Why 'That's My Boundary' Can Hurt Your Relationship
Whether at the dinner table or in the boardroom, relationships run on the same patterns. Swati Mukherjee is an International Coaching Federation (ICF)-certified Relationship Coach and Corporate Trainer who spent 15 years in Human Resources (HR) and psychology before founding Resilient Relationship, helping couples and organisations trade conflict for trust and honest communication.
Therapy speak has become part of everyday conversations, but terms like boundaries, gaslighting, and psychological safety can sometimes create more conflict than understanding. Discover how misusing therapeutic language can damage relationships and workplace communication, and why expressing honest feelings instead of relying on labels can lead to healthier, more meaningful conversations.
What is therapy speak?
Theo waited until the dishes were done. He'd been rehearsing it since Thursday. "Can we talk about the money you sent your brother? I only found out because the bank statement came."
Nina didn't look up from her phone. "I'm not discussing my family with you. That's my boundary." An hour later, he tried again, more gently. He said he wasn't angry about the money. He was hurt that she hadn't told him. When he reminded her that they'd agreed in the spring to talk before any big transfer, she said, "You're gaslighting me. I never agreed to that." Theo went to bed unsure of what he remembered. Within a week, he was using the same language. When Nina raised his late nights at the office, he said he needed to protect his peace and closed his laptop on the conversation.
Nina and Theo are a composite of couples I work with, and what happened between them has a name. Therapy speak is clinical and therapeutic vocabulary used in everyday life: boundaries, triggered, toxic, narcissist, gaslighting. A decade ago, these words lived mostly in therapists' offices. Now they turn up in reels, comment sections, and kitchen arguments. In 2022, Merriam-Webster made gaslighting its word of the year after lookups rose by 1,740%.
A lot of this is progress. People now have words for experiences they used to just endure. The trouble starts when the words travel without their meaning. The couples therapist and clinical psychologist Isabelle Morley has described couples diagnosing each other in her sessions, and some calling before a first appointment with a list of clinical traits they had found in their partner online. I hear a version of the same thing in my own practice. One partner arrives with a diagnosis, the other with a defence, and neither has said what actually hurt.
Boundaries versus rules
The simplest way to tell them apart is this: a boundary describes what you will do. A rule describes what someone else must do. A boundary governs your own behaviour, while a rule tries to govern someone else's.
"If voices get raised, I'll leave the room and come back when we've both calmed down" is a boundary. You can keep it without anyone's permission. "You're not allowed to bring up my family" is a rule. It only works if the other person obeys it.
Nina's sentence sounded like the first kind and worked like the second. It closed a subject Theo had a real stake in because the money was shared. That's the quiet power of the word. A rule invites negotiation. A boundary sounds like self-care, and arguing with self-care makes you look like the problem.
Is it really gaslighting?
Gaslighting has a specific and serious meaning. One person repeatedly denies the other's reality until they start to doubt their own memory and judgement. It happens, it does real damage, and the signs of genuine gaslighting are worth knowing.
Two people remembering a conversation differently is something else. Memory researchers have shown for decades that we rebuild a memory each time we recall it, filling gaps with what seems likely. Couples who hold two versions of the same evening are completely normal.
When Nina called Theo's memory gaslighting, she turned an ordinary difference into an accusation of abuse. The conversation stopped being about money. It became a trial about who was sane, and nobody wins that kind of trial.
Why labels escalate conflict
John and Julie Gottman's long-running research on couples found that when a complaint attacks someone's character instead of their behaviour, the usual response is defensiveness. Criticism and defensiveness are two of the four patterns that most reliably predict a couple splitting up. "You're gaslighting me" and "you're a narcissist" are character attacks in clinical language. Theo did what almost anyone does when their character is attacked. He defended himself, and then he started attacking back with the same vocabulary.
What the word protects
Most people who reach for these words aren't trying to be cruel. Nina's brother had been struggling. She felt guilty about how little she'd helped him, and part of her expected Theo to judge her family the way her father used to. "That's my boundary" got her out of a conversation that felt dangerous before she had to feel any of that in front of him.
The clinical word usually arrives when the feeling underneath is too exposed to say. It might be shame, or the fear of being judged, or the fear of losing ground in the relationship. "That's my boundary" is easier to say than "I'm scared you'll think less of me." It also borrows authority. It sounds like something a professional told you, which makes it hard to argue with.
There's a useful finding from neuroscience here. In a 2007 study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Matthew Lieberman's team found that when people put their own feelings into words, activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat detector, went down. Naming what you feel calms you. Labelling your partner gives you none of that relief and hands them a threat of their own.
The same pattern at work
Before I coached couples, I spent years in human resources (HR), and I watched this vocabulary arrive in offices around the same time it arrived in homes.
