The Importance of Saying No
By Sadie Rose Honchock
Self-preservation has never come naturally to me. This is something quite clearly indicated by my Crohn’s Disease diagnosis and my insufferable nature as a people-pleaser. The only way it’s possible to get me to say no is if I’m either angry or completely ridden with anxiety about what’s being proposed. Even then, there’s still a fifty-fifty shot of my agreeing to something.
I was always a people pleaser, even before I got sick, however, once my Crohn’s Disease diagnosis more or less landed in my lap through the simplest comment I’ve ever heard a doctor make; “You look pretty good for someone with Crohn’s,” my need for control and validation rapidly increased, focusing down into two veins of my life; my schoolwork and my activism.
The need to have control over my schoolwork had me hunting for any scrap of approval from teachers in classes that I enjoyed. For example, when I was twelve, this need to have control over my schoolwork would often take over when it came to my Algebra and Chemistry classes, and it later motivated me to boost my GPA when I was placed in a homeschooling program.
When it came to activism, I applied to every place I could come across, and over the course of eighteen months, I’d accumulated twenty four organizations I was doing work for.
Yes, you read that right.
Twenty four.
(if you’re looking for recommendations on places to do work for, message me on instagram (@_.xirasois._) I’m not even joking.)
All of that didn’t even count the organization I founded a few weeks ago in light of the latest Black Lives Matter protests in America.
I believed that I could juggle my work for all twenty-four organizations long-term, and for a while I did, all the while telling my mother I was only involved with three. My own ambition came crashing down on me once I got to my dad’s house for the summer. There, I was told to stop obsessing over my phone for three days and take care of myself. At that point the complete and utter anxiety had become reflexive. I was extremely stressed about deadlines and meetings that didn’t exist, and yet I didn’t have enough motivation to handle any of the business that was real. I was suffering from what every activist dreads: burnout.
When I brought this frustration up to my dad, he pointed out that maybe being involved with twenty-four organizations, being in summer school, and trying to incorporate some me-time would be too much. Summer school couldn’t really be ransacked and neither could the me-time, meaning the organizations had to go.
After a while, I was able to narrow it down to four, which was deemed a reasonable number. To this day, I’m still working on learning to say no, since my neediness seems to have redirected itself to my relationships with my family, but stepping down and respectfully saying “This is too much,” without even having to apologise was one of the most freeing things I’ve ever done.