Consent, Closeness, and Coming Home to Yourself
SELF-TRUST
Human connection is one of our deepest longings. To be seen, to be loved, to be safe in another’s presence—these are not luxuries, but core needs. Yet many of us were raised in systems that confused closeness with control, love with obedience, and care with paternalism.
Authoritarian structures—whether in family, religion, culture, or workplaces—often told us that belonging required submission. That trust meant silence. That consent was optional if someone else “knew better.”
But real closeness cannot exist without consent and choice. Real love cannot grow where autonomy, authenticity, and full acceptance are withheld.
Authoritarianism and the Loss of Self
In authoritarian or paternalistic systems, power flows one way: from the authority to the individual. Children are told “father knows best.” Congregants are told “the pastor hears God for you.” Workers are told “trust the company; don’t question policy.”
On the surface, these systems promise safety. But underneath, they demand self-abandonment.
Psychologist Alice Miller wrote that children in authoritarian environments learn to adapt by suppressing their authentic feelings in order to preserve attachment (Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child). Obedience becomes the currency of belonging, while one’s own body and emotions are viewed as unreliable at best, and dangerous at worst.
The result? A hollow kind of closeness: proximity without authenticity. Compliance masquerading as connection.
Paternalism Masquerading as True Care
Paternalism often arrives cloaked in kindness: I only want what’s best for you.
But “what’s best” is defined by the authority, not by you. Your own knowing is dismissed as naïve, sinful, or unreliable. This strips you of consent at the deepest level: the right to define your own experience.
bell hooks reminds us that love is not about domination but about nurturing growth (All About Love). Where paternalism rules, closeness becomes a transaction. You receive care as long as you surrender autonomy. And so you learn to swallow dissent, to defer, to disappear. To please and appease. To be the good girl.
Radical Acceptance: A Doorway Back
Healing begins with radical acceptance—of yourself.
Radical acceptance is a term popularized by psychologist Marsha Linehan in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). It means fully acknowledging reality as it is, without judgment or denial. Applied inwardly, it is turning toward the parts of yourself that were silenced and saying:
Your feelings are valid.
You matter.
Your “no” is holy.
You were never “too much” or “not enough”—you are just right, just the way you are.
This practice dismantles the internalized authoritarianism living inside us. As Bessel van der Kolk notes in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma teaches us to disconnect from our sensations and emotions; radical acceptance is the first step to reclaiming them.
Acceptance does not mean passivity. It means refusing to exile any part of your humanity. It is the soil in which self-trust grows again.
Radical Autonomy: Reclaiming Consent
If radical acceptance is the soil, radical autonomy is the fruit.
Radical autonomy says: I am the ultimate authority of my own body, my own choices, my own inner compass.
This does not mean isolation or selfishness. Autonomy is not the absence of relationship—it is the precondition for healthy relationship. Only when you are free to say no can your yes mean anything at all.
Developmental psychologist Daniel Siegel calls this integration: honoring both differentiation (the uniqueness of the self) and linkage (connection with others) as the foundation of healthy attachment (The Developing Mind). In other words: autonomy and closeness are not opposites—they are partners. They are both needed for healthy connection, with oneself, and with others.
To reclaim autonomy is to reclaim consent as the sacred foundation of closeness.
Consent to listen to your body before you agree.
Consent to choose rest over relentless productivity.
Consent to honor your desires without apology.
And even, consent to walk away if a relationship requires self-erasure.
Consent and Closeness: A New Paradigm
Closeness without consent is coercion. Consent without closeness is isolation. Real intimacy requires both.
This means shifting from:
Authoritarianism → Collaboration
Instead of “I know best,” we move toward “let’s discern together.”Paternalism → Partnership
Instead of “I’ll decide for you,” we honor “your voice matters here.”Compliance → Authenticity
Instead of “keep the peace at all costs,” we value “truth, spoken kindly, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem reminds us that healing must happen individually and collectively. Systems that erase consent leave scars in both bodies and communities (My Grandmother’s Hands). Rebuilding trust requires both individual reclamation and communal transformation.
In this paradigm, your autonomy is not a threat to love—it is the ground of it. Consent makes closeness safe. Autonomy makes intimacy sustainable.
Coming Home
Coming home to yourself means no longer trading self-belonging for conditional love. It means no longer confusing control for connection.
It looks like practicing radical acceptance of every part of you, and radical autonomy in every choice you make.
It looks like finding communities where your “no” is as honored as your “yes.”
Where closeness is an invitation, never a demand.
Where love is not the reward for obedience, but the recognition of your full, unedited humanity.
This is how we move from authoritarianism to authentic belonging. From paternalism to partnership. From self-abandonment to self-trust.
This is the journey of consent and closeness—the journey home.
Visualizing the Journey to Consent and Closeness
Consent is a part of trust. High consent means high trust for yourself, and the willingness to believe that others know what’s best for themselves. Inherent in this belief is the presupposition that each person’s inner knowing is the best indicator of what’s best for them. And each person can know that better for themselves than someone else can. Thus, self-trust encourages us to use consent language rather than admonishment or demands.
Would you like to? Would you be willing to? I’d like it if you’d… Would that be okay for you?
I created a Consent/Closeness Matrix to demonstrate this visually:
Reflection:
Where do you fall in this matrix?
Where would you prefer to be?
Where were your parents in this matrix when you were growing up?
Where were your teachers, coaches, and mentors?
Plot them on the matrix. (Here’s a png file you can download and print out.)
How does it help to see this plotted out?
Now, let’s take this an additional step and look at each quadrant’s approach to pain…
Reflection:
Which approaches to pain have you experienced?
Which approach(es) to pain do you prefer?
What would you add?
How can you treat yourself with more compassion and authenticity?
