Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Excellent Rising. I'm Anna Mail. This is part two of episode Denouncement. How tyranny silence your truth.
[00:00:08] Let's begin. Today I will share how denouncement is one of the most reliable pathways to collective apathy and how collective apathy is a main tool for therany.
[00:00:23] So why do I spend two episodes on denouncement?
[00:00:28] Because it's so insidious and tyranny does not begin with thanks.
[00:00:37] And I'm someone who lived under tyranny for many years, who survived three wars and beginning of the tyranny is very quiet.
[00:00:51] And it begins with denouncement, which leads to apathy, which leads to collective numbing.
[00:01:00] Their critical thinking is not even present with majority of the people.
[00:01:07] So what you're witnessing globally is not only a rise in authoritarian governments, but a normalization of psychological conditions that make tyranny possible.
[00:01:22] And all therapists, activists, lawyers, people who are working for human rights in governments who still have moral values.
[00:01:35] This is crucial is to recognize the very insidious patterns.
[00:01:42] And denouncement is one of them, is very efficient tool.
[00:01:50] And the reason why we need to recognize those patterns before war, before bombing, before mass destruction.
[00:02:00] Denouncement is one of his most efficient tools.
[00:02:05] And it's sneaky, it's not big.
[00:02:10] And we think denouncement is very personal, but actually it's collective. When it's done on collective level, we get to be obedient.
[00:02:22] We stop using our, uh, righteous anger, righteous rage.
[00:02:28] When we see injustice, when we see human rights have been violated over and over again, when we see moral collapse. Why this is urgent one.
[00:02:45] Tyranny thrives on a silenced nervous system.
[00:02:50] Authoritarian power depends on people who no longer trust their own perception.
[00:03:00] Let me repeat this.
[00:03:02] Authoritarian poverty depends on people who no longer trust their own perception, who stop using critical thinking, who are not assessing facts around them and question them. And when people are repeatedly punished for naming harm at home, in schools, at work, in communities, they learn a somatic telling the truth is dangerous because I'll be cast out. I'll be labeled.
[00:03:53] And belonging and safety require silence.
[00:03:57] And by the time tyranny shows up at the national level, your nervous system, your body has already been trained to comply, to submit, to obey.
[00:04:17] Fear, freeze, fawn and dissociation. You know, it's. And it's your survival strategy.
[00:04:27] And population in this state is easier to control than one that is regulated, than one which is connected and embodied.
[00:04:42] So denouncement conditions the nervous system to choose safety over truth.
[00:04:49] Second, the personal is the political training ground in tyranny. There is no new tactics.
[00:05:00] It uses familiar ones, old ones. And this is what we need to recognize.
[00:05:07] Very common families that scapegoat truth tellers. Please listen part, part one, if you haven't. So very common.
[00:05:21] Anyone who disrupts a silence or quote unquote, family loyalty is ostracized.
[00:05:35] Spiritual communities that exile dissenters, workplaces that punish whistleblowers, cultures that label protest as divisive.
[00:05:52] So all of this, look at all of those patterns as, um, micro rehearsals for authoritarian regime.
[00:06:06] And when you're taught very early that naming what's not, just, what's not right, when your moral compass is speaking out and that becomes a problem, you're more likely to accept that your truth is now criminalized as not wanted by people you're surrounded by.
[00:06:41] So when people are taught early that naming abuse makes them the problem, they're more likely to accept state systems, cultural narratives that criminalize protests, suppress journalists, or frame resistance as chaos.
[00:07:07] So basically, you are seeing how private trauma becomes public compliance.
[00:07:14] Also, denouncement replaces debate in unhealthy societies, in unhealthy cultures, power is challenged through dialogue.
[00:07:24] In tyranny, power avoids any conversation and moves directly to discrediting.
[00:07:35] And we can see this everywhere today. Just look at the news, look what's happening in Iran, in US all, in Europe.
[00:07:45] Because now in protests, you are framed as a threat to the system, to the country.
[00:07:54] You become a threat, not a citizen.
[00:07:58] Activists call destabilizing. Instead of ethical truth tellers accused of spreading disorder, a woman labeled hysterical, radical or dangerous for bodily autonomy.
[00:08:17] In a way, denouncement cuts your thinking, cuts your critical thinking.
[00:08:24] It creates fear of association.
[00:08:29] And one denouncement becomes normal people self censors, and tyranny no longer needs to silence everyone because you are doing this on your own.
[00:08:44] To what extent you learned to self censors to edit all the truth, you are seeing all the facts, you are seeing to what extent you became your own tiran.
[00:09:03] Right?
[00:09:04] It's very insidious. It's very insidious.
[00:09:09] It comes in and you don't even know you're already in the tyranny. We don't need guns.
