Say what you mean. Keep the relationship.

Boundaries That Hold is a 12-week, evidence-informed course that takes you from chronic over-giving and conflict avoidance to clear, calm, and connected — with scripts, rehearsal, and real tools for every relationship in your life.

50 lessonsAI-adaptiveCancel anytimeLearn anywhere

"Understanding why you over-give is the starting point — learning to hold a limit out loud, in the moment, without losing yourself or the relationship, is the whole game."

— G. Timothy Marte, PsyM, CPLC, PGC

What you'll learn

What you'll be able to do

Identify your personal limits across intimate, family, friendship, and professional relationships with precision and without guilt
Communicate boundaries clearly and calmly using scripted, rehearsed language that others can actually hear
Handle pushback, guilt-trips, and escalation without abandoning your position or damaging the relationship
Recognize and break people-pleasing and wall-building patterns that keep you stuck in the same cycles
Negotiate boundaries collaboratively with partners, family members, and colleagues so both sides feel respected
Repair relationship ruptures after a boundary conflict using structured, proven reconnection tools

How it works

A school that adapts to you

This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.

We learn your level

A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.

Lessons adapt as you go

Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.

Your AI coach keeps you moving

Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.

The curriculum

What's inside your school

11 modules · 50 lessons

The Boundary Baseline

Establishes what boundaries truly are, why they fail, and how your personal history shapes your current patterns.

1.1What Boundaries Actually Are (and Aren't)Included
1.2Your Boundary Blueprint: History, Attachment, and PatternsIncluded
1.3The Two Traps: People-Pleasing and Wall-BuildingIncluded
1.4Your Personal Limits InventoryIncluded
1.5Safety, Scope, and When to Seek More SupportIncluded

The Language of Limits

Builds a practical communication toolkit — scripted, rehearsed language for stating boundaries clearly and calmly across any relationship context.

2.1The Anatomy of a Clear Boundary StatementIncluded
2.2Tone, Timing, and DeliveryIncluded
2.3Scripts for Saying No Without Over-ExplainingIncluded
2.4Requests vs. Demands: Asking for What You NeedIncluded
2.5Rehearsal Lab: Low-Stakes Practice with the AI CoachIncluded

Boundaries in Intimate Relationships and Marriage

Applies boundary skills to the highest-stakes relational context — romantic partnership — where enmeshment, pursuit, and withdrawal cycles are most intense.

3.1Enmeshment vs. Intimacy: Where You End and They BeginIncluded
3.2The Pursue-Withdraw Cycle and How Boundaries Break ItIncluded
3.3Sexual, Emotional, and Time Boundaries in PartnershipIncluded
3.4Collaborative Boundary Negotiation with a PartnerIncluded
3.5Repairing Ruptures After a Boundary ConflictIncluded

Boundaries with Family

Addresses the unique difficulty of family limits — where old roles, loyalty binds, and generational patterns make even small changes feel seismic.

4.1Family Roles and the Rules That Were Never SpokenIncluded
4.2Setting Limits with Parents and In-LawsIncluded
4.3Siblings, Extended Family, and Holiday FlashpointsIncluded
4.4When Family Pushes Back: Guilt, Loyalty, and 'You've Changed'Included
4.5Protecting Your Household: Limits Between Your Relationship and Your Family of OriginIncluded

Boundaries in Friendship

Explores how to set and sustain limits in adult friendships without killing the relationship or carrying permanent guilt.

5.1Why Friendship Boundaries Feel So AwkwardIncluded
5.2Energy Drains, One-Sided Dynamics, and the Friend Who Takes Too MuchIncluded
5.3Scripts for Saying No to FriendsIncluded
5.4Renegotiating a Friendship That Has Outgrown Its Old PatternIncluded

Boundaries in the Workplace

Translates boundary skills into professional settings — managing workload, colleagues, supervisors, and power dynamics — without career risk.

6.1Professional Limits vs. Personal Limits: What's Different at WorkIncluded
6.2Workload, After-Hours Contact, and Saying No to Your BossIncluded
6.3The Colleague Who Keeps Crossing the LineIncluded
6.4Supervisors and Leaders: Setting Limits with Those You ManageIncluded
6.5Workplace Repair: Restoring Professional Relationships After ConflictIncluded

Holding Your Ground: Handling Pushback and Escalation

Builds the specific skills needed when someone challenges, ignores, guilt-trips, or escalates in response to your boundary — the moment most learners fall apart.

