Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Tawwab explores workplace problems and how setting boundaries can help to alleviate them. One of her clients, Janine, was bothered by a colleague who often interrupted her work to gossip. After years of tolerating the behavior, Janine considered leaving her job to solve the problem.

However, Tawwab argues that Janine’s poor boundaries would have recreated the same problem at her next workplace. Tawwab identified Janine’s fear of being disliked by others as the root of her problem, and helped her set boundaries so she could say no to helping others, resist gossip, and politely decline after-work social functions. Other common workplace problems include feeling pressured to overwork or work with no pay, socially inappropriate behavior, intrusive questions, and not taking vacation days.

Tawwab argues that boundaries are a learned behavior, and that management, human resources, and the general “work culture” can establish poor or healthy boundaries (222). She warns against dismissing poor behavior in the workplace by tolerating boundary violations or labeling toxic people “old dinosaurs” (223). She points to serial sexual predator Harvey Weinstein as an example of violent workplace behavior which went unchallenged for decades. The author assures the reader that they should never “feel like your job will be in jeopardy if you don’t comply with toxic workplace behavior” (223).