Mamahood After Trauma | Trauma Informed Parenting, Emotional Regulation for Moms
Aug 25, 2026 · 42 min · 16 segments
In this powerful final episode of her August series, Emily Cleghorn tackles one of the hardest challenges for trauma survivors: saying no. Emily explores why "no" feels so dangerous — rooted in…
Emily CleghornHost
Why is saying no so hard? Why can someone ask us for something completely unreasonable, and instead of saying no, we immediately start figuring out how we're going to make it happen? We rearrange our schedule.
Okay, remember in our last episode where I was talking about, uh, energetic overdraft, and we used the analogy of the bank account? That's, that's where that comes in here.
And sometimes we even think, "Why does no one ever consider me?" But here's the uncomfortable part.
Sometimes we're not giving other people the opportunity to consider us because we're, we're never telling them what we need.
That doesn't work for me." We're just automatically saying yes, and let me be really clear.
Because if you're, if you've experienced trauma, your brain may have learned that other people's reactions are dangerous.
Why is saying no so hard? Why can someone ask us for something completely unreasonable, and instead of saying no, we immediately start figuring out how we're going to make it happen? We rearrange our schedule.
Okay, remember in our last episode where I was talking about, uh, energetic overdraft, and we used the analogy of the bank account? That's, that's where that comes in here.
And sometimes we even think, "Why does no one ever consider me?" But here's the uncomfortable part.
Sometimes we're not giving other people the opportunity to consider us because we're, we're never telling them what we need.
That doesn't work for me." We're just automatically saying yes, and let me be really clear.
Because if you're, if you've experienced trauma, your brain may have learned that other people's reactions are dangerous.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
