 Why do so many people have difficulty saying no? Sometimes it goes back to our original programming from early development. Where did you learn that saying no would cause someone to feel bad and react negatively? So many people are programmed to associate setting boundaries with negative consequences. Do you ever get that sinking feeling when you have to tell someone the word ‘no’ that you’re going to end up feeling worse? Maybe you try to candy coat it ahead of time, or come up with excuses rather than just saying, ‘No thank you’, or ‘I’m not interested’. Saying the word ‘No’ often involves letting others down, causing disappointment and ultimately feeling bad about yourself for having ‘caused their negative reaction’. This is in quotes because that is the fallacy of it. You having boundaries is not the cause of their negative reaction. Their negative reaction is because they don’t like boundaries.
Saying no can be difficult and uncomfortable. We often feel guilty or obligated to say yes, even when we don’t want to. This is due to years of conditioning and brainwashing that have been ingrained in the neuro pathways and nervous system. We've been taught that saying no is wrong or selfish, so we feel bad when we do it. However, it's important to learn how to say no without feeling bad. Learning how to set boundaries and stand up for ourselves can help us avoid manipulation and guilt-tripping from others. Let’s look at the importance of saying no without feeling bad and explore ways to do it effectively. Our brains map out the world around us at warp speed in the developmental years. It identifies pros and cons of each action, and each sensory input. It lets us know which way to go, move toward something or away from something. This training is what our brains automatically do so that we don’t have to relearn everything every day. Humans are prewired to attach to their parents. The attachment helps with survival. Parents are tasked with the responsibility of providing a safe environment for their children, guiding them to safety, keeping them healthy and helping them develop into independently functioning human beings. But along with the responsibility of raising kids there needs to be a certain amount of trust, training and attachment in order for the child to be guided. Parents need to have influence over their children because without it children would do whatever they wanted to. Parents’ reactions to childrens’ behavior play a massive role in the mapping of the brain’s understanding of the world. For example, when a parent shows disappointment to a child, or when the child perceives the parent as being disappointed in them, the child’s brain maps this as devastational because it feels like rejection. Rejection could mean life or death to a young mammal of any species. This is why our brains are wired for attachment. It is fundamental survival. The protective brain then associates all sensory inputs at that moment with something powerfully negative and marks them with alarms to indicate danger in future similar situations. If the event involves the child saying ‘no’ or resisting, then that action is marked with emotional coding to alarm the nervous system and map out directions to avoid that in the future. This is just one example. There are many ways that positive and negative consequences can influence the notion that saying ‘no’ causes discomfort. That mapping or ‘programming’ served a purpose, especially in childhood, to help keep children from hurting themselves or others. But as children grow into adults, the programming might become outdated. These adults might find themselves agreeing to things that they later feel resentful about. Our needs shift and change throughout our lives. As this happens, the programming needs to be updated. When the programming is at an unconscious level, how can we consciously update it? We must bring it into the consciousness to make this happen. Understanding that the uncomfortable feeling you have when saying no is possibly just old programming trying to protect you can help. Except that the feelings are so negative and it is difficult to work through them. This is where retraining comes in. Think of some types of therapy as retraining those old, outdated neural networks that are contained not only in the brain, but throughout the nervous system. Like any other training, it doesn’t happen overnight and it takes practice. The program needs to be updated. You will feel discomfort in the process because anything that goes against the programming will cause discomfort. It was designed to cause discomfort to keep you operating in a way that returned the least amount of negativity. Things like EMDR or other trauma-focused modalities can facilitate this process by conditioning the protective part of the brain to relax while accessing the and processing the old programming or underlying negative messages. There are ways to begin doing this on your own, too. You can practice saying no in less threatening situations and sit with that discomfort. Go into the discomfort, locate it in your nervous system and observe the cognition that is associated with it. Recognize that it may be relaying outdated and false information. Give consideration to your heart and why you wanted to say no in the first place. Ask yourself if you were trying to cause harm or if you were simply protecting yourself in some way such as your time, or your energy. Over time, that part of you realizes that there is no longer such a strong need to protect the feelings of others. That part of you begins to learn the essential need to protect yourself instead and allow others to do the same. Essentially you are managing your health. By Deborah Ashway, LCMHC, LCAS #guilt #sayingno #Boundaries #SettingBoundaries #SelfAssertion #HealthyBoundaries #SelfCare #SelfEmpowerment #SayingNoWithConfidence #LearningToSayNo #RespectingYourself #SelfEsteem #SelfWorth #PersonalGrowth #SelfDevelopment #Empowerment #EmotionalHealth #MentalWellness #BreakingConditioning #OvercomingGuilt #EmotionalResilience #RetrainingTheBrain #TherapyJourney #PersonalGrowth #PositiveChange #EMDRTherapy #TraumaHealing
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 Emotions are energy. In fact, everything is energy. Energy can be measured in frequency and amplitude, meaning waves. The higher the frequency, the more energy, the higher the amplitude the more energy. One easy way to understand this at an intuitive level is through sound. Think of the harmony or discord of sound. When we hear music, the frequency and wavelengths are in harmony. When we hear noise, especially irritating noise, we are detecting chaos in the sound waves, discord, which is the opposite of harmony. This translates to any form of energy including emotional energy. When you feel sad you likely feel a sense of heaviness. When you feel joy your body feels lighter. If you want to increase your emotional IQ, you need to tune more into your body, and less into your thoughts. Paying attention to the emotional energy in your body and becoming familiar with what it is telling you can change your life. This is the key to healing and connecting with your truest self. Living life at its fullest requires authenticity. When you are connected with your truest self, who you were meant to be, you find resonance with the world around you. People will begin showing up who enhance your energy, support you and coincide with your values. You will find interest and a sense of awe in the things that are meant for you, which will in turn bring you joy. This is the very foundation of harmony. Tuning into your body’s emotional energy is similar to listening to music. We all can understand the difference between a sad melody and an upbeat melody. There are differences in the key, the rhythm, the tempo and timing to name a few. Our bodies have rhythms as well. For example, think of your breathing. When you are filled with fear your breathing may become short staccato breaths, whereas when you are relaxed your breaths will be longer, slower and deeper. Your heart has a rhythm. Your heart beat will increase with certain emotions, or decrease with others. Your sleeping and eating patterns also have a rhythm. The goal is to become finely tuned with your rhythms and acutely aware of what your emotional energy is telling you. When you are in sync with your natural body’s emotional energy, in other words, when there are no blocks to keep you from tuning in, you will be in the optimal state of harmony, which is the optimal state of healing and growth. Our human challenge is to remain in tune with our emotional energy, or our highest self. Our bodies hold great wisdom and we know at a deep level that emotions are our highest guidance system. The blocks to tuning into our emotional energy are the rules of the protective brain that we learn through life experiences. We need to know the difference between emotional energy and ego energy, which is written by the protective brain. One is natural and the other is learned. Throughout our life, since birth, our brain maps out our world. It tells us what is safe and what is dangerous. Sometimes the rules it stores for us become outdated, but still contain false cognitions. The false cognitions say things like, ‘I’m in the way’, or ‘I’m a burden’, or ‘My needs don’t matter’. These were set up to protect us from perceived worse experiences. They are stored in the body as discomfort. We need to pay attention to these discomforts as well if we are to increase our emotional awareness. These are the blocks that keep us from feeling our truest emotions because they also contain the ‘shoulds and shouldn’ts’, which get in the way. Identifying these blocks and breaking them down is the key to healing because once they are gone, we can truly connect with our highest guidance system, our emotional energy. by Deborah Ashway, LCMHC, LCAS |