No, Gracefully: Learning to Say No with Confidence: Taking Charge of Your Life Begins Here. Reclaim Your Autonomy by Putting an End to People Pleasing.

Are you embroiled in relationships that you don’t want? Do you fear the fallout that could come from refusing to grant favors or respecting your own boundaries, and then feel bitter, anxious, or guilty? Does your happiness depend on external sources? If your people-pleasing or codependent tendencies are negatively affecting you and those around you, you may need to implement completely new—and healthy—interpersonal boundaries.

Psychotherapist Nubia Santos, MS, MEd, LMHC, CST, offers you transformative principles that will help you understand the negative effects of people pleasing. Within these pages, you’ll learn to

• Identify the connection between people pleasing—or “sociotropy”—and low self-esteem;
• break maladaptive habits that involve pleasing others; and
• get control of the impulse to be a subjective pleaser and instead become the objective creator of your own reality.

When you say yes but really mean no, you reject your own and infringe on others’ autonomy. Simply put, you’re trying to control something that’s not yours to control. Drawing from general, developmental, and behavioral psychology, Santos offers real-world examples and reflective journal prompts to help you realign and enforce your personal boundaries.

You can change your relational style—if you let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Nubia Santos, MS, MEd, LMHC, CST, is a licensed psychotherapist and sex therapist. She is a current doctoral candidate in general psychology.

Santos received her bachelor's degree in psychology and her master's degrees in psychology and education. She specializes in traditional psychotherapy, couples therapy, group therapy, and coaching. In addition to her private practice, Santos has worked in community behavioral health care, case management, workshop development and facilitation, public speaking, and postsecondary teaching.

Santos lived in New York for most of her life but currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. She is the proud mother of three adult children.