Why You Can’t say no
It was a chilly late fall Sunday in Montana. There was snow in the mountains and a strong midday sun. I was out walking the dogs with a dear friend of mine on a gravel road just outside town. About 45 minutes into our walk we were met by some local dogs defending their territory and we decided to turn around to avoid any squirmishes with our pups. The late afternoon sun had dropped behind the mountains and the temperature was rapidly dropping by the time we reached our cars. I was getting excited to get home and start some soup for dinner. Just as we rounded up the dogs and were about to part my friend suggested we head up to the trailhead to keep hiking. My body had already been anticipating the cozy of home and I felt no need to continue on. In fact, I would say I actively did not want to.
I was just at the point in my healing journey where I could recognize this. I thought to my self, “not a single cell wants to keep going,”. And then to my surprise I muttered the words, “sounds great; I’ll follow you!” Fuuuuuuckkk. Really? No! No! No!
This had been my problem all along. I was living a life that looked good on paper but years of saying yes when I really meant no had crushed me inside. I was resentful, depleted and I felt like I had no real say over the course my life. For a long while I had no explanation of why I felt so lost, pissed and lonely. At the time I didn’t even know how to identify what I was feeling or needing. I now know I am not the only one here. I work with so many people who struggle with this very same thing. And surprisingly even those not struggling with full on codependency often have people pleasing tendencies that get in the way of them feeling seen, heard and fulfilled in life. In fact a study conducted in 1999 by Crester and Lombardo found that 90% of the US population fell on the codependency spectrum and close to 50% of college age students were moderate to high on that scale. That’s a lot of people!
What the heck is this about? I think this says a lot about our cultural conditioning. Perhaps it says something about how we define codependency and the fact that we are deeply relational beings, but I don’t want to digress too much here. Lets look at the internal mechanisms of not being able to say no and why its helpful to receive support in breaking this habit.
If you struggle on this kind of level with saying no (not just feeling a little bad or sheepish but seriously feeling like its rocket science) then you likely learned this pattern very very early on. I would venture to say that it became the foundation of how you learned to relate in the world. It is rooted in the belief that your feelings, needs, wants, desires come second, if at all, to those around you. Now you might not stuggle to say no in all areas of your life. Maybe you can confidently set boundaries at work but are a total noodle when it comes to your intimate partners. For some this pattern might be invasive in all parts of your life.
Either way, when it comes to saying no your whole entire nervous system is at play. At first the pattern of saying yes is so habitual and nervous-system-safe that it can be really hard to even distinguish that you in fact do want to say no. This is step one. Notice what it feels like in your body when you don’t like something, don’t want to do something, etc. What happens here?
Then there comes the phase where you might recognize you want to say no, but you can’t actually implement the learning because your nervous system enters into a survival state of fight, flight, freeze. So, just like with the walk with my friend, you begin to defer to yes even though you are conscious of your pattern because it brings you back into a state of security and safety. Dr. Gabor Mate shares a lot about this very mechanism. As he describes it, in early childhood we almost always learn to choose connection (i.e. attachment) over authenticity (our gut feelings) because as children our survival depend on attachment. Part of becoming an adult with a solid sense of self involves some element of learning to switch this conditioning.
This is why I believe we need help on this front! If you’re whole body is telling you that your life is in imminent danger if you say no or you numb out and enter into a state of I don’t really care (when in fact you do) it is very difficult to find center and orient in order to break this pattern by yourself. The good news is that it is possible.