What Do Healthy Relationship Dynamics Look Like?

0:00I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk.

0:31Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. I've been in and out a lot lately for work, press and photo shoots, the usual whirlwind.

1:08And I was just thinking about how much I love settling into a real home when I'm on the road. There's something special about staying in a space that feels lived in and welcoming. It makes the experience feel more connected to the place. When I book a stay on Airbnb, I can make simple home cooked meals, have a few friends over and ease into a rhythm that feels more grounded than being in a hotel. And it's such a simple, practical idea for anyone heading out of town. You can host your home on Airbnb while you're away. Your place would be sitting empty anyway, and hosting can bring in a little extra money to put toward future travel.

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2:09Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you and then let it go. For me, our soul is like it's unbound. It's limitless, but we will use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves and that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow and this is the Goop podcast, where we bring together visionaries, scientists, healers, artists, and seekers. I'm so grateful that I get to interview these extraordinary thought leaders and share their wisdom with you.

2:58And I love listening to the conversations that are led by my co-host and dear friend, Cleo Wade. Cleo is a beautiful poet and author. I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. Nedra Glover-Tawab is a licensed therapist, a relationship and boundaries expert, and the author of New York Times bestselling book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace. Her latest book is called Drama Free, A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships.

3:40Today, we are of course talking about boundaries, the ones we have with ourselves, with others, and with the world. We talk about navigating families, friendship, work, therapy, and Nedra shares her practical wisdom around what a dysfunctional family really means, what is at the root of jealousy, how to normalize anger, particularly when it comes to children, and some of her strategies for creating healthy boundaries of teenagers. Okay, let's get right to my chat with Nedra Glover-Tawab.

4:15Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for requesting my presence. How are you doing? I mean, I feel like you're so busy and you provide such an incredible service for people by putting so much information out there in this really beautiful and selfless way. And I'm so happy that you are not only online the way that you are, but you're also writing these incredible books because it gives people so many different ways and spaces and to kind of fit your wisdom into their current capacity. Because some people only have mental space for a, you know, a five minute kind of micro moment to readjust or reset.

4:58And some people need to take the book to the bathtub for an hour and a half and try to get their life together. And so I want to thank you and just see, you know, how are you? How has it been, especially growing this? You, I wouldn't say you follow her so much as this movement around personal healing and health. How, how has this journey been the past few years for you? Well, I am doing what was done for me. I am a lover of self-help myself. I feel like it, you know, the Ayanna books, the Oprah Winfrey, the Wayne Dyers is how I learned so much about myself. And, you know, many of these terms that we now have come to know, it's really exciting to be in the place of, you know, the people that helped you to be able to help people in that way to take up a career that's really about being of service to others in a way.

5:54And it seems like a lot of work, but I rarely feel like it's a lot of work. I let it flow naturally sometimes in the shower, you know, I'll be in the shower and I'm like, Hey Siri, create a note. That's amazing. So yeah, it's like, you know, it just comes to me. I can't, you know, except for when I'm writing a book, I don't really sit down and just be like, let me create some content. It's like in the living and the, you know, working with my clients, that's where the content sort of comes up. And even with books, like I have thousands of notes on my phone and eventually I'll combine a lot of them.

6:37And it's like, this is a book. It's like I have, if I type boundaries into my notes section and 500 notes come up, I think I have a pretty good basis for a book there. Do you feel that you kind of just live with your information and allow for it to kind of process and surround you? Do you think that's helpful to somebody else who might want to write a book? Yes. And I also think that it's helpful. We move towards the things in life that feel, I don't want to say easy, but feel. Easeful. Easeful. Yeah. Like I think sometimes we try to do really, really hard things. Like it's almost like me going to college.

7:20I am terrible at science and saying, you know, I want to be a nurse. You're not nurse material. I'm not nurse material. What I really excelled in was like social studies, sociology and anthropology, anything about people. It was like, I am so interested. And so if we could discover our thing, the thing that we want to talk about, like if you really like cars and you could talk endlessly about cars, your book might need to be about cars. Right. You don't need to go and do a ton of research on plants because that's not your joy point. Your joy point is cars. So talking about that thing that really fills you up makes the work a little bit easier.

