How To Set Healthy Boundaries for Caregivers

For some of us, boundaries might feel like a dirty word. Perhaps you’ve been taught that you’re meant to be giving, to be compassionate, to always go above and beyond. Yet, setting boundaries is a critical part of living a good life.

Doing so helps you to protect yourself and also gives you the energy to support another person. In fact, if you don’t set boundaries, you might never have the time or energy to support someone else well.

Despite the importance of boundaries, many of us have no idea how to approach boundaries. That’s why, today, we’re talking about how to set healthy boundaries for caregivers.

What are Boundaries Anyway?

Let’s start off simple.

In the relationship context, a boundary can be defined as a line that you draw. It’s the emotional break between you and the other person.

Having boundaries is an important part of any healthy relationship, as is respecting the boundaries of other people. Without these boundaries, people don’t get the chance to grow as individuals, to support themselves, and to have their own wants and needs.

For example, when couples don’t have good boundaries, everything starts to become about ‘we’ and ‘us’, to the point that individual differences and needs start to get lost. Such a situation isn’t healthy and can harm the relationship in the long term.

Boundaries are just as relevant in other types of relationships too, including the relationship between you and your aging parents.

Types of Boundaries

Boundaries can be broken into various categories, including the following.

• Physical boundaries, which relate to your personal space, your body, and your privacy. Some physical boundaries are obvious, like slapping someone is crossing a boundary. Others are less obvious, like levels of physical affection in public.
• Sexual boundaries. This area is mostly obvious and isn’t too relevant to caregiving. However, it may become relevant if you’re caring for a dementia patient, as the condition can lead to inappropriate sexual behavior.
• Emotional boundaries, which relate to your emotions and those of other people. If your emotional boundaries are low, then you might quickly take on emotions from other people or expect them to fix your emotions. 
• Intellectual boundaries relate to beliefs and ideas. For many people, a key boundary is that people show respect for their ideas, even if they don’t agree with them (i.e. you can disagree with me, but don’t call me an idiot because you have a different opinion).
• Financial boundaries. This area is most obvious between spouses, as their finances are linked. However, it can be relevant in other situations too. For example, your aging mother constantly criticizing your financial decisions may be overstepping a boundary.
• Time boundaries. These relate to the time that you spend doing things. For some people, time boundaries include the right to have time to themselves.  
• Spiritual and religious boundaries. These refer to your beliefs, which may include practices that you do regularly and things that you’re not comfortable with.

Here are some examples of specific boundaries. I’m sure you can think of plenty of others.

• Maintaining the right to say ‘no’ to any request, without explanation
• The right to have time alone
• The right to change your mind
• Expecting to be taken seriously and not disrespected
• The right to have your own values and principles
• Privacy, like your partner not going through your purse or phone

Why Boundaries Matter

They Allow You to be More Authentic

Setting good boundaries gives you the chance to focus on your authentic self. To do the things that you want to do and that resonate with you, rather than feeling like you must constantly give into other people.

Doing so also helps you to become more distinct as an individual.

This is particularly important for caregivers, as it’s easy to almost lose your identity in the midst of caregiving.

Being authentic and keeping your identity is crucial for your mental health. The approach is even relevant to your caregiving role, as you’ll bring more humor, resilience, and personality to the situation when you feel strong within yourself.

They Prevent Burnout

Not having clear boundaries often means that you say yes to everything and everyone. Doing so can quickly get exhausting and isn’t sustainable in the long term.

The problem is even worse when you’re dealing with a demanding parent, one who doesn’t recognize or respect your needs. Perhaps they even try to guilt trip you, suggesting that you’re being selfish if you meet your own needs.

Putting boundaries in place helps to protect you.

Doing so allows you to take back energy and attention for yourself, to grow as a person, and to rest when you need to. Those approaches are all essential for preventing burnout as a caregiver.

You Can Focus Your Energy on the Tasks That Matter

Once you get a handle on boundaries, saying no can become much easier.

Suddenly, you get to choose. You can put your energy where it will do the most good and say no to tasks that are much less important.

Doing so isn’t being lazy. Instead, balancing priorities is something that we all need to do. After all, it makes no sense to expend most of your energy on a trivial event, then have nothing left for something more serious.

What Are Good Boundaries?

We also need to think a little about what boundaries should look like.

The best boundaries are both clear and flexible.

For example, you might set a boundary with a needy aging parent by saying they must let you know ahead of time if they need a ride somewhere – so that you can plan. This boundary means that you can still be there when they need you, but can also have a life of your own.

There will, however, be times where the aging parent can’t give you notice. Perhaps there’s an emergency or they simply forget. In those situations, being flexible is important.

