The Word "No" - new article up on Starlight News [View All]

[Nancy Waterman]

http://starlightnews.com

The word “no” is the most difficult word in the English language. It is the most treacherous to say and the most stressful to hear. No one likes to have limits set upon their wants, which is what “no” is really about. And no one enjoys the angry or abandoning reaction that setting those limits can engender. But those who are unable to tolerate these uncomfortable emotions have not successfully graduated to a state of true emotional maturity and psychological health. Such dysfunction extends across a broad continuum, from minor neurosis to major psychopathology. But it is inevitably this inability to tolerate the setting of limits or to set limits that is at the source of most of the problems in the world today.

Whether it be the relationship between parent and child, husband and wife, or an individual and the law, the capacity to honor and respect the appropriate boundaries defines the health of the relationship. Those who manipulate and bully because they cannot tolerate a refusal, those who are frightened to stand up for themselves because they fear abandonment and anger, and those who rape or steal because the laws of society do not hold them back are all examples of the enormous dysfunction that can come from a lack of healthy boundaries and the confident inner self that maintains them. In the workings of today’s Republican-dominated government, there are numerous examples of an inability to set or tolerate limits, a pattern which has led to an increasingly massive amount of government dysfunction at the highest levels.

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