Staying calm and in full possession of your inner assuredness is the key to saying NO.

I can be a beast, savage and vicious, lashing out ruthlessly even when it doesn’t fit the receiver’s perceived “crime”.

And then, once the red mist has evaporated, after my vision has returned from blurry rage, fury becomes remorse and shame lurks in my shadow.

My contrition wakes me in the witching hour, 3am, and makes me replay the episode in a loop, changing the conversation, rewriting the exchange in each spiral.

There are usually two scenarios, one where I am still the wounded, rewording my rage as I return with more force and humiliate the other person…more, more.

The other plays out as a reasonable conversation in which I calmly express my needs in a focused way, like they tell you to do on an Oprah/ Mel Robbins podcast.

I am an addict. Alcohol, sugar, cigarettes all get the better of me if I let them. Add ATD (Addicted To Drama) to that sad and unholy brew.

This affliction has me trapped in a vortex, an eddy of hype where my life is continually amped up to full power; at volume nine when the situation really needs a whisper, or sotto voce at most.

Even my correspondence is on speed. My WhatsApps involve line after screaming line of capital letters, many, many exclamation marks and emojis. I am the queen of hyperbole.

I’ve spent a lifetime on the therapy couch and lead such an examined life that it’s painful to stand back and witness me in full exhausting technicolour.

I know the root cause of this radioactive behaviour, but as his aged patient said to the man who invented psychoanalysis, Dr Sigmund Freud, “Now that I know why I wet the bed, how do I stop?”

Boundaries. I don’t have any, though I work daily to build them.

I have discovered that I have impaired judgement – a common area of struggle for addicts – which apparently is as self-destructive as the addiction itself.

When my mother died (I was 42) I found a letter she’d left for me, written in her neat looping script.

In it she told me how much she’d loved me, how proud she was of me, how she’d prayed that I would have a happy and fulfilled life; how she would watch over me always, all I had to do was look up. I cried.

She also said, kindly, that I should watch “my vicious streak” advising that I learn how to control my “lashing out” which was so left-field it left people in the firing line reeling and perplexed. I cringed.

Don’t leave things so long that when you finally react, you overreact, my mother wrote, something my therapists (there have been many) have raised time and time again.

The trick is to know what you need and to make those needs heard.

After a lifetime of pushing my own needs aside, of trying to be as accommodating to others as possible, I’m a bit confused as to what my needs actually are. There you have it!

I suppose it also pays to know what your limits are, and to communicate those limits so there are no grey areas in your dealings with other people.

The therapy books say that feeling controlled by others because of one’s inability to say no often means lashing out to regain a sense of power and control.

So why can’t I say NO?

I like to think that I’m powerful and capable. I’ve been a boss and led large teams. I’m articulate, so I can, should I choose, express my needs.

The problem is that I lack the clarity that is key if you are to make your needs heard and understood.

My brain goes into waffle mode, thoughts jumbled, breath short, temperature slightly raised. I find myself so distressed that I can’t dredge up the sense of what it is that I want to say.

Some people recommend journaling as a tool to marshal your thoughts, while reflecting on past interactions, identifying where the boundaries ought to be. Which ones have people crossed that have turned you into the Gorgon, Medusa, with a headful of spitting snakes.

Practice mindfulness, I’ve been told, paying particular attention to interactions that cause discomfort.

Assertive, not aggressive, is another suggestion. Good point. (Refer to the question above from the therapy-couch-patient to Dr Freud).

The key, everyone will tell you, is to be consistent.

Prioritising self-care, a friend recently said, came with a host of feelgood factors. Try it she said. I wanted to punch her in the face but didn’t.

#MeToo, the social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse and sexual harassment in which survivors shared their experiences, showed women the possibilities of a whole set of new boundaries.

Well, old ones, but a reminder that it was possible to exercise the power of NO.

The office sexual inuendo, the inappropriate touching in the lift, being sent uncomfortable-making messages or disturbing photographs; all so familiar to women in the workplace. #MeToo defined the boundaries and allowed women (and men) to stand up for themselves. Some took it too far, but that’s the way of things.

The world is a very different place than it used to be in my mother’s time.

I suppose I have to catch up with it. Individual freedoms have never been more empowering.

It’s time to stand up and say NO, quietly but firmly.

My resolution: to say NO politely, kindly, and in a way that leaves me, and the person I’m saying NO to, with our dignity intact.