Every article on boundaries makes it sound clean and empowering. "Just tell them what you need." "No is a complete sentence." But nobody talks about the guilt that comes after.
I told my sister I could not keep lending her money because it was affecting my own stability. The boundary was right. I knew it was right. And I still spent the next week feeling like I had failed her as a sibling.
I told a close friend that I couldn't be the person she vented to for hours every week anymore because it was leaving me depleted. Again — right call. And I still lie awake wondering if I'm selfish, if I'm cold, if I'm abandoning people who need me.
My therapist says the guilt means I care, not that I did something wrong. But knowing that intellectually and feeling it are two very different things.
For people who have gotten better at this — does the guilt go away? Or do you just get better at sitting with it? How do you stop measuring your worth by how available you are to everyone around you?