Setting Boundaries This Autumn
Why saying no feels so hard this time of year, and what the guilt is actually telling you.
Photo: Alexander Zvir / Pexels
Why do you keep saying yes to things you already know you will resent by Thursday?
That question is worth sitting with, because the answer is rarely the one people expect. It is not weakness. It is not people-pleasing in the way we throw that word around. Most of the time, it is a simple mix-up in the body. Guilt is what you feel when you have actually wronged someone. What you feel before saying no is not that. It is discomfort, plain and ordinary, the feeling of doing something your body has not practised yet. The two sit close together, close enough to confuse, and most people spend years treating the second one as if it were the first.
Once you can tell them apart, the whole thing gets simpler. You do not need the discomfort to go away before you are allowed to say no. You just need to know it is not a warning sign. It is only unfamiliar.
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