Ph.D. Psychologist
Newton, MA
Articles on Assertiveness & Boundaries
By Dr. Lynn Margolies
In This Section
- Cultivating Women’s Strengths
- Earning Respect
- Hidden Assertiveness Issues in Men
- Interpersonal Boundaries
- Limit Setting for Parents
- Setting Limits with Manipulative People
- The Cost of Being Overly Accommodating
The characters from the vignettes in Dr. Margolies’ articles are fictitious and designed to be relatable to many people and common themes. They are not based on any patient’s individual situation or disclosure but were derived from a composite of people and events for the purpose of representing real-life situations and psychological dilemmas. Terms of Use.
Arming Yourself Against “I’m Just Saying,” and Other Annoying Phrases
Annoyed by phrases like “I’m just saying”? Learn why people use them, their hidden meanings, and practical ways to respond confidently.
Being An Actual Imposter is Now More Popular Than Imposter Syndrome
Dr. Margolies’ Commentary on A New York Times Column: It’s the Era of Swagger Without the Sweat (Savannah Sobrevilla, March 29, 2026)
Breaking Stereotypes: Why Women Excel at Financial Negotiation and Decision-Making
This blog discusses recent findings that women may be more effective than men in negotiating finances in certain situations and making smart decisions.
Can a Parent Have Too Much Empathy?
Many people experience vicarious distress when imagining other people’s reactions, which can hold them back from taking needed action in those relationships.
Can Having a Conscientious Spouse Have an Impact on Your Career?
Wondering how to support your spouse’s career? Research shows a supportive partner boosts success, job satisfaction, and happiness by reducing stress.
Competing Family Loyalties
As the child becomes an adult, a mother with an anxious, insecure attachment style may refuse to let go, secretly needing to remain the primary love attachment. This may not become apparent until her son find a romantic love partner and devotes himself to her, allowing a competitor to enter the scene. The situation is then often enacted in full drama around family events and holidays when the mother’s explicit demands, and (unspoken) expectation of “loyalty” (e.g. exclusive love) from her son, conflicts with his role as a husband.
Competition Among Women: Myth & Reality
Women seem to have a reputation for being “catty” and competitive with other women, unlike how men behave with other men. This is a curious notion, especially since women are actually less competitive than men out in the world and less comfortable being competitive.
Courage & Limits With Your Teen
This column tells a story based on a composite of real-life situations in families, depicting both the parent’s and teenager’s perspective, with teens who are too good to be true. The story helps teach parents what to look for with seemingly perfect, often high-achieving teens, and how to interpret when a child’s behavior is a disguised way to ask for help.
Daughters Growing Up, Mothers Growing Scared
Difficulties with separation often are activated during developmental transitions such as the first day of kindergarten, adolescence, high school graduation, leaving home and finally, marriage. At these junctures, mothers need to step back and let go, allowing their children to mature and transition to the next level.
Dear John (or Jane) Text/Emails: Closing the Door After an Affair
An affair that is suddenly exposed or suddenly ends poses a particular risk situation for the vulnerable marriage with an unfaithful spouse. In the aftermath of an affair, feelings of loss, conflict and pressure can make it difficult to let go of the illicit relationship, compounding the lure that led to the affair in the first place.
Easy Steps to Reconnect: A Guide for Emotionally Avoidant Dads
Empathic ability, or “mind reading,” develops in the brain when parents know how to translate their children’s reactions and respond in a way that helps them regulate their emotional states. This process also involves helping the child understand what is happening in interpersonal situations. The child then digests and internalizes these experiences, building the capacity to make sense of themselves and relationships, as well as manage their emotions.
Getting Unhooked From Pain & Choosing Happiness
Self-defeating behaviors can be understood as habits with psychological, often unconscious motives. Breaking these habits requires not only insight into the function they serve and the resolve to stop them, but the courage and initiative to try out new behaviors, thereby setting in motion a different chain of events. On a neurobehavioral level, new behaviors that generate positive feedback create new pathways in the brain, allowing momentum for psychological growth and change.
How to Influence Teens Who Cover Up
What to say to teens who think everything is none of your business or other porcupine tactics that shut parents out.
How to Live With Your (Newly Returned) “Grown-up” Child
Families are in transition now as college age kids that used to be living at school are returning home. Many parents are struggling with how to live with their kids who are often bolder now and have new ways of living and acting that pose a problem for parents. This column is a response to many parents requesting help with how to approach and word unwelcome conversations with their.
How to Resist Temptation & Be More in Control
There are two states of mind we can be in when it comes to temptation: zooming in and fantasizing about the rush, or zooming out and seeing the broader picture of how things will play out if we act on our impulses. Knowing where our actions will lead before a tempting situation takes hold gives us a chance to make an informed decision.
How to Set Boundaries With Difficult People
Boundary setting is challenging. Most people have difficulty saying no or setting a boundary. Predictably, ithout a strategy, people resort to repeating the same tactics that haven’t worked or give in and then get resentful. Boundaries protect relationships, and this can used to leverage your own motiavation to set them and as an explicit rationale with another person.
How to Snap People Out of Compulsive Self-Defeating Patterns
Understand why smart people repeat self-defeating patterns. Learn strategies to overcome self-sabotage and break compulsive behaviors permanently.
How to Succeed at Influencing People in Difficult Conversations
Thoughtful preparation when it comes to conversations involving strong feelings is worth the effort in order to maximize success and effect damage control. Fast forwarding in our minds to predict how communications will likely play out can make it quickly obvious whether, with whom, how, and in what situations we want to engage around loaded topics.
In the Doghouse… Again: Male & Misunderstood
Why do men so often find themselves in the doghouse with women? They try to please. They try to say the “right” thing. They do favors, buy gifts, work hard, and aim to live up to their responsibilities as a man.
