1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:03,000 Years ago when I first started getting a bit of traction 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,200 online, I got an e-mail from someone asking me for something 3 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:10,800 and I felt this flash of anger and it just really confused me 4 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:15,040 because what they were asking for was completely reasonable. 5 00:00:15,080 --> 00:00:18,880 They're entitled to ask, I just didn't want to give it. 6 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:23,600 So I thought about it for a bit. Anger for me is always a mask 7 00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:26,720 for some other emotion. So I sat trying to work out what 8 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:29,080 was under it. Where did it come from? 9 00:00:29,360 --> 00:00:32,680 And then it hit me. I wasn't angry at them. 10 00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:35,320 I was angry because I was scared. 11 00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:39,400 I was angry because I was being put in the position of having to 12 00:00:39,400 --> 00:00:44,120 say no to them because saying no, even to a reasonable request 13 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:47,040 from a stranger, felt like a risk. 14 00:00:47,320 --> 00:00:51,760 A risk of angering them, of being rejected, of being seen as 15 00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:56,480 awful, of confirming every narrative I've been taught about 16 00:00:56,480 --> 00:01:01,880 myself over the years not to forget that those narratives 17 00:01:02,160 --> 00:01:04,440 really weren't particularly flattering. 18 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:09,240 On top of that, there was the sense of obligation that because 19 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:12,560 someone has asked for it, I have to give it. 20 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:16,560 I'm not allowed to say no because saying no was evidence 21 00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:20,920 that I am a terrible human. So that anger was about being 22 00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:24,200 put in a position to say no, which I did anyway. 23 00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:27,560 I wrote the e-mail, said no, sent it before I could talk 24 00:01:27,560 --> 00:01:32,320 myself out of it, and something very small shifted, just 25 00:01:32,320 --> 00:01:36,800 slightly because I'd finally identified what was actually 26 00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:39,160 happening. It wasn't that I was a people 27 00:01:39,160 --> 00:01:42,640 pleaser by nature, or conflict averse, or even spinous. 28 00:01:42,960 --> 00:01:45,320 All the things I told myself I was for years. 29 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:50,800 It was that saying no had been made genuinely dangerous, early 30 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:54,160 enough and consistently enough that my nervous system had 31 00:01:54,160 --> 00:01:57,720 learned to treat it as a threat. Not metaphorically. 32 00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:02,680 Physiologically, the panic wasn't irrational, it was the 33 00:02:02,680 --> 00:02:06,000 entirely rational output of a system that had been very 34 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,199 thoroughly trained, and through therapy and time and the slow 35 00:02:10,199 --> 00:02:13,360 accumulation of relationships where people actually wanted my 36 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:18,080 truth rather than my compliance, I got better at it with a few 37 00:02:18,080 --> 00:02:21,440 knocks along the way. Of course, the people who care 38 00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:25,320 about you want your know. They want to know what you 39 00:02:25,360 --> 00:02:27,800 actually think, what you actually want, what you're 40 00:02:27,840 --> 00:02:31,400 actually willing to do. Because you're yes means that 41 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:35,720 absolutely nothing if you can't say no. 42 00:02:36,280 --> 00:02:39,960 I know that now but I'll be honest, it took a while. 43 00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:44,080 So today we're going to look at why no is such a problem. 44 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:47,720 Not in the vague, you have low self esteem way that the most 45 00:02:48,040 --> 00:02:51,440 that most of the Internet will offer you, but mechanistically, 46 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:57,240 what was actually installed, how it actually works and what you 47 00:02:57,240 --> 00:03:01,120 can actually do about it. Which is a more complicated 48 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:05,200 question than it sounds. I know you've been asking 49 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:09,480 yourself, am I the problem? Let's find out with me, your 50 00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:22,120 host Helen Villas. Here's what it looks like from 51 00:03:22,120 --> 00:03:24,680 the inside. Someone asks you for something, 52 00:03:24,680 --> 00:03:27,200 or you need to tell someone you can't do a thing. 