Boundary-Setting Beyond "No"

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Boundary-setting is something that many people struggle with, and it’s rarely about simply being a pushover or not.

  • Today’s main feature looks at what boundary setting is (and isn’t!) and how to make it actually work, and manage related consequences.

• If you shop on Amazon, then (all other things being equal) would you rather pay more, or pay less?

  • If out of those two you picked “pay less”, then today’s sponsor, Brad’s Deals, may be of interest to you!

• Today’s featured recipe is for tiramisu… But healthy!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

Replacing Sugar: Top 10 Anti-Inflammatory Sweet Foods

For those with a sweet tooth, it can be challenging to indulge one's desires while also avoiding inflammation. Happily, Dr. Jia-Yia Lui has scientific insights to share:

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Psychology Sunday

More Than A “No”

A lot of people struggle with boundary-setting, and it’s not always the way you might think.

The person who “can’t say no” to people probably comes to mind, but the problem is more far-reaching than that, and it’s rooted in not being clear over what a boundary actually is.

For example: “Don’t bring him here again!”

Pretty clear, right?

And while it is indeed clear, it’s not a boundary; it’s a command. Which may or may not be obeyed, and at the end of the day, what right have we to command people in general?

Same goes for less dramatic things like “Don’t talk to me about xyz”, which can still be important or trivial, depending on whether the topic of xyz is deeply traumatizing for you, or mildly annoying, or something else entirely.

Why this becomes a problem

It becomes a problem not because of any lack of clarity about your wishes, but rather, because it opens the floor for a debate. The listener may be given to wonder whether your right to not experience xyz is greater or lesser than their right to do/say/etc xyz.

“My right to swing my fist ends where someone else’s nose begins”

…does not help here, firstly because both sides will believe themself (or nobody) to be the injured party; for the fist-swinger, the other person’s nose made a vicious assault on their freedom. Or secondly, maybe there was some higher principle at stake; a reason why violence was justified. And then ten levels of philosophical debate. We see this a lot when it comes to freedom of expression, and vigorous debate over whether this entails freedom from social consequences of one’s words/actions.

How a good boundary-setting works (if this, then that)

Consider two signs:

• No trespassing!

• Trespassers will be shot!

Superficially, the second just seems like a more violent rendition of the first. But in fact, the second is more informationally useful: it explains what will happen if the boundary is not respected, and allows the reader to make their own informed decision with regard to what to do with that information.

We can employ this method (and can even do so gently, if we so wish and hopefully we mostly do wish to be gentle) when it comes to social and interpersonal boundary-setting:

• If you bring him here again, I will refuse you entrance

• If you bring up that topic again, I will ask you to leave

• If you do that, I will never speak to you again

• If you don’t stop drinking, I will divorce you

This “if-this-then-that” model does the very first thing that any good boundary does: make itself clear.

It doesn’t rely on moral arguments; it doesn’t invite debate. For example in that last case, it doesn’t argue that the partner doesn’t have the right to drink—it simply expresses what the speaker will exercise their own right to do, in that eventuality.

(as an aside, the situation that occurs when one is enmeshed with someone who is dependent on a substance is a complex topic, and if you’re interested in that, check out: Codependency Isn’t What Most People Think)

Back on track: boundary-setting is not about what’s right or good—it’s about nothing more nor less than a clear delineation between what we will and won’t accept, and how we’ll enforce that.

We can also, in particularly personal boundary-setting (such as with sexual boundaries’ oft-claimed “gray areas”), fix an improperly-set boundary that forgot to do the above, e.g:

“How about [proposition]?”
“No thank you” ← casually worded answer; contextually reasonable, and yet not a clear boundary per what we discussed above
“Come on, I think you’d like it”
“I said no. No means no. Ask me again and I will [consequences that are appropriate and actionable]”

What’s “appropriate and actionable” may vary a lot from one situation to another, but it’s important that it’s something you can do and are prepared to do and will do if the condition for doing it is met.

Anything less than that is not a boundary—it’s just a request.

Note: this does not require that we have power, by the way. If we have zero power in a situation, well, that definitely sucks, but even then we can still express what is actionable, e.g. “I will never trust you again”.

“Price of entry”

You may have wondered, upon reading “boundary-setting is not about what’s right or good—it’s about nothing more nor less than a clear delineation between what we will and won’t accept, and how we’ll enforce that”, can’t that be used to control and manipulate people, essentially coercing them to do or not do things with the threat of consequences (specifically: bad ones)?

And the answer is: yes, yes it can.

But that’s where the flipside comes into play—the other person gets to set their boundaries, too.

For all of us, if we have any boundaries at all, there is a “price of entry” and all who want to be in our lives, or be close to us, have to decide for themselves whether that price of entry is worth it.

• If a person says “do not talk about topic xyz to me or I will leave”, that is a price of entry for being close to them.

• If you are passionate about talking about topic xyz to the point that you are unwilling to shelve it when in their presence, then that is the price of entry for being close to you.

• If one or more of you is not willing to pay the price of entry, then guess what, you’re just not going to be close.

In cases of forced proximity (e.g. workplaces or families) this is likely to get resolved by the workplace’s own rules (i.e. the price of entry that you agreed to when signing a contract to work there), and if something like that doesn’t exist (such as in families), well, that forced proximity is going to reach a breaking point, and somebody may discover it wasn’t enforceable after all.

See also: Family Estrangement: More Common Than Most People Think

…which also details how to fix it, where possible.

Take care!

Our Sponsors Make This Publication Possible

Get the Most Out of Your Amazon Prime Membership

Maximize the value of your Amazon Prime membership by uncovering 10 lesser-known benefits that can transform your shopping, streaming, and saving experience.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between pistachios and almonds—we picked the almonds (click here to read about why), as did 60% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Recipes Worth Sharing

Healthy Tiramisu

Tiramisu (literally "pick-me-up", "tira-mi-su") is a delightful dish that, in its traditional form, is also a trainwreck for the health, being loaded with inflammatory cream and sugar, not to mention the cholesterol content.

Here we recreate the dish in healthy fashion, being loaded with protein, fiber, and healthy fats, not to mention that the optional sweetener is an essential amino acid. The coffee and cocoa, of course, are full of antioxidants too. All in all, what's not celebrate?

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More – by Dr. Uma Naidoo

“Diet will fix your brain” is a bold claim that often comes from wishful thinking and an optimistic place where anecdote is louder than evidence. But, diet does incontrovertibly also affect brain health. So, what does Dr. Naidoo bring to the table?

The author is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef who graduated with her culinary school’s most coveted award, and a trained-and-certified nutritionist. Between those three qualifications, it’s safe to she knows her stuff when it comes to the niche that is nutritional psychiatry. And it shows.

She takes us through the neurochemistry involved, what chemicals are consumed, made, affected, inhibited, upregulated, etc, what passes through the blood-brain barrier and what doesn’t, what part the gut really plays in its “second brain” role, and how we can leverage that—as well as mythbusting a lot of popular misconceptions about certain foods and moods.

There’s hard science in here, but presented in quite a pop-science way, making for a very light yet informative read.

Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand what your food is doing to your brain (and what it could be doing instead), then this is a top-tier book for you!

Click here to check out This Is Your Brain On Food, and get to know yours!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team