Episode 159 - Why Your “Yes” Feels So Hard to Find
The reason you feel stuck is not because you’re weak or broken, even though your brain may be telling you that. You’re stuck because you’ve gotten so good at being fine for so long that you and everyone around you don’t know anything different. Even when you can understand that, there’s often another layer underneath it: this pattern is so ingrained that you don’t even know what you want anymore. In this episode, I’m breaking down why your “no” has become so loud, and how you can start to find your way back to your “yes” and the life you actually want. Here’s what I cover:
Why your brain is already listing reasons something won’t work before your “yes” can fully form
How years of deferring to everyone else can disconnect you from yourself and what you want
How a part of you has learned to shut down your “yes” to protect you from disappointment
Why you can’t logic your way past these patterns and what it looks like to build a relationship with them instead
How learning to hear your “yes” again is a skill you can build by starting small and practicing over time
Find Sara here:
pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
00:59
I got an email a few weeks ago that I've thought a lot about because it's so common. I had written to someone, I'll call her Valerie, and told her something that I don't think we talk a lot about.
01:11
I told her she wasn't stuck because she was weak. She wasn't stuck because she was broken. She was stuck because she'd gotten so good at being fine that she'd accidentally convinced everyone around her, including herself, that she was fine and didn't need anything or very much.
01:30
And then she wrote back and she said, this is so good. This is exactly how I feel. But the trouble is, what if you don't know anymore what you want? You just know what you don't. And I've been thinking a lot about that ever since because it is very common to hear that from the women that I work with.
01:48
And I think it deserves a real answer. So that's what this episode is about. Here's what I told Valerie. The no comes in loud and clear first because the resentment fueling it has been building longer.
02:04
The no has had years to accumulate evidence. It has a whole case file. And every time you went along with something you didn't want, there was a little entry in that case file. Every time you swallowed the thing that you needed to say, every time you showed up for everyone else and then came home empty.
02:25
I'm telling you, the no has receipts. The yes is quieter. And there are a few reasons for that. And I'm going to walk you through all of them because one of them might even be yours. Reason number one, the brain gets there first.
02:42
The first reason that yes is hard to feel is that your brain has gotten so fast at giving you all of the reasons that something won't work that intercepts that yes or the want before it can fully form.
03:00
And I'm not talking about conscious thinking. I'm talking about the split second response that happens before you even fully let yourself know that you want something or how much you want it. Here's what it feels like.
03:16
You start to feel a pull towards something, more connection with your partner, less obligation with a particular friend, or something that you actually really want to say at work. And before that desire can finish forming, your brain is already 10 steps ahead.
03:36
What if they pull back? What if they take it wrong? What if I say it and it makes everything worse? What if I want this and I don't get it? What if it causes problems? What if there's an argument? What if, what if, what if?
03:48
And suddenly you have a dozen reasons that are fully formed about why it won't work before the yes has even had a chance to really be fully formed itself. All the reasons why it is a yes. It's like the avalanche of all of that good girl programming of being responsible for other people's reactions, responsible for how the emotions that they're going to have, what happens, what if, what if, what if that avalanche starts subconsciously the second you're even pulled towards something you want.
04:27
And so it overpowers all the reasons why you might want to do the thing, want to say the thing, and that yes doesn't stand a chance. I want you to notice this happening to you because it is so subconscious and it is so sneaky.
04:45
And what ends up happening is we walk away thinking that we made a good decision and we're not necessarily happy with it, but it just seems self-evident that I can't have this for the avalanche of reasons.
05:01
And we never fully get to feel the reasons why we should have it, why we do deserve it, how it might feel to have it, how it might make life better, how it might make the authenticity and the richness that we want to be living our lives more fully formed and part of our lives.
05:22
The yes doesn't stand a chance. This is not something that's wrong with you, right? I love how our brains as women, we just go there like, oh, is there something wrong with me? No, it's not a character flaw.
05:37
This is just a nervous system that has been doing this job for a very long time. You learned early that wanting things out loud was risky and your nervous system gets very, very efficient at protecting you from that risk.
05:57
That is all that is happening. Reason number two, you lost the thread. The second reason is quieter and I mean, if I'm being honest, actually a little sadder, right? Sometimes you can't feel the yes because you have genuinely lost connection to yourself.
06:16
You've lost the thread back to you. When you have spent years, maybe decades organizing your life around what everybody else needs, what everybody else feels, what everybody else expects from you, your own wants go further and further down the list, if they're even on the list, and they start to feel even a little suspicious.
06:37
Like I talk to women who, when I ask them what they want, they go blank, not because nothing is there, but because they genuinely don't know how to access that part of them anymore. They know what needs to happen.
06:51
They know what is expected of them. They know what they should do to make other people happy. But what do they want? That's a different language. And it's almost like they've forgotten how to speak it or they stopped speaking it a long time ago.
07:05
I had a client once who told me that she hadn't had a preference about where to go out to eat for dinner in 15 years. She was not joking. She had just gotten so good at deferring, so practiced at saying, you know what, whatever you want, it's fine with me.
07:20
I don't mind. That she actually stopped knowing. And that preference had atrophied from disuse. If that resonates with you, if something in you just went, oh, okay, I think that's me. I want you to hear this.
