Have You Learned that “No” is a Bad or Meaningless Word?

Sometimes we stop and look at our lives and wonder how we got into such messed up situations. First clue: It didn’t happen overnight. Many people are not aware that much of the programming around boundaries happens when we are kids. Think of a two-year-old who goes around saying, “No,” like it is the newest toy. Then, at some point, it seems like we forget how to use the word at all, particularly if you identify as female.

Some of our first lessons around boundaries are learned by watching parents and caregivers. We mimic what these important people do, and we learn from what they teach us. If they empower us stand up for ourselves, we learn to be assertive. If they teach us to please others, we learn to be self-deniers.

Question: Did you learn that saying, “No,” was like a bad word? Did you learn that saying, “No,” was acceptable or unacceptable? Think about that for a minute. How did important adults in your life respond to early boundary setting experiments and assertiveness?

If your efforts to put your needs first were shamed, you may have learned boundaries are bad or selfish or shameful. Women are especially susceptible to this as our moms, too, struggled with always serving others first. Just because a behavior was normalized doesn’t make it healthy. It can simply be a perpetuated self-defeating cycle.

If you learned that no does not mean no, you may have learned to give up the power of boundaries.

Regardless of why we struggle with boundaries, the solution is the same: behavior change. What I mean by that is that we have to change what we are doing regardless of why we are doing it that way. The behavior change comes first because we may never fully understand the why, and it can take years to see that light anyway.

It is important to recognize that our sense of boundaries may be skewed in favor of other people. This means that we may put our own needs behind our perceptions (which may, in fact, be inaccurate) of other people’s wants. This is backwards. We may be acting on bad information or bad programming. It is always a good time to stop and question our brainwashing — our perspective — to see how it is working for us — to see if it is valid.

Day 2: Start to question what you have learned about boundaries and ask yourself if it still fits.