Boundaries are also relevant to the people involved and situation. For example, you’re likely to have softer and fewer boundaries with close friends than with strangers.

How to Find the Boundaries that You Need

To take advantage of your boundaries, you first need to figure out what they are.

Look for Tension

Start by thinking about the various types of boundaries that we mentioned earlier, including religious/spiritual, mental/emotional, physical, sexual, time, and financial.

Where in your life is there tension? Where does it feel like your needs aren’t being met?

You might not be able to identify a specific boundary or issue at first. That’s okay. The emotional tension will often be your first clue. Once you’ve identified areas of tension, you can start taking a closer look at what might be wrong in those situations.

Look At Your Values

Your values are another important area. These are the things that matter the most to you, ones that need to be met in your life (for more information, check out our post on How to Find and Use Your Personal Values as a Caregiver).

Understanding your values can help you to work out the boundaries that are most important to you.

For example, independence and privacy show up strongly in some people’s values. Others might focus on different areas, like adventure, or perhaps kindness and compassion.

Each set of values lends itself to different boundaries.

• People with a strong independence mindset may need more time to themselves and greater privacy than others.
• People strongly grounded in love and compassion may get a strong sense of purpose from caregiving, but may struggle to say no, even when requests are unreasonable.

Ask for Advice

External council is important too, both from other people and from books.

While you know the current situation better than anyone else, you will still have blind spots.

A common issue is getting caught up in guilt, where you feel like you should be doing much more and should be more gracious in doing so. Yet, in practice, you may already be going above and beyond.

External advice can help you to realize that you need to pull back and start saying no more often.

Consider The Other Person

While books, blogs, and advice can be helpful, please approach them with caution. One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed is that advice for boundaries often heavily focuses on your needs (i.e. the person setting the boundaries), along with how to get the other person to follow them.

But, you’re only half of the equation.

You also need to consider the other person. What are their needs? Their boundaries? Where are their limitations?

Look at Their Needs

Setting healthy boundaries for caregivers is a little complex, as you’re supporting someone who can’t fully care for themselves.

This might mean that you can’t simply walk away until they come around.

One of the most helpful approaches is to pay attention to what the senior actually needs, rather than what they want. This is powerful if you’re dealing with an overly needy senior or a manipulative one.

Cloud and Townsend talk about this idea in their book Boundaries, highlighting the fact that we’re called to support people that we love with their overwhelming burdens, not with the things that they can and should do for themselves.

Doing too much for your parent can easily create a situation where you’re enabling unhealthy behaviors and increasing their dependence on you over time.

Look at Their Capabilities

The other thing to think about is, what happens if the person you’re caring for can’t follow all your boundaries or perhaps can’t understand them. For example:

• If you’re supporting a narcissistic parent, they may never be able to understand your point of view. It doesn’t matter many times you explain it to them, they might never get it and may be unwilling to try.
• Dementia is another situation. Dementia patients often engage in socially inappropriate behaviors and they don’t understand logic in the same way as when they were well.
• Some parents may simply lack the emotional intelligence to understand the way your needs work – and don’t respect them because of this.

There are many other situations like this as well.

Sometimes the solution is to frame your boundaries in another way or to explain them better. But, other times, it just may not be possible for your parent to understand.

Decide Where to Draw Your Lines

Finally, it’s time to bring all these areas together.

You’ve identified areas where things aren’t right, where something needs to be changed and you’ve considered what the other person can and can’t do.

The next step is to look at where you’re going to draw your lines.

As we talked about earlier, having some flexibility is important, but you still need to stand up for what’s important to you. What this looks like will vary depending on the situation.

Take privacy and time, as examples.

These are two areas that caregivers often struggle with, as it can feel like you’re constantly set upon and have very little time for yourself. Creating boundaries can help you to re-establish time and privacy for yourself. Possible approaches include:

• Creating a space in the home that is just yours. This might be an entire room or just a corner, whatever works for your situation.
• Maintaining the right to say ‘no’, without explanation.
• Making regular ‘me time’ a priority and finding ways to fit this in. Like, if you’re married and feel like there are constant demands on your energy and attention, perhaps you have a night where you sleep alone every so often. This can give you the chance to re-ground in yourself.
• Fitting the requests or demands of your aging parent into your schedule, rather than dropping everything when they ask (except in emergencies).

It may take time for you to work out the best boundary for your situation and how to put it in place. This isn’t a bad thing. The whole experience is a learning journey anyway and you’ll be growing along the way.

Putting Your Boundaries In Place

Once you know what your boundaries are, the next step is putting them in place, which involves having conversations with people in your life – particularly family members and those you’re caring for.

These conversations may be easier than you expect.

