When the Body Says No: The Hidden Cost of the Armor We Carry

What Dr. Gabor Maté’s work, my childhood experiences, and two decades of somatic exploration have taught me about emotional protection, physical health, and the courage to live authentically.

What if some of the qualities we’ve spent our entire lives being praised for are the very qualities that are quietly exhausting us?

Being the strong one. The responsible one. The person who never complains. The one who always puts everybody else’s needs first.

Society celebrates these characteristics as virtues. We admire people who sacrifice themselves for their families, work tirelessly without rest, and maintain a pleasant exterior even when they’re struggling internally.

But many of these seemingly admirable qualities began as survival mechanisms. And when we continue to carry that armor long after the circumstances that created it have passed, the psychological and physical costs can accumulate.

I’ve spent much of my adult life exploring these patterns through my own healing journey and through the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with over the years.

They also sit at the heart of Dr. Gabor Maté’s work on emotional repression, chronic stress, and physical illness.

When Being Good Becomes a Survival Strategy

In his book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Maté draws upon decades of experience in family medicine and palliative care. He worked with patients who faced serious illnesses, including autoimmune conditions, cancer, and neurological diseases, and began to notice recurring psychological themes in many of their personal histories.

These included compulsive caretaking and people-pleasing, an exaggerated sense of duty, difficulty expressing healthy anger, and overwhelming guilt about disappointing others.

Many of these individuals had spent their lives as exceptionally kind, dependable, and selfless people. But under those carefully maintained masks, Maté recognized histories of emotional suppression, self-sacrifice, and chronic internal stress.

These weren’t simply people who had difficult lives. They had developed identities to survive those difficulties.

A child who learned that expressing anger threatened their relationships could become an exceptionally agreeable adult. Someone who discovered that being useful earned love could become an endlessly devoted caretaker. And a child who learned that vulnerability invited punishment might grow into an adult who appeared incredibly strong but struggled to let anyone get close.

Maté describes this as a conflict between two fundamental human needs: attachment and authenticity.

Attachment is our need for love, connection, and safety. Authenticity is our capacity to recognize and express our genuine emotions, desires, needs, and boundaries.

When these needs conflict during childhood, attachment often wins because a child needs connection to survive. We become whoever we believe we need to be in order to feel loved, accepted, or safe.

But the price of preserving that attachment can be the gradual abandonment of our authentic selves.

The Guard I Learned to Wear as a Child

This subject is deeply personal to me.

Growing up, I experienced abuse as a child. At school, you would never have known how much pain I carried. I learned early that showing vulnerability wasn’t safe, and expressing my hurt or anger could expose me to more pain.

I can still remember specific moments when I made vows to myself.

“I’m not going to show my emotions. I’m not going to let anyone see me vulnerable. No one is going to break me. I will protect myself.”

These weren’t passing thoughts. They became promises about how I would move through the world. And to little me, those vows felt powerful. They gave me a sense of control when I otherwise felt powerless.

But that strength came at a cost.

I remember the almost implosive experience of holding so much anger inside without a safe place to express it. There was an explosive heat within me, and I struggled with acne and frequent illnesses, including flus and viral infections.

Looking back, my skin felt like a mirror of that inner heat. I can’t say my emotions caused those conditions, but I remember the intensity of the internal tension and the effort it took to maintain an outward appearance that everything was fine.

I had become an expert at emotional armor.

In the Seven Adaptation Patterns that we explore through Shamanic Breathwork Dearmoring, I recognize this as a strong expression of AP3 — Guard, the archetype organized around protection, betrayal, and the fear of being hurt.

Within the Solar Plexus Chakra, we explore personal power, will, identity, and protection. For me, that power had become attached to the belief that no one would ever see my vulnerability. I wasn’t simply protecting myself from physical harm anymore. I was protecting myself from being seen.

I also recognize a strong expression of AP5 — Heady, the Overthinker.

Thinking, understanding, and intellectualizing became other ways to maintain control. It was easier to explain an experience than to feel the pain under it. Psychology calls this intellectualization, a defense mechanism that uses reasoning to create distance from uncomfortable emotions.

Within the Throat Chakra, AP5 explores truth, communication, and authentic expression. Someone can become incredibly articulate while feeling disconnected from their emotional experience.

I had learned to do exactly that.

When My Body Finally Found Its Voice

It wasn’t until I entered acting conservatory that my relationship with the body changed.

As part of my training, I explored breathwork, the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and various somatic workshops designed to free the actor’s body and voice. These practices were intended to make us more expressive, emotionally available, and physically responsive performers.

For me, they opened doors I didn’t know existed.

