I just picked up a book called Unfuck Your Boundaries. It's written by a trauma therapist but the style, if you can't guess from the title, is very casual and easy to read. I am still reading it, so I can't give a full review, but it's approachable and entertaining while covering the fundamentals.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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Not strictly about boundaries, but I think you'd like the Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It goes a lot into how to consider your priorities in life and what you want to spend your time on
Children of emotionally distant parents there's also Drama free. My therapist recommended both to me
You may be thinking of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It’s an excellent book, I highly recommend it. It’s super short and taught me SO much about myself and my family.
That's the one
This could do with a comma somewhere, I think..
Shhhhh I like my run-on sentences.
It’s slightly academic, but check out Eric Berne’s “Games People Play” about Transactional Analysis theory. There’s a short series on YouTube by a user called TherminTrees (a little cheesy and dated looking) that can give you a quick intro if you’re not sure what it’s all about. Its concepts really helped me.
I bet books for children with narcissistic parents might help. Some of those might not be explicitly religious. Sadly I don't have any recommendations
I don't have any book recommendations but I can't help but feel like the entire approach you're trying to take might be too over generalized and you're better off trying to approach each problematic social encounter one by one.
If for example you have family who's down on their luck and trying to move into your living space despite you not wanting that, you need to consider what their other options are for living alone and if that would result in a quality of life you would be able to accept yourself, and weigh that against your own expectations for how the living situation would pan out in your mind.
Stuff like that family member's previous behaviour, ability to show gratitude and value you equivalently, the degree to which they are responsible for their current living circumstances, etc, are all important to consider. This is nothing generalized advice about "boundaries" could possibly help with imo.
If on the other hand you're a woman and have issues with men hitting on you at work, you have a completely different set of considerations you must make, with virtually no overlap with the previous example.
I have not read them myself, but Nedra Glover Tawaab's books come highly recommended: Set Boundaries, Find Peace + the accompanying workbook, and Drama Free (mentioned here already).
I did a Google Books search of Set Boundaries and only got one hit for the word 'god', very near the end in what looks like the "Commonly Asked Questions" section. Between that and what I see in the previews (looks quite promising), recommend checking this out to see if it's useful for you.
I've heard good things about Polysecure. I understand your question doesn't pertain to non-monogamy, but non-monogamy is an extension of being able to set and respect boundaries yourself rather than simply adopting boundaries that are the default in your community, so maybe it would be helpful?
It's really good. It's definitely from a polyamorous perspective, but it's mostly about attachment styles and boundaries. I feel like it has a lot of good general relationship advice, it just doesn't assume that you're only going to have one partner at a time.