53 00:03:27,200 --> 00:03:29,960 Or you're in a situation where the honest answer is no. 54 00:03:29,960 --> 00:03:33,560 And before you've even consciously decided what to say, 55 00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:37,160 your body, your brain, has already weighed in. 56 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:40,720 Your chest tightens, or maybe your stomach drops, or the 57 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:44,000 sudden heat crosses your face and neck. 58 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:47,560 And your brain, which has been running calculations you're not 59 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:51,880 even aware of, has already started generating the yes. 60 00:03:52,320 --> 00:03:55,680 Not because you want to say yes, or because you think yes is the 61 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:59,760 right answer, but because the alternative feels genuinely 62 00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:03,120 dangerous in a way that you can't quite justify if someone 63 00:04:03,120 --> 00:04:06,720 explains it, or someone asks you rather to explain it. 64 00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:10,720 And then you say yes, and the relief is immediate and 65 00:04:10,720 --> 00:04:14,320 enormous. And yet you kind of hate 66 00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:17,240 yourself for it. Or if you've done enough work to 67 00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:20,320 catch it, you say no. But then you spend the next 68 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:22,720 three days waiting for the consequence, checking your 69 00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:25,240 phone, replying the conversation, wondering if you 70 00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:29,760 worded it wrong or if they're angry, or if you fundamentally 71 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:33,240 revealed something terrible about yourself by declining. 72 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:37,160 The no might have been the right call by any objective measure, 73 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:40,320 but your nervous system hasn't got the memo and it is 74 00:04:40,520 --> 00:04:43,520 absolutely certain something bad is coming. 75 00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:47,760 The problem isn't the word. Most people who struggle to say 76 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:51,520 no no that intellectually they're allowed to do so. 77 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:54,400 They've read the books, they've seen the Instagram posts. 78 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:58,320 They know no is a complete sentence and they find that 79 00:04:58,320 --> 00:05:03,720 advice somewhere between useless and maybe actively annoying 80 00:05:04,360 --> 00:05:06,600 because the problem was never that they didn't have 81 00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:09,040 permission. The problem is their body is 82 00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:13,360 responding to I need to say no the way it would respond to an 83 00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:16,000 actual threat. Like a lion standing right in 84 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:19,240 front of you and you can't think you're so you're way out of a 85 00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:22,360 threat response by reminding yourself you're allowed to feel 86 00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:24,280 it. For a lot of people in this 87 00:05:24,280 --> 00:05:26,920 audience, this is happening on 2 tracks simultaneously. 88 00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:29,960 The trauma track and the neurodivergent track, which is 89 00:05:29,960 --> 00:05:34,520 doing its own thing entirely and making it all considerably 90 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:36,720 worse. If you've got ADHD, your 91 00:05:36,720 --> 00:05:39,640 emotional dysregulation means the anticipation of someone 92 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:42,640 being displeased with you can feel physically painful. 93 00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:45,680 And we'll come back to why that is, and why it's not a permanent 94 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,040 feature of your worrying in a moment. 95 00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:51,440 If you've got autistic processing the social 96 00:05:51,440 --> 00:05:54,360 unpredictability of conflict, not knowing exactly how the 97 00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:57,880 other person will respond, not having a clear script for what 98 00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:02,080 next comes next, can make the whole thing feel like stepping 99 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:05,040 off a known path into something completely unmapped. 100 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:09,400 Both of those are real, both of them compound the problem, and 101 00:06:09,400 --> 00:06:14,080 neither of them means there's something wrong with you beyond 102 00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:17,840 what was done to you and the brain you were born with. 103 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:21,040 So let's talk about what was actually installed and how. 104 00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:25,200 If you grew up in a toxic household, one of the things 105 00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:28,640 that was most consistently punished was likely autonomy. 106 00:06:29,120 --> 00:06:31,560 Your preferences, your opinions, your refusals. 107 00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:34,680 The message, delivered over years and in hundreds of 108 00:06:34,680 --> 00:06:38,120 different ways, was that putting yourself first, saying what you 109 00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:42,000 actually wanted, declining something you didn't want to do, 110 00:06:42,200 --> 00:06:46,400 or something that you thought that was in contradiction to the 111 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:49,120 other, was evidence of a character flaw. 112 00:06:49,440 --> 00:06:51,440 You were selfish, difficult and grateful. 113 00:06:51,560 --> 00:06:55,440 Mean, maybe even stupid and defiant. 