How to set boundaries when you're an agreeable person
A guide to being assertive beyond saying NO
This is a premium piece that provides a realistic guide for people who find setting boundaries with others challenging. This guide could be helpful for your friends and loved ones who would like to overcome their fear of letting people down with strategies other than saying NO.
A central theme in my work with professionals in human services and corporate settings is understanding one’s limits of generosity and kindness. While helping others make better choices, develop skills to implement beneficial strategies, and thrive in life is incredibly rewarding, it can also lead to cognitive fatigue and emotional depletion.
Certain professions, such as nursing and teaching, often attract individuals, particularly women, who are naturally nurturing and agreeable. These individuals, who may excel at people pleasing, sometimes struggle to set limits with others who demand more of their time and energy.
People pleasers are typically conflict averse and prioritise others' needs over their own to gain approval and avoid confrontation. They often say YES to requests without considering the personal cost, agreeing with others without challenging them, which can ultimately harm their well-being.
Their difficulty in setting boundaries often stems from early socialisation, where individuals are conditioned to please authority figures, creating a fear of disappointing others. Over time, this dynamic can lead to significant stress and resentment. These habits are tough to break.
In some professional cultures, especially when working with individuals in vulnerable states, there is often an unspoken expectation to remain agreeable. The fear of coming across as unkind or harsh when someone is having a difficult time can make it hard to set limits. The perception of kindness and harshness is also distorted to those who believe being slightly disagreeable can be upsetting or cause harm to the other. Unfortunately, those who are adept at using their vulnerability to manipulate others can be relentless in extracting more than is reasonable, further compounding the emotional strain and at times, professional risk, of those trying to help.
Well-meaning advice from friends, peers, therapists, and coaches aimed at helping people pleasers develop assertiveness often requires them to take a leap of faith and break free from deep-seated conditioning by saying NO. I often face a dilemma when clients come to me for help navigating power struggles, as my approach challenges this guidance. This suggests that while these professionals are skilled in their work, they may not fully understand their client's personal theory of change, which could convince them to implement strategies that can worsen their client’s situation and make their life harder.
There’s a strong pressure to constantly meet others' needs, making it challenging to suddenly summon the courage to do the opposite — especially when a pattern has been established where the other person always gets their way. While saying NO might come naturally to many of us, it's easy to overlook how difficult this can be for people pleasers who may not have developed the skills and confidence to assert themselves. This minimises the fact that habit change is difficult and involves multiple steps to achieve a single goal. Being able to confidently say NO would be downstream of successfully implementing other strategies first.