07:36
Again, not a character flaw. It's not who you are. This is a pattern that you developed for good reasons to protect yourself from the disappointment and the punishment that did happen to us when we were younger, when we wanted things that we weren't supposed to want and got in trouble.
07:54
The problem is that system just does not update on its own. So you're still living in it. Reason number three, a part of you is protecting you from the yes. The third reason is one I want to spend the most time on because I think it's the most common and possibly the least understood.
08:14
Sometimes the yes is quiet, not because you don't know what you want, but because a part of you is trying to make sure you don't feel it. I know this sounds strange. I know, but here's what I mean. We don't have one unified inner voice.
08:31
We have many, many parts. And some of these voices, some of these parts have been doing a very specific job for a very long time, keeping you safe from the particular kind of pain that comes from wanting something and knowing you're not going to get it or not getting it.
08:53
Wanting something out loud is very vulnerable. Asking for something means you can hear no. The other person can say no. Letting yourself know what you actually want in your marriage. Maybe you want to be more connected, right?
09:10
That you want your friendships to be more reciprocal, that you actually want something different in your life. That comes with risk attached. The risk of being disappointed, the risk of rejection, which is one of the most awful feelings that a human can feel.
09:27
The risk of finding out that maybe the people that you love might not want to give you more of what you need. So there is a part of you, a protective part, a part that has genuinely been trying to keep you safe, that has learned to do that by intercepting the yes before it becomes a want that you can actually feel and really develop.
09:53
Because you can't be disappointed by something that you never wanted in the first place or never allowed yourself to fully want. And so that's the protection mechanism is if I squash this yes, if I squash these little inklings, right?
10:07
If I squash these desires before they're even recognizable, then you won't be disappointed. And let me give you an example from my own life. For years, I would feel these little flickers, these small moments of wanting to be closer to my husband.
10:24
He would walk into the room and I would feel a little pull toward him. He would sit down and I would want to snuggle in and wrap his arm around me and just be really overly affectionate. At least it seemed to me at the time that it would have been overly affectionate.
10:39
And sometimes it felt like longing and it was stronger than others. But other times it was just kind of like a little pull. But before that pull or flicker could even finish forming into a sentence or a plan, my protector part voice was already there and saying, that's gross.
11:01
That's needy. He's going to think you're weird. He's going to think you're weak. Wanting someone that much, that's gross. We're not going to do that. You're too much. Don't. And just like that, it was gone, intercepted.
11:14
And I didn't even really experience it as a loss because it happened so fast. I was fine. There was just this part of me that was shutting down something that could potentially hurt me. And it was doing that because it had learned to protect me from the specific pain of reaching towards someone that I loved and having that reach go unreciprocated, not land the way I had hoped.
11:43
That was a part of growing up for me, reaching, wanting closeness, wanting affection, wanting to be cuddled and cared for and not getting it. So this part had just cataloged all the times that maybe I had tried a little bit and he hadn't reacted the way I wanted.
12:00
So this part was just protecting. It can be dramatic and it can be loud, but the efficiency is really what is amazing. It shuts down the yes before you can feel it long enough to want it. And this is actually where parts work becomes one of the most amazing, effective, useful tools that I know.
12:20
The basic idea, and I'm going to simplify a little bit here for the sake of understanding basic principles, there is a much deeper body of work that underlies this. And so the basic idea is that instead of fighting those parts that seem to be getting in the way, we get curious about them.
12:40
Instead of trying to override them and just push through and make ourselves do something, we get to know them. We find out what they're actually afraid of, what they are trying to protect us from, and what they would need to feel or the support that they would need in order to feel safe enough to stand down just a little bit.
13:01
Because here's what I have learned after a lot of years doing this work. You cannot logic your way past a protective part very effectively, if at all. You might be able to override it momentarily, but it's hard and it doesn't last.
13:16
You cannot continually override it with just willpower. And you can't read enough self-help books to make it stop running the show. But you can build a relationship with it. I have sat down with clients and I mean brilliant, capable, emotionally sophisticated women who have been trying to figure out what they want for years.
13:38
They have journaled, they have listened to all the podcasts, they have read the books, and they could describe their patterns with a lot of clarity, but they still couldn't feel a really strong yes. And when we got quiet and went looking for the part that has been squashing that yes, the part that has been trying to protect them from feeling what they actually want so they don't get disappointed,
14:02
something shifts. The part doesn't disappear, but it feels seen. And sometimes that's when the yes comes through. I want to say this clearly because I think it's probably the most important thing in this episode.
14:17
If you don't know what you want, if you can feel the no, but the yes is harder, you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not uniquely damaged. You are not the one person that this won't work for.
14:29
You are just a woman who learned a long time ago that wanting things wasn't safe, was painful, her needs come last, and I'm probably going to be disappointed. And you shouldn't have to live the rest of your life that way.
14:46
The yes is in there. It's just underneath a very intelligent, very sophisticated, very understandable, well-worn crew of protectors that your whole nervous system built to keep you from getting hurt.
15:03
Learning to hear the yes is a skill. It's a practicable, learnable, yours forever skill. And like any skill, it starts somewhere small. We are humans. Wanting is part of our experience. Desiring, needing, it's baked into this experience, and you deserve to feel that.
15:25
You deserve to know what it is that you don't want just as much as you deserve to know what you do. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.
