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

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

This unconventional recommendation column provides 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 can be equally legitimate however that always battle with one another. Keep tuned for extra authentic Your Mileage Might Fluctuate columns coming later this month. Within the meantime, submit your personal query right here.

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

This want to assist has bled into different parts of my life. One in all my finest mates went by way of a private disaster and needed to transfer out the identical day, and I packed all the pieces. Throughout the very starting of Covid, I drove to the ER in a rental automobile to assist a special buddy. 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 believe she’s about to get deported, however she’s simply calling me to ask for groceries.

After all, that is all at a price to myself. I’ve labored very onerous 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 once 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 duty that isn’t mine to carry. That looks like an inadequate cause to not assist others — one thing I consider is vital to do. Not for any explicit ethical/non secular 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 in regards to 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 onerous in remedy (yay!) and have realized to say that magic phrase (“no”). But you’re not satisfied in your bones that you need to wish to set boundaries. And I truly assume you’re selecting up on one thing actual there.

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

However I believe 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 should you consider, as I do, that we’re all truly profoundly interconnected and interdependent, that we’re continually 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 potential to attract a pointy line between ourselves and different individuals?

Pop psychology additional assures us that though boundaries may really feel egocentric, they’re actually the other: The extra you shield your personal well-being at present, the extra you’ll be capable to 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 purpose 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 individuals bastardize the idea of boundaries by brandishing boundary language as a canopy for avoidance. We’ve all received that buddy (or Instagram influencer) who says, “Nope, I’m drawing a boundary!” anytime they’re being requested to do one thing that may be even slightly onerous or uncomfortable.

You write that any act of self-preservation looks like a slight at your personal beliefs. The reply is to not simply hand over on self-preservation — that strategy can actually kill you. As an alternative, you want a really perfect that each honors the significance of self-preservation and provides you an ethical imaginative and prescient you’ll be able to truly consider in.

So permit me to current Indra’s web, a basic Buddhist metaphor that originated in historic India.

Image an infinite web 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 comprises the picture of each different jewel in all the web. Which suggests every jewel additionally comprises the reflections of the reflections, and the reflections of these reflections, on and on ceaselessly.

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

The concept that all the pieces is consistently remaking all the pieces else is what Buddhist philosophers name “dependent co-arising” or “interdependent origination” or generally “interbeing,” however actually, you don’t want any fancy terminology to grasp it. Should you’ve ever walked outdoors early within the morning and seen a spiderweb lined with dew drops, with every dew drop reflecting all the pieces else round it, you get the fundamental concept.

I believe picturing your self as a part of this net may actually enable you. Should you see your self as one of many jewels within the web, you instantly understand a few issues. First, there isn’t a sharp distinction marking off “the place I finish and the place you start.” And also you don’t care for your self at present with the intention to higher care for me tomorrow. You care for your self as a result of you’re one of many jewels within the web — you’re inherently valuable! And should you mess up your personal well-being, you’re smudging up one of many jewels, or worse, making a rip within the web!

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. Nevertheless it’s additionally only a downside on the native stage: You have got didn’t deal with one of many jewels as valuable. You’ve precipitated 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 potential. Wolf argues that that is truly a nasty ideally suited, as a result of should you’re doing fixed self-sacrifice, you find yourself dwelling a life bereft of the private tasks, relationships, and experiences that make up a life properly 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, taking part in the oboe, or enhancing his backhand,” she writes. “A life through which none of those potential points of character are developed might appear to be a life surprisingly 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 number of the nice presents of life. Life is consistently providing us presents. 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 buddy. The precise, scrumptious, brilliant shade of inexperienced you see on the underside of leaves when the solar shines by way of them at 4 o’clock.

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

And once I image the jewels in Indra’s web, I think about that it’s basking within the mild of all these presents, that makes the jewels actually gleam. Should you don’t let your self expertise and savor all these items and really feel properly and completely satisfied and fulfilled, I think you’re dulling your self. That doesn’t enhance the web. It detracts from it.

After all, caring for the well-being of others can itself be extraordinarily gratifying. However the issue creeps in once you let that crowd out all the pieces else, in the end tarnishing your personal well-being. The language you utilize 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 assume “I’m a jewel within the web, you’re a jewel within the web, and I’ll provide no matter I can provide with out damaging my well-being — with out ripping my a part of the web.”

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

Bonus: What I’m studying

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