Introducing me! My name is Helena and I am your typical type nine enneagram: the peacemaker and people pleaser. For the majority of my life, I have been saying yes to things I either didn’t want to do or things I didn’t have time for, just to spare peoples’ feelings. I even hung out with people that I didn’t really love because I couldn’t tell them that I didn’t want to hang out. I did this for far too long, and it finally took a mix of pushing myself to say no and therapy to release that pressure of always having to be the yes woman.
My therapist taught me many wonderful tips and tricks, but one specific tip stuck out to me. She taught me how to wait when responding to texts. This may sound so silly that I had to learn how to wait to respond to a text but, in order to people please, I always felt the need to immediately respond to texts. I didn’t want people to think I hated them if I didn’t immediately text back. Yes, that was my actual thought… We are learning! We talked through examples of how my friends didn’t normally text back within minutes, so why was I setting that standard for myself? It was hard, really hard, to break that habit. For those first couple of days after discussing this, I had to force myself to wait to text people back, and truthfully, it was eye-opening! I would forget about the text (and the stress that came with it) for a long time. It gave me time to clear my head and respond in a less manic manner to that text.
My personal number one tip for learning how to say “no” is slowly push yourself. This process will take time, so don’t stress if you still find yourself saying “yes” when you don’t have time or don’t want to do something. For example, if someone asks you to do something, and you have free time that was supposed to be a break time for you, tell. them. no. Downtime for yourself is a real thing, and should definitely be scheduled into your personal calendar more often. Once you’ve scheduled that free time, stick to it! That is your time! Your friend will not hate you for saying no to them. The more you do push yourself to set those personal boundaries or learn how to say “no” when you need to, the easier the process will get.
Setting boundaries for yourself is really hard. I won’t lie to you, but it will be the best thing that you can do for yourself. I still constantly struggle with saying no and setting boundaries for myself, but I am pushing myself every day. I realized that people will not unfriend you if you don’t say yes to always hanging out or helping them all the time. I had to learn how to schedule my days for me, not for everyone else. Tip of the week: practice saying “no” more often… you’ll feel better, I promise.