You Don't Know You Can Say No

Hard to practice a Sacred No when you think you're not allowed

Heads up: I mention sex and rape in this post as the extreme end of what happens when we have not deconditioned ourselves from the automatic yes we were conditioned to. Also note maybe rape happens to men less often, or maybe they report it even less than women. If you need them, 1in6 has resources for men, and RAINN offers resources for everyone.

Not being able to say no may be one of the most dangerous things we do to ourselves, especially when we don’t examine how often this happens. It’s hard and, at times, impossible to say no, even when we desperately do not want to do the thing we’re being asked (or are being compelled) to do.

I was abused from an early age by more than one perpetrator. As a young adult, I was raped more than once. I’ve done the work on this and am very comfortable discussing past events - meaning I want to be clear I am not in any pain while writing this post.

I’ve noticed that when I write about intense things, I often get a lot of upset messages. Trust me, I’ve really sifted the jewels from these ashes and alchemized the energies into gold. If I’m writing about it publicly, I’m writing from the healed place, not the wound.

When I was 17, I went on a night fishing trip to the lake with my boyfriend and his uncle. I had no idea that I was in any danger. I liked them both, we were fishing, the lake was beautiful, and I was happy.

I was offered a quaalude as they both had just taken one. I did NOT want to take that drug, and yet I watched as my hand went out to accept the pill as I was mumbling something vague about not wanting one.

I was already exiting the scene and observing. Not once did it occur to me to say a vehement no, to take it and toss it away, or to do anything other than what I was being told to do. Not once did it occur to me that this entire evening was a pre-planned event. #lambtoslaughter.

This ended in a drug-facilitated rape. I was told they’d take my car and leave me in the woods, miles, and miles from a main road if I didn’t comply. I wasn’t going to not comply even if I hadn’t been brain-addled by drugs.

At that age, I was deeply conditioned to comply with any request a man made of me, whether that was to pass the salt or give up my body. My nervous system was well versed in the freeze-fawn-fall-down mode.

I won’t share how many other times sex was requested or demanded of me or taken from me, and I immediately went into zombie mode and “complied.”

This freeze-up, this conditioned response to not resist, this ability to override a body that’s screaming inside while showing nothing outside, is why victims don’t report to the police and why, when they do, the cases, more often than not, are lost.

On a slightly smaller scale, how many times have we had sex with people we love when we didn’t want to? Are all those times rape? Are they consensual at all? I don’t know, and I wouldn’t even attempt to answer that question for anyone other than myself.

When I was a therapist and had someone truly struggling to set boundaries to their own detriment and making no progress, I had to ask the abuse/rape questions. 100% of the time, there was an abusive childhood event or series of events that indelibly branded on the brain of a small human that saying no equaled disaster and pain. This branding was done through actions or threats of actions if compliance was not immediate and without fuss, tears, or protests.

This is how conditioning happens; the aftereffects - not saying no in these cases - are the conditioned response in action.

I feel like the operational definition or basic understanding of conditioned response is often left out of conversations, especially in the Human Design world. I see loads of people talking about deconditioning and a lot of nodding heads when it’s so clear that a basic understanding of behaviorism is missing.

So look, if we’re shown a batch of roly-poly golden retriever puppies and shocked with a cattle prod, we will pretty quickly be terrified of or even hate puppies. If we are shown a tank of snakes and told by an enthusiastic teacher how beautiful and ancient they are and what a wonderful thing to see in the wild they can be, we learn to at least respect, if not love, the snake kingdom.

Some people eat horsemeat on special occasions, and some people would rather starve to death first. Conditioned response from our cultures.

Some people go to school and love the gold stars and their relationships with teachers, and so they love learning. Conditioned response.

Some people (most people) are not made for our archaic education system, can’t help but rebel and suffer the consequences, and so hate formal learning. Conditioned response.

Deconditioning means finding those conditioned responses and breaking the connections between Stimulus and Response. This is the core of addiction work, and create your own reality work.

This process can happen in so many simple but not easy ways. Maybe you need to do that in therapy, or maybe you can do it on your own with a coach or some great books, but the bottom line is the unpairing of stimulus and response is required.

Deconditioning the negative conditioned responses to the stimulus of money is what Train Your Body to Wealth is all about. We have metric fuck tons of conditioned responses to money that aren’t even ours!

Conditioning and deconditioning require us to grow up and take responsibility for what’s happening beneath our awareness. How do we get awareness? Ask for it. Every single day, take 10 minutes to ask for awareness and then sit in silence and listen—it’s that simple.

So on an even less horrifying scale, how many times do we say yes to things that exhaust, inconvenience, lead to burnout, or enrage us, but it doesn’t even cross our minds to say no to those requests?

How many of those automatic yeses are coming from those conditioned responses? All of them, yo. ALL of them.

If we can’t say no and set boundaries, the energy of self-betrayal devastates us. We need to expose the parts of us who perceive saying no as a death threat on the far end and just getting in trouble on the less intense end.

The process looks like this:

• we start saying no

• experience the discomfort of it

• notice how hard people push for compliance and breathe

• notice how hard it is to stay firm in your Sacred No while breathing

• notice the times you give in and how that feels

• notice and celebrate the times you stand firm, and the world keeps on spinning

• notice how over time, your Sacred No comes out faster and easier and more guiltless than you ever imagined it could

When you get to that point, hallelujah, Jesus, you are deconditioned. You have devoured the power held between Stimulus and Response, and now you are a true alchemist.

This is what’s meant in Human Design when you’re told it can take a few years to ferret out conditioned responses that are the “Not-Self” and learn what your Authentic Self is.

This is what’s meant by Open Centers being more vulnerable to being conditioned. This is why it matters to know your Open/Defined Centers and start using your Type, Strategy, and Authority FIRST!

Ok does this explanation help you start to consider maybe sometimes possibly saying a Sacred No to anything you just don’t want to do? It matters so much more than you know.

The turbulence we’re experiencing is rooted in the themes of power. To thrive in the transitions, you MUST get a grip on what you allow to happen in your system on a minute-by-minute basis.

Stepping up to the plate and becoming a spiritual grown-up adult is imperative to thriving even when things fall apart and golden yellow butter costs actual fucking gold.

If you need a low-cost made-on shoestring budget, Shadow Blessings is available for $49. It is my very first online course, and it’s…umm…rough production-wise, but it’s damn solid techniques and works if you work it.

XO,

LMW

ICYMI resources can be found here for sexual abuse and assault: 1in6 has resources for men, and RAINN offers resources for everyone.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash