Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Excellent Rising. I am Anna Mael, Somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma Recovery.
[00:00:07] Today piece is called Excuse me, I am drowning But I will Remain Silent.
[00:00:16] From the book the Trauma we don't talk About.
[00:00:21] When we carry trauma in our bodies, silence becomes survival.
[00:00:27] Even when we are in pain.
[00:00:29] Even when we are drowning.
[00:00:32] When we are dying, we learn not to make waves, not to disturb, not to knead.
[00:00:40] This peace is for those who learned to stay quiet while suffering.
[00:00:48] For those who protect everyone else from their own pain.
[00:00:54] Together we will explore what happens when the body confuses asking for help with danger and what it takes to slowly reclaim your voice.
[00:01:07] Let's begin.
[00:01:11] Excuse me, I am drowning, but I will remain silent.
[00:01:20] With a trauma body you don't want to disturb or upset anyone.
[00:01:29] Even if you're drowning, you can be submerged in a lake and uh, not even splash the water, make any sounds or God forbid, call out for help.
[00:01:49] That is what trauma does to us.
[00:01:56] We are conditioned to stay silent in the deepest, most desperate pain.
[00:02:06] We are taught to figure things out on our own while remaining considerate of everyone else.
[00:02:18] Even when we are sure we will die, we drown in the shame of inadequacy.
[00:02:26] Because even in the moment when we know we are about to die, we judge ourselves and feel ashamed that this happened to us.
[00:02:44] What a loser. We say to ourselves, you're drowning in this lake.
[00:02:51] You did it to yourself.
[00:02:54] Die. This is it. You made it happen. It is your fault.
[00:02:59] Again, this self alienating talk isn't enough.
[00:03:08] In our self induced shame, we also believe that if we cry for help, we will make someone upset with us.
[00:03:22] They would need to stop reading their book or whatever it is they are preoccupied with to help us get out uh, of the lake.
[00:03:37] While we are struggling to breathe in the last molecule of oxygen.
[00:03:42] We don't want anyone to be annoyed with us.
[00:03:50] So we remain silent and drown.
[00:03:57] This is the piece called Excuse me, I am drowning but I will remain silent.
[00:04:07] Page 132.
[00:04:13] The book is the Trauma we don't talk about.
[00:04:17] To get a book, please check the link in the show notes.
[00:04:22] So let's begin into deep dive of this piece.
[00:04:27] As always, pause. Write things down in your journal in your notebook and let's begin.
[00:04:36] Main theme I want to describe in this piece is psychological and social trauma pattern.
[00:04:44] The belief that your very needs are a burden. What we call in a therapy the burden identity.
[00:04:54] And at the center of this trauma state is a learned conviction that your existence is inconvenience for others.
[00:05:07] So how it forms in early life if a child's distress or need was met with irritation, silent treatment, punishment, withdrawal rather than comfort, the child internalize.
[00:05:29] When I express pain, when I express my need, people suffer.
[00:05:39] And to preserve attachment because child is completely dependent of a parent.
[00:05:47] The most essential survival bond.
[00:05:50] The child suppresses their own needs to protect the caregiver's comfort.
[00:05:58] And this becomes the root of self erasure.
[00:06:05] In some families even saying I'm hungry means it will be met with a quality of burden.
[00:06:21] With a comment.
[00:06:24] Again so very common if you face that is that you will even suppress.
[00:06:34] You need to eat, you will lose your appetite if you're in pain, if you're coming down with flu and cold.
[00:06:46] And if you see a uh, mother being completely distressed now or anxious.
[00:06:53] And if you can see uh, your cold, your pain is making your mother extremely worried or very worried.
[00:07:03] The child will not express or say that it's in the pain.
[00:07:10] Getting sick wasn't even allowed for some people.
[00:07:15] Why?
[00:07:17] Because of medical bills. So child learns that own experience and existence is inconvenient for parents, for caregivers.
