09/09/2025
The article is a difficult read but sadly necessary for too many people who need to understand where their issues/difficulties with adult life come from, at least in part. Appropriate therapy can help us to resolve the impacts of such conditionings and others besides. :)
When your body reacts to setting a simple boundary with the same intensity as if you'd committed a serious moral transgression, you're experiencing the aftermath of deliberate conditioning. Your narcissistic mother needed you to be endlessly available for her emotional needs, so she systematically destroyed your natural right to refuse, decline or prioritise your own wellbeing. Every time you attempted to say no as a child; to inappropriate confidences, to absorbing her emotions, you were met with punishment disguised as disappointment.
This training was methodical and thorough. She taught you that your refusal caused her pain, that your boundaries were selfish, that good daughters don't have limits. She weaponised guilt until your nervous system learnt to associate self-protection with wrongdoing. Your developing brain absorbed the message that love meant endless availability, that your worth was tied to your usefulness and that saying no was tantamount to abandoning the people who needed you.
Now, decades later, your body still floods with shame when you decline a request, even reasonable ones. You might find yourself over-explaining, apologising profusely or agreeing to things that drain you simply to avoid the crushing discomfort of potentially disappointing someone. The guilt isn't proportional to the situation because it's not really about the current request, it's about breaking a rule that was carved into your psyche when you were too young to question it.
This conditioning shows up everywhere: saying yes to social events when you're exhausted, taking on extra work when you're overwhelmed, lending money you can't afford to lose or staying in conversations that make you uncomfortable. Your internal alarm system fires at the mere thought of inconveniencing others, whilst simultaneously remaining silent about your own needs and limitations.
The cruelest part is how this programming disguises itself as virtue. You might pride yourself on being accommodating, helpful or selfless, not recognising these as symptoms of self-abandonment rather than character strengths. Meanwhile, people who had healthier upbringings set boundaries effortlessly, without the internal war you experience every time you need to protect your time, energy, or peace.
Healing means learning to distinguish between appropriate concern for others and the toxic guilt that demands you sacrifice yourself for everyone else's comfort. It means recognising that the people who respect you will accept your no without making you pay for it emotionally. Most importantly, it means understanding that your guilt response isn't moral guidance, it's a trauma symptom that needs healing, not obedience.