8:07And if we could flow in that way of this is what I'm supposed to do, this is what I feel called to do, whatever that thing is. Yeah. Something I've been noticing a lot are people who are starting companies and it's kind of like they don't want to be a founder. There's kind of this thing of like, I just want to have this. They don't feel that actually like running the company is like a point of joy. And I, I wonder if I think maybe around 2016, there was this kind of spirit of, I'd call it like kind of girl boss culture in a way. And I felt that even myself of like, oh my gosh, does everything need to become this kind of company idea because that was kind of the messaging around me culturally.

8:50So sometimes I feel that you know where your point of joy is and where you get hijacked is the container or the manifestation of how maybe culturally someone, it's being done or someone tells you it should be done or there's a safer way to do it. I feel that. I feel the energy sometimes from others about scaling. Yes. Right? Like you should get your own TV show. You should get, I'm like, I don't want a TV show. I don't want to do something every day. That's not what I want to do. I think we really have to create our own stuff and we have to be careful about not allowing the world and other people to guide us.

9:32Because, you know, being a founder, a CEO may be great for someone else, but it might not be your thing. I've talked to many people who, you know, work in some fields and they don't even want to go into management because it's like, yes, it's more money, but it's also more meetings. It's also more responsibility. It's also less time off. It's also working in the evening. So some people love that and you may not, and that's okay. How do you feel that we create that, I guess, boundary with the world? You know, I always think that there's the boundaries between you and yourself, right? Where you stop the negative self-talk where you're like, the world is not ending.

10:13You're upset. It's okay. This kind of way to have self-compassion and console. And then there's the boundaries between you and someone else. And then there's a boundaries between you and the world where you're like, can I not let the spirit or these like movements or big ideas or things around me or opinions, whether it's the teacher in fourth grade or your followers online dictating your path, But it's so hard in a world, and of course, you've written so much about this, of, you know, falling into the approval of others being, you know, that kind of trail of affirmation leading us somewhere. What is, I guess, the advice on that boundary with the loudest possible voices surrounding us?

10:56One of the questions that could be really helpful for us is the simple question of why. Sometimes we want things because we want to be perceived in the way that the person who has them is being perceived. Sometimes we want things because we have been taught to always want things. We're not comfortable with contentment. We're not comfortable with just being in our own space. Sometimes we want things because we truly want them. But I think many of us haven't tapped into the whys of what we want and why. It's interesting because of the way we kind of give so much space to the scroll. We don't give ourselves a lot of space to contemplate.

11:41And to me, to contemplate is to like really like infuse wonder around everything, you know, to kind of to sit and contemplate your existence, the world, relationships, love. Like your book is this very long contemplation on boundaries and with the tools and all of the ideas, but it's someone you can tell sat and really contemplates and thinks and challenges all of the ideas around how we can exist within community. And Bell Hooks obviously did that with love. She asked us to sit and wonder about love and have these definitions so that we can know when it's present, know when it's not. And I think I felt that so much in reading your books.

12:27It's really hard to, I think, put soul around things that, you know, are clinical in a lot of ways. It feels nurturing and useful, which is not always the case. Clinically, I think it's very easy for me to sit with someone and say, yep, sounds like you have anxiety. Oh, yeah, that sounds very much like depression. Oh, they have psychosis. I hear it. what is a little more complicated is helping people to deal with these things in livable ways. Because I don't want, as you show up in the world, yes, there is some anxiety with these things, but how do we work ourselves through these moments despite whatever we're feeling?

13:10So anxiety and depression, having those labels is really important, but how do you show up as a living being, no matter what is going on with you. And so my work is to help you show up. Sometimes we talk about your, you know, oh, okay. You know, someone may say, oh, my anxiety is getting worse. And we talk about the life circumstances and what's going on. And really, you know, it's, it's situations where it's like, yeah, I could see why that would, would increase it. Or I could see why that would be really scary. And we talk through these things. I don't want you to think that, you know, the end of the road is the diagnosis.

13:47That is just information for us. It's information to help us think about, you know, in light of you having anxiety around your mother-in-law visiting, how do we create some healthy? Wait, did you read my journal? How do we create some healthy boundaries during her visit? So you're not in the car, you know, having a panic attack. So you're not spending all of your time in the bedroom away from her. How do we help you feel better about these things? Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they start.

14:30It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It prevents on average eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache.

