I Learned Boundaries as a People Pleaser in Toxic Work Culture

Boundaries are the key to owing your voice. 
To being in integrity with yourself. 
To making your own empowered choices.
To communicating clearly with others.
Boundaries are the key to real self-care. 

And I have sucked at having boundaries most of my life. I won’t even pretend that I knew what clear boundaries were a few years ago. I’m a people pleaser in the sense that I wanted to be liked and seen as worthy - good enough to belong. I spent a lot of years doing the toxic cycle of overwork, breakdown, exhaustion, always being accessible, etc.

If there’s ever been a workplace culture of folks who don’t have healthy boundaries it’s higher ed professionals and academics. Which even led me to write about the need and ways for boundaries in higher education in InsideHigherEd to help folks create more space in the work week.

I found higher ed to be a work culture that wants folks to be always accessible ‘for the good of students’. I tell people that I loved the flexibility and autonomy of my academic life as I could work my 60 hour work week anytime or anywhere I wanted.

It’s common for people pleasers to lack of boundaries. Shout out to my other people pleasers reading this - we also tend to be over-achievers, suffer from perfectionism, and need to feel control. People pleasers are attracted to service fields because they want to help others.

Workplaces that operate with elements of fear and competition feed right into people pleasing cycles. I see this with clients who fear of losing their job or getting a bad performance eval or experience colleague gossip during an ongoing pandemic and budget cuts. So they work 12 hour days at the cost to personal well-being and relationships.

So often this cycle led to saying ‘yes’ to things sometimes without even realizing I didn’t want to do them. Not wanting conflict or to hurt or upset others. So I’d violate my own boundaries to ‘keep the peace,’ which, psst, it never did because I was anything BUT peaceful inside. 

I came to understand that when I felt angry, it was often because someone or something crossed my personal boundary. Now, to be clear, that someone often was me. I didn’t know my own boundary limits. I wasn’t clear with myself let alone others.

My Process for Boundaries Starts with Priorities

Now I’ve created the process of prioritization that leads to boundary creation. I do this for myself and work with clients through this process, too. 

1. What are this week’s priorities? Each week I create my top 3 priorities (that fit into my larger 30 and 90 day prioritization plans).

2. What in the schedule needs to shift? With those priorities for the week, I block out time in my days - loosely because I like some wiggle room.

3. Is this a delete, delegate, delay, or do now? With the tasks that didn’t make the top 3 priorities, I ask this question because not everything can get done at the same time. For people pleasers this is a hard choice but a necessary one.

4. What does the body say? I’ve learned that the many years of academia on top of childhood traumas taught me to override my body feelings. Yet, my body knows before my brain does if a decision is a YES or NO for me. I pause, I take some breathes to come into my body and I check.

5. What boundaries are needed to protect these priorities? Without written out boundaries it’s easy to give others what they want. Then we find ourselves at the end of the week not having met our goals. I can use this formula:

To create more space for (decision) so that I feel __________ I (the action I’m taking). (Adapted from LaPera’s How to Do the Work book)

I started learning boundaries within my academic work realm. I have found it easier to learn how to do this with work before incorporating boundaries into personal relationships. Boundaries will piss off the people who most benefited from your lack of. 

Over my time of learning, creating, and holding my boundaries, I’ve lost relationships, I’ve gained some, and I’ve refined others. Ultimately, I’ve regained myself and my own voice and power. Boundaries allow me to respect myself and to respect other people’s boundaries. I’m building back up self-trust from all those decades of people pleasing. 

As I continue of my self-healing journey, I want good, clear boundaries to protect the new good shit I’ve created in my life. 

This Wednesday’s (free) Grow Boldly workshop looks at how to create different types of boundaries for yourself. With a little practice on how to write it boundaries, I’m confident we all can verbalize what we need and grow mutual respect and understanding.