Denouncement: How Tyranny Silences YOUR Truth Before It Takes Power, Part 1

[00:00:00] Welcome to Excellent Rising. [00:00:02] I'm Anna Mail, somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery and the founder of Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. [00:00:13] Today I want to talk about the machinery of denouncement and how tyranny and patriarchy banish the truth and truth tellers. [00:00:26] Denouncement is not just being left, but being named as the problem, being cast out not for you doing harm, but for naming harm. [00:00:45] This is not accidental. [00:00:48] This is not interpersonal drama. [00:00:53] This is the machinery, the system that holds patriarchy and tyranny in place. [00:01:02] And if you have ever been exiled from your family, from your spiritual community, your workplace, your country, or even from your own sense of belonging, for telling the truth, for standing up for what is morally right, for speaking what was real, what was just, for standing up for human rights or for simply existing in your full expression, this talk is for you what denouncement really is. To be denounced is to be declared wrong by the system which is bigger than you. And to be denounced is to be declared wrong not because you were wrong, but because you were destructive for them. Disruptive to silence, disruptive to comfort. [00:02:15] They want disruptive to power. [00:02:21] They claim the announcement is what happens when you break a system unspoken rule. [00:02:30] And that system is always power over you. [00:02:37] They're up, you're below. [00:02:43] And that system unspoken rule is don't name what hurts, don't name what is unjust, don't name what we benefit from, don't expose what we refuse to change, don't say what inhumane treatment we run. [00:03:24] So it is the nervous system equivalent of being burned at the stake. [00:03:33] And not only with fire or bullets and grenades and bombs, as we can see now in Iran, in United States, absolutely. [00:03:47] But also is you being burned, cast out socially, relationally, spiritually, economically, where you are placed on purpose to be isolated, where your credibility is questioned, your tone is criticized, your intelligence and your sanity is implied to be unstable. [00:04:18] Many women, they know that the label of oh, she is the crazy one when she is telling the truth and the message is clear, if you keep speaking, you will lose belonging. [00:04:41] And as you know that belonging is to the system, you never want to belong. [00:04:48] It is the system completely different of your values. [00:04:54] And yet we get to be born in those systems. [00:05:03] So if you're looking at patriarchy, how patriarchy train us men and women for denouncement, Patriarchy uses denouncement to protect most fragile myth, that power must never be questioned. [00:05:25] And that power is someone you know, the first and last name is power over you. [00:05:37] When a woman in a family names abuse, she becomes the liar. [00:05:45] When son in a family names abuse, he is disloyal 1. [00:05:52] When a person in a spiritual space speaks up about spiritual abuse, they become the one with bad energy. [00:06:04] When in ethnic groups, in a family system now young adult set up a boundary, they become ungrateful, too intense disgrace to their community. [00:06:22] You are not exiled for being untrue. [00:06:26] You are exiled for being too true, too much in alignment with your values of honesty, justice, dignity, human rights and patriarchy. [00:06:54] Tyranny rewards obedience. [00:06:59] So we raised and we are coming from a system of obedient people. [00:07:07] And that system is tone policing. It's spiritual bypassing. [00:07:12] There you think you have some choice, but actually everything is done so you can bypass not to question anything. [00:07:24] It's also system where you endure without complaint and it punishes the body that speaks up. [00:07:37] And being exiled, cast out, always starts very close. In a, uh, family system, in the church, in the school, also in a therapist's office, there are some therapists would say to clients, have you tried compassion for your abuser? [00:08:01] Forgive. [00:08:03] So this is where the nervous system is trained to betray itself. [00:08:08] And how tyranny scales the same mechanism. [00:08:12] Tyranny takes this exact same structure and then scales up across entire nation. [00:08:22] So speak out against the regime and you're no longer a citizen, you're a traitor. [00:08:31] Protest injustice and you are labeled dangerous, destabilizing, ungrateful. [00:08:42] You are sent to prison. Now just look at the news, question the official