Learning to Say "No"

 For years, I've had an ongoing conflict with a family member.  It’s a conflict that I think many of us can identify with.  The issue, in a nutshell, is that this other person believes that I should be providing something for her that (she believes) I am not providing.  And, she believes that not providing this for her makes me, essentially, a bad person and someone she can’t trust.

For a long time, I worked like hell to provide what she wanted, what she was demanding, not necessarily because I wanted to, but because I felt I should.  But no matter how much I gave, it was never enough and I was never acknowledged or experienced by her as the person who was offering what she needed.  I was constantly arguing my case for why she was wrong about me, wrong for blaming me; I continued telling her how much I was doing, why she should appreciate me.  But it never made a difference.  I was forever stuck in the role of the one who wouldn’t provide what she really needed.

After what felt like eons of giving and giving and continually being told and experienced as the one that wasn’t giving, I started to feel differently.  I started to feel like I shouldn’t have to provide these things that she demanded from me and felt entitled to.  I started to argue with my own sense of should and rethink what I should be willing to offer.  I also started to argue with her about whether or not it was right or fair for her to expect this service from me.   

And so, for the next few years, we remained locked in a new battle, namely, who was right about whether or not I should have to offer the kind of help she required.  I said I shouldn’t have to and she said I should.  What was the truth?

More time passed but we both held our ground, each of us growing more stuck in our positions, convinced of our rightness.  Resentment infiltrated our relationship from top to bottom. 

But then something truly unexpected happened, for me.  Something simple but utterly profound.  I don’t know what it will mean for the relationship, but I know that it's opened up infinite space inside me, a deep okayness and strength, and thoroughly changed my reality.

What happened was this: I realized that at the bottom of this lifelong battle with this woman was a simple truth, a truth that had been shunned, stepped over, stepped around, ignored, and never allowed to the table.  I can say it out loud now, scream it from the rooftops, and here's what it sounds like: I do not want to be responsible for providing what she needs.  It’s not that I shouldn’t have to (that's a truth that depends on one's inner universe), it’s not that I have been responsible and it's gone unacknowledged; it’s far simpler than all that.  I don’t want it—that’s the whole story.  I don't want to requires no further dialogue, explanation, or justification.  It sounds like a small turn, like something I already knew, but it was a revelation.  It was a truth that for decades had been forced to hide in the shadows of should and shouldn't; buried under all the effort, the thousands of words, arguments, and tsunamis of fear and guilt. This truth had been denied permission to be heard or even to exist.

As long as I was still relying on the argument that I shouldn’t have to, I was still dependent on her and everyone else to feel solid in my choice.  The strength of my own truth didn’t yet belong to me.  It was still a truth of consensus, one that had to be agreed upon, and thus something that her rejection was able to undermine.  That I could never be validated in the idea that it wasn’t fair to ask this of me, that I shouldn’t have to, meant that I could never really stand in my own shoes. I could never not feel guilty for my choice even with the awareness that all the doing in the world would still not earn me the place of the one who was doing it. 

What freed me was that simple but awe-inspiring shift in awareness and perspective, the appearing of the real truth, the I don’t want to reality.  In that moment of awakening to my own not wanting, I realized that this truth more than any other had been the unacknowledged, unsafe to acknowledge key to unraveling the whole knot.  It wasn’t about not being appreciated for it; it wasn’t about winning the fight that I shouldn't have to.  It was just about discovering the plain and simple "I don’t want to."

Remarkably, "I don't want to" is not up for dialogue, discussion, or agreement.  This truth is not a truth by consensus.  It’s mine wholly, and to some degree, non-negotiable.  When I found my I don’t want to, I found my own two feet planted firmly on the ground, weighted and strong.  I found clarity and with it, freedom.  This other person no longer held the power to allow or deny me my truth.

What I’ve noticed since this awakening is that I am far more able to look at this other person without resentment.  What is is and I don’t have to defend it anymore.  And simultaneously, I don’t feel the same fear, fear of the guilt inspired by her belief about what I should be willing to offer, fear of being accused of being bad.  Oddly, it actually feels like I can enjoy her a whole lot more as well.  The truth, awakened in me, allows me to look at this other person in the eyes, and stand in the light of what’s true, for me.  Where it will take us in the relationship, I have no idea, but whatever happens, I don’t want to has, for me, turned out to be the get out of jail key to freedom.

When We Can No Longer Silence Our Truth

This week something remarkable happened—change happened. When a long-present way of feeling or behaving transforms, I view it as a miracle, a gift of grace. 

Two months ago, a dear friend, someone I consider family, asked to borrow money.  I’m working a lot these days (thankfully) and therefore could provide the help. My friend told me that she would pay me back by the end of February. Before writing her the check, I asked her three questions: 

1. Could she, realistically, commit to refunding me by the end of February? 

2. Could she repay it without my asking for it?  

3. Would she inform me if she was not able to, again, without my having to ask? 

Essentially, would she take ownership of the loan she was requesting? Her answers were yes, yes and yes.

