Epistemic sovereignty: Defending Your Inner Narrator

The sources analyze how intimate relationships can lead to the subtle erosion of one's *perceptual autonomy* when one person's emotional weight, anxiety, or *insecurity* grants them disproportionate influence over shared reality. This process causes the individual to outsource their inner narrator, resulting in *chronic self-doubt* and the practice of preemptive self-editing to maintain peace or alignment. The texts argue that this "borrowed perspective" leads to a specific kind of loneliness where one is emotionally entangled yet fundamentally unseen, trapped inside the partner's *myth of you*. To achieve true *intimacy without fusion*, the individual must reclaim *epistemic sovereignty* by reasserting the validity of their own lens through *micro-assertions* and restoring internal clarity. Crucially, the sources highlight the necessity of *solitary savoring* and quiet rituals as a means of sensory detox, allowing the nervous system to recalibrate its own signal and counteract the forces of emotional distortion.