14:58Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Do you think that every relationship is possible with the right boundaries or for some relationship? The only boundary is no relationship.

15:29I think what's possible is what you want to be possible. There are some people who can tolerate things that Nedra Glover Tawwab cannot tolerate. I can't tolerate it, but if you don't have an issue with it, I'll just watch it from afar and it's not my business. I think there are certain things that are workable, right? Like there can be really difficult people and maybe we don't speak to those people on a consistent basis, right? Like that is, you know, maybe a healthy way of existing in that relationship. You know, maybe I can't talk to this person every week, but once a month, not too bad. What typically happens where I'm kind of like, I don't know, is where your life starts to get worse.

16:15I do see people severely depressed or anxious or even having psychotic episodes when they have certain relational interactions. I'm thinking of a person who had a very triggering mother, very demeaning childhood to adulthood. And every single time they had an episode where they led themselves in the hospital, it was because they were having contact with their mother. So there are situations where certain relationships can be dangerous for us because it can trigger a lot of stuff, especially if the relationship is abusive, especially if the relationship isn't improving there are some people who want a relationship with you and they don't want to change anything and what they're doing is very unhealthy now I am seeing a lot of people canceling relationships that in the past we would have tried to work through things we would have tried to implement some boundaries and maybe there are other ways of doing it, but I also think there's personal choice.

17:20So I don't think I should say, well, that's not that bad. I mean, all you've had to do was this. It's like, that's where you are. Yeah. And so if you want to end a relationship for that reason, again, you go ahead. That may not be the choice that I make in that situation, but I understand your desire to have some level of peace. But here's the tricky part. Even when we leave relationships with people, we may still not be at peace. Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, even that disconnection can cause a lot of problems for us. When you stop talking to, you know, the problematic father or whoever, you know, people are going to say, hey, you talk to your dad, where's your dad?

18:04So stuff can still You're still talking to them. It's just not to their face. You're talking to them everywhere. You're just turning everyone else into them. Yeah, yeah. So there are ways that those things still come up. So it's not a complete freeing, right? There is still some attachment to people, even when we've detached from them, maybe physically, there is still some emotional something there sometimes. Yeah, I often wonder that if there was kind of more of a conversation around making freedom the goal, this idea that we feel free and good, how we would then interact with people. And that's psychological freedom, emotional, mental, physical, all of these.

18:47It's not just avoiding people because in avoidance, you have this cord between you. You're very attached to controlling the situation. So therefore the situation's ever present. There are times when we need to run towards the chaos of having an uncomfortable conversation as a path to freedom. Yeah. The avoidance sometimes is how we may choose to manage it, but even, you know, clearing the air and just getting all of that out of us can be the freedom that we need. Not that anyone can, can do anything about it, but just that the space is less cluttered. Yeah. I was wondering the other day, like, what is the point of confrontation?

19:33I can't remember what speech it was in, but Dr. King, he said that the point of confrontation has to be reconciliation. That's the reason why. And my brother said something interesting to me because he was like, you know, if someone doesn't come correct, it's hard to have a confrontation because they're also not willing to see or have context and how to have this conversation with you that you do have to also consider like, do we even have enough of a relationship for a confrontation? And so I do wonder, I'm like, but what is the fine line of that and avoidance if you're like, well, we're not even good friends or we're not good friends anymore and you don't see me or you take no accountability.

20:16So this would literally just be me talking to the wall. At what point is that avoidance and what part of that is kind of a protection of your peace. Has it been said before? Like sometimes in relationships when we're like, this person won't hear me. Have you ever tried to speak this before, before saying that they won't hear you or they're incapable? I think if there has been some sort of this is what I need, this is what I want, here's my issue, and the person has ignored it, then it's safe to say that you haven't avoided anything. You've tried and you know that this person is not sort of receptive to that information or they want to argue with you or they want to push back in some way that can be even more damaging.

21:07So being clear that some effort was made on your part and you have some proof of how this person has responded. it. I do think sometimes that when people want to be the victim, they will try to convince themselves that nothing has ever been said to them. Like, I don't know why this person isn't talking to me. And they have some history of what has happened in the relationship, what has been said, and they're completely ignoring it because it's not to their benefit to really address or deal with the things that have been said. So like your brother said, at some point it becomes re-injury and it does matter if you even care about the relationship.

