The annual dread of family holiday obligations has arrived early in the podcast cycle. On the latest episode of We Can Do Hard Things, therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab tackled the specific, paralyzing anxiety of telling family members you are skipping Thanksgiving.
According to Nedra Glover Tawwab, the real exhaustion of boundary-setting doesn't come from knowing what we want, but from the impossible task of managing how other people react to it. We spend hours trying to figure out "the nicest way to say, 'I actually don't wanna come home for Thanksgiving'" because we are terrified of the fallout.
Ultimately, the advice is to drop the emotional labor of coddling your relatives. "I don't think it's our job to manage how people feel about our boundaries," Nedra Glover Tawwab insisted on We Can Do Hard Things. As the holiday season approaches, the message to listeners is clear: state your boundary, stop managing the feelings of others, and accept that a little discomfort is better than burnout.