While just like olden times, modern parents and caregivers can be involved, distant, neglectful, or abusive, a stark difference with recent parenting is that there’s two-way, instead of one-way, dialogue and respect. Awareness of children’s rights, respect of their boundaries, and nurturance of their emotional, mental, and physical well-being are no longer anomalies ascribed to “hippie” or “lax” parenting. It’s also more widely understood that children are their own people, not the property of adults, so children have more autonomy. Your boundaries communicate what you know about who you are and want to be, your responsibilities, and your awareness of who others are and their responsibilities. The Joy of Saying No will help you identify your people-pleasing style and habits. A six-step framework then teaches you how to discover the healing and transformative power of no to:

The Joy of Saying No - HarperCollins Focus

And even though we’re now grown-up and might be in and around entirely different people and circumstances, in any situation that activates our people pleasing, we still play the role as if nothing’s changed in an attempt to meet old unmet needs and right the wrongs of the past. Each one of the statements I listed at the beginning of the chapter reflects incidences where you don’t say yes consciously or because you truly want or need to but because, on some level, you are afraid or experiencing misplaced and disproportionate guilt, trying to control something, or hoping that you will be rewarded in some way for going along with things. You also do things not because you want to but because it’s what you think is expected of you. If this weren’t the case, you’d say no when you need, want to, or should, or you’d certainly say it a helluva lot more than you have now and in the past. I don’t say this to you as if you and I are different and I’m some enlightened human being beyond emotional baggage. I still people-please sometimes because I spent most of my life doing it without even realizing that it was people pleasing. I just thought it was How Life Works and What Natalie Should Do. Something we have to understand about ourselves is that regardless of having grown up during the Age of Obedience, thanks to how the body works, we were always going to be socialized and conditioned into patterns that we would later on in adulthood have to work to break. Let me explain.Taking the drama out of your relationships means no longer depending on someone for your needs and self-worth. It means no longer accepting less than love, care, trust and respect from anyone, including yourself.

The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing

We learn early on that it’s critical to please your parents and caregivers in whatever form that takes because, well, they “know best” and we depend on them for survival and love. Work hard at school. Be the best. If you’re not the best, be good. Live our dreams, make us proud, don’t embarrass us with the neighbors. Be seen and not heard, keep your feelings to yourself. Stop being so sensitive. Work hard and you will get the grades. Be good and you’ll receive praise, peace, friendship, and relationships, and avoid undesirable outcomes. Do the things we expect of you. Let that relative hug you even though you’re clearly uncomfortable because you will offend them if you don’t. Be “nice” so you’re not seen as aggressive. Be “good” so people don’t think you’re slutty and ruin our reputation. Do you see those things we don’t like about those other people? Don’t do that. When you get the grades, you’ll get into university or get a job. From there, you’ll get the money, the home, the relationship, and the kids. Basically, be good and you will be a success. Understanding that not all the information you hold on file is “correct” is crucial to knowing when and how to respond to the people pleaser feelings, but also reclaiming yourself so that you can trust in you. It’s too much to expect that a five-year-old, for example, feels and perceives everything “correctly.” If you asked a child to organize your home or do the filing for your business, you wouldn’t expect them to do it perfectly, so why continue relying on files that haven’t been updated for some time?The part of our brains that stores habits—the basal ganglia—doesn’t differentiate between harmful and helpful ones. It clings to all of them, like how my husband tries to hold on to every cable he’s ever had even when we no longer have the device to go with it.

Baggage Reclaim Home - Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue Baggage Reclaim Home - Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue

So many of us are triggered, and the unbearable toll of unconditional obedience on our nervous systems is why we self-medicate and anesthetize with overwork, over- or under-eating, substance abuse, shopping, sex, gambling, and other compulsive behaviors. When we do eventually reach our limits through eruptions and challenges, it can feel horrendous, but this collapse of our false self is necessary if we are to stop being in the pain we pretend we aren’t in. Unquestionably and unconditionally complying with so-called authorities and being expected to prioritize pleasing them might have worked if one thing were unquestionably true: that all authorities were loving, caring, trustworthy, and respectful, and that they didn’t abuse their power. Obviously, that’s not the case.Not feeling our feelings, aside from disrupting our emotional intelligence, also creates stress. We avoid our feelings to not deal with the stress of something, not realizing that this avoidance is a stressor. And the suppressing and repressing of ourselves to please others means we ignore and distrust our wonderful bodies instead of listening to them. We comply to “keep the peace,” not realizing that there’s no peace inside us. And because we’ve gotten so used to being this way, we think we’re “fine,” not realizing we lost our sense of “fine” and our limits a long time ago. I cut ties with exes and opted out of shady and unworkable dating situations at much earlier points without second-guessing myself, opening me up to meeting my now husband and being able to grow in the relationship because I endeavored to be myself. With her unrivalled insight into the ways of people pleasing, Natalie Lue nails the reasons why we continually say yes and gives us permission not to. Enjoy the joy of saying NO, relieved of guilt or obligation. Freedom awaits.' Product Details The aim of all this is to reduce the complexity of my life. Now, I try to work on no more than three projects in a day. Splitting attention between multiple tasks can leave you feeling out of control. YOU DIDN’T FALL out of the sky and just decide to become a people pleaser. Even if you’ve had an awareness of it only in adulthood, your people pleasing is something that’s been with you since childhood. A combination of socialization, conditioning, and self-taught responses and lessons have trained you to use putting others ahead of you as a strategy for meeting your needs and avoiding risk and hurt.