114 00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:58,000 Deliberately. And here's the thing about being 115 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:01,720 told you're mean often enough as a child, you start organizing 116 00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:05,080 your life entirely around proving it isn't true. 117 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:08,600 You expend every bit of available energy demonstrating 118 00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:10,680 your niceness. You never say no, never 119 00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:12,480 contradict, never put yourself first. 120 00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:16,720 You fold into yourself, in the small, into the smallest 121 00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:20,840 possible shape, because the alternative is the label, and 122 00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:24,720 the label feels unsurvivable. And this is the mechanism, 123 00:07:25,400 --> 00:07:28,400 because it's not an accident. A child who believes they're 124 00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:31,880 fundamentally awful will work themselves to the bone to 125 00:07:31,880 --> 00:07:34,520 disprove it. A child who's been told their 126 00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:37,840 natural impulse towards autonomy is evidence of that awfulness 127 00:07:38,120 --> 00:07:41,560 will suppress that impulse and keep suppressing it, and get 128 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:45,520 very good at anticipating what's needed and providing it before 129 00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:49,320 anyone has to ask. Which is enormously useful to a 130 00:07:49,320 --> 00:07:52,880 parent who doesn't want to do the work of attuning to a 131 00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:56,200 child's needs. You were trained to be compliant 132 00:07:56,200 --> 00:07:59,640 because your compliance was useful, and the training method 133 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:03,600 was shame. There is a version of this that 134 00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:05,880 comes up a lot. The idea that some people are 135 00:08:05,880 --> 00:08:09,920 just naturally empathic, naturally attuned, naturally 136 00:08:09,920 --> 00:08:12,080 giving. I've talked about this before a 137 00:08:12,080 --> 00:08:15,080 lot on socials, but it bears a quick revisit here. 138 00:08:15,600 --> 00:08:19,000 If you identify as an empath, if you've always thought of 139 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:22,560 yourself as someone who just feels what other people feel and 140 00:08:22,560 --> 00:08:26,920 responds to it intuitively, I'd ask you to consider whether what 141 00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:30,400 you're actually describing is hyper vigilance. 142 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:34,000 In fact, I'd argue that what you're actually describing is 143 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:36,919 hyper vigilance. Hyper vigilance that was learned 144 00:08:36,919 --> 00:08:41,480 very early and an environment that we're reading the room 145 00:08:41,679 --> 00:08:45,680 wasn't a nice to have, but a survival skill. 146 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:48,320 That's not a gift, it's a sign of abuse. 147 00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:51,200 It's a strategy that outlived its context. 148 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,520 And one of the places it shows up most clearly is in the 149 00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:58,760 inability to say no. Because someone who has spent 150 00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:01,880 years scanning for signs of displeasure in the people around 151 00:09:01,880 --> 00:09:06,080 them is not going to find it easy to be the source of it. 152 00:09:06,840 --> 00:09:09,320 What your brain is doing when you're faced with saying no 153 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:12,320 isn't a conscious calculation, it's a prediction. 154 00:09:12,800 --> 00:09:16,480 Lisa Feldman's Barrett's work on predictive processing is useful 155 00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:18,760 here. Your brain is constantly running 156 00:09:18,760 --> 00:09:22,200 simulations based on prior experience, anticipating what's 157 00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:25,600 likely to happen next, and preparing your body accordingly. 158 00:09:25,800 --> 00:09:28,600 It doesn't wait for confirmation, it generates a 159 00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:31,720 prediction and acts on it, and then updates based on what 160 00:09:31,800 --> 00:09:34,800 actually happens. If your previous experience of 161 00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:38,520 saying no is overwhelmingly associated with punishment, with 162 00:09:38,560 --> 00:09:42,280 anger, with rejection, with shame, your brain has built a 163 00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:47,080 very robust prediction. Saying no leads to something 164 00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:51,000 bad, and it will generate the full physiological preparation 165 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,080 for that bad thing, the racing heart, the tightened chest, the 166 00:09:54,080 --> 00:09:56,400 cortisol. Before you've consciously 167 00:09:56,400 --> 00:09:59,120 decided what to say. Before you've even finished 168 00:09:59,120 --> 00:10:01,960 reading the message. This is why telling yourself 169 00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:06,320 it's fine doesn't work. Your prefrontal cortex knows 170 00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:09,280 it's fine. Your threat, a response system 171 00:10:09,560 --> 00:10:12,480 is not consulting your prefrontal cortex. 