10 min read. Scroll down to skip to the voice note.
Some of the most expensive yeses in our lives do not look particularly consequential when we say them. They sound ordinary. “Sure.” “Absolutely.” “No problem.”
A request comes in and something happens very quickly. Our attention moves outward toward the other person. Their face, their tone, their expectation, whether they seem disappointed, whether they are waiting, whether everything between us still feels okay. Somewhere inside all of that, the answer arrives. Yes. Sometimes we have answered before we have really checked in with ourselves at all.
That does not necessarily mean the yes is false, which is where I think this conversation gets more interesting than people pleasing or simply needing better boundaries. Sometimes the yes is completely genuine. We care. We want to help. We actually want to go. We value generosity, contribution and connection.
I hear versions of this in my practice often. Someone will be trying to understand why they are so tired, or why one more fairly ordinary thing suddenly feels like too much, and somewhere in the conversation they will say, “But I wanted to do those things.”
Yes. Sometimes you did. It’s important to take notice of that too.
A genuine yes can still be doing another job. It may help maintain connection. It may help us avoid disappointing somebody. It may move us quickly through that uncomfortable space where another person is waiting, and we have not yet worked out what we have available.
And a genuine yes does not necessarily tell us anything about our capacity. We can genuinely want something and still have very little room left for it. We can genuinely care about the person and still answer before we have noticed what is happening inside us.
That is the part I am interested in.
“The question is not always, Did I really mean yes? Sometimes the more useful question is, what was my yes trying to take care of?”
We are relational creatures. We are built to notice other people, often without consciously deciding to. Tone, expression, posture, pacing, closeness, distance, whether something between us feels different. Our attachment systems are concerned with connection, availability, belonging, and what happens when closeness shifts.
For some people, this attention toward the other becomes especially efficient. We get very good at reading the room, anticipating, smoothing things over, being helpful, being useful and not needing too much. None of those qualities are inherently problematic. They may be some of the most beautiful things about us. They may also reflect ways we learned to stay connected in the relationships that shaped us.
If expressing a need in our relationships early on, was often met with irritation, unpredictability, withdrawal or simply no response, one possible adaptation is that our attention becomes more finely tuned to the other person. The need itself may become harder to identify or express. We may become very skilled at detecting and adapting what keeps things smooth.
This does not happen the same way for everyone, and attachment is only one lens. But it is one worth being curious about. If being helpful helped maintain closeness, we may become very helpful. If being agreeable reduced conflict, agreement may come quickly. If needing less seemed to make relationship easier, minimizing what we need can become familiar.
None of this requires a conscious thought like, I am going to abandon myself now in order to preserve connection. Human beings are much subtler than that. Someone asks or requests something of us. Our attention moves toward them. We notice their possible disappointment. We understand what they need. We solve the logistics. And sometimes our answer is already out of our mouth before our own experience has had enough time to become part of the conversation.
Sometimes self abandonment is not that we don’t know ourselves or dont have boundaries. It’s that we move toward the other person so quickly that our own experience hasn’t had enough time to become part of the conversation.
The body time zone
We live in a world that rewards fast responses. Someone texts, Are you free Thursday? and almost immediately the mind starts solving. What is on the calendar? How long is the drive? Who needs to be picked up? Can I technically make this work?
We are very good at that question: Can I make this work? Often, yes.
This is where I use the phrase body time zone. In somatic work, we often need to slow the pace considerably in order to notice quieter sensory information that can be missed when we are moving quickly. Some of the nerve fibres involved in carrying internal bodily information are unmyelinated and conduct much more slowly than fast myelinated sensory pathways. In one commonly used comparison, those signals can travel at roughly one seventh the speed.
I think of that as a useful reminder that the speed at which we can think, organize, anticipate and respond is not always the same speed at which we become consciously aware of what is happening inside us. That is what I mean by the body time zone.
It does not mean the body always knows the correct answer. A tight chest does not automatically mean no. Activation does not automatically mean danger. Discomfort does not necessarily mean something is wrong. The body is another source of information.
Our ability to notice that internal information is often described in terms of interoception. It includes awareness of shifts in breathing, muscle tension, temperature, heart rate, fatigue, fullness, constriction, or simply the sense that something feels different. Those shifts can be subtle enough that some mindful, attuned attention is needed before we notice them at all.
This becomes especially interesting in the context of self abandonment because while that quieter internal information is still registering, the relational part of us may already be moving very quickly. We may already be thinking about the other person, what they need, whether they will be disappointed, what will keep things smooth, or whether we can technically make the request work.
Sometimes the mind has solved the logistics, anticipated the other person’s response and sent the text back before our own internal experience has had much chance to enter conscious awareness.
The mind says, Yes, technically this fits. And sometimes, a little later, the body says, Oh.
That is the moment I am interested in. Not because the body should make the decision for us, but because when our own sensory experience never has enough time or attention to enter the decision, we are working with incomplete information.
We also do not need to interpret every sensation or make every bodily change mean something. In fact, that can become another form of overthinking. What interests me more is pattern.
Maybe nothing on the calendar looks unreasonable, but over the course of the week our breathing has become a little shallower. Noise is getting under our skin more easily. We are recovering less between one thing and the next. Another request comes in and something in us contracts. We are still functioning. We are still getting things done. Technically, we can probably still do the next thing, but there is less flexibility available.
