#192: Boundaries vs. Ultimatums
If you’ve ever tried to set a boundary—only to be told you’re being controlling, dramatic, or making threats—you’re not alone. Especially for those of us with anxious attachment, the whole landscape of boundaries can feel confusing, fraught, and overwhelming. When we’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep people close, it’s natural that speaking up for ourselves can feel dangerous, even selfish.
But here’s the thing: it’s not just setting boundaries that feels hard. Receiving them can be equally triggering.
If you’re anxiously attached, someone setting a boundary with you can feel like a door closing, a rejection, or even abandonment. And in those moments, our nervous system goes into overdrive, trying to make sense of it: Why are they shutting me out? Why won’t they just let me talk this through? Am I too much? Are they done with me?
It’s important to understand this dual dynamic—that anxious attachers often struggle to both set boundaries and to be on the receiving end of them. So much of the work here is about learning to sit with the discomfort, to self-soothe, and to stay grounded in our own worth and resilience.
What is a request?
A request is a gentle, open invitation. It sounds like:
“Hey, it really doesn’t feel good for me when you’re on your phone at dinner. Would you be open to us putting our phones away so we can be more present with each other?”
Requests are important in any healthy relationship. They acknowledge a need or a desire and invite the other person to meet it. Crucially, a request doesn’t demand anything—it allows for a no.
For anxiously attached folks, making requests can feel incredibly vulnerable. There’s often a deep fear of being “too much,” of taking up space, of being rejected. But bypassing this discomfort leads to self-abandonment—and resentment follows close behind.
What is a boundary?
A boundary is not just a firmer way of asking for something. It’s not about the other person at all—it’s about you.
Boundaries are about your limits, and what you’ll do to honour them.
For example:
“If you continue shouting, I’m going to leave the room and we can talk when things have calmed down.”
That’s a boundary. It doesn’t require the other person to stop shouting. It simply states your limit and your follow-through.
When done well, boundaries are not a power move. They’re an act of self-respect. But many of us—especially anxious attachers—have learned to set boundaries from a place of panic or desperation. We say the words, but they’re hollow. We don’t really believe we can back them up. And when the other person doesn’t comply, we abandon the boundary to preserve the connection.
What about receiving someone else’s boundary?
This is where things can get really tricky. If your partner says, “I’m not available to talk about this right now,” your inner alarm bells might start ringing. You may interpret it as rejection, withdrawal, or a lack of care—when in fact, it might be them regulating their nervous system and protecting the relationship.
But if you’re not anchored in your own sense of self, it can feel unbearable. And that’s when we push. We protest. We override. We try to break through the boundary because the silence or space feels intolerable.
This is where real growth lies—learning to hold ourselves tenderly in those moments, rather than outsourcing our regulation to someone else.
Boundaries vs. Threats
Some people will hear a boundary and perceive it as a threat. And sometimes, it is.
The difference lies in the intention and the energy.
A threat is: “If you don’t stop doing this, I’ll leave you.” It’s controlling. It’s reactive. It’s about fear.
A boundary, by contrast, is grounded and calm:
“This doesn’t feel safe for me. If it continues, I’ll need to take a step back.”
And it’s important to note: if you’ve never had healthy boundaries modelled to you, even a calm, well-intentioned boundary can feel threatening. Your nervous system might register it as danger, even when it’s not. That doesn’t make the other person wrong—it just means your system needs support and rewiring to feel safe in secure dynamics.
What about ultimatums?
Ultimatums are often deal breakers wrapped in insecurity. They tend to come from a place of powerlessness, framed as: “You better stop, or else.” The content of a deal breaker and an ultimatum might be fundamentally the same. The difference lies in the delivery. A deal breaker is a clear statement of your limit. An ultimatum is often a last-ditch attempt to control the outcome through fear.
If you find yourself repeatedly issuing ultimatums with no follow-through, it’s worth exploring what you’re afraid of. What feels intolerable about actually honouring your limit? Which brings us to…
The power of follow-through
For anxiously attached people, following through on boundaries is often the hardest part. We fear being the bad guy. We don’t want to upset anyone. And, let’s be honest, we often hope we won’t have to.
But when we repeatedly state limits we’re unwilling to enforce, it erodes trust—both in the relationship, and within ourselves.
On the flip side, when someone else sets a firm boundary, we can feel hurt, shut out, and destabilised. The work here is to move from personalisation to understanding: This isn’t about me being unworthy. This is about them taking care of themselves. Just like I need to learn to take care of me.