172 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:16,480 Cortex is running on a model built from years of data, and 173 00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:20,200 that model says this is dangerous and it's preparing 174 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:22,680 accordingly. What makes this particularly 175 00:10:22,680 --> 00:10:25,520 complicated for ADHD brains is the emotional dysregulation 176 00:10:25,520 --> 00:10:29,680 piece, which I talked about earlier in the season, the way 177 00:10:30,040 --> 00:10:33,360 ADHD nervous systems experience emotions faster and at a higher 178 00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:36,760 intensity than non ADHD nervous systems. 179 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:40,560 It's not in the I CD11 and it's not in the DSM 5 either as a 180 00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:44,080 diagnostic criteria, which is a genuine problem with both 181 00:10:44,360 --> 00:10:47,520 classification systems because the evidence that it's a core 182 00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:52,240 feature of ADHD rather than a coincidental comorbidity is 183 00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:55,600 robust and has been argued for by researchers including 184 00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:58,120 Berkeley for years. The diagnostic manuals just 185 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:01,200 haven't caught up. Whether they do or not, if you 186 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:04,400 have ADHD, you probably already know this from the inside. 187 00:11:04,760 --> 00:11:07,320 And because the ADHD behaviour, the interrupting, the 188 00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:09,240 forgetting, the missing deadlines, the saying the wrong 189 00:11:09,240 --> 00:11:12,720 thing at the wrong moment, generates A disproportionate 190 00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:16,600 amount of rejection over a lifetime, diagnosed or not, what 191 00:11:16,600 --> 00:11:20,680 tends to happen is that the rejection wound accumulates. 192 00:11:20,680 --> 00:11:25,080 It gets internalized, you know, not as I do things that 193 00:11:25,080 --> 00:11:28,280 sometimes frustrate people, but as I am someone who is 194 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:32,360 fundamentally too much, not enough, or both simultaneously. 195 00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:36,360 You start anticipating rejection before it happens because your 196 00:11:36,360 --> 00:11:39,440 history has given you a lot of data points and a nervous system 197 00:11:39,680 --> 00:11:42,720 that was already running emotions hot. 198 00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:47,320 So you know it's not going to respond to anticipated rejection 199 00:11:47,600 --> 00:11:53,480 with mild unease. If you're listening to this and 200 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:56,160 wondering, do I have ADHD, do I have autism? 201 00:11:56,520 --> 00:11:59,760 You could do a Screener test on my website, 202 00:11:59,760 --> 00:12:05,040 apperioprofiles.co.uk, which are just screeners to show you what, 203 00:12:05,040 --> 00:12:08,960 if anything, is flagging for you in terms of autism or ADHD. 204 00:12:09,160 --> 00:12:13,160 So that you could take it to a doctor to get a referral or to a 205 00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:16,440 practitioner for private assessment to just get ahead. 206 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:19,960 Or maybe if you've already got a diagnosis and you just want to 207 00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:23,760 know how you're impacted, the Screener will help you 208 00:12:23,880 --> 00:12:26,520 understand that. So if you'd like to know more 209 00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:30,760 and buy one of those screeners, go to appareoprofiles.co.uk. 210 00:12:30,960 --> 00:12:32,960 The link is in the show notes. Take care. 211 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:37,800 Bye. There is a term that you'll see 212 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:41,280 everywhere for this rejection of sensitivity dysphoria, or RSDI. 213 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:43,240 Don't use it. You'll have seen me speak about 214 00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:47,960 this on socials, but let me explain here why Framing it as a 215 00:12:47,960 --> 00:12:51,640 dysphoria, a disorder of feeling, positions it as an 216 00:12:51,640 --> 00:12:55,520 inherent trait, something fixed in the wiring that you simply 217 00:12:55,520 --> 00:12:57,400 have that you can do nothing about. 218 00:12:57,440 --> 00:12:59,160 And that is not what the evidence shows. 219 00:12:59,440 --> 00:13:02,200 What the evidence shows is emotional dysregulation as a 220 00:13:02,200 --> 00:13:06,640 core feature of ADHD, combined with a learned history of 221 00:13:06,640 --> 00:13:09,320 rejection that is disproportionately common in 222 00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:12,600 ADHD lives. Because ADHD behavior attracts 223 00:13:12,760 --> 00:13:16,760 correction, criticism, and social consequence from very 224 00:13:16,760 --> 00:13:20,800 early on, that's a conditioned response laid on a neurological 225 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:23,240 1. And that distinction matters 226 00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,560 enormously because conditioned responses are healable. 227 00:13:26,800 --> 00:13:29,920 That's not the same thing at all as a dysphoria. 228 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:34,120 When you combine that emotional intensity, that accumulated 229 00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:37,040 history of rejection, and a threat response that's already 230 00:13:37,040 --> 00:13:39,800 been conditioned by years of being told your autonomy was 231 00:13:39,840 --> 00:13:43,320 evidence of your awfulness, saying no becomes something your 232 00:13:43,320 --> 00:13:47,840 entire system mobilizes against. The anticipatory distress can 233 00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:53,240 feel completely disproportionate to the situation, and it is, but 234 00:13:53,240 --> 00:13:56,280 not because something is permanently wrong with you. 235 00:13:57,040 --> 00:14:00,400 For autistic nervous systems, the picture is slightly 236 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:02,600 different but lands in a similar place. 