The Exhausting Work of People Pleasing and Boundaries

The Exhausting Work of Boundary Setting When You're a People Pleaser

Most conversations about boundaries focus on how to set them. What to say, how to say it, how to hold your ground in the moment. And while that's useful, it misses what I see come up most often in my work as a counsellor in Vancouver. The hardest part of people pleasing and boundaries isn't the initial conversation. It's what comes after, when the boundary gets tested, pushed, or ignored, and you have to decide whether to say something again.

Why reinforcing a boundary is harder than setting one

When we set a boundary with someone, we're indicating to them an expectation of how we want to be treated and why that matters to us. Most of the time, people don't violate those boundaries intentionally. They forget, they push back out of habit, or they don't fully absorb what was said the first time. And so we have to say it again. And sometimes again after that.

That repetition becomes really, really fatiguing. It can start to feel easier to just let it happen than to keep reiterating what you need. And for a lot of people, that's exactly what happens. The boundary gets dropped, not because it stopped mattering, but because saying it again starts to feel like more than you have the energy for.

Why people pleasing and boundaries are in direct tension

People pleasing and boundaries are in direct tension with each other, and that tension is particularly strong for people with ADHD and addiction histories. In How ADHD Affects Relationships, we look at how the relational patterns that come with ADHD can make it harder to assert needs and hold limits with the people closest to you.

If we understand that both ADHD and addiction are really averse to discomfort and distress, then it makes sense that neglecting your own wants and needs in service of others becomes a way of avoiding that discomfort. Causing upset in a relationship, creating contention, feeling like you've disappointed someone, these things are genuinely distressing for people wired this way. Going along with what somebody else wants or needs, even at the expense of your own, can feel like the easier option just to avoid that kind of disharmony.

The problem is that it doesn't actually reduce the distress. It just redirects it inward. When you consistently override your own boundaries, you're reinforcing for yourself over and over again that your wants and needs are not important. That pleasing others matters more than meeting your own needs. That you are not worthy of being treated in the way you actually need to be treated. That reinforcement builds over time, and it starts to shape how you see yourself.

What boundaries actually do in relationships

One of the most common things I hear from clients is that having boundaries will push people away or damage their relationships. In my experience, it tends to do the opposite.

Our boundaries actually teach the important people in our lives how we need to receive love and care. They make it really clear what feels good and what doesn't. In that way, we're communicating directly how someone can show up in relationship with us so that we feel cared for and respected. In Asking for What You Want in Relationships, we explore what it looks like to start communicating those needs clearly and why that tends to strengthen relationships rather than strain them.

Rather than seeing boundaries as something that walls you off or creates distance, it's more useful to see them as a relational practice. Something that is there to deepen your relationships, to enhance the quality of connection, because it makes really clear what kind of connection you're looking for and what's important to you.

I'll be honest, there are times when setting a boundary does upset someone. I've had that experience myself. I've said to someone directly that it's hard for me to keep setting this boundary when every time I do, you tell me it hurts your feelings. And I've also said that the intention was never to cause hurt, only to make sure my own needs could be met. That's a hard conversation to have. But the relationships that can survive it, and most can, tend to come out with more genuine reciprocity on the other side. Because not having boundaries leaves you vulnerable to having your generosity exploited, to being in relationships where people are often taking from you and you don't feel like you're getting much in return.

If you'd like support with this, our individual counselling work is a good place to explore what that looks like in practice.

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What therapy can offer

One of the things I notice so often in my role as a therapist is that I'm able to bring forward to clients the patterns they bring into the room. The patterns that show up across the relationships they describe.

I sat with a client recently who described, in real detail, exactly what they had wanted to say to someone who had hurt them. The articulate version. The clear version. When I asked whether they had actually said it, they told me they hadn't. And in that moment, what we were able to look at together was the pattern: knowing exactly what needs to be said, and consistently not saying it. That pattern doesn't usually live in just one relationship. It tends to show up across all of them.

Therapy is a great place to start looking at where those patterns are showing up in your own life. To look at where boundaries are being challenged or violated, and to start figuring out what you want them to look like going forward. It's also a space where healthy boundaries are being modelled in real time. As therapists, we are really clear about what our role is, how we provide support, when we're available, and what falls outside the scope of that relationship. That modelling gives clients a lot of space to start exploring what their own healthy boundaries look like.

Building the capacity to set and hold boundaries is gradual work. It doesn't happen through a single conversation or a script. It happens through the slow process of learning to take your own needs seriously, and finding that the relationships in your life are better for it. If you've been putting off reaching out, Why Reaching Out Is Hard speaks directly to what tends to get in the way.

About the Author

Orli Paling, RCC is a Registered Clinical Counsellor with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors, with an MA in Counselling Psychology and over 13 years of experience working with adults navigating Addiction, ADHD, trauma, and emotional regulation. She practices at OP Counselling in Vancouver, BC.