When Being Helpful Hurts: A Guide to Better Boundaries When You’re Feeling Drained
Does everything feel like too much these days? Get When Life Sucks: 21 Days of Laughs and Light for free when you join the Tiny Buddha list. “You teach people how to treat you by what you allow, what you stop, and what you reinforce.” ~Tony Gaskins It was a Tuesday afternoon when I said the word that saved my sanity: “No.” Just two letters. But the weight I’d been carrying for twenty-eight years finally lifted. My phone was ringing. Again. It was my cousin, and I already knew what she wanted before I answered. Could I watch her kids this Saturday? I know it’s your only day off, but it would really help me out. I sat in my car in the grocery store parking lot, hand hovering over the phone. My stomach twisted into that familiar knot—the one I got every time someone asked me for something. The one that whispered, “If you say no, they won’t love you anymore.” But something was different this time. Maybe it was because I’d just left therapy, where I’d spent the entire session crying about how exhausted I was. Maybe it was because I’d canceled that same therapy appointment three times in the past two months to help other people. Or maybe it was because I finally realized: I’d been so busy being “helpful” that I’d forgotten how to help myself. I let the call go to voicemail. The Breaking Point For as long as I could remember, I was the person everyone called when they needed something. Need someone to cover your shift? Call me. Need a ride to the airport at 5 a.m.? I’m there. Need someone to listen to your problems for three hours? I’ll cancel my plans. I told myself it made me a good person. A kind person. A valuable person. But the truth I couldn’t admit was that I wasn’t being helpful. I was only being terrified. Terrified that if I stopped being useful, I’d stop being wanted. That “no” was a door I was closing on relationships I couldn’t afford to lose. The resentment built slowly, like water filling a bucket one drop at a time. I smiled while agreeing to things I didn’t want to do, even at the expense of my health. I said “it’s fine” when it wasn’t fine. I prioritized everyone else’s emergencies while my own needs collected dust in the corner. That Tuesday was different because I’d finally realized something: I had canceled my therapy appointment again and again to help someone move. As I sat in my car afterward, I opened my calendar and counted. Forty-seven times. I’d canceled or rescheduled my own needs forty-seven times in six months to accommodate other people’s wants. Not emergencies. Wants. I was drowning, and I’d tied the anchor around my own neck. The Decision That day, I made myself a promise: I would no longer cancel my own needs to meet someone else’s wants. I wrote it in my journal. I said it out loud in my car. I texted it to my best friend so someone else would know I’d committed. The boundary was simple: My needs—therapy, rest, health, and peace—were non-negotiable. I would help others when I had capacity, not at the expense of my own well-being. And I would stop apologizing for having limits. It sounded empowering when I wrote it down. But enforcing it? That was terrifying. The First Test The next day, my cousin called back. “Hey! I know you’re probably busy, but could you watch the kids on Saturday? Just for a few hours.” My heart raced. My palms got sweaty. Every cell in my body screamed, “Just say yes. It’s easier. Don’t make waves.” But I thought about those forty-seven canceled appointments. I thought about how exhausted I was. I thought about the promise I’d made to myself less than twenty-four hours ago. “I can’t do that,” I said, my voice shaking. “Saturday is my rest day.” Silence. “Oh. Okay. I thought you weren’t doing anything.” There it was again. The guilt trip I’d been dreading. You’re not doing anything important, so why can’t you help me? Old me would have caved. Would have said, “You’re right, I can move things around.” But guess what? The new me took a breath. “Rest is important to me. I hope you find someone who can help.” More silence. Then: “Okay. Talk later.” She hung up, and I sat there feeling like the worst person in the world. Selfish. Mean. Cold. But also… lighter. The Pushback Not everyone responded as calmly as my cousin. Over the next few weeks, I started enforcing my boundary consistently. Each time, I felt that same terror—I mean, that I was destroying relationships, that people would think I’d changed (I had), that I was being selfish (I wasn’t). Some people were genuinely supportive. My best friend said, “It’s about time. You deserve to rest.” But others didn’t take it well. A family member accused me of “not caring about family anymore.” A friend said I “used to be so helpful” (translation: you used to do whatever I wanted). Someone actually said, “You’ve changed,” as if it were an insult. And you know what? They were right. I had changed. I’d stopped setting myself on fire to keep other people warm. The hardest part wasn’t the pushback itself but the internal battle. Every time I said no, a voice in my head screamed that I was being a bad person. That boundaries were just a selfish excuse to stop caring about people. But slowly, I started to see a pattern: the people who pushed back the hardest were the people who benefited most from my lack of boundaries. The ones who truly loved me? They understood. They adjusted. They respected my limits because they valued me as a person, not just as a service provider. What Changed Six months after setting that first boundary, my life looked completely different. My relationships actually…
