The Sacred “No”

Like many women, I didn't grow up confident in my "no." I remember my mother pressuring me to hug people I didn't want to. I was taught that being polite and going along with others’ needs was more important than my “no.”

I remember feeling these people enclose me with their strange bodies as I tensed my little body up and faked a smile. If I tried to refuse, I can still hear the deep sigh of disapproval that would come from my mother. I learned that my “no” wasn’t important, compared to what others wanted from me.

I know I’m not alone in this.

Young girls are often taught that our "no" is not only inconvenient, but even hurtful. This has consequences. Later, it can be hard to find and speak our "no" as teenagers and young women.

Lacking confidence around our “no” can lead to disastrous results in our first forays into sexual relationships. We freeze up, we say “no” politely like it’s an apology, or we try to communicate our “no” passively through our body language.

Even when we gather the courage to say "no," we're not taught what to do if someone who should care (like a sexual partner) doesn't listen.

A lot of women — myself included — had sexual debuts that were non-consensual, when the young men who were our partners didn't listen to our "no." Maybe it was a verbal “no,” or maybe it was a nonverbal “no” like shutting down, freezing, or moving our bodies away.

Maybe the freeze response — which is involuntary — took over because we were overpowered or afraid. Maybe our bodies remembered earlier sexual abuse and dissociated — also involuntarily — in self-protection. I know too many of us — myself included — had sexual experiences where we said “no” and it happened anyway.

If you are a woman reading this, it is likely that you have paid a huge price for the loss of your sacred "no." You have likely had unwanted or even non-consensual sexual experiences where your verbal or nonverbal "no" was disregarded. And it's hard to call it "rape" when the perpetrator was someone you loved and cared about, but that doesn’t change that it was.

It took me a long time to recognize that. We each have our own journey to come to terms with what's been taken from us — including the power and sovereignty of our sacred "no."

I want to be clear: our ability to decide for ourselves and our bodies is sacred.  Our "no" is sacred.

Finding the embodied power of our sacred "no" is crucial work for healing sexual and relational trauma and recovering our rightful boundaries in the world. As women, we can't be in our power without owning our sacred "no."

Often, we're so used to saying "yes" when we don't mean it that it becomes automatic, and we lose touch with our needs and how they feel in our bodies.

The implicit message from our culture to women is, we're not supposed to have any needs. After years and decades of this conditioning, who can blame us for not knowing what we need or want? After so much time not listening to our bodies and overriding our inner "no," it can be hard to find and feel it again.

But all that can change. What we've learned about neuroplasticity in the last decade confirms it: our nervous systems, how we feel, how we orient are always capable of change. Knowing that, the challenge becomes, how do we reteach ourselves our sacred "no"?

The beginning of the journey to find our "no" is to recognize that our "no" is sacred.

The definition of “sacred” that I’m using here is something that is regarded with great respect and reverence by someone. Something that is sacred has value, just in its being.

Our “no” is something that belongs only to us, as we choose what we accept and allow in our lives. Our “no” sets a boundary. And we have the choice to put boundaries around everything that matters of us – our bodies, our energy, our attention, our time, and more.

Claiming the power of our "no" to navigate our energy and time is essential to live an authentic life.

Feeling our authentic and embodied "no" is a learning process. It requires an ability to sense and feel for it in our physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts.

For many women, we stop paying attention to how we feel because it's inconvenient to push back and say “no.” The world tells us in so many ways that our needs come a distant second to the needs of others around us, in our families, at work, in our communities.

It's easy to trade our needs for acceptance, social approval, and the ease of others around us. We don't want to be "difficult." We don't want to cause "problems." But when we see our needs as disruptive, we dismiss ourselves and deny our own power.

The only way back is to recognize our needs. To notice the need for “no” when we feel overwhelmed, shutdown, and resentful. And to have the courage to claim our needs and our sacred "no."

For so many of us, this involves reprogramming the conditioning we learned about “no” not being polite or even safe. It involves us looking for and listening to our inner “no” and noticing how it feels in our bodies, so we can recognize when “no” is arising.

We need to listen for the subtleties because our “no” has likely been dismissed and overridden for so long.

Notice how these phrases land in your body:

"No, that won't work for me."

"No, I'm not able to do that for you right now."

"No, I'd prefer not to."

"No, that's not a practice I follow."

Are you tempted to say "No, thank you," to soften the discomfort of others, to appease their disappointment? Why is their disappointment yours to relieve?

When we make apologies for our “no,” we betray our boundaries and diminish our own power. “No, thank you,” is often a bid to caretake how someone else feels about our “no.” We’re unsure how it will be received, so we apologize for it in advance, instead of centering our needs and our power to choose what is right for us.

When we start to find and feel for our "no," memories and even flashbacks can come rushing into awareness. All the times we were dismissed, overruled, overpowered. It can be a lot. We might feel grief, or even rage, that our “no” was not heard or respected by people we trusted.

That's why it's essential to have an embodiment practice where we make space to feel the sensations of these experiences that get trapped in the body and often hold unresolved trauma. We have to feel them and move them through, in a way our nervous systems can integrate.

Once we start to recognize the sensations of our "no" in our bodies, we become available for our "yes." Only when we fully and deeply feel our "no" and its body-based sensations does our "yes" start to become clear.

And our "yes" is not just a "yeah, I guess so" — it's a full-bodied, ecstatic "yes." It's unmistakable. The flow, the goodness, the groundedness of our “yes” is palpable.

But most of us never get to fully feel our sacred "no", so our "yes" is wishy-washy, disembodied, given half-heartedly, and often with a side portion of overwhelm and resentment.

The amazing thing about finding our sacred "no" is that we realize that anything other than an ecstatic "yes" is a sacred "no."

This is important. Anything other than an embodied "yes" is a "no." Even — and especially — when it is inconvenient.

Our "no" does not care if we already said yes but didn't mean it. Our "no" does not mean we now need to caretake other people's feelings and experiences. The only experience our "no" is about is our own.

Tending to our sacred "no" means we are preparing the garden to receive the glory of a "yes" that is deeply authentic. People can feel that kind of "yes,” because it is powerful and magnetic. Our full-bodied "yes" gives others permission to find their own.

Speaking our sacred "no" is a radical act of self-love that comes from our own center. It demands we take care of our own needs and emotions and leave other people's reactions for them to manage on their own.

The authenticity, space and sovereignty we create with our sacred “no” is palpable. It is part of showing up with love for ourselves, aligned with the truth of our own being. 

I hope this encourages you to explore your embodied and sacred "no."

It's okay if you need to rewire some habits that veer towards people-pleasing at the expense of yourself. I have the privilege of doing this boundary work with my beloved clients in my private practice. Remember, neuroplasticity means it's never too late. I promise.

We matter. Our "no" matters. With it, we draw boundaries where they need to be. We grow our space and sovereignty. We acknowledge that we have power to determine our own lives.

I want that for every one of us. Here’s to the power of our sacred “no.”

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Thank you for reading. I have a few spaces open for the trauma resolution work I offer in my private practice, so get in touch if you’d like to learn more.

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