Just to know, this is not the first time this friend has asked me for a loan. And, she has not, ever, paid me back when promised. But she does pay me back… eventually. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I do know the problem with doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But here’s the thing, I didn’t expect a different result, and for many reasons not relevant to this post, I decided to lend her the money anyway. 

On the last day of February, I awoke to radio silence: no text, email, phone call or other communication. My friend had not repaid the loan nor contacted me to let me know it wouldn’t happen. 

In the past, when confronted with this same situation I would say nothing, at least not for several days, weeks or months. I would sit in resentment, anger, and make-believe okay-ness. Or, find some backhanded way to allude to the unpaid loan but without directly addressing it. Because of my intense fear of what I faced in expressing it—defensiveness, aggression, anger, and attack, a rage on why I was despicable and spiritually bankrupt for wanting and expecting to be re-payed, I would tuck away my truth, my experience of being unpaid, unappreciated, unacknowledged and uninformed. I would disappear, paradoxically, to save myself.

But on this recent occasion, I knew that no matter how frightening the situation, I was being presented with a great opportunity—to practice living from my truth and actually being on my own side. And indeed, I chose to take the opportunity the universe offered, or maybe more appropriately, the universe chose to take me, and lead me somewhere new. It was as if I were extending my hand into the handshake of forward-movement that grace provided. 

On that very day, I asked my friend directly if she was going to pay me back and honor the promise she had made—to me.

As expected, she was not going to pay me back, not yet anyway. But the contents of this story are irrelevant. What matters is that I asked my friend for the loan back, on the day it was due. And, that at the moment when my friend would have ordinarily launched into her attack, I stayed still and faced her, eye to eye, to remind her of her promises, and ask her when exactly she would be able to take care of this loan I'd offered. I stood in my own shoes inside the actual moment.

I’m so grateful that my friend didn’t pay me back. It gave me the chance to change, the opportunity to speak up in the face of fear—to choose myself and the truth over the certain conflict it would create and even the possible loss of the relationship altogether. It gave me the chance to practice planting my feet in the truth and trusting that no matter how bumpy the ride, the solid ground of the truth is a place that I will be (and already am) okay.

I write a lot about playing on our own team, expressing and supporting the truth of our experience. In this particular relationship, I would have argued (until recently), that saying nothing and letting it go was taking my own side, because it resulted in keeping the relationship intact, which is what I really wanted and thought I needed.  But as time passed, I grew and my heart broke, for itself. It became clear that being on my side, in this way, also required abandoning myself, not speaking up for myself, and even joining my friend’s blaming of me. 

Even though I knew, intellectually, that I had rights, nonetheless, after years of being blamed, something in my gut had lost its conviction that I had the right to ask for the money back because I didn’t need it financially. Or, that I had the right to be informed or upset that something I’d been promised was not going to happen.  Or, for that matter, the right to be able to trust my friend's word. I was not on my own side in this relationship, not only because of my fear of the aggression that would come at me in response, but also because of my own handshake with blame, both hers and mine.

Taking the step that is joining our own side, finding the courage to face whatever comes when we speak our truth, is a profound shift in a human being.  It doesn’t happen in one fell swoop but rather in little moments and small challenges (that can feel gigantic). In order for this change to happen, we have to have had enough of the suffering that comes with not being on our own side, remaining silent, abandoning ourselves, or accepting blame for having a truth that another person doesn’t like. Our own heart has to break—for ourselves—for what we’ve actually been living, and believing. We have to stop self-blaming and forgive ourselves for needing what we need—for our truth. When this happens, it’s no longer possible to turn our back on ourselves, disappear, in order to keep the peace or status quo.  

The moment comes when we say enough, not from our head, but from our deepest guts. We are done, not as an idea but as a profound knowledge. 

This process can feel like an act of grace, like something far larger than just our personal self has intervened, offering us the strength and clarity to change how we’re living and who we are. At last, we find ourselves holding our own heart.

Furthermore, the courage to speak our truth involves a shift in allegiance or purpose. Our goal transforms from maintaining the situation/relationship—at all cost—to living from the truth—at all cost. But in order to find this courage, this reverence for and trust in the truth, we have to get okay with anyoutcome that might transpire, including the one we’ve most feared.  We must be willing to let it all burn up in the fire of the truth.

To do this, we have to release the belief that the only way to keep ourselves safe, keep our life proceeding as it needs to, is to control our experience and thereby create a certain outcome. It’s a process, really, of turning it over, truth’s will not my will, trusting (or at least being willing to try trusting) that the truth will take us where we need to go, even if it’s not where we think we should be going. At the deepest level, what I’m describing is an experience of awakening and surrender—knowing that we can’t keep abandoning ourselves in the service of taking care of ourselves.  And, that it’s safe to let go of the reins, that the truth will take care of us. And ultimately, that the truth is the only real safety we have.

How to Live Peacefully with Repetitive Negative Thoughts

Source: javi_indy/Shutterstock

Do you have repetitive negative thoughts? If so, the diagnosis is confirmed: You’re human. The Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging reports that the average person experiences 70,000 thoughts per day. As a psychotherapist, I can say with certainty that a large percentage of the 70,000 are about what can go wrong, what did go wrong, what will go wrong, what you’ve done wrong, and what everyone else is doing wrong. 

