“No” is my love language
We live in a culture that worships the “yes”
We live in a culture that worships the “yes.” We are trained to view availability as a virtue and accessibility as a moral obligation. We say yes to the coffee date we don’t have time for, or the project that doesn’t align with our goals, or the emotional labor we have no capacity to carry. We do this because we believe that being “open” makes us good people, but if you look closely at that constant stream of affirmation, it starts to look less like generosity and more like self-abandonment.
Most of the trouble I’ve gotten into in my life came from saying yes when my entire nervous system was whispering no. Like in the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Andy Sachs slowly erodes her own identity, one small, frantic “yes” at a time, until she becomes a stranger to herself. We treat refusal as a failure of character, but I’m starting to think that the ability to say no is actually the highest form of self-respect. It isn’t a rejection of the world, it’s simply a refinement of it.
The psychology of boundaries
The problem is that the human brain is wired for social acceptance above almost everything else. Neuroscientists have found that rejection triggers the exact same neural pathways as physical pain. When we refuse someone, we risk belonging, and to our primitive brains, a loss of belonging equals death. So we say yes to stay safe. We say yes to keep the tribe happy.