Here’s How to Set Healthy Boundaries with the People You Love

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Shauna’s mother had been watching her young children a few times a week, but things kept going wrong: the four-year-old was left outside unsupervised; Grandma showed them a horror movie that gave them nightmares; and she fed them sugary snacks, despite Shauna’s instructions.

Not surprisingly, the children regularly come home wired and dysregulated. “They’re just a mess when I pick them up,” Shauna explained on a recent episode of More2Life, the live radio show hosted by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak on the EWTN Radio Network.

She knew she needed to set some limits, but she worried about damaging her relationship with her mother if she said that her mother couldn’t watch the kids any longer.

Her dilemma is a common one. When it comes to people we love, setting boundaries feels scary. It feels mean. And for many of us, it feels impossible.

Are boundaries “mean”—or loving?

The Popcaks spend a lot of time helping people understand that boundaries are a tool for better relationships. “Setting a boundary is not really about cutting somebody off or punishing somebody,” Dr. Popcak explained. “Don’t think of a boundary as a wall or an electrified fence. Think of a boundary as a door. 

“You put this door so that people can walk through it but they have to knock first, or they have to do something before they come through the door,” he continued. “It’s not just, you’re not being mean by having doors in your house. You’re just saying, well, I need you to do something before you can come into this room.”

All too often, the pressure to “be nice” and accommodate everyone can make us feel selfish for saying no to anything. This pressure can be even more difficult for Christians who are concerned about prioritizing love in relationships.

But look at what typically happens when we avoid setting boundaries: resentment builds, unsafe patterns continue, and we enable behaviors that hurt not only us, but the people responsible for those behaviors.

The theology of healthy boundaries

In order to understand how healthy boundaries can actually enable more authentic love, let’s take a look at what St. John Paul II says in his Theology of the Body.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God, who is one, exists as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity is fully united in love, yet each remains unique and distinct. Because we’re made in God’s image and likeness, we too are called to live in unity without losing our individuality.

Healthy boundaries help us live this divine pattern. They’re not walls that keep people out. They’re doors that help us decide when and how best to give ourselves fully to each other and to ensure that we are treating ourselves and each other with dignity and respect.

“Love isn’t about losing ourselves in another person,” Dr. Popcak explained. “It’s about giving ourselves freely and responsibly. Boundaries protect the freedom that make genuine love possible. Without them, love becomes distorted. It can become either controlling or enabling.”

As St. Paul reminds us in Galatians 6:1, we are called to correct one another in a spirit of gentleness. Boundaries help us do exactly that, Lisa Popcak said.

“With those who’ve hurt us, setting boundaries can actually be—brace yourselves—an act of mercy, not rejection,” Lisa Popcak said. “Failing to set limits when someone sins against us doesn’t help them. In fact, it often enables harm.”

Authentic love, Dr. Popcak said, is always ordered to the true and good. “Setting boundaries tells the other person, ‘I love you too much to pretend that that particular behavior is okay.’ It’s not a punishment. It’s an invitation to conversion and healing. And when we set healthy, godly boundaries, we create the conditions that allow authentic communion.”

Three steps to setting boundaries that stick

If you’re ready to set a boundary but you’re not sure where to start, here’s a practical framework.

1. Name the specific behavior and its impact

Don’t speak in vague complaints like “you’re too much” or “you don’t respect me.” Name the concrete behaviors that are causing problems and explain how they affect you or your family.

For example, Lisa suggested that Shauna could tell her mother, “Mom, you think that the kids are having a great time. They’re coming back just a mess. I appreciate you trying to be a caregiver to them, but I also need you to be a caregiver to me. I’m your daughter and when my kids are coming back scared, wired up on sugar, not able to do the next steps of their day, you’re not giving me any care.”

This frames the boundary not as an attack on Grandma, but as a request for care. It’s honest about the impact without shaming or blaming.

2. Offer a pathway forward

Don’t just tell someone what you don’t want—give them a clear picture of what would work better. “Tell me what you’re trying to do by acting this way,” Greg suggested. “Let’s figure out a better way to do that.”

In Shauna’s situation, the pathway forward might be: “I know you love spending time with the kids. Let’s do that together—family dinners, supervised visits, activities where we’re all present. But right now, unsupervised childcare isn’t working for any of us.” This preserves the relationship while protecting the children.

The key is framing boundaries as an invitation, not a rejection. If the person can respect the boundary, they can be fully present in your life. If they can’t, they can still be in your life—just in a more limited way.

3. Enforce with clarity and consistency

Once you’ve set a boundary, you have to maintain it. We don’t toss the ball into the other person’s court and hope they maintain the boundary, it’s up to us to keep the boundaries that we set. 

If someone can’t respect your boundary, they can’t be in that part of your life. That’s a door, not a wall. You’re not cutting them off forever—you’re saying, “This particular way of relating isn’t working, so we need to do it differently.”

Sometimes you can’t enforce boundaries fully. Dr. Popcak suggested that if Shauna’s mother is her only childcare option, she should focus on mitigation: prepare the kids ahead of time, identify what works better on good days and encourage those behaviors, and build in decompression time after they’re picked up.

Creating space for real love

In short, when we set healthy boundaries, we create the conditions that allow both people to flourish. We stop enabling harm and start inviting growth. We move from confusion and control to authentic communion.