During workshops that invited movement, breathing, sound, and physical expression, emotions I had held inside for years suddenly surfaced with tremendous intensity. I would burst into powerful vocal expression, deep crying, and waves of physical release.

It felt as though years of hurt and anger that had never found a safe outlet finally had permission to express themselves.

Sound was particularly powerful. For years, I had associated emotional expression with danger. Now I discovered that I could express anger, grief, and vulnerability without punishment.

I could cry. I could make sound. I could feel. And I could be safe while doing so.

Those workshops didn’t instantly resolve everything I carried from childhood, but they fundamentally changed my relationship with my body. The experiences planted seeds that I spent many years integrating.

I began to understand that strength wasn’t only about how much pain I could contain. It was also about how much truth I could allow myself to feel and express.

This is what I now recognize as the transformation from AP3’s protective guarding into courageous vulnerability, and from AP5’s intellectual control into emotional flow and expressive freedom.

My armor had helped me survive, but I no longer needed to live completely inside it.

The People Who Could Never Say No

When I began to read Maté’s observations about chronic illness, I recognized striking similarities with patterns I had witnessed in my own client practice.

One recurring theme appeared in sessions with clients who lived with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s disease. Among the clients I worked with, I repeatedly encountered histories of difficulty expressing personal needs or speaking up to authority figures.

Often, that authority figure was the father or another dominant person within the family. The client would describe an overpowering presence in the household, someone whose opinions, expectations, or emotional reactions seemed to outweigh everyone else’s.

As children, they learned to acquiesce, keep the peace, and avoid confrontation. They trained themselves to say yes even when something inside wanted to say no. Over time, this response became part of their adult identity.

Some became overly responsible and continually placed other people’s needs before their own. Others developed an almost automatic “go-for” energy, jumping into action whenever someone needed something.

They became attached to being the people everyone could count on. But under all that helpfulness, they often struggled to recognize what they wanted for themselves.

Within the Adaptation Patterns, I recognized strong expressions of AP4 — Performer, attached to obligated roles, and AP6 — Depleted, the archetype that has forgotten its inner power.

AP4 develops around the belief that our worth depends on how useful we are to others. Its Heart Chakra themes involve love, compassion, belonging, and the balance between giving and receiving. But when giving consistently excludes our own needs, love begins to feel like a one-sided obligation.

AP6 goes deeper into personal power. Through the Third Eye Chakra, we explore inner vision, agency, and our capacity to imagine a life beyond our present circumstances. When someone spends years surrendering choices to an authority figure, they can lose contact with their own inner authority. They stop dreaming about what’s possible, as though their inner spark has faded.

With these clients, I often explored the relationship between obligation, personal expression, and sovereign choice. Sometimes I simply asked what they would choose if they didn’t have to worry about disappointing anyone.

For some, this brought up overwhelming sadness about all the times they had abandoned their own needs. Others realized that they had spent most of their lives according to someone else’s expectations.

As they questioned those obligations, they began to reconnect with the possibility of choosing differently. They could express a need, set a healthy boundary, or recognize that their worth didn’t depend on continually accommodating a dominant family member.

I’m describing patterns from my client work, not claiming that suppressed self-expression causes Hashimoto’s disease or hypothyroidism. What I can speak to is the emotional significance of these experiences and the changes clients described as they reclaimed their voices and sense of agency.

For someone who has spent decades believing that expressing their needs is dangerous or selfish, recognizing their right to choose can transform their relationship with life.

The Seven Ways We Learn to Protect Ourselves

These experiences led me to explore how protective adaptations take shape through different psychological and physical expressions.

In Shamanic Breathwork Dearmoring, we work with seven Adaptation Patterns inspired by the work of Dr. Donny Epstein and Dr. John Amaral, alongside anatomical, energetic, and psychological frameworks.

I see these patterns as living body mudras, physical expressions of how our consciousness has learned to organize around protection.

AP1 — Withdrawn reflects how the past can dominate the present. Its shadow is withdrawal, and its gift is embodied presence. AP2 — Vigilant reflects the constant anticipation of future danger. Its shadow is excessive readiness, and its gift is trust and inner resourcefulness.

AP3 — Guard explores betrayal and protective defenses. Its shadow is habitual guarding, and its gift is discernment and courageous vulnerability. AP4 — Performer reflects the belief that love must be earned through obligation. Its shadow is self-abandonment, and its gift is authenticity and balanced giving.

AP5 — Heady uses intellectual control to avoid difficult emotions. Its shadow is overthinking, and its gift is emotional flow and expressive freedom. AP6 — Depleted reflects powerlessness and lost personal agency. Its shadow is resignation, and its gift is empowerment and embodied authority.

Finally, AP7 — Conflicted Turmoil explores the tension between what we genuinely desire and what we believe we must do. Its shadow is living through guilt and competing obligations, and its gift is sovereignty and freedom of choice.

