I'm A Relationship Expert & This Is How To Respond When Someone Sets A Boundary 

There's a whole lot of talk out there about boundaries, how to set them, and why they're so important to our mental, emotional, and relationship health. However, what about when someone sets a boundary with you?

By now we all understand the importance of setting boundaries, but when someone actually sets a boundary with us, there can still be an impulse to fight back or get defensive. As licensed marriage and family therapist, and founder and CEO of Ellie Mental Health, Erin Pash, LMFT tells mindbodygreen, boundaries can also be one-sided or collaborative, and it's the one-sided ones that tend to get us the most worked up.

For example, let's say your friend sets a boundary with you that if you continue to show up late to things, they're not going to invite you anymore. That's their boundary—but from your perspective, they just attacked you.

Couples therapist Linda Carroll, LMFT calls this the "red zone" of communication, in which our neurobiological reaction to perceived threats (physical or psychological) is to enter a state of fight or flight. "Our heart rate spikes, our muscles tighten, and our focus narrows," she recently wrote for mindbodygreen, adding, "Our ability to see the big picture and the details vanish when we’re in this state, as do any of those non-native communication techniques we read about on the internet that one time."

In any heated conversation, including when you're getting heated about a boundary someone just placed, your best bet is to take a beat, according to Pash.

"If your response to somebody's boundary is that you can't get curious and ask questions, and it's immediately becoming defensive, you need to give your brain and body time to calm down," she says, adding, "Whatever you do at that point is going to be reactive, so the best advice is to calm your central nervous system, look at the boundary after you've taken some space, and then come back to it."

When you're ready to come back to the conversation, do so with curiosity, openness, and plenty of deep breaths. As Pash tells mindbodygreen, let them know you care about your relationship, as well as how your behavior impacts them, and that you want to work to fix it.

To stick with the example of being late, you could say, "I don't want to be the person who shows up 30 minutes late to everything and then you don't invite me anymore." And of course, make sure you follow through.

However, Pash adds, "There still needs to be some onus back on the boundary setter—like what is their expected outcome of said boundary? And is it a conversation instead of a one-sided boundary?"

With the rise of therapy speak, Pash says, people flippantly throw the word "boundary" out a lot, "but if you're going to set a harsh boundary for somebody and think they're going to understand it or just unequivocally accept it, you need to understand that you are jeopardizing your relationship."