This message has been revisiting me for quite a while. It is time to sit down and write it, yet I find it difficult to find a starting point. Please be patient as I work through the message I want to communicate.
In my blog, What Do You Want? I shared with you one of my answers, well, two actually, to that question. They were: I want to continue working on being a recovering people-pleaser and state what I want and need unapologetically.
I’m running into difficulty. As I work to shovel and dig free on my unearthing journey, I keep encountering a repeating thread.
No. Not thread. Tether. Because it feels as if a cord is holding me in place.
And that cord is silence.
I am working to release the cord and break free of the silence holding me in place. One way I am doing this is by releasing my writing, my voice, into the world.
Because there is a burden carried when you are silent.
I trust you know I am not talking about respecting and keeping in confidence a secret that is not yours to share, but of the things you keep locked within yourself because of fear or some other strong emotion.
I encourage you to search for a Feelings Wheel. There are several of them, but the one that resonates best with me is Calm The Feelings Wheel. I encourage a feelings wheel because there are far more emotions than the basic six (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, fear), and a feelings wheel helps you identify the nuances within your emotions.
I want to restate my disclaimer: I am not a therapist, psychologist, or trained counselor. I write from my heart and my experiences in my hope of giving a nudge and hug as you, we, make our way in unearthing who we are. Additionally, if you are silent because of abuse, please seek help. The National Abuse Hotline is 800-799-7233.
I want, no, need to write this particular blog, at this particular time, because I want you to know you are not alone; you are not walking the Who Am I toward Who I Am path by yourself. And most importantly, I want to ease your struggles by vulnerably sharing my own.
Currently, the biggest struggle I am encountering is the challenge to release within myself and open myself to what is holding me back from embracing Who I Am. Silence is a hard habit to break when it has been used as a safety net and security blanket.
Maintaining silence is the tether that is holding me in place.
To release the tether, it’s imperative to start talking to my therapist, a trusted friend, and my vault. (A vault is someone who will hold in strictest confidence what you tell them, witness your experiences/pain, listen without judgment, and offer no solution or personal experiences.) And I have done so.
As I started talking, I recognized two key things. First, I am anchoring myself in silence because I have been afraid of rejection, criticism, disapproval, and “losing” people. The second is that until I started talking, exposing myself and what I have endured, I could not name it for what it was. It took my excellent therapist to help me do that.
I’ll add a third key thing since I am being wholly authentic here. Our children are watching. What we model our children learn. There are several things I would do differently as a mom raising her children, and one of those would be to live the way I strive to now – with open, honest statements of wants, needs, boundaries, and regulating emotions in a healthy way, not locking them down.
The burden part of being silent is that there is an almost constant internal conflict happening. The more you silence yourself, the more you lose yourself. Which, hopefully, leads to asking ourselves, Who Am I? I say hopefully because to ask that question, you are hearing yourself say, “I’m here.” Then, you can find help and get to work untethering and unearthing.
My friend, I offer you a flood of compassion and a question to contemplate: What weight are you carrying because of your silence?
Thank you for walking with me today. By my writing and posting this blog, and your reading it, you and I have taken steps to unburden, to begin releasing the tie tethering us in place 💙
2 Responses
Therapy is work. It is hard to unearth what has been buried. It is hard to recognize truths when they have been whitewashed or colored over with more accepted tones. It hard to accept your truth may be denied by others. But there are great rewards for the hard work… freedom, lightening of heavy burdens, openness to new possibilities.
Beautifully stated, Rose. Thank you very much for sharing your superbly worded thoughts.
Hugs,
Judy