For The Lonely, Suffocated, or Overextended: How To Balance Your Relationships When Others Won't Change | Nedra Glover Tawwab

**Dan Harris** (0:03)
Hello, everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we're talking about something that I find inexhaustibly interesting and like perennially urgent. I sometimes call it the human curse. We need other people in order to be happy, and yet other people can sometimes be a gigantic pain in the ass. My guest calls this The Balancing Act, and that is in fact the name of her new book, The Balancing Act. Said guest is Nedra Glover Tawwab, who's coming back on the show for the third time, which I'm very proud of.
Nedra Glover Tawwab, welcome back to the show.

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (0:40)
Thank you for having me for the third time.

**Dan Harris** (0:42)
First of all, congratulations on your new book.

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (0:44)
Thank you.

**Dan Harris** (0:45)
Tell me what you mean by Balancing Act.

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (0:48)
Relationships are a bit of give and take. They are about us and other people. Our lives are full of things. Our lives are full of work and parenting. Parenting our parents and so many things. We have to figure out some sort of harmony to exist in this space of needing others and being there for them and what it looks like to have boundaries and also to honor other people's boundaries.

**Dan Harris** (1:16)
It's so tricky because the temptation is, given the messiness of human affairs, to withdraw.
And the culture makes it easier than ever. Our technology and our individualistic culture makes it easier than ever to withdraw into whatever our tech silos or our workaholism or whatever. And yet that is the shortcut to an unhappy life. At the same time, once you engage with other people, it's like it's just this delicate dance.

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (1:49)
Yeah, I think there are some relationships where disengaging could be healthy, but I don't think we need to disengage and not be engaged in other areas. So the problem with the disengagement is we're not reconnecting with other people. So there are some relationships where, you know, I don't know, maybe there is some toxicity or there is some abuse or those sorts of things where it may be healthier for you to not be in them, but what are your other relationships in your life? We have to have other people. We need lots of people. We can't depend on one person for everything. And I think right now what we're seeing is instead of working through our conflict and situations that can be salvaged, some of us are choosing to leave those situations, but we have to determine what is fixable and what is not.

**Dan Harris** (2:44)
It's interesting you brought up this idea of like sometimes you may need to cut somebody off. I had one of your colleagues, one of your fellow therapists, Esther Perel on the show not long ago, and she was saying, yeah, I get it, sometimes you do need to cut people off, but it can backfire in that when you cut somebody off, they can subsequently occupy much more brain space for you, live rent-free in your head in ways that they wouldn't if you had found some sort of accommodation with them.

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (3:17)
Yeah, yeah, it really depends on what the scenario is. And I think that's the real complicated piece that we are now looking to, you know, maybe listening to a podcast or looking at something online to determine what the solution for our very unique situation can be. And we have to figure out what can we live with? What can we live with without overthinking about the situation? So, you know, it's really about what is the damage that could come from this and what is the piece that could come from this. And in some situations, you know, it's a delicate line of this will actually cause more chaos and confusion. And maybe it's something that I do need to work through. Or, you know, there's also this local distancing that we can do, right, where we maybe don't cut a person off, but we decide to speak to them a little less or allow them to have more space or time away from us. So, you know, every situation is so different. But I agree with this there, that there are some times where ending the relationship, but the mental load of that relationship is still taking a lot of time away from us.

**Dan Harris** (4:32)
I want to hear more about a term you just used, local distancing. That means that, is that your coinage?

**Nedra Glover Tawwab** (4:40)
Yeah, I just coined it right now. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, it reminds me of this concept of like decentering. You know, some people have this space in our lives where we allow them to be the main thing, or we spend a significant portion of time with them.