[00:09:17] Absolutely, we don't need guns.
[00:09:21] Recognize you're in a tyranny when you recognize how silenced you're becoming and how you're not expressing the facts you're seeing.
[00:09:36] Fourth, trauma makes authoritarianism feel safer.
[00:09:45] So this is the part many miss.
[00:09:49] So trauma makes authoritarianism feel safer.
[00:09:56] For traumatized nervous system, authoritarian order can feel stabilizing.
[00:10:04] Clear rules, structured system.
[00:10:12] Here is a punishment, here is reward and predictability.
[00:10:18] When societies are collectively dysregulated through economic instability, uncertainty, pandemics, climate collapse through war, people unconsciously gravitate toward strong control because chaos feels unbearable.
[00:10:46] Please recognize this pattern and the announcement that becomes justified as necessary, protective or for the greater good is your sign.
[00:11:01] This is a tyranny.
[00:11:04] And understanding this is essential if we want to interrupt it. Because traumatized nervous system wants something grounding wants something stabilizing. But do not confuse this with authoritarian regime. And look at your healing. Your healing is a form of resistance.
[00:11:31] How that looks, it looks trusting your perception, uh, trusting your critical thinking.
[00:11:40] Please check the episode on critical thinking.
[00:11:44] We lost that.
[00:11:46] And it's so easy to gain those skills back.
[00:11:50] Also how we heal is by naming harm without self erasure, refusing this internal exile again and again, reminding yourself you're a grown up adult, not a helpless child who had to be silenced to survive.
[00:12:13] And this is not just your personal victory, which is so important, but also this directly undermine authoritarian logic.
[00:12:25] Because your regulated nervous system thinks clearly, tolerates complexity, resists scapegoating, resist numbing out.
[00:12:39] Resist numbing out by reality shows, gambling addictions, spiritual bypassing.
[00:12:50] Because tyranny cannot, no one can take over you if you're embodied, resourced and relational.
[00:13:00] Right? No one can, no one can make decisions for you to use power over you. And what is very important to know, denouncement is one of the most reliable pathways to collective apathy.
[00:13:17] And that's very dangerous zone. That's step closer to the tyranny and to the beginning of the wars. I saw that many times, I witnessed that, I experienced that. And it happens not because people don't care, but because you learn that caring voicing is very dangerous.
[00:13:45] So how it happens, the announcement trains people to withdraw.
[00:13:51] When people witness truth tellers being punished, exiled, shamed, destroyed, the body learns an implicit lesson, and that's engagement costs too much.
[00:14:05] And over time, people don't stop noticing harm, they stop responding to it.
[00:14:12] And withdrawal is not interference, it's a protective freeze response scaled across a population.
[00:14:21] Collective apathy is often mass nervous system collapse. And we need to have our eyes on it.
[00:14:31] Are we already deep in a, uh, freeze response, in a uh, collective freeze response where we just stop responding to injustice, to moral collapse?
[00:14:43] Right.
[00:14:44] Look for the patterns where fear is replaced by nothingness.
[00:14:50] In early stages of repression, you do feel fear.
[00:14:55] Absolutely.
[00:14:57] You feel fear, you feel terror, but then later you don't feel nothing.
[00:15:04] It's complete dissociation. It's not a moral failure. It's complete dissociation. It's the only way to survive. I remember by third War, Third War, I felt nothing.
[00:15:17] I could walk on the streets, literally grenades dropping around me and bombs.
[00:15:24] I felt nothing.
[00:15:26] Complete numbness. It was so normalized and the level of functioning freeze was so ingrained that even that fear, who was protected to save you, to find a shelter, didn't mean anything anymore.
[00:15:45] It's complete numbness.
[00:15:48] So when denouncement becomes normalized, speaking up feels unsafe and silence feels like survival.
[00:15:58] Because the load from the outside is too intense.
[00:16:03] It's overwhelming. And it's too late, right, to fight, to fight back.
[00:16:09] And apathy is the body's last defense when fight and flight are no longer possible. We are way deep now.
[00:16:19] We are way deep. It's too late to do anything at this point.
[00:16:25] And also what's very common.
[00:16:27] So look how, uh, voices of truth that names harm are labeled as unstable, ungrateful, radical, derisive.
[00:16:44] And when you live in that kind of culture and climate, your truth begins to feel pointless.
[00:16:53] So notice those states, because if you start thinking, what's the use? It won't change anything.
[00:17:02] I don't want to be next.
[00:17:05] Now you're entering into learned helplessness, not lack of ethics.
[00:17:11] And helplessness is your tyranny drives.
[00:17:16] This is what they want from you.
[00:17:18] So who is naming your truth as unstable, radical, as a threat, as a lie?