The deeper work
If communication is the tip of the iceberg, what lies beneath is self-worth. You can’t just script your way to healthy boundaries. You have to believe you’re worthy of having limits. You have to trust yourself to honour them. And you have to accept when someone else is doing the same. That’s the work of secure relating. And it’s not easy—especially when your nervous system is wired for closeness at all costs. But it’s what allows us to show up in relationships with honesty, respect, and mutual care. Because ultimately, boundaries aren’t barriers. They’re bridges to better connection—when built from a place of grounded self-respect.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find it difficult to identify the difference between making a request and setting a boundary in your relationships? Can you recall recent examples of each from your own life?
When you set a boundary, do you notice a tendency to phrase it more like a demand or an ultimatum? Reflect on what the underlying emotions might be for you in those moments.
How comfortable are you with following through on a boundary if it is not respected? Are there certain situations or relationships where this feels particularly challenging?
Think about a time when you communicated a need or boundary. Did you genuinely feel that you were advocating for yourself, or were you hoping it would make someone else change their behaviour so you wouldn’t have to act?
Are you more likely to pursue connection at the expense of your own needs and boundaries? How does this tendency show up for you, and how might it relate to your attachment style?
Have you ever found yourself repeating a boundary or request over and over again, hoping for a different response? What effect does this pattern have on both you and the relationship?
Reflect on your relationship with self-worth: do you feel your wellbeing is as important as the desire to maintain connection with others? Where do you notice tension between these two values?
When others set boundaries with you, how do you tend to respond? Is there a part of you that feels rejected, controlled, or wants to push past their limits?
Can you identify any deal breakers for yourself when it comes to relationships? Are you clear about these—both to yourself and to others?
What does “embodied self-advocacy” mean to you in practice, and how might you begin to cultivate it, especially when it feels uncomfortable or uncertain?
Feel free to use these as journaling prompts, conversation starters, or simply as points of reflection as you explore your own relationship to boundaries, needs, and self-worth.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:23]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about boundaries, and in particular, distinguishing boundaries from all of the other buzzwords that fly around. So what's the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum? A boundary and a request, a boundary and a demand, a boundary and a threat. I think that for a lot of us with anxious attachment patterns, and probably other insecure attachment patterns as well, this can all feel really murky. And that makes so much sense because most of just did not have good modelling around boundaries. And if you are someone with more anxious attachment patterns, there's a good chance that your communication patterns have generally taken the form of, how do I get someone close and keep them close? And so that might look like suppressing your communication, biting your tongue, not speaking up until such time as you get so overwhelmed and so overwrought with unmet needs and stresses that you blow up and become very demanding and protesting.
[00:01:28]:
And obviously that's not a very healthy way of communicating a relationship. And yet what I see often happen is that people learn about boundaries, they learn about communication. They probably know they have a communication issue in their relationship, so that's a skill deficit. And so they set about trying to improve their communication. But if that's done in isolation, so if you're not working on all of the underlying stuff in tandem with that, so healing the core wounds and insecurities that lead you to communicate in those desperate, panicky ways, what can often happen is a bit of a band aid approach whereby you're saying the words that you've read in a book or an Instagram post, right? You're following the script, maybe quite literally, but it just doesn't have the sturdiness within to back it up. And I think what can happen there is when that self advocacy is not taking place on a really solid inner foundation, it can take the form of demands and threats and ultimatums rather than a really embodied self advocacy, which is what we want to shoot for. So in today's episode, I'm going to give a bit of a lay of the land as far as all of that different terminology. So just kind of running through, you know, what is a boundary, what is a request, what is an Ultimatum.
[00:02:39]:
What is a threat? What's a non negotiable? What's a deal breaker? What place do each of these things have in a healthy relationship as well as what you should really be focusing on in a big picture sense so that you can communicate and set boundaries and voice limits and be clear about what you want to need from a really grounded and sturdy place rather than one that feels like you're clutching at someone to try and get them to change so that you don't have to follow through on what you're saying. Which I, I think is often where it lands for anxiously attached people. Okay, so before we get into all of that, a final reminder about the Secure Self Challenge, which is my 28 day challenge which kicks off on Monday next week. So if you haven't joined us already, I would love to have you. We talk about all of the stuff we're gonna talk about today. We talk about self compassion. So if you have a very vocal inner critic, we talk about self care and self regulation, we talk about self respect and self honouring and boundaries and integrity. And we talk about self trust and control and surrender.
