Your heart beats faster. A touch of cotton-mouth. What is the source of your anxiety? You just ordered an expensive steak, medium-rare, and the waitress put down a well-done slab of meat in front of you. Now you face having to tell her that she gave you the wrong order. If the thought of confronting someone or just plain saying “no” makes you nervous, you may find yourself imagining an irate waitress, an enraged chef, an annoyed date—and so you pick up your fork and unhappily begin eating.

For people who hate to say no, these moments may occur more often than we would like and they’re not always as easy to swallow as an over-done steak. If you find yourself unable to stand up to people in general and unable to assert yourself, you may experience low self-esteem and the persistent feeling of inconveniencing others- or conversely, a steadily building store of resentment that explodes in inappropriate outbursts. Herbert Fensterheim and Jean Baer’s classic book “Don’t Say Yes When You Want To Say No” gives timeless advice on how to assert ourselves, and improve our self esteem and relationships at home, work and in our everyday relations by saying what we really mean and want.

Excitative vs. Inhibitive

Dr. Fensterheim mentions two personality types, the excitative and the inhibitive, and the type we lean towards greatly influences how assertive we normally are. In general, an excitative person is one who is well-adjusted. They have no problem expressing who they are, what they expect from life and the people around them, and they can properly and appropriately display emotions such as affection or anger. When they speak, they are animated, have good body language and eye-contact, and are generally considered interesting and engaging. On the other hand, an inhibited person may have many problems expressing their wishes and expectations or simply may not know them. They may have problems properly expressing emotion, or have a fear or distrust of showing love, affection or anger and they may find themselves boring others or unable to speak in a way that engages those around them. Fensterheim explains that eliminating inhibitions does not necessarily require digging up their source in our past or childhood: essentially we can deal with the symptom itself and train ourselves to be more assertive. Just like we may have learned in the past to lock away our feelings or to not make waves, we can unlearn those behaviours by practicing the right patterns of thinking and acting to eliminate some of our inhibitive traits and replace them with more assertive ones. Like the Pavlovian experiment, if we learn to couple assertion with positive results, eventually, on a physical level, our body will learn to not have a nervous response when exposed to a potential confrontation. Through training, we can teach ourselves to calmly express our desire (or lack of desire) for a certain action and the positive results will then reinforce that being assertive and expressing oneself clearly and truthfully is not the same as being aggressive and inconveniencing or stomping all over others.

The Right to Say No

Too often, the problem of asserting oneself is based on a misconceived notion of rights. The well-adjusted person has fixed a clear boundary, a circle around themselves they may move freely in. They know that even if they refuse something, they are within the bounds of their own freedom and not hurting anyone. (Fensterheim 46-47). For a person who can’t say no, this circle can be much smaller, more arbitrary and is often defined by others: the boss, co-workers, husbands, wives or friends. Because they feel trapped in the tight circle drawn by their environment and not themselves, they may become neurotic and feel they have little control over their own circumstances. They become resentful. Fensterheim points out that it’s important to identify our rights, for then we and not the people around us draw the boundaries and define what we want or don’t want to do.

Get the list of your five basic rights – including questions to determine what you consider your rights to be – from the Club Library.

Make Yourself Say No

Once you have identified your boundaries and goals, you can now identify the situations that make you most uncomfortable. Does an irresponsible friend keep borrowing money and never paying you back, but you are too reluctant to point this out? Does a spouse keep expecting you to pull more than your share of housework and you say nothing? Find the situations that make you irritated, frustrated, nervous or worried and identify why. Take the situation with the money. Imagine that your friend still hasn’t paid back the cash you lent him during his unemployment. He’s now working and spending money, but does not mention his debt and you find yourself getting more and more resentful. There are three possible ways to approach this confrontation:

1. Over-subtlety: You hint around about money when your friend is with you, but never come out and properly say it. (You avoid confrontation, because you don’t want him to dislike you or become angry.)

2. Over-reaction: You say nothing again, but when out together, you see your friend buy something expensive and explode at him, saying he’s a terrible friend who STILL hasn’t paid you back, when he obviously could. (You avoided confrontation to spare his feelings, but you couldn’t take it anymore and your true feelings spilled out, now possibly hurting or embarrassing him.)

3. Appropriate: You calmly and rationally tell your friend that now that he is working, you would like him to pay back what he owes, offering to let him pay in installments, if necessary. (You are well within your rights and have been a good friend and you accuse him of nothing, calmly pointing out that you are willing to work together. If this is a friend worth keeping, he will recognize that you have been reasonable, he has been thoughtless, and he will hasten to fix the problem.)

Fensterheim reminds us that “assertion” is not synonymous with “aggression” (which is what non-confrontational people often interpret “assertion” to be). Assertion is acting appropriately within the boundaries of your rights, even if that means refusing something. It is also recognizing the right to ask something of others, when they also have the right to refuse.

When we learn how to say no, we also learn to not over-commit. Taking on more than your share is something almost anyone can relate to and the root of it is the embarrassment or reluctance to simply say “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time/don’t want to.” Unfortunately, when we take on a task simply to not refuse, we cannot guarantee our full commitment or our best. This can result in inferior involvement on our part, as well as resentment—towards the person who asked us and towards ourselves, for not honestly refusing.

Hearing the Dread Word

Those who hate to say no often live with the fear of hearing no. There are several possible reasons for this. A non-confrontational person may refuse to assert themselves simply because they imagine that they are inconveniencing the other and hearing a “no” would only confirm that.

Some may also avoid putting themselves in a possible “no” situation because they imagine that being refused by someone is too embarrassing. They would rather not risk the chance of losing face. They may avoid making demands unless they are certain of an escape route.

Fensterheim gives us exercises not only to say the word, but to hear it and to train ourselves to see that often, the worst that can happen is that someone says no. This is natural and their right, as it is ours. Still, it should not stop us from making requests or asserting our desires in an appropriate way.

Doing something that may potentially cause refusal is one way to learn how to say and hear no. When we hear someone else easily refuse us and see that it did not hurt or inconvenience them and that we were not unduly embarrassed, we see that it is ok to refuse even a reasonable request if we don’t feel like it ourselves. Fensterheim recommends a few easy exercises that can boost our acceptance of confrontation:

1. Go into a store and ask for change, without buying anything.

2. Ask people for directions, to borrow a pen, for the time.

3. Ask someone who is talking in a movie theatre during a show to stop.

4. Ask a spouse to do a task that is normally yours to do or one they don’t enjoy and you are usually stuck with.

Always ask politely and answer even refusals with a thank you. You will find that people are often more receptive to favors than we imagine (if we only clearly ask). Keep in mind chronic apologies as well. If you are apologising often, for everything, you reaffirm that you are somehow automatically in the wrong and a bother to the people around you. Don’t apologise for your existence or your right to assert yourself. Be courteous but firm in the belief that you are allowed, like anyone else, to determine how you spend your time. When we assert our desires, clearly state our expectations, and honestly refuse to do something that is our right to refuse, we become happier people who are less resentful and more enjoyable to themselves and others.

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