You can’t set boundaries until you know where you end. That part’s homework.

A boundary is only a line if you know where you drew it. Usually the frustration arrives before the knowledge: you feel used up, you said yes again, and you cannot explain what exactly went wrong. Nobody can hand you the line either, because it depends on what actually drains you and what does not, and only you have that data. Working it out is slow, private, unglamorous.

Think back to three times this month you felt flattened afterward. Look for what they shared: the person, the hour, the kind of favor. Write one sentence naming it, and that sentence is what you will eventually say out loud.