Trying to stay close to a hurtful parent without it costing you everything? This free worksheet helps you set limits you can hold without guilt.

Setting limits with a parent cuts against everything you were taught about what family means and what you owe the people who raised you. When that parent is hurtful — critical, controlling, dismissive — the guilt gets even heavier. You love them, you want a relationship, and you also can’t keep absorbing the cost of an unlimited one.

This free worksheet helps you see the pattern clearly, untangle real obligation from inherited guilt, and define a limit you can actually hold. It won’t tell you to cut them off — or to keep tolerating what you’ve been tolerating. It helps you choose, honestly.

• Naming what your parent does, specifically and repeatedly, that leaves you depleted
• Separating what you actually owe from the guilt that was installed in you
• Defining one concrete limit that would make the relationship sustainable
• Holding that limit when they push back through guilt, anger, or silence

You’re allowed to love your parent and protect yourself from how they hurt you — both can be true.

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