This is where capability and capacity begin to separate. Capability asks, Can I do this? Capacity asks, What do I actually have available for this today?
Sometimes the body begins offering pieces of that information before the calendar does.
That is why slowing down matters, especially in the context of what we are talking about here. Sometimes we need a little more time for our own experience to become perceptible, particularly when our attention is already moving toward the other person. In relational somatic work, that might mean noticing the breath, the support underneath us, a shift in tension or ease, and staying with that experience long enough to actually register it before we respond.
The body does not need to give us the answer. What matters is that our own experience has had a chance to be included in how we arrive at one.
Sometimes noticing is enough.
“The body does not have to make the decision. But it deserves to be included in the conversation.”
Capability is not capacity
The big decisions are usually easier to notice. It’s the little ones that fascinate me. One more favour. One more appointment. One more phone call. One more dinner. One more errand. One more thing we agree to because technically there is still an empty square in the calendar.
Each one may draw only a little, but it draws from somewhere. Attention, patience, sensory tolerance, emotional bandwidth, recovery time. Our ability to remain curious rather than reactive. Our ability to tolerate another interruption and still feel like ourselves.
One little yes rarely changes everything. A hundred little yeses can.
I sometimes think of it like having too many tabs open on a computer. One is fine. Ten might still be manageable. Eventually something is buffering in the background, music is playing somewhere, there are tabs you forgot were even open, and the whole thing is moving more slowly.
I'm finding that we are similar as humans, and we can do something similar relationally. The schedule still technically works. We are still functioning. Nothing has fallen apart. But we carry what came before into what comes next.
That is why someone can suddenly feel disproportionately irritated by something small. The small thing may not actually be the whole story. Sometimes there is no single event to point to. There have simply been too many draws from the same pool of capacity.
This is where capability and capacity become very different questions. Capability asks, Can I do this? Very often, yes.
We are astonishingly capable. We can rearrange, problem solve, show up tired, make dinner anyway, take the call, get through the meeting, go to the event and do what needs to be done.
Capacity asks, What do I actually have available for this right now?
That answer is influenced by far more than whether there is technically time. Sleep matters. Workload matters. Pain, caregiving, conflict, grief, illness, money, sensory input, loneliness, recovery and relational stress all matter.
A person can be extremely capable and still have very little capacity available.
Not every yes depletes us. Some relationships expand us. Some activities restore us. Some yeses give energy back. The point is simply that what we can technically accomplish and what we have room for are not always the same thing.
The mind may still be saying, of course I can, while somewhere underneath that is the recognition that there is not much room left.
That does not automatically mean no. Maybe it means yes, but for an hour. Yes, if someone helps. Ask me tomorrow. Not today. Or maybe the answer remains an uncomplicated yes.
A pause is creating room for a boundary
This is why I have become so interested in the pause before the answer.
Sometimes the most useful thing we can say is remarkably ordinary. Let me check and get back to you. I need to think about that. I am not sure yet.
The pause gives us enough time to notice whether all of our attention has moved toward the other person.
And then something else becomes visible. What happens when we give ourselves that time? Does something settle? Does something tighten? Do we immediately start explaining ourselves? Do we feel an urge to justify why we cannot answer right now?
That is information too.
The pause does not guarantee a better answer. It simply gives more of our experience the opportunity to be present when we make one.
There is something here about practice as well. Our brains remain capable of change throughout life, and repeated experience matters. Patterns we rehearse again and again become increasingly familiar and efficient.
If our familiar sequence has been someone asks, I read them, I accommodate, I answer, it makes sense that it can happen very quickly.
The pause gives us another sequence to practice. Someone asks. I notice them. And I also notice me.
We are not trying to erase the old pattern in one moment. We are making another experience available. Over time, bringing our own experience into the interaction can become more familiar too.
And this is why I think a pause can be much more significant than it first appears. We are practicing the possibility that connection with another person and connection with ourselves can exist in the same moment.
The relationship matters. The other person matters. And the relationship we are building with ourselves matters too. We are one of the people in the interaction.
A pause before saying yes is not a boundary. It is room for one.
Maybe this is where self abandonment begins to change. Not because we suddenly become excellent at saying no, but because our relational intelligence begins moving in both directions.
We already know how to read the room. We know how to notice other people. We know how to maintain connection.
What if some of that attention began moving inward too? What am I noticing? What do I actually have available? What is this yes taking care of? Do I need to answer yet?
Sometimes that is enough to widen the choice.
“What if relational intelligence included the ability to read ourselves as carefully as we have learned to read everyone else?”
Food for thought
Where does your attention go when somebody asks something of you?
What might your yes be trying to take care of?
And before the next automatic yes: If I did not have to answer right now, what might I notice?
Listen With Me
The written piece is the thinking. The voice note is the experience.
0:01 Introduction and overview of focus
7:33 Guided somatic practice
14:25 Wrap up and invitation to the Community Rest & Reset
17:39 Fade out
Before You Say Yes is a short guided companion to this exploration. Rather than giving you more to understand, I guide you into the few moments between being asked and answering: where your attention goes, what happens when you include yourself too, and what becomes available when there is enough pause for your own experience to become part of the answer.
You are not trying to find the “right” answer in your body. You are practicing making room for yourself inside the answer.