[00:07:31] And over time the nervous system wires this pattern need.
[00:07:37] My need will be met with shame.
[00:07:43] I will feel shameful about this basic need or even wanting just something, just wanting right.
[00:07:55] My shame will then be met with silence.
[00:08:00] Death equals I uh, will be isolated self blame follows and I will collapse and the body learns.
[00:08:12] Silence equals safety, visibility, expressing, naming, what I need equals danger equals shame equals being isolated equals feeling so bad about self because of self blame.
[00:08:38] And it equals I will resign. Also. What we have here is from attachment wound.
[00:08:47] We quickly move to moral wound because this metaphor I used of uh, drowning while staying quiet captures a double bind.
[00:09:02] If I speak I cause pain.
[00:09:07] If I don't speak I disappear.
[00:09:11] And this is not mere co dependence. This is a moral injury that you're forced to betray your own aliveness, your own life. Sometimes to preserve belonging.
[00:09:26] And by life I mean many more men, they will hide their illness, they will hide they need help.
[00:09:37] They will hide their terminal ill so they don't feel as a burden to anyone.
[00:09:52] If you grow up like this or this is also what your partner can condition you and make you feel. As any expression of your need is a burden to him or her.
[00:10:06] And this results in a chronic hyper responsibility.
[00:10:12] Constantly scanning others moods to avoid upsetting them.
[00:10:18] Um, second learned self disgust, internalizing caregiver stress your wantings and your needs is something shameful, is something as shouldn't ever happen to you as calling for help is not okay as being sick is not okay.
[00:10:46] Wanting to get something nice for yourself is not okay.
[00:10:52] Being fed is not okay.
[00:10:56] And then we have third survival guilt. Feeling unworthy of care, attention and rescue.
[00:11:10] And when the guilt fuses with shame, the person's help seeking reflects shutdown.
[00:11:19] So this is very, very important. This is very important.
[00:11:23] So even in crisis they self soothe by not needing.
[00:11:33] And it's so important to check on your people, to ask them to offer help even without asking.
[00:11:46] It's so important.
[00:11:47] As you know, I'm somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery and describing drowning without making a splash.
[00:12:00] It is not a metaphor. It is the felt reality of dorsal vagal shutdown.
[00:12:07] And the phone appease response.
[00:12:10] Their nervous system equates movement, sound or request with danger where the body freezes own distress signals to maintain social safety.
[00:12:26] This is so automatic. So phone and appease response is so quick. And many people can feel deep shame because they didn't ask for help.
[00:12:39] They would say I was so stupid, why I didn't.
[00:12:46] But there is no blame because response is something you don't have control over.
[00:12:54] Nervous system response, fight, flight, freeze, fall is innate. It is automatic. It's part of your biology.
[00:13:10] Okay? M.
[00:13:12] So remaining silent is neurological strategy. It's not vagueness.
[00:13:21] It is the body protecting the last shred of connection by sacrificing expression. And that expression can be the last call to stay alive.
[00:13:35] And this comes from a deep childhood wounds where a child is raised with a uh, burden identity.
[00:13:46] And it was so necessary for a child to make peaceful agreement not to make parents upset because life depended on the parents.
[00:14:02] Also what's very important here is to expose collective trauma pattern. Not only individual families, individual in dysfunctional system.
[00:14:14] The child learns emotional caretaking and unspoken rule is uh, don't upset the family peace.
[00:14:24] Speaking truth or asking for helps makes you the problem, right?
[00:14:30] So if you're coming from a family of complete denial and pretense of happiness, this is very common. If you speak truth, if you're a whistleblower, you are the problem.
[00:14:47] You are that burden no one wants to deal with, right?
[00:14:51] And in society, in capitalist and patriarchal cultures, productivity and composure are valued over vulnerability.
[00:15:03] And people who struggle are told to toughen up or not to make it about themselves.
[00:15:15] It needs to be a team experience.
