Ep. 14 - Inner Consent: Saying Yes to Your Life
Saying no outwardly is about saying yes to myself.
Inner consent represents the lived experience of saying yes or no to something. It is a somatic, gut feeling engendered by tuning into ourselves and detecting how it feels to say yes to something. Inner consent is a capacity to attune to ourselves. Paradoxically, sometimes inner consent means saying yes to saying no. Also, when we say yes to something, we say no to something else as the yes and the no form a dynamic duo. In this sense, it is important to ask ourselves if we truly want to say yes or to say yes to say no. Realizing that we are allowed to say no may be the first step towards inner consent
The felt experience of saying yes is a sense of inner gathering and mustering of one’s energy and vitality. A rising of some sort followed by relief or a sense of lightness or feeling right. Inner consent is experienced as a movement towards what we say yes to, and as a mobilization of energy. When we live with inner consent, we can express ourselves in a clearer voice and the words are coming more easily. Inner consent is an affirming, grounding experience as we feel that we can fully show up and stand our ground.
Inner consent is not black and white or absolute. We do not always consent fully but rather there are degrees of inner consent. Nonetheless, the key part is to detect the gut feeling or felt sense of what we say yes to, and to recognize the value(s) involved in inner consent. Even if we do not consent 100% and we do not feel amazing about saying yes to something, as long as we affirm a deep, felt yes to a value then we live with inner consent. Inner consent is also not permanent and static, but it may change over time. Hence, the no may be temporary, and it is usually felt as inner resistance, a wall coming up, bracing oneself, hardening at our core, and closing in rather than staying open. When we say no to something, we tend to want to move away from that, and we carry more body tension. Recognizing this is an important step towards finding our inner consent.
Inner consent is not always pleasurable or convenient, but rather it is a yes to a value even when there are competing values involved. Thus, it is important to clarify to what value are we saying yes and to learn to tolerate the discomfort or displeasure that committing to realizing a value may bring up.
Inner consent is very important to our existence as it highlights our essential freedom and invites us to take up our freedom and make decisions- we can say our yes even to our no. Inner consent is relevant in everyday life’s routines and choices because our existence happens in every moment not only when we have to make life altering decisions. Living with inner consent allows us to not feel victimized or be a victim as we can choose to what we say yes to.
Inner consent is foundational for psychotherapy work, especially in working with challenging clients or in challenging or tiring situations. The key question as therapists is to ask ourselves periodically: Am I finding my yes, my freedom to being human with other human beings? Often, the meaningfulness of the therapeutic work supports the inner consent.
Not living with inner consent is dangerous as we may end up not living our life, never finding ourselves or not being present in our own life and with other people. Typically, this leads to emotional disconnection, loneliness, and meaninglessness as we are missing ourselves and our lives. Since we do not show up in our interactions with others, our relationships tend to be superficial or short lived.
We can cultivate living with inner consent by engaging in the following strategies:
Changing from “you” to “I” pronoun and adopting the 1st person perspective when we share our experiences
Starting small and being persistent in checking if we provide our inner consent: Do I want to do this now? Do I really want this?
Reflecting on a time when we made a difficult decision & reliving that: how did I know, what did it feel like in my body, and while carrying it out?
Install somatic resources: what is the gut feeling or felt sense when we give our yes to something?
Engaging in inner dialogue with ourselves
Recognizing the potentially competing values involved in a complex situation & prioritizing a value while enduring our discomfort
Increasing our capacity to tolerate the discomfort
Taking the time to feel the inner consent
Slowing down: arriving at the inner consent needs to gestate
Taking into consideration all aspects of decision making: can I do it , do I want to, does it do justice to myself, should I do it?
Despite the enormous significance of inner consent for our existence, there are some risks involved in living with inner consent:
We may upset some people
Our relationships may be affected negatively
We could make mistakes when we choose in accordance with ourselves
One’s life may change drastically as a result of saying yes to something
There may be loss, grief and pain associated with inner consent but the consent itself offers the ground to grieve the losses and metabolize the pain
However, the losses stemming from on not living with inner consent far exceed these risks. For example, a life lived without inner consent may lead to self-estrangement, emotional numbness and persistent feeling of meaninglessness.