These patterns are not fixed identities. We cycle through them in different relationships, circumstances, and stages of life. AP3 and AP5 were prominent in my own history, but I’ve also experienced withdrawal, vigilance, and other forms of protection.

The value of this framework is that it helps us recognize the strategies we’ve learned to use and question whether they still serve us.

What Science Tells Us About Stress and the Body

The relationship between emotional stress and physical health extends beyond spiritual philosophy.

Research in psychoneuroimmunology shows that the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems communicate continuously. Chronic psychological stress can influence hormonal activity, inflammation, sleep, and several aspects of immune functioning.

In 2004, researchers Suzanne Segerstrom and Gregory Miller published a major meta-analysis of more than 300 studies examining psychological stress and immune function. They found that chronic stress was associated with changes in several measures of immune activity.

A large Swedish study published in JAMA in 2018 followed more than 100,000 people diagnosed with stress-related disorders. The researchers reported a 36% higher relative risk of subsequent autoimmune disease compared with matched individuals without those diagnoses.

These findings establish meaningful relationships between stress and health, although they don’t prove that a particular suppressed emotion causes a specific disease or that dearmoring prevents illness.

Research on adverse childhood experiences also links early adversity with a range of later health outcomes. This gives further context to Maté’s questions about the long-term costs of the protective identities we develop in childhood.

Our emotional lives and physical health are deeply interconnected, and chronic stress deserves to be taken seriously.

For me, this scientific perspective complements what I’ve encountered through somatic and spiritual practices. It invites us to understand the human being as an interconnected system rather than treating the mind, body, and emotions as separate experiences.

Dearmoring: Changing Our Relationship With the Armor

When people hear the word dearmoring, they sometimes imagine breaking through someone’s defenses or forcing years of suppressed emotion out of the body.

But that’s not the intention of the work I teach.

We’re not here to tear someone’s armor away. We’re here to create the conditions in which they can decide that they no longer need to hold it so tightly.

My childhood armor gave me strength when I had little control over my environment. But as an adult, the same protection restricted my capacity for vulnerability, authentic expression, and connection.

Dearmoring helped me recognize that I could honor that protection without allowing it to control my life.

In our training, we combine breath, somatic awareness, supportive touch, traditional acupressure references, and verbal inquiry to explore how these patterns appear in the body.

But the physical session is only one part of the work. What matters most is how the client changes their relationship with everyday life.

Can the person who always says yes begin to express an honest no? Can someone who suppresses anger learn to establish healthy boundaries? Can someone who guards against betrayal allow trustworthy relationships into their life? Can someone who surrendered their power to an authority figure finally make their own choices?

This is where we use the Four Point View as a framework for integration.

We Name what we observe in the body. We Claim the emotional experience and protective response. We Frame the experience through a new understanding of what the adaptation once served and what has become possible. And finally, we Game, turning those insights into small, practical choices that change how we live.

A profound release during a session can be meaningful. But if the person returns to the same patterns of self-abandonment, emotional suppression, and compulsory obligation, the deeper work of integration is still incomplete.

The gift of dearmoring is not simply the release itself. It’s the possibility of living differently afterward.

We Shouldn’t Have to Wait Until the End of Life to Become Ourselves

One of the most moving aspects of Maté’s work is his account of people who confront their needs, boundaries, and authentic desires while facing serious illness and mortality.

It raises a question I believe we should all consider.

Why do so many people wait until life forces them to stop before giving themselves permission to live authentically?

Why must we become exhausted before allowing ourselves to rest? Why do we wait until a relationship collapses before expressing the truth we’ve held inside? And why do we sometimes need a crisis before recognizing that the life we’re living no longer reflects who we are?

I know what it feels like to carry protective armor from childhood into adulthood. I also know the freedom that comes when that armor softens and the emotions we’ve suppressed finally find expression.

Through my work with clients, I’ve witnessed how expansive life can become when someone recognizes that they have permission to choose differently.

Sometimes the change begins with a breath. Sometimes it comes through an honest expression of grief or anger. And sometimes it begins with one simple sentence:

“I don’t want to do that anymore.”

A boundary. A request for support. A decision to stop sacrificing ourselves simply to feel loved.

I believe dearmoring can be life-changing because it helps us recover the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden under protective identities.

The purpose of dearmoring is not to erase what happened to us. It is to help us recognize that what happened does not have to define who we become.

The greatest gift we can offer ourselves is to reclaim our authenticity now and live the lives we were born to live, rather than wait until life gives us no other choice.

(To find out more about the next Shamanic Breathwork Dearmoring Training coming up on Nov 21 & 22 here).