🦚When they keep moving the goalposts on you

For the last 13 years, I’ve worked as a translator, translating documents from German, French, and Dutch into English. I still work in this field part-time. A couple of weeks back, I had to do something I rarely do in this job: I walked away from an end client mid-project.

It was a mess. Three different employees of the end client were making contradictory changes to work I’d spent hours on, systematically reversing the informal, conversational tone the client had specifically requested. They were micromanaging every word choice, making “corrections” that directly contradicted what the client had asked for, and each other’s changes, and were sometimes ungrammatical. And now I was being asked to redo my translation with their changes. I’d already reworked it once to align it with the client’s request.

As I banged at the keyboard with hard, resentful strokes, forcing myself to implement changes that I knew would make the text worse, my body started screaming at me. My head tightened. My shoulders tensed. My heart rate picked up. I felt that familiar clenching in my stomach, the one I recognize as my internal alarm system.

That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t overreacting. It was a PTSD trigger. This feeling was identical to what I used to experience when my ex would push the goalposts way out on me and make me feel like I couldn’t do anything right.

Your stress response doesn’t lie

When I was married to my abusive ex, I learned to ignore my body’s signals. The tension headache that would come on right away when he contradicted himself or denied saying what I’d heard him say before. The stomach knots when he’d criticize what I was wearing, my weight, my hair, the way I ate, the way I walked, or a meal I’d cooked. The constant depression from walking on eggshells, trying to predict whether he was going to be angry with me.

In that translation project, my body was sending the same message: You’re in an impossible situation. The rules keep changing. Nothing you do will be right.

But here’s the difference: as a business owner, I had the power to walk away.

So I did.

Recognizing the pattern

After I sent an email declining to continue the project, I realized something profound. The professional boundary I’d just set was a perfect mirror of the personal boundaries my divorce coaching clients struggle with every day.

In both situations, you have:

• Multiple conflicting demands that can’t all be satisfied

• Your lived experience being undermined or dismissed

• Having to deal with moving goalposts

• The stress of trying to please a person and/or a system that will find you wrong, no matter what you do

• The fear that setting necessary boundaries makes you look “unreasonable”

The only real difference? When I have toxic clients, I can fire them. When you share custody with an abusive ex, you’re still stuck in the relationship. Still, the boundary-setting principles remain the same.

The true cost of toxic professional relationships

When I calculated what that project was costing me, the numbers were shocking, but not in the way you might think.

Yes, I was losing the fee for the hour of work I’d already started implementing these corrections. But more importantly:

• I was impacting my health by subjecting myself to a situation that stressed me out

• The stress was affecting my day as a whole

• I was second-guessing my professional judgment

• I was neglecting other work, from clients who did appreciate me

Sound familiar?

This is exactly what happens when you stay entangled with an abusive ex without proper boundaries. The “cost” isn't just the immediate drama. It’s the toxicity that seeps into every other area of your life.

What walking away taught me

The moment I sent that “I’m stepping away from this project” email, the relief was immediate. My shoulders dropped. The knot in my stomach loosened. I could think clearly again. It took me a whole day to get rid of the tight feeling in my head, though.

It reminded me why boundaries are more than just nice-to-have guidelines. They’re essential for psychological and physical health.

And here's what surprised me: my client didn’t argue. They didn’t tell me I was wrong. They said they’d find someone else to finish the work and told me that if they’d known their client was going to manage this so badly, they’d never have taken it on themselves.

This reminded me what healthy responses to boundaries look like. It also highlighted for me how abnormal it is when someone retaliates, escalates, or punishes you for setting limits. In healthy relationships, professional or personal, boundaries are respected, not weaponized.

Your boundaries matter more than their opinion

Whether you're dealing with an impossible client or an abusive ex, the principle is the same: you can’t control their behavior, but you can absolutely control how much access they have to your time, bandwidth, energy, and peace of mind.

Your stress response is giving you valuable information. Your judgment matters. Your voice deserves to be heard. Your well-being is not negotiable.

And when walking away isn’t an option, the most powerful thing you can do is control what you will and won’t engage with.

Want to know how I can help you?

Are you exhausted from being told your stress responses are “overreactions” while you’re trying to set boundaries with someone who retaliates against every limit you establish? Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to someone who understands that your body's alarm system is giving you valuable information, not evidence that you’re “too sensitive”?

Feel free to contact me for a 30-minute consultation, free of charge, where you can finally describe what it’s really like when someone weaponizes every boundary attempt and moves the goalposts constantly.

You’ll have space to articulate your current reality without being told to “just communicate better” or “focus on co-parenting.” We’ll explore where you want to be and what obstacles you're actually facing.

I’ll help you gain clarity on what’s keeping you stuck and what your actual constraints are.

You’ll leave feeling heard and validated, with a clearer understanding of your situation and whether coaching might be a helpful next step for you.

Want to know more about what I do?

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