[00:03:35]:
All of those things in a really n manageable, bite sized format over 28 days in a nice group. So there's a really strong community component. If any of that appeals to you, you can sign up via the link in the show notes or head to my website. There's a few days left to sign up before we kick off on Monday next week. So I would love to have you in the group if that is interesting to you and you're someone who is wanting to work on building self worth. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around what boundaries are, what they aren't, how they're different from requests, ultimatums, all of the things. So let's start with a request because a request will often be the first step in the so something's going on in your relationship. There's behaviour that maybe doesn't feel good to you, there's some sort of unmet need.
[00:04:16]:
The first thing you want to do is make a request. A request is where you say to someone, hey, it really doesn't feel good for me when you are scrolling through your phone at the dinner table, would you be open to us putting our phones aside during mealtime so that we can actually be present with each other? That's a request, right? It's voicing. Here's how I'm feeling, here's what I would love. Would you be open to doing that? And a request can be used to make a request about a need. It can also be used in the context of a boundary. So that first example was more in the vein of a need. In the context of boundaries, expressing your limit might be, I'm not comfortable with you raising your voice, please stop shouting. A request is quite simply what you hope the other person would do, what you would like them to do.
[00:04:58]:
And it's an invitation to them to modify their behaviour in accordance with what you would like, feel more comfortable with, what would support you, whatever that might be. And that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. You are allowed to make requests of someone that you're in a relationship with to, to accommodate you. Even that might be really uncomfortable for you if you're someone with anxious attachment. Because there's this sense of like, I'm not allowed to ask for anything or take up any space or be difficult at all. I just have to be this quiet little mouse who's fine with everything. Obviously that is a one way ticket to self abandonment and unmet needs and resentment and all of that. So requests are step one.
[00:05:33]:
That's where we ask someone, you know, would you be willing to or can you please whatever. Now, a boundary is best thought of as the limit of what you can tolerate, what you will tolerate, what you are and are not available for, coupled with the thing that you will do if that limit is not respected. And really critical here is that a boundary, properly framed should not require that the other person cooperate or modify their behaviour or do what you want them to do. Again, that's the domain of a request. But a boundary is the thing that I will do if my limit is not respected, if the request is not responded to in the way that I had hoped. So going back to the previous example, that might sound like if you continue raising your voice at me, I am going to leave the room or I am going to hang up the phone and we can resume this conversation later. Or not recognising that initially we can make the request, please stop shouting. I'm not comfortable with it.
[00:06:30]:
If the person continues to shout in spite of the request that you've made, then it's over to you to do something about that, to honour your limit and take action that is in the direction of respecting your own limit of really following through on what you've said. Like I won't tolerate X, Y, Z thing because it does not feel good or safe to me. So here's what I'm going to do in response. Now you might be hearing that and going like, oh, am I really allowed to do that because that sounds almost like a threat. I actually got a couple of people commenting on an Instagram post I did on this topic a few weeks ago saying like that, that framing of if you continue to do X, I will do Y felt like a threat, felt controlling and manipulative. And am I really allowed to say things like that? And I think a lot of people was saying if I were on the receiving end of that I would feel controlled or manipulated, like the person was trying to prevent my self expression or something like that. What I would say in response to that is that if you are someone who has not historically had any sort of boundaries and your sense of taking care of myself is trying to get people to behave differently so that I feel better, then that kind of language may feel controlling to you, right? Because if it has always been used in that way, if it's always been wielded as a form of control, and if you know deep down that were you communicating in that way, it would ultimately be to try and elicit an outcome in them. It would be more like a threat, more like an escalation, saying if you don't stop raising your voice, I'm going to hang up the phone or I'm going to walk out the door.
[00:07:55]:
All the while hoping that you don't actually have to make good on it. That makes sense that you would have that response of like that feels manipulative and threatening. But the difference with a boundary is healthy. Boundary is really not about controlling the other person. If you are articulating here is the limit of what I will and won't have in my relationships, what I am and I'm not available for, then following through on your boundary is very simply an act of responsible self care and it is in service of healthier relationships. Because if you're saying I will not put myself in the situation where I'm exposed to this thing that does not feel safe for me, then that is your responsibility. If you are continually brought into contact with this thing that does not feel right for you, it is your responsibility to ultimately act on that and defend the boundary to the extent that you need to. This is the part that is so hard for a lot of people with anxious attachment because we default back to step one.
