June 2025
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• Protecting Your Boundaries

• Book Review
  Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to
  Reclaiming Yourself

Protecting Your Boundaries

A full calendar can feel productive—but it’s often a sign that something’s out of balance.

Nine out of ten adults believe there is a mental health crisis in America, and workplace norms play a role in that. Learning to set healthy boundaries at work is one of the most effective ways to protect your mental well-being—and it doesn’t require being rigid or confrontational. Often, it’s about making simple, thoughtful adjustments that allow you to show up with more energy and clarity.

Why Saying No Is So Difficult

Most people want to be seen as helpful and reliable. It’s human nature to want to contribute. But when you say yes too often—especially without checking your capacity—you start pushing your priorities and mental bandwidth to the side. This can quickly spiral into chronic overwork and stress. It is common for adults to report work as a significant source of stress, and this type of pressure doesn’t usually go away on its own. It takes intention to change how you respond and reset the norms around your time.

Signs That Your Boundaries are Blurring

Stress doesn’t always show up loudly. It might look like reading the same email twice without absorbing it, saying yes before you’ve had a chance to evaluate your workload, or ending the day with no clear sense of what you accomplished. When work starts bleeding into every corner of your day, it’s time to take notice—and take back control of your time.

Practical Ways to Reset

You don’t need to overhaul your schedule overnight. Start with one or two small shifts that support your mental load.

Delay your yes.
Instead of answering right away, take a few minutes—or even a few hours—to check your schedule and assess your bandwidth.

Use straightforward language.
You can politely decline without overexplaining. A simple note like “I’m not available this week but happy to revisit later” is enough.

Rehearse common responses.
If you tend to feel pressured in the moment, practicing a few phrases ahead of time can help you stick to your boundaries.

Make technology work for you.
Try moving email off your phone’s home screen on weekends or using calendar blocks to protect focus time.

Change the rhythm, not the relationship.
If late-night requests are common, propose a regular check-in earlier in the week to realign expectations.

Keep a "no list."
Create a mental or written list of tasks, times, or situations that tend to leave you drained—so you can pause before automatically agreeing.

What to Expect When You Start

At first, setting boundaries may feel uncomfortable. You might worry that you’ll disappoint someone or seem uncooperative. But usually the opposite happens: your communication becomes clearer, your workload becomes more manageable, and your sense of control starts to return.

Start Small, Stay Consistent

Pick one area where your limits feel stretched—maybe it’s meeting overload, late-night emails, or quick-turnaround requests. Choose one habit to shift this week and see how it feels. Boundaries aren’t about being unavailable. They’re about protecting your energy so you can be present and productive where it matters most.

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Wellness Works® Book Review ​

Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Nedra Glover Tawwab's Set Boundaries, Find Peace offers a compassionate roadmap to one of the most crucial yet often overlooked skills in personal well-being: setting boundaries. With a clear voice and zero judgment, Tawwab makes the case that boundaries aren't just helpful—they're essential. She blends practical strategies with real-world wisdom, offering relief for anyone feeling stretched too thin or stuck in cycles of resentment.

Highlights

Key Concepts
The core message is both liberating and straightforward—your needs matter. Tawwab unpacks the types of boundaries (physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual, time, and material), explaining how unclear limits often fuel anxiety, burnout, and unhealthy dynamics. Drawing on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and her experience as a licensed therapist, she gives readers a new vocabulary for expressing limits confidently and without guilt.

Practical Applications
This is not just a book about saying “no"—it's about saying "yes" to balance and self-respect. Tawwab provides step-by-step guidance for initiating boundary-setting conversations with coworkers, partners, family members, and friends. Her examples are relatable and realistic, making it easier to practice assertiveness in daily life. Whether you're navigating a demanding job, complex relationships, or chronic people-pleasing, the guidance here feels doable.

Impact
Set Boundaries, Find Peace helps readers shift their perspective on self-care rom optional to foundational. It invites you to break long-held patterns, speak honestly, and choose peace over people-pleasing. Readers walk away not just with tools but with permission: to take up space, to ask for what they need, and to stop apologizing for doing so.

The Final Word
Set Boundaries, Find Peace is the gentle push so many of us need. If you've been avoiding conflict, overcommitting, or feeling emotionally drained, this book offers a path back to yourself. With empathy and expertise, Tawwab reminds us that boundaries aren't walls—they're bridges to healthier, more authentic relationships.

About UBA
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