Why Saying No Feels So Bad

If someone asks you to do something and you feel guilty saying no, the standard advice is, well, you need to work on your boundaries. You need better boundaries. And that standard advice is wrong. Not because boundaries aren't a real thing in relationships, but because it's not addressing the underlying pattern and question, which is why does saying no feel so bad? Why do you feel so guilty saying no? Why is there so much fear about it? Because that is what prevents us from doing it. You might intellectually know like, yeah, it's a good idea. I should probably say no more. But then you get in the moment and something else overrides. That's what this is all about. And you're going to discover why that pattern is operating and how to shift, how to be free from that, so you can say no with more freedom and have all kinds of boundaries with more freedom and more taking care of yourself in the world. So let me ask you this: you don't have a problem with saying no everywhere, right? I mean, if someone's like, hey, you want a pretzel? You're like, ah, no, no thanks, I'm good. But there's certain situations where the saying of no feels way worse. You feel way more guilty. It feels way more dangerous to do it, right? What are those situations? Well, maybe if that person that asks you to do something and you say no, they're gonna have some feelings about it. Maybe they're gonna be upset with you, they're gonna be disappointed with you, they're gonna be angry with you. What are you— how could you say no to me? You owe this to me. You're supposed to do that. Or they'll be sad, they'll be disappointed, like, oh, you don't want to go to the movie with me? Okay. And man, isn't that like a knife in the heart? Like, oh, oh. And if you're anything like me who ran this pattern for many years— I'll describe the pattern in just a second— then you just flip into like, okay, yeah, yeah, I'll go to the movie. I cannot handle this feeling inside. In In fact, if you're like me, you don't even say no the first time. Like, you want to go to the movie? Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, right? Why? Is that true? No, I don't want to go, or I don't want to take on this thing, or I don't want to do that favor, whatever it is. But there is an override inside, and that override has a very specific purpose and pattern behind it, which is why it keeps happening. So every time I work with a client on this, I say, how long has this been going on where you want to say no but something overrides inside and you end up saying yes? How long has that been going on? And they'll tell me 20 years. 30 years, 40 years. And look, they've read a lot of personal development, they read some book on boundaries, they did some therapy. Why? Why does that keep happening? Because it's not intellectually knowing that I should say no. Inside you have a survival system that's linked up disapproval equals danger. If you don't approve of me, if you're mad at me, or if you feel sad around me, then that's dangerous because you're going to disapprove of me and I'm going to lose connection with you. And also I'm going to lose my sense of self-worth because many of us have bought into a false equation, which is someone's approval of equals my worth. So they disapprove of me, my sense of feeling okay about who I am as a human just plummets into the toilet. Which is why when someone says, hey, can you do this for me? And you say no, let's say you did have the boundary, you walk away, do you feel great? You feel like, oh cool, dodged that bullet, I don't have to go do that thing. No, you feel awful, right? Like, oh, that was— I should have said yes. What was wrong with me? I'm so selfish is the word that I often hear. And then you're berating and beating yourself for hours or even days afterwards. So you can't win. You either have to say yes and do the thing you don't like or say no and feel bad about yourself. That's the trap, and that is the approval trap. That's when we're caught in having to be something for other people. And there's a very specific name to this pattern. So after doing this with thousands of clients over the years, I've seen that there's 4 key patterns, and I call them approval types. And these are things that you do when there's a moment of uncertainty— are they going to disapprove of this? A pattern kicks in, and you could find out what yours is if you go to www.draziz.com. I have a 2-minute quiz you could take it to find out which of these approval types you are and what underlying mechanisms are and how to change it. There's a full in-depth training for free on how to do that. But I'm going to describe one of them here. The person who feels extremely guilty for saying no is also the same pattern that feels responsible for everybody, everybody's feeling. Where is that person sad over there? Well, then it's my responsibility to make them feel better. I should probably reach out and connect with them. Oh, that person's upset. It's probably— it's my responsibility. I don't even know why they're upset, but there's some compulsion in my body to go calm them down so that I can