I’m not going to learn new skills in verbal self-defense or practice them well on my own, any more than a punching bag teaches me how to fight off an attacker. I can practice using my words, but I wind up over-explaining on here, and thinking our loud, and that’s one of the things I want to replace with, more simply, “stop. time out. No.” It should not be this hard. When my right to say no is entirely hypothetical, it’s crazy-making.