“When the Body Says No”: What Trauma Teaches Us About Boundaries and Emotional Repression

In When the Body Says No, Gabor Maté writes:

“In important areas of their lives, almost none of my patients with serious disease had ever learned to say no… the underlying emotional repression was an ever present factor.”

That observation is uncomfortable. It is also clinically profound.

In trauma therapy, I regularly see this pattern. The people who struggle most are often conscientious, loyal, high-functioning, and deeply attuned to others.

And chronically disconnected from themselves.

The Cost of Not Saying No

Not saying no is rarely about weakness. It is about survival.

For many trauma survivors, especially those shaped by emotional neglect, attachment wounds, or unpredictable caregivers, saying no once meant rejection, anger, withdrawal of love, or emotional punishment.

The nervous system learned something efficient. If I stay agreeable, I stay safe.

Over time, that becomes identity. The good daughter. The dependable spouse. The peacemaker. The strong one.

But anger that is never expressed does not disappear. Grief that is never processed does not dissolve. Fear that is never acknowledged does not fade.

It goes underground.

Emotional Repression Is a Nervous System Strategy

Maté’s insight is not that emotions directly cause disease in a simplistic way. It is that chronic emotional suppression keeps the nervous system in a prolonged stress response.

When someone lives in people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, internalized anger, and self-abandonment, their body rarely settles. Trauma is not just a memory. It is a physiological imprint.

This is why effective trauma work must address both story and body. Our approach to trauma therapy focuses on helping the nervous system feel safe enough to experience and integrate emotions that once felt dangerous.

Why Repressed Emotions Surface in Relationships

Many people can hold themselves together at work or with friends. But in intimate relationships, repression breaks down.

We often see heightened reactivity, shutting down, defensiveness, explosive arguments, emotional withdrawal, and chronic resentment.

When one partner has learned that expressing needs leads to rejection, they may either suppress or erupt when the pressure builds. The relationship becomes the stage where old attachment wounds replay.

This is where couples therapy in Colorado Springs becomes essential. In a structured and emotionally safe environment, partners can identify the fear, shame, grief, and longing underneath anger and withdrawal. Instead of attacking each other, they begin understanding the protective patterns driving their reactions.

Repressed emotion does not disappear in marriage. It leaks. Couples work helps it surface in a way that strengthens connection instead of destroying it.

How EMDR Helps the Body Learn It Is Safe

For many individuals, deeper healing requires targeted trauma processing. EMDR therapy for trauma allows the brain to metabolize unresolved experiences so they are no longer stored as active threat.

When someone reprocesses memories of being shamed for having needs, exposed to explosive anger, emotionally neglected, or chronically invalidated, their nervous system stops reacting to present-day boundary setting as if it were life-threatening.

Saying no begins to feel uncomfortable but not catastrophic.

That shift reduces anxiety, increases clarity, and restores agency.

When the Body Speaks What the Voice Cannot

People often say:

I do not know what I feel.

I do not know what I want.

I am exhausted all the time.

I feel resentful but cannot explain why.

When the body says no, it may speak through panic, depression, chronic tension, illness, burnout, or relational conflict. The body becomes the voice of the disowned self.

But repression was learned. That means it can be unlearned.

If your nervous system learned that saying no equals danger, it can learn that boundaries equal safety.

Healing Is Becoming Congruent

Healing is not becoming aggressive or detached. It is becoming congruent. Your yes and your no align with your internal reality.

It means feeling anger without shame. Feeling grief without collapse. Holding compassion without erasing yourself.

When people become emotionally congruent, their bodies soften. Anxiety decreases. Relationships stabilize. Energy returns.

The body does not have to scream anymore.

It can finally rest.

If you recognize yourself in patterns of over-responsibility, emotional suppression, or relational conflict driven by unprocessed trauma, trauma-informed therapy can help you move from self-abandonment toward wholeness.