How to Handle Family Drama | Nedra Glover Tawwab
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Navigating Family Dynamics and Communication Strategies
This chapter discusses strategies for managing family dynamics during difficult conversations and interactions. It emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, enhancing communication, and cultivating self-awareness to improve relationships amidst family drama.
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Speaker 4
That one French journalist who was being kind of a hard O, who was like, there's no way they got back together. He's just like, I will write the pop song novel while this lazy American.
Speaker 1
He was kind of the woe John LeBron circa 2012. Before anyone could
Speaker 2
just tweet about it. So that's helpful.
Speaker 1
Does anyone have a CR that thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford had a stake award? I do. I have a stake. Okay, let's hear it CR.
Speaker 4
Jesse kind of fucks over his wife and and Selene fucks over her war photojournalist boyfriend, who's probably in a war zone when she decides to get back together with this guy. I
Speaker 2
don't know. Last night, I was rewatching this, and I asked Adam, what do you think the lesson of the movie is? And my husband said to me, we had a very sensible measure of conversation. He's like, it's probably like try to find your first love again. And I was like, yeah, is it like, it's like okay to cheat on your spouse? I
Speaker 4
mean, I just to say, if you shot, if you could make, I'm married to my first love. Before sunset, from the perspective of Jesse's wife, who's home with a five-year boy, waiting for him to get back from this lark of a book tour for his like kind of bestseller novel. When she knows this second novel is not going to take off because it's a stupid idea and she's like okay when you get back you have to take the kid for like a week and then it's like yeah hey like when when does he make the phone call to be like crazy thing happened missed the flight but like
Speaker 1
I'll jump on one in a couple of days I think when your sex PER is under three all bets are off
Speaker 3
That should be part of the Prime Video's Amazon X-ray feature, is that you can see the sex PER for every character on screen at any time. That would give a lot of depth.
Speaker 4
I was also thinking, in Midnight, he wants to move to Chicago to be closer to the sun. So I don't know if they're living in Chicago at the time.
Speaker 2
She thinks he wants that. Okay.
Speaker 4
Let's talk about the third movie. I'm just saying, there is a possibility that while Jesse's on his European tour his wife's banging Kirk Heinrich yeah
Speaker 2
they're not in a good place they're not in a good place but they're in New York at that time they're not in Chicago yet
Speaker 1
is there a deleted scene where Jesse's wife is just angrily stalking around in the airport because he's not he has his plane he wasn't on the plane or hysterical like where
Speaker 2
is he yeah I mean I think this is a completely valid point. That is one of the things about the movie that, like, it makes you complicit and kind of rooting for them to commit adultery. But,
Speaker 3
like, you were very swept up in... I mean, yeah, both things are true, right? You want to see them together, and also he's clearly destroying Henry's life and his psyche for the This is why,
Speaker 2
like, all of that will be dealt with in the third film, right? In a way that is very difficult. What's your hottest take? All right, here's my hottest take. We haven't talked enough, obviously, about Che the cat, but it's time. And my take, I honestly don't know this is very hot. This is a tepid take. Selene, who I love and is a very important character to me, terrible cat mom. Terrible cat mom. is so boastful about the fact that she just deposits every morning this beautiful creature in the mean streets of paris just to fend for himself in the hundred degree weather no terrible no
Speaker 1
that's a hot take. But I mean, cats are animals. Yeah. Who would just kill rodents and different things. Bring a dead rat back into your living room and be like, look, mom.
Speaker 2
My cat sleeps
Speaker 1
in my arms in bed. Your cat's like 15. He's doing great. He's thriving.
Speaker 4
Watch it. Careful. That cat's going to live forever. Careful. There
Speaker 2
is a line you
Speaker 4
can
Speaker 3
make fun of Mark Andrews we've never hit it yet don't talk about my cat there is a line oh I don't know if I can follow that one up I texted this and I think I believe it I think the car ride scene is I don't know if it's the best scene of the 2000s, but it's the scene that makes me feel the most kind of electrified when I'm watching it. And it's on a list with two other scenes that I can think of right off the top of my head, which is one, the truck flipping over in the dark night, where I was like, oh my God, like this is so exciting and crazy when that happened for the first time. And then the other one is, yo homie, is that my briefcase from Collateral? When Tom Cruise shoots those two guys in the street and I was like, what the fuck? Like, holy cow. And I was so like, just pumped up and excited. And this movie is, that scene does the same thing in a different way, obviously, but where you just can feel everything inside your body when it's happening. You're thinking really hard and you're feeling really deeply at the same time. So you're saying that should get the,
Speaker 1
okay, motherfucker,
Speaker 3
the word for when the movie goes up. I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1
Casting with ifs, there are none. Best that guy word, there are none. Victor Dobchef, Dobchef, is that his name? The guy who's Jesse's, like,
Speaker 4
French handler.
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If you’re part of a family, you’ve probably experienced some level of drama. Maybe it’s minor annoyances, like an uncle who chews too loudly. Maybe it’s divorce, sibling rivalry, or abuse. There are lots of flavors in this noxious cornucopia.
Nedra Glover Tawwab is a licensed clinical social worker and the author of the new book Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships. She’s here to talk about how to handle family drama of all types.
This is episode two of a four part series in which we are doing some counter programming against the typical Valentine's Day fair.
Content Warning: There are some brief mentions of rape and incest in this conversation. We also talk about substance abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic abuse.
In this episode we talk about:
- Nedra’s own experiences with family dysfunction
- The terms boundary issues, enmeshment, and codependency
- The uncomfortable realization that you might be (at least part of) the problem
- The limits of compassion
- What to remember if you choose to spend time with a family member with whom you have a difficult relationship
- Why you should not “un-become” yourself just to fit in with your family
- Why shaming people doesn’t make them better–and what does
- The temptation of receding into a victim mentality, and how to avoid it
- When to end a relationship
- What the term “toxic forgiveness” means
- Some of the myths about forgiveness
- And her remedies for various family drama scenarios, including: How do you get your mom to see a therapist?
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/nedra-glover-tawwab-559
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