This book has been a bestseller for over 30 years. It’s helped people learn how to allow good to flow into their lives and say “no”’ to what’s toxic in their relationships with family, friends, lovers, and self.

If your neighbor finds a way to rig the water mains in such a way that he can water his lawn using your water, that would feel wrong. Your neighbor would have a lush, green lawn for free while you’re left with dead, brown grass and the bill. Your neighbor gets all the benefits of your water supply without any responsibility. Meanwhile, you’re sponsoring your own suffering, taking ownership of things for which you’re not responsible.

Much less obvious, but just as critical to a life in which we don’t drain each other dry, are emotional and spiritual boundaries. These boundaries also serve to protect us, by showing what we are and are not responsible for, who we are and who we are not. Boundaries define us. They tell us, “I’ve come to the edge of my existential property; this is where I leave off, and someone else picks up. I will not go further than this.” This sounds limiting, but it actually gives us freedom and opens us up to give and receive genuine love.

Boundaries are everywhere in our world. We see them in lanes on the highway, city limits, fences between countries, property lines between homes—even our own skin. They tell us where someone’s property ends and someone else’s begins.

The word boundary can carry connotations of being severe, strict, exclusive, or unloving. The truth is that barriers are necessary for true love to even happen. They allow us the freedom to know who we are and where we should devote our love, and (just as importantly), who we are not and where we should not devote our love. Barriers are not confining, but profoundly liberating.

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In our relationships, we get confused about the difference between a load and a burden. Each of us has a load to carry. Your load is your load. No one else can carry it. There are things that are for you to do not your spouse, friend, or neighbor. Burdens are those crises and hard times that we sometimes face—where we need the support of trusted others in our lives to help us through. This is not a permanent state of affairs, though, and we must remember that while we sometimes need one another to help us move those boulders in our lives (burdens), we can never hand someone our own load. Everyone else already has their backpack of responsibilities, which includes their own thoughts, actions, and emotions. You cannot hand someone your backpack of emotions and responsibilities that you do not want to deal with. That’s your responsibility.

Christians especially seem to struggle with boundaries because they think they are being loving by saying “yes” to every opportunity to serve and try to save others. Relationships can stay toxic longer when people misapply verses about loving others. They can end up hurt, burnt out, and miserable in the process. Boundaries help our relationships with family members, spouses, kids, friends, and colleagues by clarifying what is our load and what is another person’s.

Our boundaries can even help our relationship with God. God helps bear our burdens, but he expects each of us to carry our own load. God brings insight and healing in ways that we cannot bring to ourselves, but he will not force us to accept his love. He invites us, but then he also waits for us to be available to his influence. He knocks at the door—he doesn’t kick it open. Each of us has to open the gate.

A boundary is not a wall—it’s a fence with a gate. Our boundaries with others should be permeable because we are wired to give and receive love. When the soul’s gates work right, we can open them to good things and we can close those gates to protect ourselves from toxic things that would like to get in. So, boundaries should be strong enough that we have a distinct sense of self and so we can protect ourselves, but not so fortified that we can’t receive or give love.

There are different types of people, and their gates malfunction in different ways. The four main groups are compliants, avoidants, controllers, and non-responsives.

Compliants have a hard time saying “no.” They end up saying “yes” to the bad because their gates don’t block it effectively. Their boundaries are blurry and their sense of self is ill-defined at best. They tend to get enmeshed with others and accept the demands and requests of others very readily. Compliants are like social chameleons—they will adjust their appearance to fit what they believe those around them would like. More than being incapable of keeping out the toxins of others, they have difficulty even knowing toxic when they see it. Compliants don’t put up boundaries because they hate the thought of letting someone down. Compliants neglect boundaries because they feel like it would be cruel to reject someone or a request. Compliants are afraid of being abandoned or losing someone’s love. Compliants don’t want to seem uncaring, unspiritual, or self-absorbed, and they tend to enjoy the feeling they get from someone else depending on them.

Avoidants can’t hear “yes.” Their gates don’t readily let good in. Their boundaries have become walls with no gates. This is suffocating, but it comes from a desire to avoid the bad. So deep is  fear within avoidants that they forgo love in their attempts to evade pain and hurt. Boundaries cannot remain walls or we become soul sick, unable to accept the things we need. It is possible to be both a compliant and an avoidant. Compliant-avoidants double their pain because they end up saying “yes” to what’s toxic, and “no” to the love they need.

