When Your Body Says No: Learning to Listen After Years of Pushing Through
I spent most of my life treating my body like an inconvenience.
It was something to manage, control, push through. If I was tired, I drank more coffee. If I was in pain, I took painkillers and kept going. If my nervous system was screaming for rest, I told it to be quiet — I had work to do, clients to see, a life to build.
I thought that was what strength looked like. Pushing through. Showing up no matter what. Proving I could handle it.
And then my body said no.
Not gently. Not as a suggestion. It said no in the form of pericarditis after a vaccine I didn’t want to take but felt pressured into. It said no in the form of fibromyalgia that made every day a negotiation with pain. It said no in the form of chronic fatigue, chronic muscle contractions, and a nervous system so dysregulated that even small tasks felt impossible.
My body didn’t ask me to slow down. It forced me to stop.
The Years of Overriding
Looking back, I can see the signs were there long before the crash. I just didn’t know how to listen.
I was a personal trainer who burned out from giving everything to my clients and nothing to myself. I worked through exhaustion, through stress, through the quiet whispers of “something’s not right” because I believed my worth was tied to how much I could produce.
I ignored the anger and frustration that showed up in my work because I was afraid of what would happen if I left. I was afraid of losing my income, my identity, my sense of purpose. So I stayed, and I pushed, and I told my body to keep up.
I gave away my power in relationships because I was scared of being abandoned. I bent myself into shapes that weren’t mine because I thought that’s what I had to do to be loved, to be wanted, to matter.
And my body absorbed all of it. The stress. The suppression. The constant state of fight-or-flight. The belief that rest was weakness and boundaries were selfish.
Until it couldn’t anymore.
What Happens When You Ignore the Signals
Dr. Gabor Maté wrote a book called When the Body Says No, and the core premise is this: when we chronically suppress our emotional needs and override our body’s signals, the stress doesn’t just disappear. It goes somewhere. And often, it manifests as illness. 1
He writes about people with autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, cancer — people who spent years being “nice,” being “strong,” being the ones who showed up for everyone else but never for themselves. People who, like me, learned early on that their needs didn’t matter as much as other people’s comfort.
I don’t know if that’s the whole story of my illness. I don’t think there’s ever just one cause. But I do know that my body was holding decades of unprocessed stress, suppressed emotions, and the belief that I had to earn my right to exist by being useful.
And when I got the vaccine — the one my intuition said no to but my fear said yes to — my body finally broke. Not because the vaccine was inherently harmful (though for me, it was), but because my system was already so overloaded that it couldn’t handle one more thing.
The pericarditis was the final straw. But the groundwork for that crash had been laid years before.
Learning to Listen (The Hard Way)
I didn’t choose to start listening to my body. I was forced to.
When you’re in chronic pain, when your nervous system is so dysregulated that you can barely function, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring the signals anymore. Your body is screaming, and you have no choice but to pay attention.
And that’s where I’ve been for the last few years. Learning — slowly, messily, with a lot of resistance — how to actually listen.
Here’s what that’s looked like for me:
If my body says it’s too much, I stop. Even if my mind thinks I should be able to handle it. Even if I feel guilty for resting. Even if it means disappointing someone. I’ve learned (and am still learning) that pushing through doesn’t make me stronger. It makes me sicker.
If something makes my nervous system spike, I don’t force it. I used to think I had to fix everything immediately, that I had to power through discomfort to heal. But my body doesn’t work that way. It needs slow, gentle, gradual. It needs me to stop treating healing like a performance.
If I feel anger or frustration, I let it be there. I spent so many years suppressing anger because I was afraid of being too much, too difficult, too inconvenient. But anger is information. It’s my body’s way of saying this isn’t okay. And I’m learning that I don’t have to fix it or explain it away. I just have to let it exist.
If my body needs rest, I rest. This one is still hard. Because I’ve spent my whole life believing that my worth is tied to productivity. But I’m learning that rest isn’t laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s how my body repairs. It’s how I survive.
What I Wish I’d Known Sooner
I wish I’d known that my body wasn’t the enemy. That the pain, the fatigue, the nervous system dysregulation — none of it was a punishment. It was communication.
I wish I’d known that boundaries weren’t selfish. That saying no wasn’t a failure. That asking for what I needed wasn’t asking for too much.
I wish I’d known that I didn’t have to earn my right to exist by being useful. That I was allowed to take up space, to have needs, to prioritize my own wellbeing without feeling guilty about it.
But I didn’t know those things. So I learned them the hard way.
And if you’re reading this and you recognize yourself in any of this — if you’ve spent years overriding your body’s signals, pushing through, suppressing your needs because you thought that’s what strength looked like — I want you to know this:
Your body isn’t trying to work against you. It’s trying to protect you. And the sooner you start listening, the less it has to scream.
I’m still learning. I’m still messy. I’m still figuring out how to exist in a body that requires more care than I was ever taught to give it.
But I’m listening now. And that’s the start.
References
Maté, G. (2003). When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. Knopf Canada.
