Over-explaining yourself is often a sign that you don’t yet believe you have the right to your own limits. — Unknown
I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve felt that I had to explain myself, whether I felt compelled to or whether I was made to, I’ve found myself defending my decisions. It has been an automatic response and I always thought it was because, growing up, I was being taught accountability. Because when asked, I (was made to believe) had to be able to explain myself, I had to be able to articulate my answers to why questions. I’ve always joked that I had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and I know inside me there’s this little girl still deathly afraid of disappointing people.
As I’ve been going through this healing journey, I’m starting to learn that apart from the fight or flight response that humans have, trauma survivors have a freeze or fawn response. The trauma is something else to unpack entirely and I’m not laying blame on anyone. I know I need to deal with it eventually. But I don’t think that day is today. I do understand and recognise that I fawn more than I freeze. I think I understood early on in my life that I needed to be hyper-compliant and that I had to learn to how to quickly soothe and please other people to diffuse potentially volatile situations, avoid conflicts and be safe. Part of this was me explaining my decisions, justifying my actions and answering the why questions to appeal to reason. I somehow believed that it was my responsibility to do that.
Sometimes you don’t necessarily owe anyone else an explanation because it doesn’t matter if you have a perfectly good reason for your decisions. And, sometimes you don’t have to say anything more than no. No is sometimes the only thing you have to say because it’s a complete sentence. You don’t have to explain why your boundary is where it is. They won’t necessarily explain themselves to you. So let them set that boundary, and you can also act accordingly.
Yellywelly 