Popular conceptions of “boundaries” don't make sense

I spent hundreds of hours thinking about boundaries, spoke to 100+ people, and ran two related AI safety workshops. All because every time I asked someone to explain how boundaries worked, the explanation didn’t make sense.

2025 JULY 7 UPDATE: A post with my new thoughts on boundaries is available:

A definition of boundaries that actually makes sense

Notice your arm. Notice that you have more access to your arm than anyone else: You have a far greater ability to control and feel it than anyone else. I can’t control or feel your arm nearly as well as you can, and you can’t control or feel my arm nearly as well as I can. 

More generally, I can’t (directly) control your actions, and you can’t (directly) control my actions.

Similarly, I can’t know what you are thinking or feeling, unless you somehow communicate this to me, and you can’t know what I am thinking or feeling, unless I somehow communicate this to you.

These are the natural boundaries that always exist between people: I can basically only control and feel parts of the universe that are me, and you can basically only control and feel parts of the universe that are you. 

Many social conflicts look like misunderstandings of these boundaries:

• You try to get someone else to do something that you want, and you expect to be able to control them, but then they don’t do what you want and you get frustrated.

  • The boundary is that you can’t unilaterally control others. They can always just not do the thing you want them to do. If you fully emotionally believed this, the situation wouldn’t feel triggering for you.

• You get mad at someone for “making” you sad and “controlling” your emotions.

  • The boundary is that others can’t control your emotions— they haven’t reached into your brain and controlled you. No, you’re perceiving the world, your mind is interpreting it somehow, and then you’re getting your emotions. But that interpretation could be anything. If you fully emotionally believed this, this situation wouldn’t feel triggering for you.

• Someone else tries to tell you how you’re feeling, and you fail to filter it out as obviously impossible and BS that someone else could know your internal state, and you get triggered at them.

  • If you deeply and unconsciously understood the fact that other people can’t unilaterally know what you’re feeling, this situation wouldn’t feel triggering for you.

Generalizing this, there are four types of boundary misunderstandings between you and someone else:

• You expect that you can control them. (E.g., their thinking, their actions, their emotions, whether they like you.)

• You expect that they can control you.

• You expect that you can know what they are thinking, feeling, or wanting, without them having told you.

• You expect that they can know your internal state, without you having told them.

These are all failures to acknowledge the natural boundaries that exist between individuals.

But if instead you didn’t feel compelled to control the other person, or believe that they might possibly be able to control you, etc., then you wouldn’t see the situation as a conflict or something to feel any bit anxious about.

For a more technical description involving causal distance and Markov blankets, see:

What is autonomy? Why boundaries are necessary.

Popular conceptions of “boundaries” don’t make sense

I developed my model of boundaries because I was frustrated that no one seemed to be talking about the topic in a logically consistent way. As a simple example, someone might say, “I’m setting a boundary here: Don’t call me that name!” 

But this is actually very confusing. By “setting” a boundary, they’re attempting to control another person’s behavior. Isn’t the whole point of boundaries to promote autonomy and limit manipulation? It’s less of a boundary and more of a… preference they really really want the other person to believe is a “boundary”. It’s actually quite manipulative.

To be clear, I think it would be fine if instead you were to say, “If you call me that name, then I’m going to leave the room.” You can say that, and do that. There is no attempt to control the other person there, you’re just offering a trade.

Also, the language of “setting” boundaries doesn’t make sense either. You don’t set boundaries… you are boundaries. If you didn’t have boundaries you’d be jelly into the physical and social universe. How can you “set” what already exists? If you’re “setting” a boundary, that means you’re ignoring the boundaries you already have.

Finally, the last thing I disagree with conventional wisdom on boundaries on is: Maintaining boundaries shouldn’t take effort. People who “set boundaries” experience it being hard and effortful, like they’re fighting against the natural order of things.

Meanwhile, when you get your emotions right, having boundaries, blocking manipulation, etc., is completely effortless. It’s like they’re operating in another dimension that doesn’t interact with you.

A simpler version of NVC

(Skip if you’re unfamiliar with Nonviolent Communication.)

If you’re familiar with NVC, it shouldn’t be too hard to see that “violent” communication == communication that fails to acknowledge natural boundaries.

For example: if you attempt to control someone else and expect it to work, that may seem violent to them. Or if you attempt to tell someone else how they’re feeling and expect to be right, that may seem violent to them. 

Similarly, communication from others to you will only seem violent, if on some level, you believe you don’t have boundaries. For example, if someone says things like 'You have to do this' or 'I know you're just pretending to be upset, you might feel annoyed. However, if you knew in your heart that they can’t control you and they can’t read your mind, then their communication wouldn’t feel violent to you at all. 

As I understand it, all NVC is saying is “This is how you talk in a way that acknowledges the boundaries that exist people.” Albeit, in an extremely overcomplicated way.

Regardless, NVC is often very difficult to learn. This is because it doesn’t address the usual bottlenecks that prevent people from acknowledging boundaries and handling conflict: emotional security…

Acknowledging boundaries requires emotional security

I spent six months and hundreds of hours last year trying to teach people boundaries in the way that I thought was right. I thought that if I could teach people boundaries correctly, then they would be able to do boundaries and have a lot less social conflict in their life. This did not work. 

In the final case, my then-girlfriend had a conflict of this type with her parents. She had visited her parents, got into a conflict with them, and suddenly became quite anxious they were “controlling” her. 

I thought to myself, You’re probably letting them control you? You don’t have to do let them?

But I noticed my confusion. She had worked with me writing about boundaries for a hundred hours, and she obviously understood the concept consciously. But as soon as she got into a real conflict, she could no longer understand it. Hm…

Finally, I realized what might be happening: She had incentive to ignore the boundaries. When she is physically with her parents, they control aspects of her life. If they got mad at her, they could take action against her in the physical world, prevent her from going out, etc. 

This physical dependency could incentivize her to not do anything that might have her parents make her life harder. The boundaries were still there — she could ignore her parents “control” at any time— but if she did, she felt it would result in a worse world for her.

(When I later shared this model with her, she agreed and said it helped her understand her situation better.)

Something similar also happens for many people with emotional insecurities. For example, if you feel emotionally attached to whether other people like you, you’re going to have a very hard time “respecting” others’ boundaries because you’re going to feel the need to control other people into liking you (for example). 

Also, if you feel emotionally dependent on other people not disliking you, you’re going to have a very hard time “setting” boundaries because some fraction of the time when you “set” boundaries, people get mad at you! 

You will have a very hard time acknowledging boundaries if you’re insecure! Personal example:

I didn’t have to avoid you; I was just insecure

If that’s true, then what causes someone to understand the concept of boundaries actually has very little to do with consciously understanding the concept of boundaries. Frankly, the concept is almost trivial. (Like, Of course you can’t control other people! And of course they can’t control you! Etc.) Yet many people make mistakes of this nature everyday. 

Instead, what allows people to understand the concept of boundaries is *not feeling the need to control other people* and *not fearing what others might do to you if you don’t do what they want and you don’t allow them to control you*.

In which case, the real way to understand boundaries and minimize the social conflict in your life is to become less insecure. 

Then, once you’re no longer excessively insecure, you could learn about and understand boundaries in two minutes, and then execute them basically perfectly forever. You would feel no need to try to control other people, or let them control you, or expect to know what they’re thinking, etc.

Become more secure and “setting boundaries” will feel completely effortless.

Related:

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Thanks to Kaj Sotala, Alex Zhu, Damon Sasi, Şefika Öztürk, Stag Lynn, Anna Salamon, Epistea Residency, CFAR, and many many others.