Influencing People: What Works to Change Behavior (and How It Applies to Parenting)
Without accurately understanding children’s behavior, we may intervene in ways that compound the situation, creating a control struggle on top of the original problem. To be effective in helping children, we must accurately diagnose the problem and be curious: What’s causing this behavior? Though they may look the same, a problem of defiance is handled differently than one of capacity. Learning difficulties involving executive functioning are neurologically based, but executive functioning is sensitive to and impeded by stress. Parents’ reactions can, in this way, become an additional impediment to children’s executive functioning.
Jordan Neely Was Hungry. Did No One Offer Him Something to Eat?
Dr. Margolies’ Commentary on a Boston Globe Column: A Black man desperate for help instead finds death on the N.Y. subway (Renée Graham, May 5)
Manipulative or Unaware? Inside the Male Mind
Some men have a pattern of instinctively accommodating and then becoming resentful and acting it out – often without realizing it. Men vulnerable to this dynamic may have limited self-awareness or skills to communicate their needs and feelings directly. Secret rebellion against feeling controlled can manifest unconsciously through forgetting, lateness, silence, irritability. Learn how to read the signs so that you can protect your relationship and prevent negative cycles of disconnection and hidden conflict.
Men’s Issues: How Therapy Can Help
There are aspects of men’s experiences that are particular to being male. In working with men, it is important for a psychologist to understand the differences in men’s experiences, what men need, and how to best help them achieve their goals.
Mind Games in Families: How to Keep Your Sanity
Are you giving up your power in relationships with intimidating people? Understanding the psychology behind what’s happening can help you act from a position of strength.
Outlawed by Your In-Laws
Failure to set appropriate boundaries with a mother often results in persistent in-law conflicts and problems in the marriage. Many marital issues fall into this category and can be traced to habitual boundary difficulties between mothers and sons which spill over into the man’s relationship with his wife.
“Pleasing” Is Not the Proper Word
Describing yourself (or someone else) as a “people pleaser” confuses subordinating yourself with altruism, and encourages this unhealthy behavior. Read Dr. Margolies commentary in the New York Times to understand the psychology behind the term “people pleaser” and why the language you use matters.
Serving Up Guilt This Holiday Season
Guilt can be used unconsciously to get loved ones to do what we want. Even though this method doesn’t always produce the intended effects, we may resort to it when feeling helpless in the face of longing and disappointment.
Surefire Ways to Alienate Your Adult Children (and Other People)
This article discusses confusing patterns that occur with narcissistic and controlling parents and other people.
“That’s an Ugly Shirt. I’m Just Saying”
Lately the annoying expression “I’m just saying” keeps coming up in everyday conversation. The remark preceded by “I’m just saying” is unsolicited and provocative. “I’m just saying” creates a confusing interpersonal dynamic. The speaker unconsciously attempts to trick the listener into believing an altered reality in which he or she is blameless, and the listener is implicitly accused of having an unfounded reaction.
The Psychology of Midlife Crises in Men
Midlife crisis in men can trigger identity issues, affairs, and risky behaviors. Recognize warning signs and learn healthy coping mechanisms.
The Psychology of the Guilt-Tripper
Does a family guilt-tripper have an emotional hold over you? Here’s what makes them tick and why you feel you are being controlled.
We Can Have an Impact
Dr. Margolies’ commentary on a New York Times article with a headline that used a poor choice of words.
What to Say About Drinking: How to Tell if Your Teen Needs Limits
This column depicts the challenges parents face when trying to protect their teen. The story is told from the separate viewpoints of Dylan, 17, and his parents in a situation involving unproductive conversations about drinking. The story is followed by the therapist’s psychological analysis and guidance to the family.
When Men Feel Trapped: a Practical Guide
Male midlife crisis is essentially an identity crisis that occurs at around midlife that evolves into a crisis when men act out their feelings and have an affair or otherwise blow up their lives. Men in a midlife crisis feel trapped in an identity or lifestyle that feels constraining and they want to break out. This can lead to destructive behavior that dismantlles their lives or an impetus to make positve changes.
When Perseverance Costs You Success
Most of us know that persevering – staying the course and not giving up despite difficulties and setbacks – is an important part of what it takes to be successful in many areas of life. But perseverance, like other intrinsically healthy behaviors, can be taken too far and actually work against moving forward.
When Teens (or 20 Somethings) Think You’re Bugging Them – but Really They’re Bugging You
This article is about a common dynamic in families in which parents feel controlled by their teenage or adult child’s anger, irritability, and/or fragility and, as a result, avoid approaching certain topics or setting needed limits. Tiptoeing and avoiding instead of taking charge leads people who need boundaries to become more out of control and too powerful. The article discusses this dynamic, common obstacles to giving truthful feedback and setting boundaries, and lists practical steps for how to overcome them.
Why Appeasing or Being Silent Attracts Aggression in Bullies
Dr. Margolies’ Commentary on A New York Times Column: Trump Is Playing Rope-a-Dope With Elite Law Firms (Jeffrey Toobin, March 5)
Women’s Issues: How Therapy Can Help
Some struggles that women experience are common to many women, and can therefore be attributed to or understood in this larger context of what it means to be a woman in this culture. Framing women’s issues in this larger context helps to normalize these struggles, rather than blame women for them and unfairly contribute to their shame and self-doubt.
You Should Be So Lucky: Dealing With Tragedy
People often avoid and isolate those who are grieving or have terminal illnesses, either literally or emotionally – inadvertently isolating the person in their lives who is suffering. They are uncomfortable, don’t know what to say or how to act – staying far enough away to preclude being able to really relate. They change the topic to the luck of it all or steer clear of talking about the elephant in the room. Why do people act this way.
