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

Many people believe a proper adult communicates clearly and assertively. For a long time, one person did not fit that definition. There was a period when she could not even ask someone for a glass of water. She felt crazy for this inability. She wondered why she could not do simple things that others did without thinking. She asked herself why she could not just say what she needed to say and why she could not be normal.

These questions fed a spiral of shame. However, the question she should have asked was not how to overcome being damaged. The right question was how her struggles made sense based on her upbringing. Based on that, she was perfect, and her behaviors made perfect sense.

She was a child taught to be seen and not heard. Her feelings made others angry and violent. Her anger led to shame and rejection from the person she needed most. She was hit again and again until she stopped crying. Her needs inconvenienced those in charge of her care. Her wants were called selfish, attention-seeking, or ridiculous. She was made wrong for everything she felt, wanted, or needed. She was called a monster for being a child. She grew up feeling unwanted, alone, and repulsive.

Given this, why would that child ever speak? Why would she share anything about herself? It all made sense. It was a way of surviving. She was taught that she did not matter. What she wanted, needed, or felt was something abhorrent that needed to be hidden at any cost. She did this to avoid getting hurt, shamed, and rejected. This pattern continued even when she was with different people and even when she was an adult. She could not get herself to say what she wanted and needed to say. It felt too scary, too dangerous, and too shame-inducing.

If you struggle to express yourself and feel embarrassed about that, she understands. She did too. She wants you to know it was never your fault. Life is harder when you could not be who you were growing up. The only way to protect yourself was by being less of yourself. You could not grow into yourself because that would have gotten you hurt. You could not learn to love yourself because that was the biggest risk of all.

Today, that risk only lives within you, in your conditioning. That is where inner healing work comes in. For her, that meant getting professional support. She learned how to safely connect to herself and her truth. She learned 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. She could then 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 learned to avoid and suppress her emotions growing up, she knew it would be challenging to get to know herself. She had the opportunity to reparent herself. She gave herself the love, affection, and attention she did not receive as a kid. That ultimately allowed her to 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. 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. She knows that kind of change is possible, even if it does not feel like it right now. 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 she does not feel held back by toxic shame in the ways she once did. She hopes that sharing her story will help others follow the spark of desire in them to express themselves.

She believes people were born to be fully expressed. That was their birthright. Just because the people who raised you did not understand you, that does not mean you have to deprive the world and yourself of experiencing you. It is never too late to open your heart and share yourself in ways that feel healing, liberating, empowering, and loving.