I grew up in a home where saying no to people, especially elders, was not done. You adapted, you accommodated, you made do. By the time I was an adult those patterns had calcified into an automatic yes to almost everything — favours, plans, commitments, emotional labour, time I didn\'t have — regardless of whether I actually had the capacity.
The turning point was a conversation with my therapist who asked me: when you say yes to something you can\'t do, who are you actually protecting? The answer, when I sat with it, was: not the person I was saying yes to. I was protecting myself from their disappointment, their judgment, their withdrawal of affection. The yes was never about them — it was about managing my own fear.
That reframe was significant. It didn\'t immediately change my behaviour (nothing ever does), but it gave me a new way to see what was actually happening. I started practising small nos — to things that were low-stakes. I noticed the world didn\'t end. I noticed people rarely reacted as badly as I\'d anticipated. I noticed that the ones who did react badly were often the people I had the least healthy relationships with.
I still struggle with this. Three years in, I still feel the pull to say yes automatically. But now I have a pause between the ask and my answer, and that pause is everything. What has helped others here navigate people-pleasing?