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9 Healthy Ways to Say “No”

Cooks Hill Counselling • Sep 10, 2018

Helpful Ways you Can say “No” Without Sounding Negative

The art of saying no - Cooks Hill Counselling

It’s human nature that most of us genuinely want to please others and be liked. But these fundamental underlying motivations can interfere with our ability to set boundaries with other people, often leading us say “yes” when we really should be saying “no”.

For most of us, saying “no” isn’t easy and can cause some anxiety. We don’t want to let people down or feel uncomfortable in a social interaction. It’s hard to get out of the mindset that saying “no” means you are invariably letting someone down or not meeting their expectations of you.

It’s true that sometimes it will cause someone pain or disappointment if you have to tell them “no”. But there’s also a personal cost to saying “yes” when you really don’t mean it. Committing to something you really would rather not do can lead to feelings of regret, resentment and exhaustion. It can cause you to engage in damaging negative self-talk and self-criticism, and even lead to you experiencing anxiety and depression.

Saying “no” isn’t about getting out of doing something we don’t want to do. Inevitably in life, there will be things we have to do whether we like it or not, and we can’t always say “no” to everything we don’t like. But many of us find ourselves saying “yes” to things we really have completely no obligation to do.


9 healthy Ways to say No - Helpful Ways to say No

The art of saying “no” revolves around the issues of boundariesand how we set them. Without setting healthy boundaries we can easily become stressed and overwhelmed, and yet, it can be very challenging to set limits.

Often, setting boundaries will result in an emotional response from the other person, which may not always be positive. It takes practice to remain firm with your personal boundaries even when others are reacting angrily or with disappointment.

But in the long term, learning effective boundary setting will help your relationships, because it leads to increased self-respect and helps avoids the resentment and bitterness that can come with saying “yes” when you really want to say “no”.

Motivational speaker and burns survivor Turia Pitt tackles the question of how to say no without being negative in her latest newsletter. As she points out, saying “no” can be a positive, because it frees up your time and energy to focus on the things you need to do for yourself. By contrast, saying “yes” to things that are going to over commit you will clearly limit the time you have to spend on your own goals.

Turia provides her tips for saying no without sounding negative. These include:

  • Be aware of timing – don’t put the decision off, especially if you already know that you won’t be able to commit. Sometimes we try to buy time in the hope that it will somehow become easier to say “no” at some later stage, but this is rarely the case, and usually just makes the situation harder for everyone.

  • Be honest - we’re all guilty of using white lies to get out of a tricky situation. But it’s better to give no reason at all than make something fanciful up and risk getting caught up in that tangled web.

  • Own it – never apologise. It isn’t necessary.

  • Be constructive - if it’s at all possible, offer an alternative, whether that’s a different timeframe, or suggesting a different person, and so on.

When working with our clients to help them achieve their goals in setting healthy boundaries, we help them learn to become attuned to their own personal limits and listen to their inner “yes” or “no” voice, in order to be able to align their behaviours with this internal guiding compass.

We help people learn how they can become skilled at tolerating other people’s reactions to hearing the word “no” and we work on techniques for delivering the word “no” without sounding negative.

Cultivating the habit of authentically saying “no”, rather than participating in arrangements that make you feel down about yourself, is one key to achieving good overall emotional and psychological health. If you would like to speak with a qualified counsellor and learn strategies for setting boundaries along with other vital life skills, please contact usor give us a call here at Cooks Hill Counselling on 0421 598 486.

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