In Al-Anon, I'm given two principles that appear to contradict each other. Firstly, I should accept what we cannot change. Secondly, I should not 'accept unacceptable behaviour', in other words, I may set boundaries ('I cannot', 'I will not', 'Stop it!', 'Do it!', 'Do it differently!'). How do I reconcile these?
It appears I am not supposed to accept everything: rather, I am supposed to pick some things to accept and some things to change: this is the central idea of the Serenity Prayer.
This job is made easier by first understanding that 'accept' has two levels: emotional and practical. Everything must be accepted emotionally: if something is happening, it is happening, and it does no good to deny it or rail against it. However, that does not mean I do not have to do something about it. Some things I can and should change. Some things I cannot or should not. To change something does not necessitate me being upset. In fact, I must eliminate the upset promptly to see clearly what I can and should change. Upset gets in the way. Once I reach equanimity, I can see clearly.
Once the upset is eliminated, however, there may still remain much that appears to require rectification or boundaries.
However, there are two cleansing operations required before I can see whether a rectification or a boundary is genuinely required.
Firstly, my cognition needs to be cleansed.
At the simplest level, my thinking needs to be cleared of ‘pigs’ (personalisation, interpretation, generalisation, and speculation). My perception of a situation is usually altered by these. There are many other cognitive distortions that might be at play, to name but a few: black-and-white thinking, rule-based thinking, filtering out counterevidence, filtering out the positive, emotional reasoning, catastrophising, etc. Lists of cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, and formal and informal logical fallacies abound.
Secondly, once my cognition is cleansed, there is the moral question. I am not an instrument of God's justice; I'm not the universal corrector; I'm not entitled to have everyone adjust themselves to me; I'm not entitled to impose a thousand rules on the people round me; all of these plus my own intolerance, impatience, and pique can drive me to set boundaries that are neither necessary nor reasonable.
I set very few boundaries. Negotiating joint activity or establishing procedures are a different matter: that's a common and sometimes constant need, depending on the nature and scope of the activities in my life.
I've had anonism my whole life, and I've worked with a lot of people with anonism, and something I share with many of the people I have worked with is this: I used to see an awful lot of 'unacceptable' behaviour in the people around me, i.e. behaviour which I shouldn't have to 'tolerate' and which I should seek to change or avoid altogether by terminating the relationship. In my case, there was an attachment to the role of victim and to the pattern of rescuing myself against the persecutors who were ranged around me. In turn, I would demonise and persecute others, with the righteous indignation of the aggrieved. There is a psychological attraction here (research the Karpman Drama Triangle or study A Course In Miracles for more information). Suffice to say: even where other people are genuinely behaving badly, my victimhood has its own blinding pathology and momentum.
To summarise: I am very cautious and deliberate about setting boundaries. Consequently, they're rare. When I do set them, they're almost invariably for purely practical reasons: their purpose is to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, or harmony of the endeavour or interaction.