[00:08:51]:
If someone is not respecting the boundary, we just say it again and again and again and maybe get louder and bigger and more emphatic and more desperate trying to explain why the boundary is important and why they should change their behaviour so that we don't have to do the difficult thing, which sometimes is to remove ourselves from a situation, from a relationship, to accept the fact that someone isn't going to want modify their behaviour to accommodate us. And that will happen from time to time. And part of really mature and self responsible boundary work is that sometimes we will have to do that. Now let's talk about the scenario in which this does feel controlling or misused or you know, someone's weaponizing therapy speak to have the upper hand or to gain a sense of power in a dynamic. If this is happening to you, if you're trying to voice a need and someone's saying, I don't feel comfortable with this, if you keep talking about this topic, I'm going to walk away. And maybe you've tried several times to talk about out the topic and you feel like you're being pretty regulated. It feels like someone's just putting up a brick wall in a way that feels really unfair. That is entirely possible, right? Like, I'm not saying that that can't happen and I'm not saying that what they're doing is necessarily healthy and secure behaviour.
[00:10:01]:
But ultimately that's not for you to decide. You can't decide that their boundary is invalid and therefore you're just going to keep pushing past it or ignoring it or dismissing it. That is you not behaving in a healthy, respectful way. It's really up to you to decide whether you like their boundary or not. In the sense of if I like it and I think it's valid, I'll respect it, but if I don't like it and I think it's unfair, or I think you're just using that as an excuse, then I'm going to push past it. Again, this is a bit of a tough one for anxious attachers who are actually not great at respecting other people's boundaries. There's this sense of like, yeah, but I just need to say this thing. And so I'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
[00:10:40]:
If you don't like the boundary that someone's setting, then you can reassess whether and on what terms you want to be in relationship with that person. If you feel like they are blocking you from expressing yourself and keeping you at arm's length in a way that isn't working for you and you feel really silenced by them, for example, then that's good information. But ultimately it goes back to you to decide in light of their boundary, having regard to their boundary, what am I going to do? What are my choices? What's in the ambit of my control and responsibility. Their boundaries, their behaviour, their choices are over there with them. That's not something that's for me to control. I can only control what I do in response. And that is, is a really big paradigm shift. It sounds kind of obvious, but if you are someone who has typically been very anxious, very enmeshed in your relationships, who has this sense of, I need to make them behave the way I want them to so that I feel okay, that can be a real adjustment to start thinking about relationships and boundaries and responsibilities in this way of like, what is actually within my sphere of control and responsibility here.
[00:11:48]:
Okay, so let's move now to talking about ultimatums. And I want to talk about ultimatums by contrast to something like deal breakers. So again, when I spoke about this on Instagram, a lot of people were saying, isn't that an ultimatum? And aren't ultimatums bad? Isn't that the same as a threat? And as I reflected on this, I think an ultimatum is essentially a deal breaker, but maybe coming from a more unhealthy, insecure place. So I think the words could almost be similar, like the substance of a deal breaker being, this won't work for me. So if this continues to be present, I'm out. I can't do it anymore. I think the substance of it, a deal breaker versus an ultimatum, could actually be very similar or even the same. The difference is often the energy with which it is packaged and delivered, you know where it comes from.
[00:12:35]:
And I think a deal breaker is a really important thing to have and to know and to follow through on for yourself. I teach this all the time in the context of dating. If you don't know what your deal breakers are, you're going to probably end up pursuing connections that aren't aligned because you're just following things like chemistry and connection and feelings and romance without really knowing if there's underlying alignment compatibility. So knowing where are my limits, what am I available for? What's absolutely a no go zone for me, that stuff's really important. So I think like, fundamentally having these bright lines, these lines in the sand of like, if it crosses that line, that is a deal breaker. So I think all of that can certainly be healthy and part of a secure relationship. For me, an ultimatum is more of a power play. And so I think it's like wielding a deal breaker as a way to get someone on the right side of the line.
[00:13:25]:
So it tends to be coming from this energy of threat and demand and like, you have to do this or I'm leaving or I'm gonna do blah. And it's sort of designed to maybe scare or intimidate someone into doing what you want them to do. And again, I think that's almost always coming from insecurity when it is carrying that energy. And so that's really the distinction that I want you to be mindful of when it comes to ultimatums is like, am I actually just over there with them trying to change their behaviour, or am I here with me saying this is what's true for me in terms of what I'm available for and what I'm not. And if this is present in the relationship, that's a deal breaker for me. And I'm not saying that to jump up and down to make you not do the thing, I'm just telling you, like that's the line. And I'm like, no. So to think of an example here, so many women that I work with, like a frightening number of women that I work with will be in relationships where there's like repeated known instances of boundary violations around infidelity and talking to other women in inappropriate ways, whether that's sexual messages or actual cheating.
