Understanding Boundaries
© Neurodiverse Connection 2025 All Right Reserved
What is this resource about?
This resource provides a Neurodivergent-affirming guide to understanding boundaries, recognising the unique challenges and strengths that can come with Neurodivergent experiences. While it centres Neurodivergent perspectives, the insights and suggestions may apply to a broader audience.
Additionally, it acknowledges the complexities of boundary setting, particularly for those in lived experience roles, where the personal and professional identities intersect and identifying and maintaining boundaries can be harder. Setting boundaries in these roles can be especially challenging due to the deep emotional connection to the work, a strong desire to support others, and the possibility of sharing and encountering experiences that resonate on a personal or emotional level. This resource aims to offer supportive strategies that reflect those realities.
What are boundaries and why do they matter?
Boundaries define our limits and what is acceptable for us at any given time. They also refer to the personal space we need to maintain healthy connections in both personal and professional relationships.
Boundaries are important because they protect our well-being, agency, and sustainability.This means that they help prevent burnout and stress and encourage mutual respect and personal autonomy. They play a vital role in protecting mental and emotional well-being, while also contributing to greater productivity and healthier workplace and group dynamics.
Identifying and establishing boundaries is an ongoing process that involves learning, adjustment, and negotiation—they take time to develop and require continuous effort to maintain.
What types of boundaries are there?
We need to know and set various types of boundaries in our day-to-day lives, including:
Physical boundaries
Personal space, physical contact, and privacy
Emotional boundaries
Protecting personal feelings and avoiding emotional overburden
Mental and topic boundaries
Respecting individual thoughts, beliefs, and opinions
Time boundaries
Managing workload, personal time and commitments effectively
Digital boundaries
Managing notifications, social media usage and the right to switch-off
Professional boundaries
Defining appropriate interactions and responsibilities in the workplace
What are the challenges of identifying and setting boundaries as a Neurodivergent person?
Being Neurodivergent presents unique challenges when it comes to identifying and establishing boundaries, primarily due to sensory processing, social interaction, and communication differences. These differences can impact our ability to recognise, define, communicate, and protect our boundaries. Additionally, experiences like alexithymia, difficulty identifying, understanding, and describing emotions, and alexisomia, difficulty recognising and expressing physical sensations, can make it harder to recognise our instinctive emotional responses and bodily signals of ‘no,’ especially when those signals are related to anger.
Misunderstood communication
Neurodivergent individuals may struggle with normative expectations regarding assertiveness, such as maintaining eye contact, which can complicate the communication of boundaries, particularly in cross-neurotype relationships.
Victimisation and coercion
Neurodivergent people are at higher risk of interpersonal victimisation, grooming, or coercive control, making it challenging to establish and maintain their boundaries.
Learn more about coercive control by exploring the recorded webinars and other resources created for ourGrooming & Coercive Control Summit in 2023.
Conflicts at home
Overprotective family members, caregivers, or partners may impact an individual’s ability to set personal boundaries.
Lack of role models
There is often a scarcity of visible role models who effectively demonstrate boundary-setting skills, making it harder for Neurodivergent individuals to learn these essential techniques.
Misinterpretations about relationships
Some may believe that love and friendship should be boundary-less, leading to the neglect of personal limits.
Workplace pressures
The misconception that professionalism or success at work requires the absence of boundaries can result in overworking and the neglect of personal limits.
Feeling undeserving of boundaries
Some Neurodivergent individuals may feel they do not deserve boundaries or the right to say “no,” particularly when they are already receiving reasonable adjustments and accommodations.
Self-comparison and overriding boundaries
There may be a tendency to override personal boundaries to compensate for perceived differences or to compare oneself to other individuals.
Challenging social expectations
Neurodivergent individuals often encounter confusion regarding social norms and expectations, which can complicate their ability to set clear and effective boundaries.
Why might Neurodivergent people sometimes say “yes” when we mean “no”?
There are several reasons why this can happen, often rooted in nervous system responses, social conditioning, and communication differences. For example, burnout and alexithymia—difficulty identifying and expressing emotions—can make it hard to recognise or articulate one’s true feelings or capacity in the moment. The fawn or freeze response, part of the nervous system’s survival mechanisms, may lead someone to agree or comply to avoid perceived danger or discomfort.
Masking, or suppressing one’s true needs and behaviours to fit in, can make it feel unsafe to be
honest or assertive, especially in environments that don’t accommodate Neurodivergence. In some cases, coercive control or past trauma can also play a role, causing someone to say yes out of fear
or pressure.
Other contributing factors might include empathy or emotional caretaking, where a person
prioritises the feelings of others over their own needs, and faux relational security—a sense of connection that feels safe on the surface but lacks true psychological safety, making authentic communication difficult.
How can Neurodivergent people set and maintain healthy boundaries?
For Neurodivergent individuals, setting and maintaining healthy boundaries begins with understanding our capacity, needs, and priorities. Self-awareness is crucial: we need to pay attention to our limits, identify stress triggers, and recognise feelings of discomfort as important signals. Because our nervous systems can be sensitive to change, it is often more effective and sustainable to make small, manageable adjustments.
We can consider what we might gain by setting a boundary and what we could lose by not doing so. Clear and assertive communication is essential. We can use holding statements like, “I need a bit of time to process that before I respond,” to give ourselves time to establish our boundary. Additionally, clearly stating our needs, such as “I need uninterrupted focus time between 2 and 4 PM,” helps others understand how to support us.
Consistently reinforcing our boundaries and addressing any violations promptly is important. By reaffirming expectations and enforcing consequences, when necessary, we build mutual respect. Saying “no” can be challenging, but it is perfectly okay to be both firm and kind. For example, we might say, “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t commit to that.” If appropriate, we can suggest alternatives.
Finally, seeking support from trusted managers, mentors, or professionals can help us when we are new to setting boundaries.
How might being Neurodivergent affect the way we respond to other people’s boundary-setting?
Being Neurodivergent can sometimes mean we respond differently to other people’s boundary setting. We might interpret a boundary as a demand, a rejection, or even as a sign that we are the problem or that we’re not important. These reactions are understandable and often stem from lived experiences such as rejection sensitivity, hyper-empathy, past coercive control, or attachment ruptures. Our current nervous system state also plays a big role; if we’re already feeling overwhelmed or unsafe, a boundary might feel more intense or personal than it is. Understanding these patterns
with compassion can help us pause, reflect, and respond in a way that honours both our needs and others’ boundaries.
Conclusion
Establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries is crucial for well-being, workplace harmony, and personal growth. Through self-awareness and consistency, along with support when needed, Neurodivergent individuals can develop the skills to identify, set, and maintain healthy boundaries to protect their limits.
