I want to tell you a story about a senior executive in her 50s (details have been changed to protect confidentiality).
She is smart, warm, creative and steady. The kind of leader who can walk into tension and the room starts to exhale.
She doesn’t gossip.
She doesn’t dramatise.
She solves.
She holds.
And somehow, that exact skill set has made her a magnet for emotional “digging.”
Not evil digging. Not villain behaviour.
Just the slow, relentless kind where people keep taking a little more because no one ever hits the wall.
Her daughter has just turned 30 and is recovering from depression.
She calls once a day, sometimes twice. She talks through her feelings, her day, the small wins and the days that slide backwards. Mum listens. She listens well.
Then Mum offers a short personal example. One sentence. A lived-experience bridge. Not to hijack. To connect.
And her daughter snaps.
“So it’s not all about you.”
That moment matters.
Because it reveals her mind underneath the words.
A traumatised brain can misread connection as competition. It can hear one sentence as criticism. It can experience empathy as interruption. That’s not character. That’s threat circuitry.
But here’s the line we don’t cross:
Deepression can explain reactivity.
It does not excuse disrespect.
If love means Mum must shrink, the relationship becomes a rehabilitation centre with no visiting hours.
Then there’s her previous boss.
Over the years, they became genuine friends. They’ve shared a lot. They respect each other. There is care there.
But he still speaks to her like he has a badge that gets him into her decision-making room.
He gives advice she didn’t ask for.
He pushes his viewpoint.
He rewrites her choices out loud.
It’s subtle. It’s dressed up as support.
And because she’s diplomatic, she softens her “no.”
She redirects. She jokes. She lets it slide.
So he keeps going.
Power dynamics don’t magically disappear when you become friends. Sometimes they just change outfits and keep the same habits.
The third story is the hardest.
She visits a friend in a retirement facility.
His family is absent. He has almost no visitors. He is lonely in the specific way that makes your chest tighten.
She goes to see him not because she feels obliged but because she knows he has no one.
That’s beautiful.
And also dangerous.
Because over time, his loneliness starts turning into entitlement. He treats her visits like they are owed.
He wants more time, more attention, more emotional labour. He wants her to plug the hole left by an entire family system.
And because she is a good human, she keeps giving.
This is how saints burn out.
Quietly.
People love to diagnose.
Is it narcissism? Is it trauma? Is it illness?
Here’s the cleaner truth.
This is a system.
And the nervous system learns fast:
If pushing works, pushing escalates.
That’s not cynicism. That’s behavioural neuroscience.
Brains repeats what gets rewarded.
It often looks polite.
It’s not always manipulation.
Sometimes it’s just need with no brakes.
But if you keep absorbing it, you become their external nervous system. And that is not a relationship.
That is an unpaid role.
A boundary is not a lecture.
A boundary is not a debate.
A boundary is a sentence plus a consequence.
Short. Calm. Repeated.
No rage required.
Boundaries are not walls. They are nervous system seatbelts.
You don’t wear a seatbelt because you hate driving. You wear it because you plan to arrive alive.
With her daughter: keep love, remove the snap.
Start by creating structure because structure calms threat circuitry.
When the “not about you” line comes:
Warm voice. Steel spine.
The goal is not to punish. It’s to teach the nervous system a new rule: closeness does not require disrespect.
With the former boss: rewrite the contract.
Friendship needs consent, not hierarchy.
If he can’t adapt, the issue isn’t her tone.
It’s his attachment to control.
With the friend in the retirement facility: compassion with limits.
She can care without becoming the substitute family.
And then she needs to redirect support into the broader ecosystem.
Staff, social groups, volunteer visitors, community services.
One person cannot replace a village without collapsing.
This executive doesn’t need to become harsher.
She needs to become clearer.
Because here’s the line I want every high-empathy, high-performing woman to tattoo on her nervous system:
Your kindness is not a public utility.
When you stop being the emotional shock absorber, the digging either stops or the diggers leave.
Both outcomes are peace.
The real kind. The sustainable kind.