[00:17:28] Compliance happens quietly.
[00:17:32] Very, very quietly.
[00:17:34] And also we are, uh, wired to belong. We need to belong.
[00:17:41] We are social beings.
[00:17:43] And social death is real in tyranny because the announcement threatens social death as, uh, loss of community, loss of credibility, loss of work, loss of safety, loss of reputation.
[00:18:06] And for many, this feels worse than being wrong.
[00:18:11] And it is worse because you now you just simply don't belong. I remember my parents because of their ethnicity. I'm a, uh, Serbian from Croatia. They were ethnically profiled and they were fired from their work.
[00:18:29] No income left, no money, no food on the table.
[00:18:35] They lost work, they, uh, lost safety income, they lost community, place of belonging.
[00:18:47] And then we were exiled.
[00:18:49] It makes you very, very small.
[00:18:52] And I remember how they were fighting that by saying, I don't want to follow politics or it's too much.
[00:19:01] Both sides are bad.
[00:19:03] And this is not being neutral or spiritual.
[00:19:07] It's detachment born from deep terror and fear you feel in your body.
[00:19:16] So think about how apathy serves tyranny perfectly. Oh, they're so Very well coupled.
[00:19:26] Because tyranny does not require loyalty from everyone.
[00:19:30] A tyrant doesn't care if you are loyal. What he wants is your passivity.
[00:19:40] And denouncement achieves that by isolating truth tellers, exhausting witnesses, and making resistance look dangerous and futile.
[00:19:53] They'll send you to the prison if you protest, if you resist.
[00:19:57] You are danger.
[00:20:00] Are you?
[00:20:02] You're not.
[00:20:04] And when enough people go numb, injustice, moral collapse proceeds unchallenged.
[00:20:15] So we know this. Just look at the history.
[00:20:18] So why this matters for healing work from somatic perspective. Right? I'm a somatic therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery, and I work with survivors of displacement, war, and genocide.
[00:20:32] Collective apathy equals collective shutdown.
[00:20:37] You cannot mobilize a, uh, dissociated body.
[00:20:42] You cannot build justice or nurture morality on collapsed nervous system.
[00:20:51] So that's why reclaiming feeling, especially grief, anger, and care, is not indulgent. It is necessary.
[00:21:01] Reclaiming your values back, your moral values back, reminding yourself of human rights.
[00:21:11] That's opposite of apathy and embodiment.
[00:21:16] Being alive.
[00:21:18] Being alive, assessing, reclaiming back your vitality, reclaiming your skills.
[00:21:26] To assess, to be cautious, to question, is antidote to tyranny. So we need those skills.
[00:21:37] We need also safety in connection. Don't isolate.
[00:21:41] We need collective witnessing, collective questioning.
[00:21:46] We need truth told without being isolated.
[00:21:51] And in this context, let's look how we can move from denounced to defiant.
[00:21:59] And that doesn't mean becoming louder, harder, or more oppositional.
[00:22:04] It means becoming less obedient from the inside, less censored from the inside.
[00:22:14] Defiance here is not a performance. It is a somatic shift.
[00:22:19] So how can we move this defiance?
[00:22:22] Defiance begins when you stop internalizing the accusation.
[00:22:28] When you are denounced, the first wound is not to exile.
[00:22:34] And defiance starts the moment you stop asking, was I, uh, wrong for speaking?
[00:22:40] Was I too much?
[00:22:42] Did I deserve this?
[00:22:45] And instead, you ask yourself, who benefited from my silence?
[00:22:52] Who?
[00:22:53] This is not arrogance.
[00:22:57] It's using your critical thinking to orient, to assess who is benefiting from my silence.
[00:23:11] So the nervous system begins to recognize when blame moves outward, where it belongs.
[00:23:19] Also, defiance does not begin with speech. It begins with coming back to soma, coming back to your body.
[00:23:29] So this is very critical, because tyranny depends on dissociated bodies, on numb bodies.
[00:23:39] And defiance begins when the body is no longer gone. It's absolutely here and present.
[00:23:47] It's simply. It's very harder to have someone control over you, to overpower you when you're embodied.
[00:23:55] When you notice and say, oh, uh, what's happening?
[00:23:58] Why my pelvis is tight, why my belly shrinked?
[00:24:05] The threat is around me.
[00:24:07] Can I orient toward the threat? What just happened? I need to be alert before I am alarmed. Um, that's agency. That's control over you, between you and you, right?
[00:24:23] That's control over your body. No one is controlling from outside you.
[00:24:28] And also, defiance is choosing truth over belonging selectively.
[00:24:35] So this is very misunderstood part. Defiance is not cutting everyone off.