21:55There are times where we want to leave a relationship and we don't want the other person to do anything but let us go. It's like, I don't want to have another conversation with you because I'm actually done. There is no air to be clear. There is no reconciliation to happen or a next thing. So having the conversation is now pointless because I'm no longer interested in this connection. Right. Or like the conflict is affirmation that the relationship doesn't work. Someone said to me recently that in thinking about friendship breakups, because I feel like that's kind of the thing that people are really talking about the most lately.

22:33I don't know. Do you feel like people are writing you a lot about that? Yeah. She said that her advice was that if you're in the space where you're calling the person toxic and not the dynamic toxic, then like you need to pause. And she said that if something feels toxic, all parties have contributed to it, you know, in often, which I mean, I know talking to a therapist or I don't want to speak in a, you know, but she was like, if we're in a friendship dynamic often, she said. Well, toxic is often used to describe a person. And I would agree that the dynamic can be toxic without the person being toxic.

23:15Very rarely is there a toxic person, because that means that they are disturbing many, many people in their lives in the same way. And that's not always the case when we're describing someone as toxic. We're describing a situation that doesn't work for us. So that may not mean that this person is toxic. It just means that I choose not to have a relationship with them because of several things that, you know, maybe happen in our relationship. I think with friendships, we're constantly learning how to be friends. You know, we've been learning for many years, you know, from elementary school until, you know, throughout adulthood.

23:56And it's a process. Some of us haven't nailed it. Some of us are still figuring out what to say, what not to say, how to show up for people, when not to, you know, get in someone's business, like all of these things, there's really no handbook that helps us with this. Like there are friends who love to hear your advice. And then there's others that are like, please don't say anything to me about my life. And so it's, it's a really interesting thing to be in these relationships that we choose, but also how do we show up in them honestly and sort of as ourselves? If you could have a friendship where there is a freedom to talk through things, then that could be a really healthy, long-term friendship, you know, where you can say like, you know, that thing you did that hurt me and having someone who's emotionally mature enough to process that with you.

24:55Oh, wow. It's really important to not see friendship as a disposable experience. I don't think any of my friends at this point are people that I will want to let go of easily. I want to work on it just as I would a marriage, just as I would, you know, a relationship with my children that I love them enough to have hard conversations with them and not avoid difficult topics. That is what, you know, being in a relationship is. But that's growth. Right. Because maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I would have been like, oh, well, forget her. She didn't want to call me back. That's it. I'm not that tough anymore.

25:34Now I'm like, girl, why you ain't call me back? I'm just putting it out there now. I no longer have that ego standing in the way. Like they can't know how I feel about this. I'm like, no, I want you to know how I feel about this. And I want to hear your response to it because I really care about you and I care about this relationship. There's a conversation I hear generationally about like, how young is too young for children to go to therapy? Should everyone be in therapy if they could be in therapy? Do we think it benefits everyone at every age? Or when do we think is the right time? I would say when we see an issue or when someone expresses a desire.

26:15Also, if you see someone having a major life challenge, it might be helpful to get them into therapy before there are any issues. We know that some things have an impact on people. And those are times like if you move to a new state and your kid is no longer around family and they're, you know, in this space and they're isolated, that might be a good time to take them to a therapist. You know, these are wonderful times where they just have this person to open up to because kids don't always open up to their parents because they're trying to be gentle and caring and they don't want to be offensive, but they have thoughts and opinions about stuff.

26:51But I think therapy works best when you have people who want to be there. The worst thing is when we try to force people to go to therapy. I see this sometimes with couples where it's like, I'm going to make this person come and change. And it's like, this is the worst use of your hour because they don't want to be here as evidenced by their back being turned, them not contributing, them not having, you know, like, so that's not very useful. But what can be useful is this seeing therapy as a place to have a person who sees you from a different perspective, who you're able to talk to in a different way.

27:32It's not always about crisis and mental health and problems as much as it is about learning how to talk about yourself and be with someone else in your discoveries of self. And maybe it's about also how you frame it. I have friends who have a lot of resentment for their parents because I think they framed sending them to therapy as young children as there being something wrong with them rather than a self-care practice or something everyone in the family did or something that is just like going to the dentist. And so I think that would you agree that it's maybe how you approach it too in inviting children into the space?