[00:15:19] You don't get to have your own experience.
[00:15:23] And the result is silence becomes a uh, virtue and pain and asking for help becomes shameful.
[00:15:37] And this image of a lake is a mirror of modern society.
[00:15:46] A uh, culture of Drowning politely without the sound.
[00:15:55] Where your best friend can struggle, where your best friend can face terminal illness and it will not share anything with you.
[00:16:11] So main teachings would be silence was never your personality. It was your protection.
[00:16:18] In silence is not same as being introvert.
[00:16:24] It's not the same.
[00:16:26] The inability to ask for help is not a flaw. It's a survival reflex.
[00:16:33] Learned in unsafe environments, learned from burden identity.
[00:16:43] Help seeking is relational repair.
[00:16:48] And when you begin to call out, even softly, you will rewire your nervous system to believe in safe co regulation.
[00:17:00] And you will not force your nervous system. You will have evidence that people, safe people around you are more than willing to help.
[00:17:12] Same way as you would.
[00:17:16] Third, the burden story is inherited.
[00:17:20] Many carry generational trauma. Their visibility was dangerous.
[00:17:28] If you're a minority person of color, if you went through the war, poverty, displacement, being silent was only thing what kept you safe. It did me.
[00:17:44] I was silent for many years.
[00:17:49] Then I lived in a worse many years in deep silence. And that kept me safe absolutely.
[00:18:00] Also for it altruism as self harm.
[00:18:05] So we need to expose the shadow of selflessness.
[00:18:10] How being considerate can become a trauma pattern that erases the self.
[00:18:18] So this is now complete opposite from narcissistic personality, Right?
[00:18:25] So being considerate is a silent killer of your own being.
[00:18:33] And it's a trauma pattern.
[00:18:37] And it's also conditioned in patriarchal structures.
[00:18:42] Right? You cannot be seen, you cannot be heard.
[00:18:48] We know about that one.
[00:18:52] And the, uh, way how you will heal is to reclaim permission to disturb.
[00:19:02] And yet you will not disturb what you feel. This is disruption. Uh, is what people are doing all the time, disrupting others. Comfort was a memory how you grew up.
[00:19:21] You will not disrupt anyone's comfort if it means saving your life.
[00:19:27] It is not harm. Um, it is what people do all the time. And the essence of this is you do not owe the world your silence in exchange for belonging.
[00:19:42] You are not that child, helpless child anymore. You are not.
[00:19:49] So we need to move from appeasement to aliveness, from self blame to self recognition, from invisible suffering to embodied dignity.
[00:20:03] Being taught that you're a burden creates a core trauma, uh, of unentitled existence.
[00:20:14] And one thing you're entitled is your existence. You're entitled of your own existence. Your need is not too much.
[00:20:28] Your seek for help is not harm.
[00:20:34] And your survival deserves space and help from others.
[00:20:39] So asking for help is not disturbance.
[00:20:43] And if you are surrounded by people who always react as you are burdened, as you are disturbing them, then it's a time to Change your people because they were never your people.
[00:21:01] You get to build your own adoptive family, your soul family, or you find that one person.
[00:21:11] But clearly if there is this dynamic of you being over, considerate, always silent, hiding your needs and when you need help, but you're always available to help others.
[00:21:26] And then if expression of your needs is received as a burden and you feel like you're a burden, it's time to change people around you.
[00:21:39] It's too costly to have them.
[00:21:42] And why would you. It's not enjoyable.
[00:21:47] Absolutely it's not enjoyable. Core teachings Trauma trains silence.
[00:21:54] Their nervous system would rather die quietly than risk disturbing others.
[00:22:04] And the body equates asking for help with danger, shame or retaliation.
[00:22:14] This is very important.
[00:22:17] If sound retaliate when you expressed your needs or wants, your nervous system will go in a silence mode. So you don't feel this ever again.