What makes negative repetitive thoughts so challenging is that they often stem from core self-beliefs, like I’m not good enough, I won’t get what I want, or the world is not trustworthy. Because they’re built out of these deeply held beliefs, repetitive thought loops are powerful and sticky; we believe our repetitive thoughts, as if their persistence is somehow evidence of their truth. As a result, we are compulsively compelled to attach and engage with their content.

Further, we learn early in life that we need to do something with and about our negative thoughts: Either prove them wrong, convince them (and ourselves) that they’re false, or actively replace them with positive thoughts that feel less threatening. Either way, we're taught, we need to put up a fight.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these strategies: Arguing with and disproving negative thoughts is sometimes helpful, as is actively replacing the negative with positive thoughts. But the most effective approach I have found (personally and professionally) for working with repetitive negative thoughts is actually the least intuitive:

• Stop trying to change negative thoughts.
• Don’t do anything about them.  
• Leave negative thoughts alone.
• Stop fighting with what’s actually happening.
• Look elsewhere.                                                                                                  

How can we be okay when what's happening in our mind is not okay? How do we leave our thoughts alone and not get involved in their content?  

We assume that by agreeing to not change our thoughts, we are also agreeing to believe and engage with them — that if we allow the thoughts to happen, we also have to pay attention to them and invest them with meaning. But what if that weren’t true? What if negative thoughts could appear in your inner world, and you could see and hear them, comprehend their content, but not have to do anything with or about them — not have to make them go away, invest energy in them, get involved in their stories, award them with a sense of importance, or even believe them to be true? What if the negative thoughts could mean nothing about who you are? Before we can practice this, however, we have to know it’s possible. And I can tell you with certainty, it is.

Source: BrainFacts.org

We are a culture of doers, and the instruction to not do, for some, can feel like not enough. It can be helpful, therefore, to reframe the not doing into a doing, or in this case, the not changing into a changing. Specifically, instead of focusing on not changing your thoughts, practice turning your attention away from the contents of the thoughts and placing it on who or what is actually hearing the thoughts. Ask yourself, who are these thoughts talking to? For whose attention are they vying? As soon as thoughts appear, particularly negative ones, we tend to narrow our attention down onto the thoughts with the focus of a laser beam, thereby darkening anything else that might exist in our awareness. And yet, what if, when thoughts appear, we were to look beyond them, and contemplate what else is here? What is behind and under the thoughts? In so doing, we leave the thoughts alone, and direct our attention to the spaciousness within which the thoughts are appearing. If thoughts are like birds appearing in our sky, we shift our attention from the birds to the sky. 

An important aspect of the practice of not changing negative thoughts involves another not — not judging the fact that you have negative thoughts. In truth, thoughts happen, with or without our consent. The fact that negative thoughts may come back again and again, in almost or entirely the same form, is just how it is — it's a byproduct of our mind’s operating system. It is not a failing on our part; it does not make us less spiritual, or more troubled or tortured. The sooner we can accept this truth, the sooner we can get on with the business of living. Getting rid of negative thoughts is by no means a necessity for well-being. 

Try it out for a day or an hour: Don’t change your thoughts, no matter what they contain — just leave them alone, and let them happen. Turn your attention away from the thoughts and toward the one who’s listening, the one whose attention the thoughts are beckoning. Sense the space in which the thoughts are appearing, the silence behind the noise, the stillness under the movement of thoughts. Notice your own awareness, that presence which is aware of these thoughts. 

When we shift our attention in this way, something very curious happens: The thoughts start losing their power. They may still be there, but they contain less oomph. Simultaneously, the volume of the thoughts shifts from a shout to a whisper. And sometimes, as the thoughts figure out that they’re not that seductive to us anymore, or that their appearance no longer sends us into a tailspin, they start to fade altogether. But then sometimes they don’t fade. And while we would prefer that the negative thoughts subside rather than continue, neither is evidence of the success or failure of our process.

Repetitive negative thoughts are part of the human journey; we cannot stop them. We can, however, stop trying to stop the unstoppable, or to change the unchangeable. What matters is how we relate to the thoughts, what we tell ourselves we must do or not do about them, and the self-attack we propagate as a result of having such thoughts. We generate internal peace when we give up the fight with the inevitable and direct our attention towards new frontiers. Ultimately, the relationship we build with our thoughts and the agency we take with our attention is what creates our experience. And, as is always the case, life resolves itself in contradiction: When we stop trying to change reality, reality changes. 

WCBS Health and Welness with Pat Farnack and Nancy Colier

Nancy Colier is a Manhattan psychotherapist, life coach, and author of "The Power of Off." She talks about how use of our devices has really affected our entire world, and not always for the better.

Spirituality and Health, The Power of Off

Scary as it is to admit, I once walked by my own children at the end of a workday, offering them just a quick nod on my way to get to my email, and it wasn’t as if I was expecting a note from the president.  I am not alone in this. For me, this experience, both acted out and witnessed by me, was a turning point. I suddenly woke up, perhaps by grace or some other force, and was in touch with what’s most important to me, my deepest... read more...

http://nancycolier.com/spirituality-health-power-off/