How do you set boundaries without feeling guilty?
Written by the clinical team at The Lyceum Clinic. Clinically reviewed by Sanah Younis, Founder and Clinical Director, BABCP-accredited (no. 1000792). Published 28 October 2026. Last reviewed 28 October 2026.
Clinical perspective: A senior CBT therapist at The Lyceum.
You mostly do not, at first. A boundary is not a wall to keep people out, it is a gate to let the right people in safely. The difficult part is never the sentence. It is tolerating the guilt and the fear of abandonment that arrive immediately after it.
Saying no is the easy half
Most people can produce the words under instruction. What undoes them is the twenty minutes afterwards, when the urge to explain, apologise or take it back becomes overwhelming.
What we practise instead
Holding the discomfort without resolving it. The boundary is kept, the guilt is allowed to be present, and nothing is added to make it go away faster.
For more detail, read about self-esteem therapy.
What changes
The guilt reduces because it stops being obeyed, not because it was argued with.