Just Say No!

Unless I'm asking you for help with something. Then please say yes. Or don't. You don't have to. It's fine.

I'm not good at asking for things.

Not things that I want and certainly not things that I need. Favors? Forget it. I’ll handle it myself. I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to impose.

It’s not difficult to figure out where this instinct comes from. Or, I guess, it’s not difficult for a trained therapist to figure it out. Like many other things I had blocked out before the paper thin shell of my unresolved grief cracked open and years of issues and anxieties spilled out all over the pristine, carefully calculated and blissfully unaware bubble i’d built around me, I never connected the hyper-awareness of what “my place” is in a friendship or social situation with my childhood.