Cass

And if they keep going, you just say, I'm not going to discuss that with you right now.

Similar to the first one, you could say, I need a break.

I'll be back shortly.

So you can either go to another room in the house.

You could step outside.

You could even go for a drive around the block if you really need some space.

Again, similar to the second one, you could say, that's not something I want to get into today.

If a particular topic comes up that you're not comfortable discussing or you know that it's going to lead to some heated tension, yeah, you can just use that one.

You could just try.

That's not something I want to get into today.

And this one, if you've tried some of the other ones and people still want to talk about that particular heated topic or they're still behaving poorly towards you, you could just say, I'm heading off now.

Thank you for your hospitality.

Goodbye.

So look, I know with some people it's harder to set a boundary than it is with other people.

But at the end of the day, you need to protect your own emotional well-being.

So having these boundaries, it might mean leaving earlier than you planned from an event.

It might mean just taking some quiet breaks here and there throughout the day.

Or if you really know that there's a well-worn path when you get together with certain family members,

You could decide ahead of time how much time you're going to spend in certain situations.

So I don't know, you might say, I'm only going to go for half a day and then we're out of there.