Does setting boundaries really feel egocentric? Possibly boundaries are the issue.

Editor’s word, June 21, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you a few of our best-loved Your Mileage Might Range columns whereas Sigal Samuel is on parental go away. The one beneath was initially printed in November 2025.

This unconventional recommendation column affords you a novel framework for pondering by way of ethical dilemmas. It’s based mostly on worth pluralism: the concept that every of us has a number of values which are equally legitimate however that always battle with one another. Keep tuned for extra authentic Your Mileage Might Range columns coming later this month. Within the meantime, submit your individual query right here.

I’m the one youngster of divorced mother and father. Each of my mother and father require totally different ranges of assist. One is extremely poor and attempting to care for my grandparents. The opposite doesn’t have laptop literacy and English isn’t their essential language. I assist with my consideration, cash, and time every time I can, as a result of on the finish of the day, we’re all we acquired.

This want to assist has bled into different parts of my life. Considered one of my finest buddies went by way of a private disaster and needed to transfer out the identical day, and I packed every little thing. Through the very starting of Covid, I drove to the ER in a rental automobile to assist a distinct good friend. There’s a migrant mom on my nook who I cross every single day, who is aware of that I’ll give no matter I can. She’s known as me throughout work, and each time I feel she’s about to get deported, however she’s simply calling me to ask for groceries.

In fact, that is all at a price to myself. I’ve labored very exhausting over the previous couple of years with a therapist to study to say no and set boundaries — and I graduated from remedy!

However the issue is that I don’t need to say no, and after I do, it’s as a result of I do know if I say sure, I’ll fall down a slippery slope of absorbing extra accountability that isn’t mine to carry. That looks like an inadequate cause to not assist others — one thing I imagine is necessary to do. Not for any specific ethical/spiritual cause or as a result of I fear that I’m a nasty individual. Frankly, I don’t give a rattling about that. However I do care concerning the well-being of these in my orbit immensely.

My concern is that I do know that I’ll give, give, give till I’m nothing. Any act of self-preservation looks like a slight at my very own beliefs, however resentment bubbles away anyhow as a result of I’m so overextended.

You’ve labored exhausting in remedy (yay!) and have realized to say that magic phrase (“no”). But you’re not satisfied in your bones that you need to need to set boundaries. And I truly suppose you’re choosing up on one thing actual there.

To be clear, I feel self-preservation is each bit as necessary as self-sacrifice — particularly for folks like me and (by the sounds of it) you, who grew up as “parentified” kids targeted on taking good care of others’ wants.

However I feel the favored language of “boundaries” isn’t fairly passing the sniff check for you — and for good cause. We’re taught that “a boundary is a restrict or edge that defines you as separate from others” — it’s “the place I finish and the place you start,” to cite a few standard therapists. But when you imagine, as I do, that we’re all truly profoundly interconnected and interdependent, that we’re always influencing and shaping actuality for each other, then that concept of boundaries might really feel prefer it muddies greater than it clarifies. Is it actually attainable to attract a pointy line between ourselves and different folks?

Pop psychology additional assures us that though boundaries would possibly really feel egocentric, they’re actually the alternative: The extra you shield your individual well-being in the present day, the extra you’ll be capable of assist others tomorrow! However that is weirdly instrumentalizing: It treats you as a method to an finish, not an finish in your self. It makes it sound like your actions are solely justifiable if their final intention is to serve others’ wants — precisely the form of “self-sacrifice is all that issues” mentality that boundaries are supposed to get you away from.

To make issues worse, some folks bastardize the idea of boundaries by brandishing boundary language as a canopy for avoidance. We’ve all acquired that good friend (or Instagram influencer) who says, “Nope, I’m drawing a boundary!” anytime they’re being requested to do one thing that might be even a little bit exhausting or uncomfortable.

You write that any act of self-preservation looks like a slight at your individual beliefs. The reply is to not simply surrender on self-preservation — that strategy can actually kill you. As a substitute, you want an excellent that each honors the significance of self-preservation and affords you an ethical imaginative and prescient you may truly imagine in.

So enable me to current Indra’s internet, a traditional Buddhist metaphor that originated in historic India.

