Building Better Boundaries Begins with Building Better Self-Esteem

Putting your foot down with friends, family, partners and colleagues.

I have struggled my entire life with boundary issues.

In my 20s and 30s, I found myself in friendships with people who left me drained and with whom I didn’t feel a kindred connection. With them, friendship meant sacrificing my needs to satisfy theirs.

Initially, I felt energized by these friendships. Still, after a while, I realized I was enervated by them and stuck without knowing how to extricate myself from them.

That made me resentful and uncomfortably aware that, without my participation, I would not have been in the situation I so often seemed to find myself in.

There was the friendship with Clara (names changed to protect the BOUNDARIES of those who also suffered from poor boundaries), who, despite having a girlfriend, treated me like I was her girlfriend with the requisite obligations to attend to her every need.

Her expectations included that I miss work and grant deadlines to nurse her back to health when she got sick (conveniently, for her, she got sick all the time).

There was Stella, who consistently interrupted my work day by popping by unannounced or calling midday to “catch up” or ask what I was doing.

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