Boundaries often feel mean at first just because you’re new at them.

Anything unpractised feels wrong in the body, and that includes behaviour which is perfectly fair. The first few times you hold a limit, your own discomfort gets misread as evidence that you were harsh, when it is really just unfamiliarity. The feeling fades with repetition. The limit does not need changing because the first attempt felt strange.

Expect that mean feeling in advance, so it cannot surprise you into backtracking. Hold the same limit three separate times before you judge whether it was right.