Controllers hate to hear “no.” These are the kinds of people who can’t deal with the limits that other people put on them and constantly cross boundaries, either through aggression or manipulation. They don’t know how to take responsibility for their own lives, so they try to take control of others. Controllers get others to take on responsibilities that only the controller was meant to carry. Each of us has a load and must learn to bear it, but the controller asks (or demands) that others carry his backpack in addition to their own.

It’s possible for people to be compliant and avoidant and controlling. These people live with so much pain because they let in the bad, avoid the good, and make other people responsible for their own happiness. Such people control in more manipulative ways than aggressive ways. They might do something nice for someone and then wait expectantly (for years, sometimes) for the favor to be returned. There’s a price tag on the love—which is hardly love at all. At bottom, controllers are isolated and without love because they know that they’ve used fear, shame, and guilt to get people to stay with them. 

The non-responsives have a hard time saying “yes.” When other people voice their needs and desires, the non-responsive stonewalls. At first this might sound better than no boundaries, but we must remember that, while we cannot take responsibility for the actions or feelings of others, we are responsible to others in our lives. Within reasonable parameters, each of us does have the responsibility to love and care for those placed in our lives. The non-responsive’s stonewall is a denial of that responsibility.

One of the saddest combinations in relationships is the complaint-avoidant and the controlling-non-responsive. The compliant-avoidants are on the lookout for something to fix, for a burden to bear. The controlling non-responsives are more than happy to give them theirs. The compliant-avoidants get to focus on others instead of going through the pain of discovering who they are and what they actually need. That’s a win as far as they're concerned. The controlling-non-responsives get to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, which they consider a win. And so many unhappy cycles start and continue until one of them starts saying “no.” 

So where do these boundary problems come from? Boundary formation begins in the first three years of life. Findings in developmental psychology show us that every child should, at age three, be capable of saying “no” to what she doesn’t want, be securely attached to a parent while also being willing to take independent action. Children will not feel safe in the world if they can’t say “I don’t like that,” “stop that,” “that’s not yours,” “don’t touch me there,” or “that’s not right.”

Unfortunately, there are plenty of adults who never learned this skill of boundary creation during those critical first three years, and it’s brought them misery and pain.

Boundary formation goes wrong in the early years when parents give their kids reasons to stop saying “no.” Sometimes kids hurt their parents without realizing it and parents withdraw. The message that the child internalizes is, “When I do this action, I lose my parent’s love.” When the choice is between saying “no”—which leads to parents withdrawing their presence and love on one hand, and saying “yes” to adapt to the parents in order to keep their love, kids will inevitably adapt. Kids are not going to continue forming boundaries if love is on the line. Parents must stay connected to their children even when they’re upset or disagree with their kid’s action. Parents can be angry and stay attached to their kid.

Other ways in which parents hinder their children’s capacity to make healthy boundaries is hostility to their child’s boundaries, being overly controlling, or removing restrictions all together.

It’s ideal to learn boundary creation in the first few years of life. If someone doesn’t, they can still learn during adolescence with the help of some very patient and attentive parenting, or later in young adulthood during the period of disorientation that usually takes place upon leaving the nest and confronting the lack of structure. It’s a difficult process when the skill of boundary creation doesn’t begin early, but adults can and should still learn how to let in the good and keep out the bad. It’s never too late for that.

So what do we do about it? We know boundaries are important, that they enable us to say “no” to the bad and “yes” to the good in our lives. We know that boundary formation ideally begins in the first years of life, but that it’s never too late to begin forming healthier boundaries. So how do we do it? What do these boundaries look like, and where should they be placed?

Here are some rules of thumb that help us know where boundaries need to go. The Law of Sowing and Reaping is an important one to bear in mind. It’s also known as the Law of Cause and Effect. It’s the idea that our actions have consequences. If you don’t pay your rent, your landlord evicts you. If you rear-end someone, your insurance premiums will go up. If you study, you’ll probably do better on your exam than if you played video games all night instead. There are consequences for actions, but sometimes people attempt to interrupt the law by not allowing people to experience these consequences.  If your parents bought you a new car every time you crashed your old one, you probably wouldn’t learn to take care of your car or sober up before you get behind the wheel of the new one. This is what’s called codependency. One person foots the bill emotionally and spiritually, and the other gets loved and coddled without feeling the weight of his actions.