feel okay. Does this feel familiar? This is called the fixer pattern. And I lived this pattern for so many years. In fact, when I take my own quiz, I am the Fixer. That's my result because that's the pattern I run. That's what I was booted up on. And this is, you know, you're often the peacemaker in the household. You're emotionally sensitive, empathic, aware. You feel people's feelings. You're very socially and emotionally perceptive. And so you can track a room, you can know what people need, and you feel this strong urge inside to make sure that you meet those needs. That's what you have to fix. And so the Fixer will try to fix on two levels. One is on the circumstance level, right? Like, you need me to do the thing, I'll do the thing. And I mentioned earlier, you know, they ask you and you want to say no and you say yes. If you're a really good fixer like I was, then you go one step further. You don't wait for them to ask and make sure you say yes. You anticipate what they might want and you say it and do it. This is the death of my relationships, by the way, when I was trying to date when I was younger, is I would be dating a woman and I wouldn't just wait for her to say, hey, you want to go do this thing on Saturday? And then I would of course have to say yes, because if you say no that's the end of things. I would actually think about it earlier in the week and say, she's probably gonna want to do something on Saturday. Okay, well, let me think about what she might want to do. Okay, cool, I'm gonna go invite her to do that thing. I'm being such a good boyfriend, right? And yeah, that might sound like from the outside you're being a caring, thoughtful person, but it's coming from so much fear because I'm terrified of her asking, and what if my answer inside is no? I have a very distinct memory of this. I was dating this woman and she asked me— we were in Portland and there's this thing where these swallows, birds, come out of this chimney in the evening. It's very pretty and people kind of hang out set of picnics and watch these birds swarm in and out of this chimney in these big beautiful flocks and stuff. And, uh, she's like, want to go see the swallows? It was like a Thursday night, and I was like, no. I didn't say that though, but inside that was my honest answer. Like, I don't— I want to chill out at my own house. But here's the other biggest challenge for the Fixer, is not only can you not say no, but you have to have a very good reason if you are going to ever ask for what you want or say no to something. And I didn't have a good reason. I was like, I'm just gonna hang out by myself on a Thursday night? That's not a good enough reason. I don't feel like it? That's not a good enough reason. So I pulled through my options and I was like, well, shoot, I guess I just got to say yes. And so I did. And that erodes your relationships over time. So fixers have a very hard time with relationships because they end up feeling trapped in them. Is that familiar? And the reason you're trapped is because you can't say no. You have to do whatever they want. And your partner, your friend, your colleague might not even be this intense, demanding person who's like, you do whatever I say or else I'm going to withdraw my love and leave you. They might not say that. They might just be like, hey, can you do this thing for Yes, whatever you say, whatever you want. And it's us creating that. And to make it more interesting, sometimes fixers do attract narcissists who are like, yeah, do whatever I want. The fixer's like, yeah, I'll do whatever you want. And you get this beautiful cycle, the circle of life, until it becomes intolerable. I can't tell you how many fixers I connect with and work with who have found themselves in relationships where the dynamic is very skewed. They are overgiving, over-functioning, over-delivering. And instead of their partner, their friend, their family being like, wow, you are like Amazing. No one else would give me this much. They're like, yeah, what have you done for me since Tuesday, huh? And the fixer's like, yeah, you're right, I should give more. And it can get pretty toxic. And if you've ever been in a relationship like that, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. And the key here is not, oh my God, I'm so messed up. Oh, I'm ruined from my childhood. Oh, blah blah, whatever stories we have. It's just a pattern that you're running, and you're running it because it feels too intolerable, too uncomfortable, too overwhelming to go into, well, what if I do disappoint them? What if they do feel guilty? What if they dislike that I said no here? And so trying to just say no more never works because we have to address that underlying core permission. That's the one thing I do with every client on this, is that deep down they don't feel like they're allowed to have a preference, have a desire, because fixers have learned, I'm okay if you're okay, so I'm going to entirely focus on your needs, entirely responsible for your emotions, your emotional state, your health, your life, your everything. And if I can make sure that you're okay, then I