From October to February, the invitations don’t stop. This season is a vortex of tidings, outfits, expectations, manners, delicious food, and enough holiday cards to crowd your fridge. If you’re a people-pleaser, every one of those gatherings comes with an unspoken question: how much of yourself do you owe everyone at the table?
As a mental health counselor, I see this season add another layer of pressure for my clients. It’s the Super Bowl of practicing boundaries and breaking people-pleasing patterns.
Let me be clear: setting boundaries with family over the holidays doesn’t mean you get to skip the fuss. The people who organize these gatherings are a big part of what makes life worth living. They make sure we don’t let another year slip by without a few laughs at their table, good memories, and the perfect game after a meal that has us undoing the top button of our slacks. Boundaries aren’t about cutting those people off. They’re about building more nuanced tools for discomfort, rooted in self-awareness and authenticity.
Why Look to Adoptees for Boundary-Setting Tools?
Adoptees and their families practice boundary-setting constantly, often in situations most people never have to think about. In my experience, the best tools rarely come from people for whom a skill came naturally. They come from people who had to work for it.
Think of it like golf. Don’t take advice from someone born with a natural swing who went pro. Take it from the person who spent a decade correcting and honing their form.
The same holds true in therapy. If you’re looking for tools for happiness, look to tools designed for people who have experienced depression. If you want to stay organized, look to the skills many ADHDers have built. And if you’re looking for tools for setting boundaries, look to the lives and advice of adoptees.
So much of an adoptee’s life is shaped by how boundaries are structured, defined, and negotiated. As an adoptee myself and an adoption-competent counselor, I see adoption mental health work focus on two things. The first is exploring how the boundaries set for adoptees have affected them: open vs. closed adoption, transracial or transcontinental placement, and access to their culture of origin.
The second is the boundaries they now get to set for themselves as adults. The goal is to become a steward of their own story, choosing select loved ones as supportive forces and protecting their private experiences from a larger, often well-meaning and curious, crowd.
When I interned at Adoptions Together, we trained adoptive parents on how to handle boundaries with curious strangers, family members, and friends. Many of the examples centered on the holidays. Parents practiced how to respond to:
Stray comments in the grocery store line about how their child looks different from them
Ruder remarks from friends and cousins that the parents “aren’t really” the child’s parents
Family members who don’t understand the decision to adopt rather than “have their own kids”
For adoptees and their families, opportunities to practice boundaries abound. They come up at the most inopportune moments, even ones meant for celebration and connection.
How Do You Decide Who Gets a Say in Your Life?
Start by mapping your relationships by closeness, then decide which of those people get a vote in how you live. Think of it as a friendship onion.
Picture your social and family connections as an onion cut in half. That nubby inner ring at the center holds the people closest to you: the family members who are always there for a pep talk, the friends who’d answer an 11 p.m. FaceTime on a random Wednesday when everything hits the fan. These are your center-onion people. They create emotional safety, invest in you the way you invest in them, and leave you feeling relaxed (most of the time) at the end of a hangout or conversation.
Each ring out gets a little less close and a little less intimate. Old college friends you’d be happy to see but haven’t kept up with might sit in ring five. Colleagues who would write you a reference might be in ring ten. Way out at the edge is the guy you held the door for last week. If drawing it helps, draw it. If you’re a strong visualizer, picturing it may be enough.
To decide where each person sits, ask yourself:
Would this person listen to me if I was really down?
Do I trust this person to give me good advice?
Does this person need me, or do they genuinely want me in their life?
Once you’ve placed about 20 people across different rings, you can ask the most important question: Which of these people, or rings, gets to weigh in on how I live my life?
Adoptees and their families prepare for the holidays the same way. They explore who is safe to share with, which aunts and uncles sit further out, and who gets to be part of the conversation when questions come up. One cousin might have the capacity to understand the nuances of growing up as an adoptee, while another cousin in the same family isn’t ready to safely discuss the adoptee’s story yet.
In trainings, parents and adoptees practiced how they wanted to respond to different people using a version of “who gets a vote.” A tactful aunt might get a deep, honest answer. A roguish cousin might get a simple “I don’t have to share that with you” from the adoptee.
What Do You Say When Family Asks Personal Questions at the Holidays?
Match your answer to the person’s ring. Prepare a few responses that feel true to you, then scale how much you share. Inner-onion people get the full story, while outer-onion people get a true but briefer version they can still engage with.
Your inner circle might hear how hard the breakup has really been, the wild thing your boss said last week, or how you’ve actually been doing. People further out get the short version.
Social media often teaches us that firm boundaries require absolutes. In reality, boundaries exist on a gradient, ranging from moments when we let ourselves be seen to moments when we say a forceful “No.”
So when Aunt Lisa corners you beside the charcuterie board to ask when your partner is going to propose, you’re still in control of how much access she gets to your story. If she’s a middle-onion member of your family, you might say, “We’ve been talking about the future a lot lately, and I’m excited about what we’ve discussed.” Then leave it there.
If Lisa is more aggressive and sits in your outer onion, try a simple “I don’t want to talk about it tonight.” Or name the intensity directly: “It doesn’t feel good when you ask questions this way.”
Ultimately, we’re responsible for setting the rules about who gets access to our story. Hard-and-fast rules for avoiding discomfort don’t always serve us at Thanksgiving dinner. When we approach loved ones with a gradient instead, we’re better able to accept our differences, practice assertiveness through the tension, and build confidence in setting boundaries.
If you’d like more tools like the friendship onion, or support exploring your adoption story, reach out to schedule a free 15-minute consultation today!
About the Author
Hillary is a therapist who brings a collaborative and grounding approach to helping clients navigate life's complexities with greater clarity and intention. She specializes in supporting individuals through life transitions, identity changes, and challenges related to motivation, relationships, and boundaries. With particular expertise in anxiety, trauma, OCD, depression, adoption, men's issues, relationships and dating, attachment issues, and identity exploration, Hillary creates a therapeutic space that honors each client's unique experiences and perspectives. Her integrative style balances reflection with action, encouraging clients to explore the deeper meaning behind their experiences while simultaneously building practical tools for emotional regulation and relationship building. Hillary is passionate about helping people align their choices with their core values, whether they're re-evaluating career paths, seeking better balance, or imagining their next life chapter. She views therapy as both a creative and structured process that fosters resilience and intentional living. Through this values-centered approach, Hillary empowers clients to deepen their self-understanding and make confident decisions that reflect who they are and who they're becoming. Her work ultimately aims to help people navigate daily challenges while staying connected to what truly matters most in their lives.