narrative, and suddenly you are the threat to peace. You are the threat to the peace, not them, not autocracy and tyranny. So if you're looking in the United States, where protesters are criminalized, surveilled, and framed as violent simply for refusing silence, refusing to be denounced, Iran in many countries across Europe. [00:09:29] So different governments by the same system. It's, uh, the same machinery. [00:09:35] Because tyranny does not fear chaos. [00:09:41] Tyranny fears truth that spreads from you. [00:09:48] And the emotional training ground for tyranny almost always begins long before politics. [00:09:58] It begins in homes where kids are told, don't talk about that. [00:10:04] Don't upset your mom, don't embarrass the family, don't make it worse. [00:10:11] So you are trained to silence your knowing. [00:10:17] It's very confusing for a child and for a young adult to be raised in the system like this, because all your internal knowing of justice, of what's right and wrong, gets to be very confused. Because now you have a parent who is above you, who is supposed to be smarter and more wiser than you. You're supposed to listen. That parent is saying something which is complete against your innate instinct to stand up for what is right. [00:10:55] So you learn to exile your grief, to swallow your anger in order to belong. And as a child, this is the only way to be, is to belong, to survive. [00:11:11] But then you're being prepared for compliance on a national scale. [00:11:19] And then what? We can see a population that has exiled itself. [00:11:25] It is easier to control. [00:11:29] You get to be easier to control, to be denounced, because your nervous system learned that from very young age. [00:11:43] And as you know, this is nothing new in our history. We know about vitriols, shunning, religious inquisitions, colonial laws. [00:11:57] So every time a system feels threatened by truth tellers, by activists, it does not debate, it denounces. [00:12:11] And the cost is staggering. [00:12:14] So we have emotional self erasure. [00:12:17] It's erasure of your own identity, of your instinct of righteous rage and righteous anger in a phase of violation of human rights, of what's right, what's wrong. It's a deep moral injury. [00:12:44] When we get to be denounced, we are experiencing moral injury. [00:12:55] And that leads to intergenerational silence, loss of vitality. [00:13:03] A, ah, culture that worships image. [00:13:08] Massive spiritual bypassing. [00:13:13] Their people in the prime years are now in a, uh, retreat centers, silence retreats numb, dissociate. And healing from denouncement is not just personal work. It is political and ancestral and it is spiritual. It means coming back to true spiritual work. [00:13:36] Because every time you return to your body, to your essence, you interrupt a system, uh, that survives on dissociation. [00:13:46] Every time you speak again, even softly, it doesn't have to be big, but speaking up softly still refuses to be silenced. [00:14:08] Every time you feel your anger without turning against yourself or someone next to you, you break a lineage of compliance. [00:14:21] I'm talking about healthy ang. [00:14:28] And tyranny depends on numb, um, bodies. [00:14:33] Patriarchy depends on silenced voices and your healing. [00:14:42] You're standing up for what is right, what is just. [00:14:48] What is humane threatens tyranny. [00:14:53] Absolutely. [00:14:57] So if you ever been denounced, and if you're denounced now, I want you to know you're not too much. [00:15:08] You are not the problem. [00:15:12] You're carrying the cost of being the only one in the room who didn't look away. [00:15:22] In my eyes, you are hero. [00:15:26] I bow to you. [00:15:33] And coming back to yourself is an act of resistance. [00:15:38] Speaking truth, even imperfectly, even when your voice shakes, is an act of defiance. [00:15:47] And your inquiry can be, uh, do I want to be denounced or is this my act? Of defiance and feeling your body developing critical thinking, questioning news systems, politics. [00:16:14] In a world that profits from this connection and numbness is revolutionary because this is how tyranny is interrupted not just in the state, but also in the family, in the room. [00:16:40] So as I close this talk today, take a time and just inquire, inquire what it means for you to be denounced and how can you be defiant? [00:17:02] How can you interrupt to be overpowered again and to look your neighbors and your people to be overpowered. [00:17:25] I'm on a mile. [00:17:27] This is excellent rising. [00:17:29] Until next time. [00:17:32] Be gentle with yourself. [00:17:35] Much care.