[00:14:35]:
And it happens multiple times, again and again and again. But from this place of hurt and fear and worry and low self worth, rather than saying initially when something isn't okay, like absolutely not, this isn't okay, and I will honour myself by, you know, maybe walking away from the relationship, depending on the circumstances, there's this escalating, you can't do this to me, you have to stop doing this to me. Why do you keep doing this? Oh, you've done it again. Like I've told you, you can't do this. Why wouldn't you know, like just continuing to go back to that, like, please stop, please change, please hear me. And again, like, I have so much compassion for this because I've been there. But that is a really disempowering place to be. And so often with these big issues in relationships, the communication piece is not so much about words, it's about action.
[00:15:24]:
I think self advocacy as more of an umbrella is oftent about taking action to back up what we're saying because it's so much easier to say the thing. But I think a lot of anxious attachers are all bark and no bite. And there's this great fear around actually having to follow through on the thing that we're saying. And that dilutes the power of our words because it does end up taking the form of empty threats over and over again. And People clock onto that pretty quickly. And so the unfortunate reality, of course we would love for everyone to, to be respectful enough and attuned enough to see the pain that their actions might cause in advance so that they never do it. But if people can have their cake and eat it too, if they can behave in a way and you get upset and then say don't do that again, but then they do it again and nothing happens other than you getting upset, that might not provide enough of an incentive, right? That just might not be enough. And so sometimes people do need to experience consequences to actually understand that certain things aren't acceptable.
[00:16:25]:
So if there is a bit of a track record of a lot of empty threats being made, I think we have to look at the part we're playing in continuing that dynamic rather than just pointing the finger at someone else and saying, how could you do this to me? Really the question is, how can I keep doing this to me? Because I'm the one who's still here, I'm the one who's still tolerating this even when I say that I won't tolerate this. So I think it's so important that when you say something is a non negotiable for me, something is a deal breaker for me me that you honour that because I think we, we do often say that in the hope that someone will respect it. But then we continue to tolerate whatever the thing is and that is where we abandon ourselves. And that's really, really big. That's a big important piece for anxiously attached people. It's like, I will not abandon myself by continuing to tolerate something that I've said I will not tolerate. So just before we wrap up, I want to talk about the bigger picture, which is like that if you're trying to do all of this communication, hopefully you've gotten the sense through this episode that this is not just about saying the right thing in the right way in your relationships. And then like, voila, I now have secure communication.
[00:17:26]:
Communication is just kind of like top layer, you know, it's the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is all of the stuff that makes self advocacy really hard and scary because it brings us into contact with, you know, can I really take a stand for my needs? Are my needs valid? Am I allowed to honour myself by walking away from something that doesn't feel good? All of those things are really big and they do bring us into contact with some of our deepest wounds and insecurities. So trying to just solve for communication without also bringing these other parts along. For the ride and getting curious around like, well, what is stopping me from actually honouring myself in the first place? Why does that feel so impossible? Why do I revert back to step one and just go back to pleading and persuading and explaining myself for the hundredth time? Until we understand that, and until we really bring those parts along for the ride, it's unlikely that we're going to be able to shift those patterns in any meaningful way. Because really, boundary work to me comes back to self worth. Boundary work is really about honouring ourselves, and it's really hard to do that. To put your wellbeing above a connection. If a connection is a lifeline for you, if you have this sense of I am not okay without this person or this connection or whatever it might be, when that feels like a life raft and you're going to drown without it, then of course, of course you'll say you have a need, but as soon as the relationship feels threatened, you'll drop the need and hold the relationship.
[00:18:56]:
So that's always going to be the bigger work for anxiously attached people is like learning to stand on my own two feet so that I can come to a relationship from a level footing and feeling like if it's not right, if it's not working, then I am comfortable honouring myself and walking away. Of course, there'll still be sadness and grief that comes with a relationship potentially ending or changing in form or shape, but my wellbeing matters. I treat myself as someone who is precious and worthy of care rather than casting myself aside in favour of holding onto someone else. Okay, I'm going to leave it there you guys. I hope that this has been helpful. As a side note, I meant to mention earlier my free training around how to Heal Anxious Attachment, which is a 75 minute webinar if you want to check that out, it's totally free. And I do talk about this topic in more detail, specifically that last piece around. Like if we just try and solve for the secure relationship skills without those foundations of self worth, it tends not to land and it can actually backfire. So if you're interested in going a little deeper into that, you should check out my free training, which is also linked in the show notes or on my website. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me guys and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
[00:20:07]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
boundaries, anxious attachment, secure relationships, self worth, communication skills, setting boundaries, requests, ultimatums, deal breakers, threats, insecurity, self advocacy, core wounds, self compassion, self regulation, self care, integrity, self respect, self honouring, inner critic, non negotiables, relationship coaching, self trust, control, surrender, attachment patterns, emotional safety, unmet needs, self abandonment, personal limits