237 00:14:03,200 --> 00:14:05,760 A significant part of the difficulty was saying no For 238 00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:08,840 autistic processing isn't just the threat response or the 239 00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:12,200 condition fear, though both of those can of course be present. 240 00:14:12,680 --> 00:14:15,640 It's the unpredictability of what happens next. 241 00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:18,840 If you've got autistic processing, you tend to rely 242 00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:22,000 heavily on pattern recognition and known scripts. 243 00:14:22,480 --> 00:14:26,360 Conflict, or the anticipation of conflict with whoever it is, 244 00:14:26,640 --> 00:14:28,360 doesn't follow a reliable script. 245 00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:31,440 You can't know exactly what tone the other person will take, 246 00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:34,800 whether they'll be annoyed or hurt or indifferent, what the 247 00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:37,440 appropriate response to each of those would be, what the 248 00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:39,880 sequence of social moves looks like from here. 249 00:14:40,320 --> 00:14:44,440 The uncertainty itself is. The uncertainty itself is 250 00:14:44,440 --> 00:14:48,200 dysregulating separately from any conditioned fear response, 251 00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:53,160 and the easiest way to avoid it is just to say yes and stay on 252 00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:56,240 familiar ground. All of that has been running for 253 00:14:56,240 --> 00:15:00,360 so long. It feels like personality, like 254 00:15:00,400 --> 00:15:03,920 this is just who you are. Someone who finds it hard to say 255 00:15:03,920 --> 00:15:05,600 no. Someone who people pleases. 256 00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:10,080 Someone who, if they're being honest, it's a bit of a 257 00:15:10,080 --> 00:15:12,520 pushover. You're not a pushover. 258 00:15:12,760 --> 00:15:16,280 You're someone whose nervous system learned very efficiently 259 00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:19,520 that Noah was dangerous. And it's, you know, still 260 00:15:19,520 --> 00:15:24,560 operating on that information. This connects to what we talked 261 00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:26,480 about in episode 3, the apology reflex. 262 00:15:26,480 --> 00:15:29,160 The same parent who taught you that your know was evidence of 263 00:15:29,160 --> 00:15:33,160 your awfulness also possibly had a thing about contradiction, 264 00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:35,440 about being questioned, about having their decisions or 265 00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:39,200 preferences challenged. So the prohibition wasn't just 266 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:42,640 on saying no in the sense of declining requests. 267 00:15:42,920 --> 00:15:47,160 It was on any expression, expression of a preference that 268 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:50,640 conflicted with theirs, any opinion that differed any moment 269 00:15:50,640 --> 00:15:53,960 where your reality didn't match the one they we're presenting, 270 00:15:54,280 --> 00:15:56,920 which means the conditioning is broader than it looks. 271 00:15:57,240 --> 00:15:59,880 It's not just I can't say no to fevers. 272 00:15:59,880 --> 00:16:03,440 It's I can't assert my version of reality when it conflicts 273 00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:06,640 with someone else's, which is a much bigger problem. 274 00:16:06,640 --> 00:16:10,400 And 1:00, we'll come back to when we get to episode 7 and the 275 00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:13,480 trust stuff. The is this a thing companion to 276 00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:16,320 this episode goes deep on exactly this, on the evidence 277 00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:19,720 around threat conditioning, how conditioned fear responses form, 278 00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:22,600 persist and generalize, and specifically what the research 279 00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:26,360 says about reconditioning them. It's a solo episode and you 280 00:16:26,360 --> 00:16:29,240 know, it gets into the predictive processing model in a 281 00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:30,920 lot more detail than we have here. 282 00:16:31,240 --> 00:16:33,720 So if you're a member of the hub, it's there waiting for you. 283 00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:39,360 And if you're not, you can go to liberationacademy.co.uk/thedashhub 284 00:16:39,920 --> 00:16:43,520 and if you sign up on Foundation tier you'll get 90 days free At 285 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:49,440 the moment. This episode is this a Thing 286 00:16:49,440 --> 00:16:53,120 Companion episode goes deeper into the science of why saying 287 00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:55,200 no is so hard. Not the psychology we've covered 288 00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:58,880 that here, but the actual mechanics of how conditioned 289 00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:02,520 threat responses form, how they generalize to situations that 290 00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,160 weren't in the original conditioning, and what the 291 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:07,640 evidence says about how they change. 