Daniel manages a small team. Sam, one of his best people, had missed three deadlines in a row. When Daniel raised it in their one-to-one, Sam said, "I don't feel psychologically safe in these conversations." Daniel didn't know what to say. He apologised, ended the meeting early, and never brought the deadlines up again. Two months later, the rest of the team was quietly covering Sam's work and resenting both of them.
Psychological safety is real, and it matters. Amy Edmondson, the Harvard professor whose research made the term mainstream, describes it as a team climate where people can speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes without being punished. She has been clear that it doesn't mean comfort, and it doesn't mean being spared difficult feedback. Used the way Sam used it, the phrase did exactly what "that's my boundary" did for Nina. It ended a hard conversation and left the real problem untouched.
The same goes for calling a demanding manager "toxic" or a direct colleague "a narcissist". Once the label lands, nobody talks about the deadline, the workload, or the tone of last Tuesday's email. Everyone talks about the label.
I've come to believe we are the same person in both rooms. If you reach for a diagnosis when your partner raises something hard, there's a good chance you do it with your manager too, and the cost is the same in both places: the conversation you needed never happens.
4 questions to ask first
I give clients four questions to ask themselves in the moment they feel the word coming. They take about as long to ask as the word takes to say, and they work at home and at work.
Who has to change? If the answer is only the other person, you're probably setting a rule. A boundary can be kept by you alone, whatever the other person does.
Does it end the conversation? "Not tonight. Can we talk on Saturday morning?" protects you and keeps the subject open. "I'm not discussing this" closes it for good. If the subject matters to both of you, closing it permanently is a decision you're making for two people.
Would I accept it back? Imagine your partner or your manager saying the same sentence to you about the same subject. If Theo had sent his sister money in secret and called it his boundary, Nina would not have let it go.
What haven't I said? If there's a feeling underneath, such as shame, fear, or embarrassment, name that instead. It's usually shorter than the label and much harder to argue with.
None of this means boundaries aren't real or that gaslighting never happens. If your memory is denied over and over until you no longer trust it, or if you feel afraid or controlled at home, take that seriously and get proper support. These questions are for the far more common situation: two people who care about each other borrowing serious words for ordinary hurt.
What to say instead
If you're the one reaching for the word, swap the label for the feeling, then make a request.
Instead of "That's my boundary," try: "I get defensive when we talk about my brother. Can we talk about it on Saturday, once I've had time to think?" Instead of "You're gaslighting me," try: "I remember it differently. Let's each say what we remember, then agree what we'll do from now on." Instead of "I'm protecting my peace," try: "I'm too tired to do this well tonight. Can we pick a time tomorrow?"
At work, instead of "I don't feel psychologically safe," Sam could have said: "I know the deadlines slipped. I've been embarrassed about it, and I'd like help working out what's getting in the way."
If you're the one hearing the word, don't argue about the definition. Once you're debating whether it's "really" gaslighting, the fight has turned into a vocabulary test, and the actual problem is still sitting there. Answer what's underneath instead: "It sounds like this conversation feels unsafe for you. I'm not judging your brother. I want us to decide about money together."
Then state your own boundary, a real one that describes what you need and what you'll do: "I'm not comfortable with large transfers I don't know about. I'd like us to agree on a limit we both check in about." No diagnosis is needed to say that.
What changed for Nina and Theo
The first time Nina tried saying the real thing, it came out badly. "I don't want you judging my family" was as far as she got before she started crying, which she hates doing in front of anyone.
Theo said he wasn't judging her brother. He was frightened about the mortgage, and he felt shut out of a decision that affected them both. It was the first completely true thing either of them had said in a month.
They didn't settle it that night. They did agree to talk again on Saturday, and on Saturday they did. Nina still says "boundary" sometimes. These days, she's more likely to follow it with what she's actually afraid of.
Some couples reach a point where the arguments have gone on so long that the real question is whether to stay or leave. Many more are where Nina and Theo were, still close enough to repair it, and stuck mostly because neither of them is saying the true sentence.
Start with one honest sentence
If you and your partner have started speaking to each other in diagnoses, or you recognise the same pattern with your team, this is the work I do every week with couples and with people managers. In my coaching, we find the pattern underneath the label and rebuild how the two of you talk when it matters most. Book a private consultation, and we'll look at what's really being said in your arguments and what isn't.
Read more from Swati Mukherjee
Swati Mukherjee, Relationship Coach & Corporate Trainer
Swati Mukherjee is an ICF-certified Relationship Coach and Corporate Trainer based in London, working with couples on the edge of separation and workplaces where good people quietly become poor managers. After 15 years in HR and psychology watching the same story repeat in exit interviews, she noticed that people leave relationships, not organisations. That insight became Professional Proximity, her framework for rebuilding trust and communication before they break down completely, taught through Resilient Relationship. Her work continues in Proximity, her newsletter on the relational side of work, and her podcast, Relationship Ironies of the World We Live In.