We also must be aware of the Law of Power. All 12 Step programs begin with the admission of powerlessness. Participants come to the end of themselves and admit the ways they’ve been trying to fix and maintain things haven’t been working. From this admission of powerlessness usually comes the discovery of what is within one’s control. You do not have the power to change another person, but you do have the power to be honest with yourself about your issues. You have the power to admit your issues to God and others, and ask them for help. You have the power to say “no” to old patterns that have harmed you. It’s not just addicts who benefit from this shift—everyone does. The hunger to change others is a far more pervasive addiction than anything drug- or alcohol-related.

It’s also important to remember that if you want others to respect your boundaries, you have to respect theirs as well—even if you don’t like their boundaries or you think they’re unnecessary. It’s up to each person to determine his or her boundaries. Boundaries need not be permanent, but it is up to the individual to negotiate them, not you. You have your own boundaries to negotiate.

The Law of Motivation is also critical. It’s about love and desiring to love from fullness, rather than deficit. Outwardly, someone might look like an incredibly loving person but  only behave that way because he’s afraid of losing someone’s love, of incurring someone’s rage, of being alone. She might be trying to cover up or compensate for self-hatred, shame, or guilt, trying to gain approval or earn a return on investment. But none of this is truly loving. There’s a price tag on all of it. We truly love when we are truly free. Get your freedom first and a desire to care for others will come. Freedom comes from healthy boundaries.

It’s not easy to learn healthy boundaries. You would have done it a long time ago if it were. As you begin to lay down good boundaries and discover what is and isn’t yours to carry, remember that it’s a process. It won’t come all at once, and it will create tension in some relationships in which others expect you to play certain roles. As you discover roles that are not yours to play, expect pushback. You will meet resistance internally and externally.

External resistance—the resistance we face from others—usually comes out as anger. When people get angry with boundaries, it can point to their egoism, that they have come to consider you an extension of themselves. They think you have to cooperate and give them what they  believe you owe them. When people get angry, it can be disorienting for the boundary-setter, but remember that their anger is their anger—not yours. It won’t get inside you unless there’s part of you that’s allowing it. You can’t make others stop being angry with you. Hold your boundary and allow them to deal with their anger. They will not get better themselves unless they deal with it. Compromising a boundary and taking on their anger deprives them of an opportunity to deal with it. Your responsibility becomes not fixing their anger, but understanding why their anger hooks you the way it does.

Another common reaction to boundaries is the guilt trip. People who have not yet established healthy boundaries get taken on guilt trips all the time.

“If you ever cared about your family, you’d do it.”

“After how good I’ve been to you, you’re not going to do me this one favor?”

“You know that I would do the same for you.”

“How could you just abandon your family like that?”

Without good boundaries, you’ll internalize the manipulation even when you’re aware that it’s happening. Identify the guilt messages, realize that there’s anger or sadness underneath it, and if the guilt gets to you, don’t put that on the manipulator. When you say, “they make me so mad” or “they’re making me feel so guilty,” you give them power over you that they don’t deserve. That’s a problem, but it’s your problem—not theirs. Explore what might be bringing that up within you. Look for the emotions that hide underneath the guilt trip they’re attempting to take you on. Sympathize with those emotions if you can, but remember that those are their emotions—not yours. Let them hang onto those.

Attempts to create boundaries will meet with internal resistance as well. We fear a loss of relationship if we say “no.” We’ve been adapting to avoid losing love and connection since we were little. To start saying “no” sets off all sorts of alarms. It feels like we’re saying “no” to basic survival instincts.

There’s also resistance from the unmet needs that still yearn for realization. We have to grieve those needs that our parents never satisfied and let go of the expectation that they or anyone else can fill that need. We have to let go of the bad to begin accepting the good.

There’s often a very angry critic in your head as you create boundaries, too. People who are susceptible to the anger of others still fear this internal critic. With someone you trust and who will stay attached to you as you work through things, acknowledge that part of you and begin to trace where that anger comes from, and the hurt that’s underneath it. Practice talking about those feelings linked to past pains, and resist the urge to go on auto-pilot, tune out, and give up on boundaries. There will be times where that desire is strong.

As you confront and deal honestly with these internal and external blocks, you will start to find that your gates are working better, that there’s more love and less toxin in your life.