292 00:17:08,319 --> 00:17:12,040 It's just me on my own explaining, and if today's 293 00:17:12,040 --> 00:17:15,400 episode made sense of something for you, this is where we'll go 294 00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:17,960 further into it. You can either access it through 295 00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:21,319 your membership of the hub, or you can access it by subscribing 296 00:17:21,599 --> 00:17:24,800 on the platforms either Apple or Sub Stack. 297 00:17:27,560 --> 00:17:31,200 So anyway, right? What do you actually do with 298 00:17:31,200 --> 00:17:33,040 this? The first thing, and I know this 299 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:35,680 sounds annoying, is to stop trying to fix the no in the 300 00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:38,480 moment. The moment you're already in the 301 00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:40,960 threat response is not the moment to try and rewire it. 302 00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:44,200 Your cognitive capacity is reduced, your body is running a 303 00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:47,680 program you didn't consciously choose, and whatever you managed 304 00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:51,120 to do from that state is going to cost you more than it should 305 00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:54,880 and probably won't stick. The work happens before and 306 00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:58,120 after, not during. What happens before is building 307 00:17:58,120 --> 00:18:01,800 a bothered body of evidence that contradicts the prediction your 308 00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:05,400 brains model that no leads to something bad was built from 309 00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:07,600 data. It's very, very efficient. 310 00:18:07,600 --> 00:18:11,920 It updates, though, from data. Every time you say no and the 311 00:18:11,920 --> 00:18:15,040 world doesn't end, every time someone takes your know, your 312 00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:18,080 know graciously, every time a relationship survives your 313 00:18:18,080 --> 00:18:21,080 refusal. That's a data point that runs 314 00:18:21,080 --> 00:18:23,680 counter to the model. The update. 315 00:18:23,840 --> 00:18:27,240 The model updates slowly because predictions built under 316 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:30,200 conditions of chronic, chronic stress are resistant to 317 00:18:30,200 --> 00:18:32,560 extinction. But they do update. 318 00:18:32,840 --> 00:18:36,000 It's It's a bit like the cognitive dissonance and 319 00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:39,320 confirmation bias thing. You ignore the things that don't 320 00:18:39,360 --> 00:18:43,320 validate the belief. We only look for things that 321 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:46,720 confirm what we know. So you you need the data points, 322 00:18:46,960 --> 00:18:50,720 which means you need to actively do this, which also means you 323 00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:55,520 need to say no, which also means you need to do it in a way that 324 00:18:55,520 --> 00:18:59,200 doesn't require your nervous system to be on board first, 325 00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:01,320 because it won't be and not for a while. 326 00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:03,720 And that's OK. It's totally normal. 327 00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:07,600 So the practical version of this is prepare the know in advance. 328 00:19:07,600 --> 00:19:10,960 If you have ADHD, you know that the moment of decision is not 329 00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:13,320 your friend. Scripted responses you've 330 00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:15,800 prepared when you were calm are your friend. 331 00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:17,640 I can't commit to that right now. 332 00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:20,680 That doesn't work for me. I'm going to have to say no to 333 00:19:20,680 --> 00:19:22,800 this one. None of these require you to 334 00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:27,000 justify yourself, and having them kind of pre loaded means 335 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:29,960 that you're not generating language in real time while your 336 00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:33,560 threat response is using most of your available processing. 337 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:37,280 Write them down somewhere you can actually find them, like as 338 00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:39,920 a phone screensaver on your phone. 339 00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:45,000 Not as a kind of nice idea, but as a literal list in your phone, 340 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,320 as I said, or on a sticky note visible somewhere. 341 00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:49,960 Even when you say the no, the threat response doesn't 342 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:52,400 immediately stand down. You're going to feel the 343 00:19:52,400 --> 00:19:56,000 anticipatory dread, the checking, the replaying of how 344 00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:57,720 you said it and whether it came out wrong. 345 00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:00,080 That's totally normal. It's the prediction is still 346 00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:01,440 running. And the most useful thing you 347 00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:05,040 can do with it is not to try to logic it away, but just. 348 00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:07,520 Let it run and notice what actually happens. 