I read this thismorning, and thought I'd share it in here.. We cannot simultaneously set a boundary and take care of another person’s feelings. It’s impossible; the two acts contradict. What a tremendous asset to have compassion for others! How difficult that same quality can make it to set boundaries! It’s good to care about other people and their feelings; it’s essential to care about ourselves too. Sometimes, to take good care of ourselves, we need to make a choice. Some of us live with a deeply ingrained message from our family, or from church, about never hurting other people’s feelings. We can replace that message with a new one, one that says it’s not okay to hurt ourselves. Sometimes, when we take care of ourselves, others will react with hurt feelings. That’s okay. We will learn, grow, and benefit by the experience; they will too. The most powerful and positive impact we can have on other people is accomplished by taking responsibility for ourselves, and allowing others to be responsible for themselves. Caring works. Caretaking doesn’t. We can learn to walk the line between the two. Today, I will set the limits I need to set. I will let go of my need to take care of other people’s feelings and instead take care of my own. I will give myself permission to take care of myself, knowing it’s the best thing I can do for myself and others.

What if, by trying to avoid rocking the boat, you actually make it sink. If you’re like most nice guys and people pleasers, you’ve probably been walking on eggshells in your relationship to avoid upsetting your partner and to prevent conflict. You choose your words carefully. You avoid certain topics. You anticipate and prevent problems from happening. You pretend to agree with things. You follow rather than lead. You are generally just trying to keep the peace all the time, and you probably pat yourself on the back for doing it. But I’ll bet you’ve noticed something that’s pretty frustrating: Not only is this not working, the conflicts are getting worse as time passes. So either the drama keeps happening anyway—it’s just a different type of drama—or other problems are starting to emerge. Even if it looks like the two of you are reasonably conflict-free and things look okay on the surface, things like intimacy, respect, and knowing who you are are starting to deteriorate, or have gotten really bad over time. You start to feel resentful, highly anxious, feel like you’re kind of being eroded away, and you get a sense of dread that things are never going to get better—that you’re trapped in a prison and there’s really no way out. There’s this kind of paradox, or this trap, where you feel like you’re doing everything right and being a good person, and yet there’s constant tension. It feels like the problem never gets solved. In today’s podcast episode, we’re going to break down why walking on eggshells not only doesn’t work, it’s actually one of the main causes of conflict and tension in a relationship. We’re going to break down what it means to walk on eggshells, what it looks like, why it happens, how you became a person who does this, why it doesn’t work, why it backfires on you, and a healthier, more respectful, and confident way to deal with these issues that will actually reduce the overall conflict over time. The best thing is, you can reduce all this conflict without actually causing a lot of chaos. It’s not going to be as bad as you think it’s going to be, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.