How to Say No

FOSNO, or the Fear of Saying No, is no laughing matter.

BlogAllison ScharmannMarch 14, 2024no, how to say no, saying no, self care, boundaries, communication, social anxiety, anxiety Comment

4 signs you should be friends with someone

We’ve already talked about how to know it’s time for a friend break-up, but how do you know that someone would make a good friend? Here are four “green flags” that suggest you might want to keep someone in your life.

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Three tips for surviving the holidays

Whether you’re spending the holidays with family, with friends, or with yourself this year, your celebrations probably won’t live up to the impossibly wholesome fireside gatherings that the media depicts as the norm. Well, the good news is that no matter how many pictures of glistening ham you see on Instagram, nobody else’s holiday is going to be perfect, either. So, we’ve come up with some tips for making the most out of your holidays, whatever they look like.

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Three relationship tips you won’t find in Cosmo

Whether you’re looking for a good fit with a friend, a romantic partner, or even a new workplace, you’ve probably heard tips like “communication is key” and “stick with someone/somewhere that encourages you to grow” and “go with your gut.” Sometimes even those clichés can be useful, but there are some other “tells” about how any given relationship is going that can be easy to miss if you’re not looking for them, especially since they aren’t as culturally emphasized as platitudes like “follow your heart.” Of course, these aren’t going to be the *only* things you should pay attention to, but they can all be easy to overlook, particularly if you are focusing some portion of your energy on appearing desirable to the other person/ workplace/ whatever.

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The single most surprising way to get close to people

We'll cut to the chase. It’s boundaries, or more specifically, setting boundaries liberally and respecting them consistently.

Surprised? Think about it this way. Boundaries come on a spectrum, which looks different for each person-- there are smaller boundaries, which might look like, “Please lower your voice; my roommates are sleeping” and bigger boundaries, which might be more like, “Please don’t come to my house again.”

What a lot of folks don’t realize is that setting and respecting smaller boundaries are the single best way to avoid the big boundaries.

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Three steps to make yourself bulletproof to criticism

I used to be awful at receiving critical feedback or anything I perceived as rejection. I was so bad at it that it led me to quit things I otherwise enjoyed. I went to musical theater camp as a middle schooler and got turned down for big parts for two summers, so I quit. As a dance team member in high school, I had to hear about how I could improve on a regular basis, so I quit. The pattern pervaded pretty much all aspects of my life for years.

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If you have trouble skipping the small talk, this might explain why

I recently found myself in two almost identical social situations with one small difference that changed everything about the way the interaction went down.

A few months ago, I had some new friends over my house when one of my friends took advantage of a brief silence:

“Can I ask you all a weird question?”

We all nodded and leaned forward a tiny bit in our chairs.

“Is a hamburger a sandwich?”

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TIPS, STORIES, AND insPiration