But, I won’t lie, they can also be incredibly difficult. Some people will be resistant to your boundaries, perhaps because they feel hurt. There might also be confusion. After all, if you’ve had few boundaries for years, the sudden change might make little sense to people in your life.

Here are some tips that can help the process along:

• Explain what you’re doing and why. This includes talking about why these boundaries are important to you and also why you’re putting them in place now.
• Be clear and specific about what you want. For example, saying “I need more time to myself” is vague and is difficult for people to work with, while telling them that “I’m not going to be available on Friday nights” is much more powerful.  
• Be patient… to a point. It might take your family member a while to get a handle on your new boundaries. For example, they might periodically forget to call ahead of time or may expect too much of you. However, it’s still important to be clear and remind them of your boundaries. And, at some point, you may need to draw a firm line and say ‘no more’.

Consider Consequences

Consequences are important when you’re thinking and talking about boundaries too. In particular, what happens if your family member refuses to follow your boundaries?

For example:

• I won’t cancel work or events because you decide last-minute that you need a ride. If you don’t let me know ahead of time, you’ll need to take a taxi instead.
• I can’t pick up groceries for you at the drop of a hat, but I can easily buy whatever you want when I go to the store on Mondays and Fridays.
• I need you to call ahead before you come to visit. If you don’t and I have other plans, I won’t change them to spend time with you.

It’s important to talk the consequences through with the other person. This way they know what to expect and aren’t surprised if you suddenly seem to shut them out.

Be Willing to Negotiate

Remember what we said earlier about values being flexible?

This is important, especially in a caregiving situation. The goal is to find a way to make things work well, for you and for them.

For example, let’s say you like to plan things.

You have a lot on your plate and managing that all requires a decent amount of juggling. Your aging mother, on the other hand, is more of a free spirit. She tends to make things up as she goes along and finds planning difficult, as she doesn’t know how she will feel on the day.

Your first instinct might be to see a boundary where you say ‘no unarranged visits’. But, for your mother, that would be too difficult. So, you might agree that she’ll try to let you know before she comes around. And, if she doesn’t give you much (or any!) notice, that you can’t guarantee you’ll be available.

A similar approach can be done in most situations.

The trick is to be aware of what aspects of the boundary are most important to you. What needs are you trying to meet? You can then hold your ground with the important aspects, but be flexible with some of the specifics of how the boundary plays out.

What Happens if They Refuse?

There will be some cases where the person you’re supporting just refuses. Where they regularly go over your boundaries or don’t seem to care about them at all.

Re-asserting the boundary or presenting it in a different way might help, but not always. After all, you can’t force someone to do what they don’t want to do.

The first thing here is to think about the boundary itself.

What can you change? Are there other ways to meet the underlying needs that are more realistic for the situation? For example, if you live with your aging parent and they don’t respect your need for time alone, you might choose to get your alone time away from the home, where they can’t disturb you.

Is the boundary essential? Some boundaries are set in stone and essential (like ‘no cheating’ in a relationship). Others aren’t. What’s the case for this boundary?

If the boundary can be changed, can be met in another way, or isn’t essential, then you might choose to stay connected with your parent, even though they’re don’t respect all of your boundaries.

Remembering that what’s happening isn’t personal can help here.

However, if the boundary is crucial or if their boundary breaking is causing significant harm, then it might be time to leave. Perhaps this means looking at assisted living or other family members, or even taking more drastic action.

Doing so might sound harsh, but supporting your parent isn’t always the healthiest option for you or for them.

Final Thoughts

Here are some useful guidelines when thinking about boundaries:

• Communication is key. People often have very different values and boundaries from one another. The more you talk, the better you can understand one another.
• Be curious and open minded. Rather than having a right versus wrong mindset, try being curious about the other person’s perspective. If they’re not willing to meet your boundaries in a given area, try to work out why. Doing so may help you find a better solution, one that meets everyone’s needs.
• Be patient and kind. Changes to boundaries can be confusing and some people may feel hurt when you first make changes. Being patient and gentle can help to make things easier for everyone.
• Be flexible. Flexibility is important too. There are often multiple ways to meet the same need and some may be better suited for your situation than others.
• Remember that boundaries are a two-way street. You also need to respect the boundaries of your loved one. This is something we’ll discuss in more depth in a later post, as some adult children end up going over their parents’ boundaries in an attempt to help them.

Further Reading

If you come from a Christian background and struggle with the idea of boundaries, then I highly recommend the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.

The book is an easy introduction to boundaries, one that works well regardless of your experience.

And, more than that, Boundaries takes a strongly biblical perspective, with the authors often quoting bible verses to show that strong boundaries don’t go against your faith at all. Indeed, having good boundaries is a critical part of living a good Christian life.

I also go into boundaries in more depth in my upcoming book, so keep an eye out for that when it is published.