31/05/2026
⛔️ WHAT IF WE DON’T KNOW
One of the things I have noticed repeatedly in working primarily with survivors of s*xual trauma is that sometimes the difficulty is not simply saying no.
Sometimes people are no longer fully sure how to recognise, interpret, trust, or stay connected to what their body is actually communicating in the first place.
What is a yes?
What is a no?
What is a maybe?
What is people pleasing?
What is a fawn response?
What is genuine desire?
What is fear, obligation, guilt, shutdown, or conflict avoidance?
If through experience, relationships, trauma, family dynamics, or wider social conditioning, saying no has felt unsafe, ignored, punished, emotionally costly, or has led to disconnection, it can make sense that many people learn to override themselves.
And this often does not only appear in s*xual relationships.
It can show up in:
agreeing to plans when exhausted, taking on additional work when already overwhelmed, struggling to decline requests, saying yes automatically, hugging people out of obligation, tolerating touch you do not want, or finding yourself unable to tell the difference between discomfort and desire.
I think rebuilding trust with yourself and slowly learning the language of your body can become fundamental in recognising what genuinely feels like:
yes
no
maybe
not yet
I need more information
I need more time
I changed my mind
And then there is the separate process of learning how to communicate those things with other people whilst also navigating the emotions, fear, guilt, shame, or nervous system responses that can arise alongside it.
This is one of the reasons I value somatic work alongside talking therapy. Sometimes people do not only need intellectual insight. Sometimes they also need support reconnecting with the felt experience of themselves underneath adaptation, survival, fawning, and self-override.