Brazil learns to speak up after being taught feelings don’t matter

Many people say that a proper grown-up communicates clearly and assertively. By that definition, the author of this piece would not have been considered a proper grown-up for most of her life. There was a time when she could not even ask someone for a glass of water. She knows that might seem strange to some people, and for a long time, she felt crazy for it.

She asked herself why she could not do what others did without thinking. Why she could not say what she needed to say. Why she could not be normal. Those questions fed into a spiral of shame she was trapped in at that time. But she realized the question she should have been asking was not how to overcome being damaged, but how her struggles made sense based on how she was raised.

Based on her upbringing, her behaviors made perfect sense. She was the child taught to be seen and not heard. She was the child whose feelings made others angry and violent. She was the child whose anger got her shamed and rejected by the person she needed most. She was the child who got hit again and again until she stopped crying. She was the child whose needs inconvenienced those in charge of her care. She was the child whose wants were called selfish, attention-seeking, or ridiculous. She was the child made wrong for everything she felt, wanted, or needed. She was the child called a monster for being who she was, a child. She was the child who grew up feeling unwanted, alone, and entirely repulsive.

Why would that child ever speak? Why would she share anything about herself? She would not. It all made sense. It was a way of surviving. She had been taught that she did not matter. That what she wanted or needed and how she felt was abhorrent and needed to be hidden at any cost. She did this to avoid getting hurt, shamed, and rejected. Even when she was with different people. Even when she was an adult. That pattern ran her life. She could not get herself to say the things she wanted and needed to say. It felt too scary. It felt too dangerous. It was too shame-inducing.

For those who struggle to express themselves and feel embarrassed about it, the author says she understands. She did too. But she wants people to know it is not their fault. It was never their fault. Life is harder when you did not get to be who you were growing up. When the only way to protect yourself was by being less of yourself. When you could not grow into yourself because that would have gotten you hurt. When you could not learn to love yourself because that was the biggest risk of all.

Today, that risk only lives on within you, in your conditioning. That is where inner healing work comes in. For the author, that meant getting professional support to learn how to safely connect to herself and her truth. It meant learning to banish the critical, demanding, and demeaning internal voice that told her her feelings, needs, and wants were wrong. It meant learning to regulate her nervous system so she could get past her fear and be honest about what worked for her and what did not. This was a major turning point in her relationships. She started to represent herself more openly and assertively. Her relationships either improved dramatically, or she found out that other people did not really care about her or how she felt.

It also meant opening up emotionally and learning to understand what her feelings were trying to tell her. Since she had learned to avoid and suppress her emotions growing up, she knew it would be challenging to truly get to know herself. She had the opportunity of reparenting herself, giving herself the love, affection, and attention she did not receive as a kid. That ultimately allowed her to finally feel safe enough to express herself. The relationship she had with herself started to become a safe haven instead of a battleground. Her life has never been the same since.

Everything on the outside started to align with what was going on inside of her. The safer she became for herself, the safer the people in her life became. This allowed them to develop deeper, more meaningful, and intimate relationships. The author believes that kind of change is possible, even if it does not feel like it right now. She says it is possible because today she is the most authentic and expressed version of herself she has ever been. She no longer chokes on the words she was always meant to speak. She speaks them. She no longer holds back her feelings. She feels them and shares them freely. She no longer denies her needs or plays down her desires. She owns them, meets them, and fulfills them. She owns who she is and does not feel held back by toxic shame in the ways she once did.

Back then, she would have never thought this was possible for her. She hopes that in sharing her story and her transformation, others will follow the spark of desire in them that wants them to express themselves. To share their thoughts and desires. To express what it is like to be them. To finally get to meet more of themselves and eventually all of themselves. That is what they need to listen to, not the voice of fear or shame, not their conditioning, and not anything or anyone that reinforces their inhibitions or trauma. The author says people were born to be fully expressed. That was their birthright. That is the world’s gift. Just because the people who raised them did not understand them as the unique miracle they are, that does not mean they have to deprive the world, and themselves, of experiencing who they are.