Boundary Issues

Porous, Rigid, and How to Restore Healthy Boundaries

Healthy boundaries keep the self safe. They determine what you let in, what you keep out, and how you remain connected without losing yourself. Pia Mellody describes two types of boundaries: protective (what you allow in) and containing (what you express outward).

Where It Comes From

Boundary development is shaped by how caregivers respond to the child’s emotional and physical space:

• Enmeshment → creates porous boundaries
  The parent uses the child to meet their emotional needs, forcing the child to be available, compliant, or overly attuned.
• Neglect or abandonment → leads to rigid boundaries
  The child learns that depending on others is unsafe, so they shut people out.
• Abuse → destroys protective boundaries


The child cannot protect themselves, so they grow up feeling unsafe, hypervigilant, or unable to say “no.”

Adult symptoms include:

• Difficulty saying no
• Feeling responsible for other people’s feelings
• Oversharing
• Emotional shutdown
• Difficulty being vulnerable
• Attracting boundary-violating relationships

How to Heal It

1. Identify your boundary injury.
   Are you too open, too closed, or both depending on the situation?
2. Protective boundary work.
   Learn to say “no,” limit access, and screen what comes toward you.
3. Containing boundary work.
   Practice speaking your truth with clarity rather than flooding others or withholding.
4. Somatic safety.
   Boundary healing is nervous-system healing. Body-awareness helps you sense safety, threat, and choice.
5. Inner-child protection.

Your Functional Adult Self becomes the boundary-setter your younger parts never had.

With practice, boundaries become a source of connection—not walls or surrender, but a healthy doorway.