349 00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:10,360 Did the person respond badly? Did the relationship end? 350 00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:13,440 Was there a consequence? Often there won't be. 351 00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:16,880 That lack of consequence is the data your brain needs. 352 00:20:17,120 --> 00:20:19,920 But you have to let the anxiety run long enough to get the 353 00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:23,680 result rather than seeking reassurance, which sort of short 354 00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:27,720 circuits the process and leaves the prediction intact because it 355 00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:32,960 means that you have used an external barometer to change an 356 00:20:32,960 --> 00:20:36,440 internal state. Reassurance seeking is very 357 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:39,560 common in this group and actively undermines the rewire 358 00:20:39,680 --> 00:20:42,960 wiring process. When the anxiety peaks and you 359 00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:45,720 text a friend to say, you know to ask, was that OK? 360 00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,160 Did I handle that right? Do you think they're annoyed and 361 00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:50,680 they reassure you? The anxiety drops and your 362 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:54,360 nervous system learns that reassurance seeking is what made 363 00:20:54,360 --> 00:20:57,600 it drop, not the absence of consequences. 364 00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:00,720 So we'll seek reassurance again next time. 365 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:03,800 The hard version, and I'm not going to pretend it's going to 366 00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:07,200 be anything other than hard, is to stay with the discomfort long 367 00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:09,720 enough to get the actual information. 368 00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:12,400 For autistic nervous systems specifically, where the 369 00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:15,920 unpredictability of the response is part of what's dysregulating, 370 00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:18,640 there's something really useful in building a script, not just 371 00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:20,760 for the know itself, but for the possible responses. 372 00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:22,560 What will you say if they're annoyed? 373 00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:24,280 What will you say if they push back? 374 00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:26,760 Having those mapped out in advance doesn't make the 375 00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:29,880 interaction predictable, but it reduces the number of unknowns, 376 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:31,880 and that's really important. It matters. 377 00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:35,360 You're not scripting the whole conversation, you're just 378 00:21:35,360 --> 00:21:39,480 reducing the territory that's completely unmapped. 379 00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:43,360 The physical component of this tends to get ignored in favor of 380 00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:46,680 the cognitive work. If your body is generating a 381 00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:50,240 full threat response every time you decline something, that's a 382 00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:53,480 lot of physiological activation and it needs to go somewhere, 383 00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:56,080 you know? Movement helps not in a Wellness 384 00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:58,680 content way, but in a very boring, mechanical way. 385 00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:01,760 The stress response prepares your body for action, and the 386 00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:04,960 actual physical movement uses up some of that preparation. 387 00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,400 A walk after a difficult conversation, even a short one, 388 00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:12,440 gives the activation an outlet rather than leaving it sitting 389 00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:17,400 in your chest for three days. If you are unable to do things 390 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:21,120 physically, like walking or running, one of the great tools 391 00:22:21,120 --> 00:22:25,800 is to do almost like Lamar's breathing, you know, breathe out 392 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:29,400 heavily. You're ultimately trying to 393 00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:32,400 dispel the adrenaline and the cortisol. 394 00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:34,920 The longer arc of this is accumulating evidence that 395 00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:37,640 you're safe to disagree, safe to decline, safe to take up space. 396 00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:41,320 And that happens through relationships more than through 397 00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:44,640 practice, through finding people, even just one person to 398 00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,080 start with, whose response to your know is curiosity or 399 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,160 acceptance rather than punishment. 