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51 pages 1 hour read

Nedra Glover Tawwab

Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021

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Background

Literary Context: Boundaries and the Self-Help Genre

Tawwab’s work is an addition to the ongoing discourse about mental health and changing attitudes towards therapy. Set Boundaries, Find Peace is a pragmatic guide for boundary setting in a variety of relationships and life situations. As a therapist, Tawwab’s insight and real-life examples about the value of boundaries lend her work authority and model for the reader how to face the discomfort of setting their own boundaries.

Similar works by other psychologists or therapists have helped to set a precedent and develop a language for the topic. Tawwab credits Anne Katherine’s 1991 book Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin with helping her to understand what boundaries are and how to create them. Katherine, a psychologist, later wrote several other books on the topic including Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Boundaries Every Day and Boundaries in an Overconnected World. Her work Boundaries is structured similarly to Tawwab’s work, as it includes anecdotes and real-life examples, instructions directly addressed to the reader, and end-of-chapter reflection exercises and quizzes. Katherine also examines several types of boundaries, which she labels physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual, which she argues are based in self-awareness and are essential in healthy relationships. In her work, Tawwab expands on this idea with her concept of physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual, material, and time boundaries, and makes the same argument for their benefits.

Later in the 1990s, Mike O’Neil and Charles E. Newbold authored the book Boundary Power, promising that by setting boundaries, readers could empower themselves and have more fulfilling lives. In 2002, Henry Cloud and John Townsend wrote their book Boundaries, which became a New York Times bestseller. Their work offers a “biblically-based” Christian perspective on the issue of creating boundaries. In addition to emotional, mental, and physical boundaries, they discuss spiritual boundaries, which they believe differentiate between God’s will and people’s own plans. Like Tawwab’s work, Cloud and Townsend also argue that everyone is responsible for understanding and communicating their own feelings.

Brené Brown, a researcher, author and motivational speaker, has also discussed the importance of boundaries in her best-selling work, Atlas of the Heart. She argues that boundaries are foundational for forging strong and genuine connections. Brown is a prolific author whose books explore how to build healthy relationships, create positive work environments, and develop personal resilience and self-esteem. Tawwab shares the same message in her work about self-esteem and self-care, claiming, “The root of self-care is setting boundaries” (6).

Tawwab’s Set Boundaries, Find Peace adopts a similar language to many of the previous books about boundaries, but offers a more detailed understanding of the many types of boundaries that people may choose to make. Writing from a secular perspective and embracing accessible language makes her interpretation on boundaries applicable to many different types of readers.

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