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How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

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Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#101

Post by cheschire »

berdario wrote: post #98
cheschire wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has your recent experience been as these opportunities arise in the face of COVID? How does the potential for danger in even mundane social gatherings affect your decision now? In the last 18 months I came to the same conclusion as you and started socializing more, but then COVID happened and then quarantine and while the rest of my office rushes back to doing team lunches and whatnot, I find myself hesitating.…

I wish there were actually opportunities in my life. My office is still closed, I tried to have a reunion with university mates in my home country (I always meet them when I travel back to my birthplace), but 3 out of 4 of them bailed out. I tried to reach out to other friends, but (except one or two) they are also opting out of meeting anyone for the foreseeable future. I'd obviously try to play it safe: meet the ot…

I had a similar situation, but the reunion-esque meetup functioned adequately over slack instead. It's definitely not the same, but we figured everyone sitting 1.5 meters apart at a bar isn't the same either and also not very conducive to socializing.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#102

Post by amelius »

agumonkey wrote: post #58

I suffered from this in way I can barely explain. Recently I came to a place where I thought that 'if' you live your life like an adventure where anything you do has to be very exciting, than a yes means you really want to do, not just a 'why not' but something that tickles your soul. And a no was the reflection of that, "I could come, and do that, but it will be boring in a way and I'll only be a ghost which would b…

With that attitude, how do you convince yourself to do chores such as cleaning the house, or writing that boring glue-logic that your boss asked you to implement?

I think the only way these tasks can be made exciting would be to build a cleaning robot or write a "glue-logic compiler". But these approaches would probably get you divorced or fired.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#103

Post by dannyw »

cheschire wrote: post #88
closeparen wrote: post #29

My life got a lot better after I stopped considering questions in terms of my own preferences and started considering them in terms of how they would connect me to others. I really don’t want to go out for drinks after work. But this preference is nothing compared to how much I value the friendships that come from doing it. Hiking a mountain is not in the top 100 things I want to do with my weekend. But a shared expe…

What has your recent experience been as these opportunities arise in the face of COVID? How does the potential for danger in even mundane social gatherings affect your decision now? In the last 18 months I came to the same conclusion as you and started socializing more, but then COVID happened and then quarantine and while the rest of my office rushes back to doing team lunches and whatnot, I find myself hesitating.…

I think you should consider the actual quantified risk to you and the community.

For someone living alone for example and going to work drinks with 5 people, your risk of contracting COVID is very small. Your chance of developing serious complications from COVID is also very small. Your chance of spreading COVID to others, should you isolate once you develop symptoms, is also small.

I highly recommend you research the actual numbers from WHO, CDC, papers, etc. You might find it surprising how little risk it poses to people our age.

Multiply these all together and you will probably realise that COVID is not so concerning that you should forgo all social outings for.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#105

Post by ritchiea »

partyboat1586 wrote: post #91
ritchiea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with being kind and speaking to people with respect while you disagree with them? One of the big problems with the "politically incorrect" or "radical free speech" crowd is that your words can hurt people's feeling. And your tone can hurt people's feelings. And there's no good reason to tell someone "fuck off" when you can politely say no other than maybe you have things you're angry about that you haven…

The >"radical free speech" crowd understands hurting other people's feelings, they just don't believe anyone should be compelled by law not to hurt someone else's feelings.

There have never been laws against hurting people's feelings. And no one is advocating for laws against hurting people's feelings. We're telling you, if you act like an asshole other people might not like it and that's fair. And that you can get fired for being an asshole. And that the law is merely that the government will not imprison you for being an asshole.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#106

Post by smoe »

closeparen wrote: post #29

My life got a lot better after I stopped considering questions in terms of my own preferences and started considering them in terms of how they would connect me to others. I really don’t want to go out for drinks after work. But this preference is nothing compared to how much I value the friendships that come from doing it. Hiking a mountain is not in the top 100 things I want to do with my weekend. But a shared expe…

This is one of the main reasons why I prefer living in big cities. Compared to other places I've stayed, it makes it a whole lot easier to build and maintain human connections with people whose preferences and interests overlap with mine.