For more help setting healthy boundaries in your relationships, check out Dr. Greg Popcak’s book, God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts. And for more in-depth, personalized help, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

When “Fixing” Loved Ones Doesn’t Work, What Next?

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Even professional counselors miss the mark sometimes. For Dr. Greg Popcak, that moment came a few decades ago. After several conversations with a friend who was going through a rough time, his friend finally said, “Greg, you’re making me feel like a project.”

Dr. Popcak thought he was doing everything right: listening carefully, identifying the issues, walking his friend through solutions. But his friend’s words hit home, helping him realize that he had made his friend’s problem the focus of their relationship rather than seeing him as a person, a beloved child of God.

“My intentions were good but, there you go,” Dr. Popcak said on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show. “And I think it happens to all of us where we want to be there for another person, but sometimes the way we’re choosing to be there for them just isn’t landing the way we thought it would.”

If you’ve ever tried to help someone you care about only to watch them push you away, shut down, or accuse you of meddling—well, you’re not the only one. Maybe they deny there’s even a problem. Maybe they listen but never change. Or maybe your efforts to help are keeping you up at night.

Whatever the case might be, when helping hurts more than heals, something needs to change. Here are four principles to follow so that your desire to help produces good fruit for both you and your loved one.

1. Prioritize the Person Over the Problem

As Dr. Popcak learned when he was trying to help his friend, when we make someone’s problem the center of our relationship with them, we’re no longer in communion with them. Instead, we’ve reduced them to a puzzle we need to solve, a broken thing we need to fix. That’s not love—that’s control dressed up in compassionate clothing.

The Theology of the Body helps here. As St. John Paul II wrote in his book Love and Responsibility, loving someone means more than doing nice things for them. It means working for their ultimate good, really helping them become the person God made them to be. Everything we say and do should bring out the best in others.

“As my friend reminded me, people aren’t projects, right?” Dr. Greg said. “They’re not fixer-uppers waiting for our renovation plan. And when we treat them that way, even accidentally, we do stop seeing them as persons. True love respects the other person’s freedom and dignity.”

2. Is your relationship deep enough?

One of the core principles the Popcaks emphasize is this: “The relationship has to be deep enough to contain the conversation you want to have.”

“If your relationship is relatively superficial and you’re just talking about current events or what he did this past week, you’re not going to have those deeper discussions about his goals, his life choices, faith, values, those kind of things,” Dr. Greg explained.

The solution isn’t to force deeper conversations. It’s to deepen the relationship first. This means:

  •       spending time together without an agenda
  •       showing up consistently
  •       demonstrating through your actions that you value them as a person

A caller named Valerie shared how she did this with her adult son. Rather than lecturing him about his choices, she focused on practical acts of love. Specifically, she brought him food, cooked for him, or took him out to eat. Those meals became opportunities for real connection.

3. Ask God what he wants from you in this situation

A common pitfall for people of faith, Lisa Popcak said, is rushing into a situation because God has appointed us to help.

While it’s true that God wants us to help those who are struggling, how we do that matters. When we want to help someone—whether it’s a toddler, a friend, or an adult child—it’s important to pause to pray and ponder.

Not every person God brings into your life is someone you’re meant to fix, the Popcaks noted. Sometimes God wants you to simply love them; other times, you’re meant to pray, or to be a good listener. And sometimes you’re meant to let them face the natural consequences of their choices without rescuing them.

Lisa compared our tendency to jump into “helper mode” with St. Francis of Assisi’s initial response when God told him to rebuild his church. Francis started literally rebuilding stone churches, picking up rocks and mortar.

“And God’s like, ‘That’s not what I meant,’” she said. “I need you to rebuild the church with the way I’m teaching you to live and how you’re supposed to reach out to people.”

Before you decide how to help, pause and pray. Ask God what he’s inviting you to do in this situation. What does this person actually need from you? The answer might be very different from what you assume they need.

4. Focus on producing good fruit, not on feeling helpful

Here’s a hard truth: if your efforts aren’t producing good fruit in the other person’s life, you’re not actually helping—no matter how much energy you’re pouring into the situation. Real helpfulness is measured by results, not by effort or intention.

“Sometimes we think being helpful means doing something, right? Fixing problems, giving advice, stepping in,” Dr. Popcak said. “And we tend to tell ourselves that we’re being helpful even when our efforts aren’t producing good fruit.”

In other words, we measure our helpfulness by our intentions rather than by the actual results, focusing on what makes us feel like good helpers instead of what actually serves the other person’s growth.

This requires brutal honesty with ourselves. Are you spending hours worrying about someone but never actually talking to them? Are you giving the same advice over and over while they ignore it? Are you enabling destructive behavior by constantly rescuing them from consequences?

Connect, Show Up, and Trust God

If you’re exhausted from trying to help someone who won’t be helped, or if you’re wondering whether you are actually helping, take a breath: step back and ask God what he’s actually calling you to do in this relationship. Build connection before offering correction, show up consistently without an agenda, and trust that God loves this person even more than you do.

For more advice about helping adult children, consider reading Having Meaningful (Sometimes Difficult) Conversations with Your Adult Sons & Daughters by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. And for more one-on-one guidance on supporting the people you love while maintaining your own peace, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.