Knowing how to say no is to set limits.

The context can be:

• professional, with his hierarchy, his colleagues, his collaborators,
• in a business relationship with customers
• family, with spouse, children, parents
• social, with his friends, his neighbours.

It is more difficult to say no to someone who is intimidating or, professionally, to someone to whom you are hierarchically attached.

And we also have to say no to ourselves but we may be unable to do so “it's stronger than me”, for behavioral or mental reasons.

The case of Delphine

The context

Delphine is a 35-year-old marketing assistant. She returns to work after a 6-month absence due to burnout. She finds her job, her manager, her colleagues and after 1 ½ months, she does not feel very well. On the advice of the occupational physician, she turns to Lact.

Situation analysis

Delphine thought she would find her place, as before, but she realizes that it is more difficult than she imagined. She finds that the environment has changed and puts a lot of pressure on herself to do everything on her own. Her manager entrusts her with a lot of tasks that she considers unrewarding, he always asks her for more, she says. So, she finds him ungrateful , because he does not give her all the consideration, the recognition, which she expects from his investment.

And she begins to doubt and fear that what led her to her first burnout will happen again.

In fact, Delphine carries within her a personal fragility; she is afraid of being rejected by others. And this idea terrifies her.

Chez Delphine has a logic of belief . In order not to be rejected, she thinks that she must satisfy everyone, be irreproachable, even go beyond the desires of others. In this way, she thinks she can escape the risk of rejection. Her goal is also to be appreciated for who she is and not for what she does.

There is also a control logic . She wants to do everything as best as possible, anticipate, overinvest in her work.

Finally, there is a logic of avoidance because she refuses to ask for any help whatsoever from her colleagues or her manager.

She is actually in a trap. Because the more she does, the more she anticipates the desires of others, the more she wants to satisfy them, the more she is appreciated for what she does, which is not her objective, and not for what she is. And she is obviously in a state of mind that forbids her to say no. So she's heading straight for exhaustion.

Lact support

In our Lact Assistance device we open a consultation which gives rise to a first interview which we call “operating diagnosis”.

After this diagnosis, she decided on the advice of the occupational physician to continue with us and we did 8 sessions.

During these sessions, we sought to relax all these logics of belief, control and avoidance.

To mobilize Delphine, we told her an anecdote about a little farm pig which, after having saved several members of the farmer's family, ended up being eaten.

This anecdote was obviously told with extreme precautions of language but constituted a lever of persuasion to reverse Delphine's behavior, to make her understand that it is not because we say no to someone that the relationship is compromised. and inevitably leads to rejection.

We have also worked on desensitizing to rejection so that the signs of rejection perceived by Delphine are no longer experienced as a drama.

And we gave him little exercises to do to test his ability to manage situations of disagreement. And, little by little, she realized that she was getting there, that knowing how to say no without provoking rejection reactions was doable and within her reach.