Speaking of boundaries, there’s an important component around self-empowerment that we want to call out. As licensed marriage and family therapist Rachel Zar, LMFT, CST, previously told mindbodygreen, we think setting a boundary sounds like, “Please don’t ask me about politics,” but what it actually sounds like is, “If you ask me about politics, I won’t respond.” Or, as another example, instead of, “Can you not bring up family gossip around me?” you would say, “I will not participate in family gossip.”