When someone's imposing something upon you, they're trying to remove your choice (and overstepping your boundaries)
She makes the point that:
"Imposers dress up their boundary busting behaviour and demands as 'requests'. Just say no and then you'll see that they were never asking..."
Yes, that's exactly it: "they were never asking". It was a command, albeit a 'disguised' one. Saying no is like challenging Darth Vader to a fight to the death, because then comes the change of tone, the anger and the sulking. And their sending you the non-verbal message that they.are.not.happy.with.you AT ALL. I'm starting to suspect that these 'requests' are not just about getting NS but also an exercise of their power. It's a power struggle. So every now and then they come up with something they want you to do just to see if you'll do it and reassure themselves that they still have the 'upper hand' (i.e. power/control over us). Because if this was simply a suggestion or a request, there would be no issue when we say no, but that is never the case, is it?
I feel like I'm back 5 years ago, at the time when I had started to say no to my sister, and now I'm about to go through the same process with my mother all over again. I wonder what will be revealed if I continue to refuse her