400 00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:54,400 It comes through noticing over time that the people who really 401 00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:58,800 care about you want your truth, because your truth is what makes 402 00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:01,640 the relationship real. That takes time. 403 00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:06,320 It's not a quick fix, and anyone telling you it is has probably 404 00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:10,320 never had their autonomy. Systematically punished from the 405 00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:15,480 age of 3, you know. OK, so you know how toxic 406 00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:17,840 parents teach you you're a terrible person, so you spend 407 00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:21,120 every available bit of energy proving them wrong, Never saying 408 00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:23,600 no, never contradicting, never putting yourself first, always 409 00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:27,440 available, always accommodating, always thinking about everyone 410 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:31,080 else's comfort before your own. They taught you you were mean 411 00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:36,160 and selfish for exactly that reason, to make you bend over 412 00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:39,160 backwards to be nice. It's a remarkably efficient 413 00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:43,480 system, if disgusting, but the person who is genuinely selfish 414 00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,440 doesn't lie awake worrying about whether they were too selfish, 415 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:51,160 and the person who genuinely doesn't care about others isn't 416 00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,880 exhausting themselves trying to prove that they do. 417 00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:58,760 The one who tried so hard to have minimal impact they almost 418 00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:03,440 disappeared entirely is not the one with a character problem. 419 00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:06,240 You're not actually terrible good. 420 00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:09,320 Knowing that changes your responsibility because once you 421 00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,760 understand the mechanism, once you can see that the yes you 422 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,080 keep saying isn't virtue or generosity, but a conditioned 423 00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:17,880 fear response dressed up as niceness. 424 00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:20,720 You don't get to keep calling it niceness. 425 00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:25,000 You don't get to keep performing the self sacrifice and telling 426 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:26,960 yourself it's because you're a good person. 427 00:24:27,120 --> 00:24:30,360 It's not just because saying no still feels dangerous and 428 00:24:30,360 --> 00:24:33,600 performing niceness is the strategy you learned from 429 00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:36,440 managing that danger. And at some point, and other 430 00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:38,080 people's feeling, I might just point out. 431 00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:42,200 And at some point you have to decide whether you're going to 432 00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,680 keep managing it or start dismantling it. 433 00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:50,680 The explanation is not the exit. Understanding why you can't say 434 00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,920 no doesn't mean you now can, but it does mean the next yes. 435 00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:58,560 You say when you meant no is a choice you made, not just a 436 00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:02,320 thing that happened to you. And that matters not because it 437 00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,600 means you're feeling if you still get it wrong, but because 438 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:09,440 the difference between I couldn't say no and I said yes 439 00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,640 when I didn't want to is the difference between being a 440 00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,680 passenger and being at least partially in the driver's seat. 441 00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,720 You've done the hard bit of understanding it. 442 00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,920 The rest is just data collection one no at a time. 443 00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:27,360 And it gets easier, not immediately, but it does, I 444 00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:29,800 promise you. So there we are. 445 00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,520 It's time to start collecting that data. 446 00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:36,720 Thank you so much for listening. I would love to hear how you get 447 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:40,480 on how much data you can collect, where you start testing 448 00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:42,800 that no and what it changes for you. 449 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:45,160 By all means, leave it in the comments, send me an e-mail, 450 00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:47,360 whatever you like. And if you want to know more 451 00:25:47,360 --> 00:25:50,520 about the hub, if you want to know more about me online and 452 00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:53,440 all the other things Ioffer, check out the show notes. 453 00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:55,560 But for now, I'm going to leave it there. 454 00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,320 And as as ever, all that remains to be said is take care. 455 00:25:59,720 --> 00:25:59,880 Bye.