For this particular coaching session, I meet with Aïssatou, a project manager in her thirties, who sits down opposite me with a sigh: “Here comes that tiredness again, like an old habit…” She immediately begins to reel off her list of responsibilities. The projects piling up. The last-minute requests. The meetings she agrees to “to be helpful”. Everything seems urgent, important and impossible to refuse.

But something strikes me: she never talks about herself, her needs, or what she really wants. So I ask her: “When you say yes to all that… what are you saying no to?” She looks up, surprised. She had never considered the question that way before.

Beyond Workload: A Deeper Kind of Exhaustion

We move forward step by step through our sessions. I invite her to revisit a few situations where she said yes even though she would have preferred to say no. She finds three. Then five. Then eight… And each time, the same pattern emerges:

• she perceives the request as urgent, even when it isn’t
• she immediately imagines the other person’s disappointment, or even their anger
• she pushes aside her own need for time or rest

I ask her, “What would happen if you said no?” “I’d disappoint people. I’d come across as difficult. They’d rely on me less,” she says. Her answers are automatic, almost mechanical. They don’t come from the adult she is today, but from a much earlier place.

Exploring the Source of This Automatic Pilot

I tell her about the “drivers” in transactional analysis, those inner injunctions that shape our behaviour without us even noticing. Aïssatou listens carefully, then murmurs, “I think mine is… please others.”

This driver isn’t just a relational preference. It’s a survival strategy learned early on: being kind, available, keeping the peace to avoid rejection. We explore this together. As a child, she was praised when she was gentle and accommodating. Otherwise, she was told she was making things difficult. She begins to understand that her exhaustion is tied to this silent injunction.

At the heart of the discussion: an inner journey

During our sessions, we revist a recent situation where she accepted a task even though she was already overwhelmed. I ask her to replay the scene and analyse it. “When he asked you to take on that assignment, what did you feel physically?” “A tightness in my chest and a slight dizziness,” she replies. “And what did you think?” “I have to say yes, otherwise he’ll be disappointed.”

We focus on that precise moment — the moment the driver takes over. I invite her to imagine pressing “pause,” breathing, and letting another, more grounded voice emerge. She tries: “I understand your request… but I won’t be able to take it on this week.” She blushes. “It feels strange. I feel like I’m being selfish.” Saying no, for someone driven by Please Others, is not a trivial act. It is an act of courage. At one point, she stops and says, “I think I’ve been confusing saying no with rejecting someone. As if saying no to a request meant saying no to the person.” It’s a turning point.

First awareness, then readjustiment

We round off our sessions by identifying three simple yet fundamental micro-actions to put into practice:

• Take 10 seconds before answering: breathe, check how you’re feeling, and distinguish between a knee-jerk reaction and a genuine choice.
• Formulate a nuanced “no”: “I can’t right now, but I’ll look at it later,” “I prefer to be honest: I’m not able to take this on.”
• Observe the automatic ‘yes’ responses: note them down, without judgement, to understand when the driver kicks in.

Aïssatou leaves feeling lighter. Not because her workload has decreased, but because she has begun to reclaim agency over what was silently governing her. As she walks out the door, she softly says, “I think I can learn to say yes to myself too.”

And what about you? Are you feeling overwhelmed by work or exhausted? Perhaps now is the time to talk about it and explore the underlying reasons for this feeling. Let’s come up with some solutions together!