7.1Why People Push Back and What They're Really DoingIncluded
7.2The Broken Record: Staying Calm and Consistent Under PressureIncluded
7.3Guilt-Trips, Manipulation, and Emotional EscalationIncluded
7.4Regulating Yourself in the Hot MomentIncluded
7.5When to Hold, When to Bend, and When to Walk AwayIncluded

Breaking the Cycles: People-Pleasing and Wall-Building

Goes deeper into the two chronic patterns that survive surface-level insight — dismantling them at the level of belief, habit, and nervous system response.

8.1The Roots of People-Pleasing: Shame, Fear, and FawnIncluded
8.2The Roots of Wall-Building: Avoidance, Control, and ShutdownIncluded
8.3Rewriting the Core Beliefs That Fuel Each PatternIncluded
8.4Building the Middle Path: Warm, Clear, and GroundedIncluded

Repair, Reconnection, and Rupture Recovery

Consolidates the repair skills introduced across earlier modules into a full, transferable reconnection framework usable in any relationship.

9.1Why Repair Is a Skill, Not an ApologyIncluded
9.2The Four-Step Reconnection ProtocolIncluded
9.3Repairing When You Were the One Who Crossed the LineIncluded
9.4Rebuilding Trust After Repeated ViolationsIncluded

Specialized Contexts and Helping Professionals

Addresses boundary application in high-complexity contexts — including a structured clinical track for coaches and helping professionals using this framework with clients.

10.1Boundaries During Major Life TransitionsIncluded
10.2Digital and Technology BoundariesIncluded
10.3The Helping Professional's Framework: Scope, Countertransference, and Self-DisclosureIncluded
10.4Teaching Boundary Skills to Others: Using This Framework EthicallyIncluded

Integration and the Long Game

Brings the full 12-week arc to a close by consolidating skills, building a personal maintenance system, and planning for the inevitable backslides that come after any real change.

11.1Your Boundary Profile: What's Changed in 12 WeeksIncluded
11.2Building Your Personal Boundary PracticeIncluded
11.3Backslide Recovery: When You Revert to Old PatternsIncluded
11.4Community, Accountability, and Continuing the WorkIncluded

Who it's for

Is this you?

The chronic over-giver

She says yes automatically, runs on empty, and needs a structured way to identify her limits and finally mean it when she says no.

The conflict-avoider

He goes quiet instead of speaking up, and needs scripted, rehearsed language to say hard things without shutting down or blowing up.

The family system survivor

She's the designated peacekeeper in a family with unspoken rules, and needs concrete tools for navigating parents, siblings, and holiday flashpoints without guilt.

The burned-out professional

He's drowning in after-hours messages and workload creep, and needs a clear framework for setting professional limits without derailing his career.

The partner who wants to fix 'us'

She and her partner keep hitting the same wall, and needs collaborative negotiation tools to break the pursue-withdraw cycle before it does more damage.

The helping professional

He supports others for a living and needs a rigorous framework for scope, countertransference, and ethical self-disclosure — plus his own overdue personal work.

Questions

Frequently asked

Your teacher

A note from your teacher

G. Timothy Marte, PsyM, CPLC, PGC

If you're reading this, I want to start by saying something I mean: I know exactly how exhausting it is to live at the edges of everyone else's needs while quietly losing track of your own.

Maybe you say yes when every cell in your body is screaming no — and then resent it for days. Maybe you've gone the other way, built the walls high and called it protecting yourself, and now the distance feels lonelier than the original wound. Maybe you've read the books, nodded along to every insight, and still found yourself in the same conversation, with the same person, having the same sinking feeling that nothing has actually changed. That's not a character flaw. That's what happens when insight doesn't have anywhere to go.

I built Boundaries That Hold because I kept seeing the same gap — between people who understood, on some level, that they needed to do something different, and people who could actually do it, in the room, when the guilt-trip lands or the pressure mounts or the relationship they love is on the line. Understanding and doing are two completely different skills. This course is about closing that gap. It's structured over 12 weeks because real change — the kind that holds under pressure — needs time to layer. We start where you actually are: mapping your history, naming your patterns, and getting honest about which trap you've fallen into most. Then we build language. Real, scripted, rehearsed language — because "just be direct" is advice, not a skill. We move through every relationship domain you live in, because how you set a limit with your mother is not the same as how you set one with your boss or your best friend or your partner at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday when everyone is tired. And we practice repair, because I've never met a person who held a new boundary perfectly on the first try, and ruptures — handled well — are often how trust actually deepens.

I won't promise you this is easy. Some of what you'll sit with — the roots of people-pleasing, the beliefs underneath the wall-building, the relationships that have needed an honest conversation for years — will take real courage. What I will promise is that nothing in this course requires you to be harsh, cold, or someone you're not. Warm, clear, and grounded is a real thing. It's learnable. And it changes everything.

I'm glad you're here. Let's get to work.