Drawing Lines

When we’re burned out, we might hear from others (or ourselves) that we just need to draw better boundaries. That’s good advice. But some of the leaders I coach need to do something else first.

Imagine a client who’s chronically overworked and having trouble meeting competing demands and multiple deadlines. In fact, he’s been having so much trouble his supervisor has told him she’s considering whether he’s really a “match” for the role.

Our client is wondering the same thing. Everyone around him, including his supervisor, is chiding him—shaming him, really—for not stepping up to set better boundaries and say what he needs. And right now, he’s doing a great job of turning that shame into contempt for himself.

We need to be clear: Setting boundaries is vital. Boundaries protect us. They help us heal. And our client needs to set boundaries.

But in this example, the whole discussion about boundaries has taken a dark edge. It’s about rendering judgments about deficiencies. It’s focused on blaming, threatening, and punishing.

So we step back, get curious. It turns out the client’s organization is, to put it mildly, a chaotic mess. The organization is on its second round of layoffs in the past year. Morale is in the basement. Conflict is through the roof. And the supervisor—like everyone else on the senior team—is in over her head and taking it out on her staff on a daily basis.

We're dealing with something much more complex than a skill deficit. As therapist Aundi Kolber argues in her book “Try Softer,” boundaries are important, but we need to feel safe before we can start setting them.

If we’re being constantly pushed outside our windows of tolerance through overwork and stress, if we’re constantly feeling threatened, if we have the resources to support us, if we don’t feel like we have a voice, she writes, we’ll struggle with setting limits.

Either we’ll shut down and not set them at all—as in the case of our client—or we’ll set them up so erratically or aggressively they become self-sabotaging.

And there’s nothing about our client’s situation that feels safe. What’s more, those feelings of unease might also be deepened by other parts of his story that encourage him to see his already unstable environment as even more threatening than it already is.

So what does our client need to do? The first thing is to help him recognize that his problems don’t all start with him. But beyond that, we also need to help him find his feet, resource himself, and reduce the sense of threat just enough to help him find his voice again.

When he’s out of survival mode, then he can start drawing boundaries to change his environment. That might mean making changes at work. It might also mean working somewhere else. But whatever it means, it will be on his own terms. Not theirs.

What boundaries do you want to draw? Book your free Discovery Session here.