Listening to the Body’s “No” and “Yes”

Try this little experiment. I learned this in EMDR training 25 years ago and it has always stayed with me. Close your eyes. Be as aware of your bodily sensations as you can be. Notice tension, pain, your posture, your facial expression, your mental outlook, how closed or open you feel. Now say the word “No” to yourself firmly 5 times, separated by a few seconds each. Let it ring in your body and just notice what you experience. Jot some words down. If you notice nothing do the same experiment but say the word “no” out loud and realize you are saying “no” to yourself.

Take a moment to reset. Take a deep breath to recenter yourself and become aware of your body again. Close your eyes. This time, say “Yes” to yourself firmly 5 times, separated by a few seconds each. Let it ring in your body and just notice what you experience. Jot some words down.

When I did this exercise I could feel a subtle but powerful closing in within my body. My posture started to slump (more than its usual slumpiness), I could feel a little tightness in my muscles, and my mental outlook grew kind of dim. I suddenly felt a bit self-conscious and kind of wanted to cover myself. I could literally feel my own defensive constriction and collapse of agency.

When I heard myself say “Yes,” I felt relief. There was an opening in my core that spread to my posture and I could feel myself sitting up a little taller. The self-consciousness started to go away and my mental outlook felt brighter as if I could actually take in more light. I could literally feel my own vitality returning and the openness of hope.

Why Negative Thoughts Feel So Powerful

It turns out that negative information and thinking are, actually, more powerful, more salient and sticky than positive information and thinking (see this resource if you want to do a deep and fascinating dive). Human beings have a tendency to let the good information and experiences roll off our backs after we check them off our list. We habituate easily to good things. After a rise in happiness, multimillion dollar lottery winners return to their baseline happiness within a year even though their lives have been unrecognizably changed. What this means is that we actually have to work to not be bullied by our negative thoughts and to train ourselves to notice and pay more attention to our positive experiences and thoughts. There is nothing inherently wrong with us. It has been a survival mechanism for the brain to focus on what has gone wrong or what could go wrong and it is useful up until a point. An inner yes is not forced positivity. It is the nervous system’s natural movement toward safety and openness when the relentlessness of our self-directed “no” is softened.

What Happens When We Get Stuck in “No”

This is the second week of the 2026 Winter Olympics. For anyone who follows figure skating, you have already seen the devastating performance of Ilia Malinin in the Men’s free skate. Leading up to it everyone spoke as if the gold medal would soon be his. So, when he fell for the first time, the shock was real for us but debilitating for him. He couldn’t recover and we all watched the whole beautiful, powerful performance he had just delivered to help the US win a team gold medal fall apart before our eyes. That is the power of no.

Most of us are not Olympians. Gratefully, we don’t bear that kind of pressure and are not burdened by the expectations of millions. But Malinin is not the only Olympic athlete who has spoken about how the pressure is “mental” or that he “got in his head.” His fall and subsequent falls illustrate so emotionally what happens in most of us when our inner no is too loud and we can’t recover our yes.

The Courage to Return to “Yes”

This is one of the reasons so many of us watch the Olympics. We witness people coming up against terrible odds, sometimes enduring humiliating failure or debilitating pain. But then, somehow, in a way we often cannot imagine for ourselves, they come back. They try again. They take a risk or shake off shame or fear. They intentionally reconnect with “yes” even though they are very well-schooled in the crippling power of their internal no’s. And in that way, they show us for our own lives the power of no and the promise of yes. When we can quiet the screaming voices of no, we can find again an openness to connect to ourselves, others and the world in a more life-giving way.

How Therapy Helps Restore Openness and Hope

If you find you are swimming upstream in negativity and cannot seem to catch your breath, give us a call. We know how hard it can be and we also believe it is worth the effort to learn to shift toward the promise of yes. Anxiety, shame, self-criticism, trauma wounds make it hard to be hopeful, grateful or calm. We can match you with a therapist who can work with you to bring healing to these painful patterns.

Authored by Eileen M. Russell, Ph.D. February, 2026