Feeling Good About Saying No

Whether you’re a parent, professional or anyone else trying to fit too much into your busy life, one thing we all have in common is the need to look after ourselves.  Funnily enough, loving ourselves is not necessarily foremost in our minds; we are usually too busy saying yes and looking after everyone else so your own needs fall to the bottom of a very large pile.

Carrying other’s burdens at your own expense, or never knowing how to stop and rest, is a sure fire way of burning out, or at the very least becoming resentful.  That’s where it’s crucial to learn how to love one self enough to know when to put yourself first. 

During a recent ThetaHealing™ session I worked with Jayne, (a healer herself), because she was having trouble with managing her workload and life: “I have to do everything I’m asked to do, I can’t ask for help – that would mean I’d failed.  I am a perfectionist.  Being able to be self-sufficient and independent were highly valued in my family and stopping to take a rest was seen as a copout or just plain lazy – so I just keep going until I drop – only then am I entitled to rest”. 

Jayne felt truly incapable of managing her hectic life, so we worked on her underlying beliefs of failure and its consequences; and how her perfectionism could both serve and harm her. This kind of inner stress can contribute to conditions like chronic fatigue where we’ve ignored our body’s signals to rest, so it finally takes control and makes us rest. 

I then used a ThetaHealing™ technique that teaches us positive new feelings in an instant – these included how to see herself as important and valued; that it was possible for her to control her workload; to know how to feel successful and how to live without feeling a failure if she sought help; that it’s possible to ask for help whilst also valuing the gifts of her perfectionism, self sufficiency and independency; and a new balanced definition of rest, relaxation and allowing her body to recharge itself.  Jayne was also intuitively taught how and when to say no; and how to set boundaries before she needed them.

These changes allowed Jayne to recognise her achievements and the space to instigate some other simple solutions in her life: scheduling her diary with time out for holidays and days off – both were a marvellous psychological and physical help.  Jayne got back into eating a good nutritious diet; she remembered to take her supplements; she also had a regular medical check-up to rule out any underlying causes for her fatigue; and she finally began to get regular rest and recreation away from her clients’ needs; everyday exercise found its way back into her life and she found time to have lots of fun with those she loved. 

Jayne has learnt the valuable lesson of how to love herself enough to know when to put herself first, which in turn transformed her life through her new practice of knowing when and how to say the simple little word – no – and feel good about it.

Image by Michal Marcol