Set Boundaries, Find Peace

Relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab had already established herself as a holistic counselor when, in 2017, she started posting on Instagram about mental health topics. Four years later, after a 2019 New York Times article on Instagram therapists featured her account, she broke a million followers. Today, 1.5 million people subscribe to Tawwab’s Insta feed for her quickly digestible, bullet-pointed posts offering direct, actionable advice for mental and emotional health.

Tawwab’s 2021 best-selling book on boundaries reflects much of the feel and format of her Instagram posts: staccato sentences and simplified content broken out into lists, paired with an empathic, practical tone. The book’s first part sets out the concepts of boundaries – a practical definition, explanations of the six types of boundaries, obstacles to enforcing them and what can happen when violations take place. The second part delves into the settings and relationships where boundaries count most. Tawwab offers helpful illustrative stories from her own practice and specific advice for putting boundaries into action, even down to phrases to use.