[00:24:42] It is discerning where truth is welcome, where you stop trying to convince those who require your silence so they feel safe. You stop. Let me repeat this. You stop trying to convince those who require your silence to feel safe.
[00:25:02] And you stop explaining yourself to system invested in misunderstanding you and labeling you as the wrong one.
[00:25:18] So instead you speak where there is a witness, share where there is a capacities to receive.
[00:25:26] And of course you will remain silent where speech would cost you your safety.
[00:25:34] So this is not being covered. It's a strategy and it's a good assessment. Again, critical thinking. You need to assess, as every activist knows that, right?
[00:25:50] So you choose your truth over belonging selectively. You choose your own belonging. You choose your own pack, pack of people. You want to belong, pack of truth tellers.
[00:26:09] Also, defiance refuses the rush.
[00:26:13] Tyranny thrives on urgency.
[00:26:17] Also, burnout.
[00:26:20] And moving from denounced to defiant means slowing your pace.
[00:26:25] You need to pause regulating before responding, resisting the demand to react immediately. I work with many activists and I teach activists about nervous system regulation.
[00:26:44] This is crucial.
[00:26:47] Burnout with activists are 95%.
[00:26:55] It's very real. And we are all activists by end of the day.
[00:26:59] So you're no longer driven by prove it, correct them, defend yourself.
[00:27:05] You need to learn your nervous system to stop dancing to power over tempo.
[00:27:15] And that alone is an act of resistance.
[00:27:19] Defiance is reclaiming moral authority.
[00:27:25] This is big one.
[00:27:28] We need to reclaim our moral authority because denouncement strips you of perceived legitimacy.
[00:27:38] And defiance is reclaiming back.
[00:27:41] You no longer need permission to name harm. It's your decision, it's your choice.
[00:27:47] You don't need to ask institutions to validate your experience.
[00:27:54] You trust your experience, you trust your reality.
[00:27:58] And this is very, very important for those raised in patriarchal or authoritarian system.
[00:28:05] Their external authority was always prioritized over your own inner knowing, over your own experience in your own reality.
[00:28:20] And defiance is self trust, uh, restored, claiming back your reality, what happened in your body, in your experience, what's your truth?
[00:28:38] And with that we need to know. Defiance is relational. It's not isolated.
[00:28:45] True defiance is not alone. Heroism it looks like finding others who were also denounced, building parallel structures of care, standing up for what is morally right, for human rights, for dignity through care.
[00:29:11] It's solidarity. It's a human to human.
[00:29:16] It's also refusing to let truth tellers stand alone.
[00:29:22] Don't let that happen.
[00:29:25] If you see someone is speaking the truth, stand beside them.
[00:29:32] Think about tyranny isolates, defiance reconnects.
[00:29:37] Two regulated bodies together are harder to silence than one always.
[00:29:43] And then imagine dozen and hundreds and thousands.
[00:29:49] Is that harder to silence? Absolutely.
[00:29:53] So think about who wants me silenced and why I'm numbing out.
[00:30:00] Defiance doesn't mean you stop feeling fear.
[00:30:05] So defiance is not absence of fear.
[00:30:09] You will have fear in your body, but this is the fear without obedience.
[00:30:16] You will also feel grief, anger.
[00:30:21] Your bones will shake.
[00:30:23] But it will not be from the place of obedience. It will be from the place of choice.
[00:30:31] It's a place where tyranny is not deciding your values.
[00:30:38] And politically, defiance looks like refusal to go numb.
[00:30:45] It's refusing apathy, refusing both sides collapse, refusing disengagement as, uh, safety.
[00:30:57] And it does not require constant action.
[00:31:00] Actually, defiance requires so many pausing where you can regulate and rest, revive your energy.
[00:31:13] And presence is disruptive to systems that rely on dissociation.
[00:31:19] So to move from denounced to defiant is to say internally first, you don't get to raise me.
[00:31:29] You don't get to raise my kids. You don't get to raise my family values.
[00:31:36] You don't get to decide what I know.
[00:31:42] You don't get, um, my silence.
[00:31:45] You don't get my silence for free.
[00:31:51] Defiance is not loud.
[00:31:53] It is not fleshy.
[00:31:56] It is not instant.
[00:31:59] It is embodied, deliberate and is deeply threatening to tyranny.
[00:32:09] Because power can denounce a voice, but it cannot govern a body that has come home to own dignity.
[00:32:22] As we close today, take a moment, make a list.
[00:32:29] What needs to be said, what needs to be spoken, what needs to be reminded, what needs to be learned, what needs to feel again.
[00:32:43] I'm Anna Mail.
[00:32:44] This is Exile and Rising.
[00:32:47] Please support Share Donate.
[00:32:52] Check all the links below and until next time, Much care.
[00:33:00] Much care.
