You might have a problem with being too permissive

Boundaries don’t have to hold us down. They can lift us up. Here’s how.

I recently heard someone say that a speaker making vicious and slanderous claims about other people in a meeting was acceptable behaviour. For her, the meeting went well because no one else had taken the bait by reacting to the vitriol.

I guess that’s better than if the rant had dragged others into an equally false and mean-spirited back and forth. But I felt that something important was missing here: Healthy disagreements and conflicts can’t happen without healthy boundaries.

We need containers that help conversations to be worth having. Boundaries don’t have to be rigid. But they should be clear enough to everyone involved.

For some of us this can sound off-putting. Maybe we value autonomy and don’t want to be told what to do.

Maybe we think that letting others say whatever is on their minds is kindness.

Or maybe we’re scared to speak up when someone is crossing what we see as a line. After all, it takes courage to hold a boundary for someone. For many of us it can be easier to stay silent and let others behave poorly.

Not wanting to limit others, wanting to be kind to them, and wanting to avoid the discomfort of speaking up to maintain boundaries are all understandable. But such concerns may be exaggerated.

Research suggests that the act of negotiating and defining what our boundaries are, when done with care, can actually strengthen relationships. Sometimes we’re just not clear on what other people’s expectations are. We assume what we’re doing is totally fine when it isn’t. Honest conversations can help us get clarity and feel closer to each other.

Real kindness is a balancing act. It isn’t only passive. The goal isn’t to give folks space to do or say just anything. The goal is to create dynamics that help bring out everyone’s best self. Letting someone act in ways that are disregulated (such as through raging at people in a meeting!) may be physically unhealthy for them and definitely damages relationships. That isn’t kindness.

Take parenting for another example. If you feel that your parents were too demanding perhaps you dream of what it might have been like if they were more permissive. Psychologists talk about permissive parents as ones who are very warm and responsive to their children, refraining from setting clear limitations, expectations, or boundaries on behaviour. These parents tend to just allow and accept whatever their children want to do.

Research shows that permissive parenting isn’t all bad, but it is associated with childhood aggression from preschool all the way to adolescence. Psychologists think this happens because permissive parents don’t help their kids to see when their behaviour is inappropriate and to reflect on it. Since they don’t receive this learning support, the kids struggle to develop the ability to notice their harmful aggressive impulses and to regulate them.

Rather than helping children’s development, permissive parents, by giving their kids too little feedback on boundaries, can make them feel forever unsure of where the limits are. Reasonable limits aren’t about stifling kids. Knowing what healthy limits are can actually help kids to feel more secure to explore their freedoms and creativity within those supportive limits. Much the same goes for relationships between adults.

For example, studies with women recovering from emotional abuse in their families show how vital boundaries are. “One of the critical components in the healing trajectory is the capacity to articulate and implement boundaries that were historically denied or violated.” Boundaries help with reclaiming autonomy. This can mean negotiating new norms and enforcing consequences such as limiting or breaking off contact when agreed boundaries aren’t respected.

What is a fair boundary and how can I set one?

There will be many different ideas here, based on facts like personalities and cultural norms.

One near-universal boundary is treating others with the same respect that you would want to be treated with. (By the time one party has made up lies about another as in the example I gave above, that is no longer a conversation!)

One tool I’ve used to help with establishing boundaries is creating a “Learning Contract” at the start of workshops on difficult topics.

We go around the room with every person adding a rule if they want to. Everyone else has the opportunity to question or negotiate on any of the rules. Once there is agreement, everyone signs the Learning Contact. This gives me, as a facilitator, a strong basis to step in if anyone crosses boundaries the group has set.

I’ve found that once in a while conversations get heated and people do cross the boundaries. But when given a reminder of something they already signed, they usually begin to follow the agreed norms again.

Anger versus aggression

In setting boundaries, one distinction that can be helpful to think about is around anger. Anger is normal and isn’t necessarily a problem. It may be going too far to try to set a boundary against anger. But there’s a key difference between anger and aggression. Feeling angry means you think something is wrong. Something might be wrong! Becoming aggressive means you want to cause harm to someone else.

Anger can easily slide into aggression, but it doesn’t have to. If you have the skills to notice that you think something is wrong and to have the conversation you need to have, even if you feel uncomfortable while doing it, anger could result in addressing the problem. That could bring you closer to the other person. But if you slide into aggression—wanting to harm the other person emotionally, psychologically, or even physically—that will never improve your relationship.

A version of this post originally appeared on Psychology Today. Learn more about how to have better quality disagreements.