Red Flags: What Your Body’s Been Trying to Tell You
Yesterday, we explored Rules vs Boundaries. But boundaries aren’t just the lines we draw with others, they’re also the ones we quietly cross within ourselves. They’re often internal ones we fail to recognize. And if you’re neurodivergent, you might cross your own boundaries on a regular basis without even realizing it. Many of us have spent our lives shrinking to fit into other people’s worlds. We’ve worried more about disappointing others than disappointing ourselves. We’ve prioritized comfort for everyone but us.
We’ve also become so used to discomfort that we forget it’s not the baseline. We mistake survival for alignment. But when you’re living in constant adjustment mode, your nervous system never really lands.
In September of 2021, Hannah Taylor shared a Facebook post that went viral. She outlined how she doesn’t look for red flags in others, she looks for them in herself. That resonated with me deeply. Her experience is her compass, and her red flags aren’t about the other person being good or bad. They’re about whether she feels aligned, safe, and present in that connection.
Some of her internal red flags include:
When her voice goes high-pitched or sits in her throat.
When she finds herself overexplaining.
When she has to set the same boundary more than once.
When she fears someone’s reaction.
These aren’t just social discomforts. They are signs of misalignment. And they deserve to be honored.
When the metric for access to ourselves is based on external factors it is far easier to become internally misaligned. Red flags in others (people, jobs, situations, relationships) as the sole barometer implies that as long as things are deemed as universally or subjectively “good” we should continue to allow them access to us. However, often our bodies are screaming that something is not, in fact, good. We owe no one access to us. And we owe no one a justification for that choice.
Referring primarily to external red flags is not a flaw. It is how we have been conditioned. Women are often told to ignore their intuition, to not cause a scene, or are seen as dramatic for their intuitive responses in a given situation. For marginalized individuals, especially women of color, trans people, or disabled folks, learning to override intuition isn’t a bad habit, but rather a survival strategy learned through necessity.
It is easy to say “notice the red flags in yourself,” but in practice this often feels overwhelming. I don’t expect you to know all of these red flags right away. Can you sit down and create a list? Yes, of course. But any list you create is going to be a living, breathing document that you will iterate on over time.
You can also start practicing observation. You may not do this naturally, or consciously, so put your hyper-self-awareness to good use and just start with noticing.
Notice when your throat catches, your heart rate quickens, your cheeks flush, when you’re apologizing just for existing, when you hold back your emotions (laughter or tears) or when anxiety quietly creeps in.
What is going on around you when these things happen?
Who are you with?
What did they say?
Are you about to meet up with someone?
Go to a certain event?
Just start taking note of these things and over time learning what those mean to you. Are they red flags within yourself? Maybe. It’s worth investigating.
How we ignore our internal red flags and cross our own boundaries.
Red flags aren’t just signals that something’s wrong. They’re invitations to pause and realign before the fallout. The signals Hannah describes in her viral Facebook post (exhaustion, irritability, shutdown, voice pitch) are data. And they matter.
I remember moving in with a partner in my early twenties. While packing, I threw away DVDs I loved, like Bring It On, because I feared they’d laugh at me. They never said anything directly, but something in their energy told me those parts of myself wouldn’t be welcome. So I cut them off before they could.
They were the kind of person who did things to shock others, like slowly undressing in front of missionaries at the door. Brash. Provocative. And I adjusted. My humor got sharper. I stayed up late to match their schedule, which affected my health. I tried to change my body. Wore clothes that didn’t feel like mine. The shifts were so gradual I didn’t even realize how far I’d gone until I looked up and didn’t like who I saw.
That’s the thing about boundary erosion. It’s slow. It’s quiet.
And it doesn’t always come from demands, it often comes from the spaces we willingly step out of ourselves, to stay close to someone else.
As we adjust over and over again to be in alignment with others, to be “likable,” we get further and further out of alignment with our true selves, what my mom calls our “core truth.”
Sometimes, our gut knows long before our mind catches up. And it keeps whispering until we either listen or lose the part of us it was trying to protect.
Reflective Prompts
Take a moment to think about or even jot down how you would answer these questions, then expand to see how I answered them.
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My earliest signs of shrinking are easy to overlook and I, like many others, have been trained to overlook them.
It might be as small as saying “yes” to something I don’t really want to do.
Letting an offhanded comment slide.
Choosing to withhold parts of myself in a conversation.Noticing these things doesn’t always mean I’m seeing red flags, but they are signals.
They’re invitations to slow down and check in. To ask:
“Where is this behavior coming from? Am I responding from alignment or fear?”Sometimes, shrinking doesn't look like silence, it looks like permission. And when we justify "harmless" discomfort, we begin trading pieces of ourselves for temporary ease.
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This is a hard one. And I want to acknowledge that before I go any further. I almost didn’t share this story, because I acknowledge how it looks. But this is part of the work.
Sometimes, the behaviors we justify don’t just cost us moments, they cost us integrity, compassion, and a sense of who we are.
In that earlier mentioned relationship I ignored the little red flags, the questions, the way they made me feel. Each one seemed harmless on its own, but over time I was really just becoming desensitized until my empathy had eroded. We were at a grocery store one day when I said something I’ll never forget.
A little girl asked her mom for a donut as she passed, and I turned to my partner and said,
“The last thing that girl needs is a donut.”I don’t know if she heard me. But I did. He laughed. I didn’t.
That moment hit like cold water. I realized I wasn’t just uncomfortable. I had been performing. And I had become someone I didn’t like.
It took time for me to leave. I wasn’t ready to walk away just then.
But that was the beginning of my return to myself. -
Yes.
In a later relationship I was told I dressed "too nicely" for their friend group.
I didn’t want people to think I thought I was better than them.So I adjusted.
I wore more jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies and less slacks, blouses, or Ann Taylor Loft sweaters.They also talked about how impractical heels were.
That they did not understand why women felt the need to wear them.
So, I wore lower and lower heels. Eventually, I wore flats almost exclusively.They told me that crying was a form of emotional manipulation, so I disconnected more and more from my emotions.
In arguments where I desperately sought understanding, they'd ask if being right was more important than being happy.
I rarely noticed that I was always the one apologizing, often just for expressing my feelings.Each compromise seemed small.
Together, they created a different version of me that was smaller, both physically and energetically.They never outright told me to change, but in my efforts to be liked, to be loved, to be seen as worthy, I did.
That’s what happens when we don’t listen to our internal red flags. We leave pieces of ourself behind just to belong. To be lovable.
Reflection
If any of this stirs something in you, pause and breathe.
You’re not alone if these questions bring up shame or discomfort. That’s often the first sign you’re brushing up against something tender and true. You don’t have to do anything with that truth right now.
Just notice it. Honor it.
So take a breath. Let it settle. This is where boundary work begins, in the quiet noticing, the sacred pause, the return to your own pulse.