Image an infinite internet stretching out throughout the universe (a bit like a spiderweb). At every node the place the threads intersect, there’s a jewel (a bit like a dewdrop that sits on the spiderweb). And every jewel is so shiny and reflective that it incorporates the picture of each different jewel in the whole internet. Which implies every jewel additionally incorporates the reflections of the reflections, and the reflections of these reflections, on and on eternally.

That is actuality, the Buddhists say. No jewel exists as a separate, boundaried entity: Change one jewel, and each jewel within the internet transforms too, as a result of they’re all reflecting one another. Change one individual, and each individual adjustments, too.

The concept every little thing is continually remaking every little thing else is what Buddhist philosophers name “dependent co-arising” or “interdependent origination” or typically “interbeing,” however truthfully, you don’t want any fancy terminology to know it. If you happen to’ve ever walked exterior early within the morning and seen a spiderweb lined with dew drops, with every dew drop reflecting every little thing else round it, you get the essential thought.

I feel picturing your self as a part of this net would possibly actually provide help to. If you happen to see your self as one of many jewels within the internet, you instantly understand a few issues. First, there is no such thing as a sharp distinction marking off “the place I finish and the place you start.” And also you don’t care for your self in the present day so to higher care for me tomorrow. You care for your self as a result of you’re one of many jewels within the internet — you’re inherently valuable! And when you mess up your individual well-being, you’re smudging up one of many jewels, or worse, making a rip within the internet!

Sure, smudging up your jewel will change the reflections in all the opposite jewels, so it’s an issue on the extent of the way you have an effect on others. But it surely’s additionally only a drawback on the native degree: You might have did not deal with one of many jewels as valuable. You’ve prompted a rip. That isn’t morally praiseworthy.

I’ve written earlier than about up to date thinker Susan Wolf’s idea of the “ethical saint” — somebody who tries to make all their actions as morally good as attainable. Wolf argues that that is truly a nasty ultimate, as a result of when you’re doing fixed self-sacrifice, you find yourself residing a life bereft of the non-public initiatives, relationships, and experiences that make up a life nicely lived.

“If the ethical saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or therapeutic the sick or elevating cash for Oxfam, then essentially he isn’t studying Victorian novels, enjoying the oboe, or enhancing his backhand,” she writes. “A life by which none of those attainable elements of character are developed might appear to be a life unusually barren.”

It’s clear that Wolf finds this form of life distasteful. However your query prompted me to ask myself: What’s it, precisely, that makes it so distasteful? Why does it truly give Wolf — and me — the ick?

I might argue it’s as a result of somebody who’s hyper-focused on giving to others is refusing a few of the nice items of life. Life is continually providing us items. The style of an unusually good meal. The pleasure of feeling your physique transfer on the dance flooring. The intimacy you’re feeling in a late-night dialog with a good friend. The precise, scrumptious, shiny shade of inexperienced you see on the underside of leaves when the solar shines by way of them at 4 o’clock.

When somebody affords you a present — as life is providing you simply by supplying you with a wholesome physique and thoughts and a phenomenal planet — the gracious factor to do is settle for it and luxuriate in it.

And after I image the jewels in Indra’s internet, I think about that it’s basking within the mild of all these items, that makes the jewels actually gleam. If you happen to don’t let your self expertise and savor all these items and really feel nicely and glad and fulfilled, I believe you’re dulling your self. That doesn’t enhance the web. It detracts from it.

In fact, caring for the well-being of others can itself be extraordinarily gratifying. However the issue creeps in while you let that crowd out every little thing else, in the end tarnishing your individual well-being. The language you employ to explain your present state — “my concern is that I do know that I’ll give, give, give till I’m nothing” and “resentment bubbles away anyhow as a result of I’m so overextended” — tells me you’re placing an excessive amount of of your power into caring for others and never sufficient into caring for your self.

Feeling concern and resentment whereas providing “charity” or “service” or “assist” to others is just not truly being in proper relation with others — it’s an all-too-common type of martyrdom that units up a hierarchical dynamic between a long-suffering “giver” and a passive “receiver.” The choice is to remain horizontal, to suppose “I’m a jewel within the internet, you’re a jewel within the internet, and I’ll supply no matter I can supply with out damaging my well-being — with out ripping my a part of the web.”

So, pricey reader, play with discovering that steadiness. You’ll know you’ve discovered it while you don’t really feel resentful — you simply really feel tightly linked to others, and gleaming.

Bonus: What I’m studying

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