can feel okay temporarily. As you can imagine, that's extremely exhausting. It's also kind of impossible because how can you control the emotions of other people and everyone that you come across in your life, especially intimate people, colleagues, co-workers? And so it's an endless hustle. It's a treadmill that goes faster and faster and you can't get off of it. And so every fixer I talk to, by the time I meet them, usually people when they start working with me in their 30s, 40s, 50s, they've run these patterns for 20, 30 years and like, okay, it's not working. Okay, the standard approaches of just some therapy and some books doesn't really actually change it. I need a targeted specialist training on this. And then they see, wait a minute, this pattern has been running my life since I can remember. And we need to address it on that layer and create that core permission inside, which is, wait a minute, I am actually allowed to have a preference. I'm allowed to have needs. I'm allowed to be a full, complete human. And that's the first step, is intellectually getting that. You'd be surprised, there's a lot of resistance to that. When I work with someone, they're like, yeah, that sounds great, but no. No, no. Why? Because they learned it goes against the programming, right? They learned that's not okay. So part of the work is seeing that, and the next step is actually training your nervous system to truly realize that that's safe. Because as long as you intellectually think, yeah, that makes sense, that checks out on paper, it doesn't change anything at your next work meeting, the next time your spouse asks for something. It doesn't change it. You need to train your mind and body through repetition, through practice, through exposure, and increasing permission that the world doesn't end when I say no, that I'm allowed to do this. And I'm going to show— I'm just going to tell myself I'm allowed to do it. Did you do it? No. Are you really allowed to? Right? So you have to show ourselves that we're allowed to. It's like training a child or a pet or something. We have to show it over time. This is what we want. This is okay. And we retrain ourselves. And all of a sudden, though, I can tell you every time I'm working with a client, it's so hard. It's such a struggle. Oh my God, am I allowed to do this? Is this okay? Is this safe? Oh, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then at some point, they'll Hey, tell me a story. And like, yeah, so this person asked me to do this thing and that just seems so unreasonable, so I told them no. They were a little upset, but hey, you know, that's okay. And, and they describe it matter of fact, like that's just how they always were. And in a sense, that is how they always were underneath. That's who they really are when they're not running the pattern. You're able to connect with yourself, hear what you need and want, communicate that, express that. Of course that's okay, that's healthy, and it all feels normal and natural because it is. And the old thing, that pattern, is what's not functional, not natural, not who you are, and therefore can be changed, shed, and released. And you want to find out exactly if the Fixer type or what your dominant type might be, go to www.draziz.com. You can click down below in the description to go directly to take that 2-minute quiz, find out your type, and get the deeper training on the 3 key steps on changing that, including how to retrain your nervous system and how that process exactly works. One key insight I want to leave you with today is a saying that I use with clients all the time, which is the right thing will feel wrong. So A lot of people, when they do try to say no, right, I should have better boundaries, I'm going to say no, then that guilt comes up and they start to question. They say, well, geez, if this is the right thing to do, why does it feel so bad? And that's where the saying comes from. Well, the right thing is going to feel wrong, not because you did something wrong. It's healthy to say no. It's healthy to ask for what you want. It's healthy to know what is important to you and make choices based upon that versus doing whatever anyone wants of you. When you hear me say that, you can realize that, right? You kind of agree with that on an intellectual level, like, yeah, that is healthy. And when you then put that into practice, probably not going to feel good. It's probably going to feel bad. But when you interpret that not as a sign of my conscience and how bad of me and I'm so selfish, and you say, wait a minute, I'm actually recalibrating my system for a more healthy way of being in the world, and that's going to feel wrong until I realize on a deep level that it's right. So my encouragement for you, my invitation for you, is to test this out, to really observe that deeper pattern at play, and to spend just a little more time this week asking yourself, what do I want? What do I need? What do I feel here? And bringing more attention, curiosity, and permission to being able to express that and to say no when whatever someone's asking you, something doesn't align with that.