Aaron Doughty argues that guilt about setting boundaries comes from taking on others' emotions as your responsibility. When you keep bending your frame for family or close people, you enable them to stay stuck. The fix: stand firm, express yourself authentically, and use distance as medicine for unhealthy dynamics.
When people say, I feel guilty setting boundaries, the guilt comes because they feel responsible for their emotions. Your tension is my tension, so I can't set boundaries with you because I'll feel tension because your tension is my tension. So guilt is attached to responsibility. So the key is recognizing that if someone else feels tension, that might be the lesson that they need. You may be enabling like certain people in your life, mom, dad, siblings, other people in your life by continually bending your frame for them, where actually the medicine they may need is for you to stand in your power and to express yourself or to even set distance and boundaries as a consequence for a certain type of energy behavior.