I also do plenty of activities I'm not really interested in for the sake of socializing. But always just adopting to whatever is most popular at a given time would be soulcrushing to me.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#107

Post by cutemonster »

watwut wrote: post #99
closeparen wrote: post #29

My life got a lot better after I stopped considering questions in terms of my own preferences and started considering them in terms of how they would connect me to others. I really don’t want to go out for drinks after work. But this preference is nothing compared to how much I value the friendships that come from doing it. Hiking a mountain is not in the top 100 things I want to do with my weekend. But a shared expe…

I used to do this. But it lead to one sided relationships where I was not equal party. I liked people more then they liked me and while I would say yes for sake of relationship, the favor was rarely returned. These relationships were contingent on me being passive and having no preference. I was liked, but did not had real friends (as I found out later).

How did you find out?

What happened after that?

I think somehow somewhere there're real friends for you to find. Possibly simpler to find if you do new unusual things you didn't try before? Or maybe try a different city or country (if work allows)

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#108

Post by throwaway81753 »

Natales wrote: post #34

No means a lot more than “no” most of the time. My mom was Jehovah’s Witness, so I was raised always to take care of “the appearances”, always being polite, even when you disagree. When I moved to the US back in 2000, I “discovered” people have freedom to think and say whatever they want (kind of) and it was OK to dissent. The pendulum went the other way, and I became a big fan of Bill Maher and the “it’s OK to be po…

I come from a very conservative family, at least among my father's family there have been also religious fanatics. That was hardly part of my life luckily, on the other hand open dissent (from younger ones) was hardly ever accepted. It was either met with ridicule, anger or shock. Actually both my mother and my sister also have been influenced a lot with their job choice. For me it has been quite a struggle to choose the studies and job I want to do involving stopping contact with my father almost completely without being faced constant criticism, persuasion and ridicule. Also showing showing happiness is expected.

For me it's completely counter-intuitive what is acceptable and what not in terms of disagreement or even which opinions are okay to voice. I had to "manually" learn this.

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#109

Post by cutemonster »

unabst wrote: post #69
kome wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beautifully written. Indeed my problem is the contrary to the one in the article "How to say yes, for people closed in themselves who always say no."

So to put them together: people who say no too much are self-tortured, and people who say yes too much are tortured by others. Learning to say yes sounds great, but you're on the path to becoming a people pleaser. And people pleasers who listen to NPR and learn to say no are now on the path to... prioritizing themselves over relationships and self-torture. This can't be right. How do we not torture ourselves?

Too much, or too little, both can be bad. Also in other areas, like, eating or working out

Re: How to say no, for the people pleaser who always says yes

#110

Post by unabst »

bananaface wrote: post #80
ritchiea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with being kind and speaking to people with respect while you disagree with them? One of the big problems with the "politically incorrect" or "radical free speech" crowd is that your words can hurt people's feeling. And your tone can hurt people's feelings. And there's no good reason to tell someone "fuck off" when you can politely say no other than maybe you have things you're angry about that you haven…

What makes it difficult is the fact that people respond like this. What did he say that you even disagreed with? He has an "anger issue"? wtf.

Exactly. The true issue is what's making you think fuck you in the first place! Not how you say it. And that's the real conversation.

If fuck you is what you mean, then no amount of dressing will change the fact that you're saying it. And to then act as if you didn't say it just because you didn't use the words fuck you is lying. Being polite is being polite, but that doesn't change the message THAT much unless you actually lie and say something different. And then often the conversation becomes about attitude and respect and language, and not what was actually angering. Ultimately, that's what's stupid and disrespectful. And to then be scanning and policing each other's statements for this?

This annoys me to no end on Quora too when people just find novel ways of saying fuck you believing that's what their Be Nice Be Respectful policy means. No, it's not a license to say anything you want so long as you're polite. It's like how a racist thinks to get away with racism. If you're a racist then let's talk about it! Of course, normally they can't, so they've trained themselves to talk different. But it's not a real conversation. It's horseshit.

Challenging someone's argument and challenging someone's character are completely different. It doesn't matter how politely you do it if that's what you're doing.

And being honest takes courage! It was never truly about other people's feelings. It's "what if I" hurt them. You're about to do that anyway based on the point you're making, if it's a valid point against something they have a stake in. From there, either they're adults who recognize valid points or they're not. That's their court.

And if they weren't hurt, then you didn't say it, period. What you meant to say got lost in all the correctness.

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