[00:22:32] But your nervous system will not make a difference if this is very serious. Now, where you need to uh, ask for help and scream.
[00:22:43] I work with victims of abuse.
[00:22:46] It's not uncommon. That woman will completely be silent and not scream for help.
[00:22:55] And that's very real.
[00:22:58] Very real.
[00:23:02] Because of this second self attack replaces self rescue.
[00:23:08] So that inner voice becomes, becomes the most difficult critic and many times the voice of abuser.
[00:23:19] It's your fault. Die.
[00:23:23] So this is internalized perpetrator logic. Self alienation learned from chronic invalidation.
[00:23:32] Right?
[00:23:33] When someone is continuously invalidating our needs, we internalize that and we start doing the same on our own.
[00:23:46] So we suppress that need to say anything, to want anything. It's very intelligent how it works.
[00:23:55] Appeasement as revival.
[00:23:58] So even at the brink of suffocation, the system prioritize, not upsetting others over its own breath.
[00:24:11] And this is cruel paradox.
[00:24:15] We protect others from inconvenience while abandoning ourselves.
[00:24:26] And the cost can be our life. And that's the trauma we don't talk about.
[00:24:34] We don't. And when it comes to social and culturally layered gendered and cultural scripts, our soul in us, because we were raised to be nice, undemanding, low maintenance and in oppressive context. Right? Visibility has been costly.
[00:24:56] If you are undocumented now, is it wise to scream out for help or is it better to stay silent and hide?
[00:25:08] Okay.
[00:25:12] And there is a deep moral injury, the demand to remain considerate. So inner demand, survival. Demand to remain considerate while dying creates a betrayal of self.
[00:25:33] And that's a moral injury against one's own aliveness. Uh, and existence. Asking for help is regulation. It's not burden.
[00:25:46] That's Biology, it's not selfishness.
[00:25:50] And disturbing is sometimes ethical.
[00:25:55] So shifting from don't upset them to protect your own life reorders values from life is more important than belonging in this moment or any moment with wrong people.
[00:26:17] So how to work with this? Please check the links below. I'm teaching in my programs and offerings on somatic level how we can move into expression of the voice.
[00:26:31] And how can we leave that voice of shame and work with full expression of our voice when we need help and when we also want. And how can you immediately start working with this is to seek a safe person where you will make a contract for help seeking. So with the partner, pre agree with your friend.
[00:27:00] Describe. Describe what you are going through, what was your life.
[00:27:06] So pre agree. It can be signals, it can be phrases and no questions asked responses. For example, I will sit and not fix.
[00:27:19] Okay?
[00:27:21] There you start expressing your wants and needs without asking for permission or to look if you're in that moment a burden for them.
[00:27:33] And predictability reduces the cost of disturbing. Right?
[00:27:39] So make a pre contract with your safe person.
[00:27:46] And then if the parts work okay, if appeasing part shows up, you can say thank you for keeping us safe from retaliation.
[00:28:00] We will ask small and specific.
[00:28:05] They are adults. They are adults.
[00:28:09] We will be fine.
[00:28:12] And if that judging shaming part kicks in right, it's very rash.
[00:28:19] You can say from your witnessing mind, you took a job to prevent shame.
[00:28:27] Thank you.
[00:28:29] I will take it from here and to the exile. So that's that part who is completely silent and it will resign to the death.
[00:28:43] You say I'm here.
[00:28:47] We will surface together.
[00:28:53] I uh, will take it from here.
[00:28:56] We are told be adults and work with this with your therapist.
[00:29:07] This is very, very important.
[00:29:09] And you can retrain breath into voice and voice into small rehearsed asks how to do on a somatic level with the script.
[00:29:23] Check my programs.
[00:29:25] I'm teaching very distilled lessons.
[00:29:29] The links will be in the show notes. If this piece touched something in you, please remember needing help is not a burden.
[00:29:42] Your voice deserves to exist.
[00:29:48] You deserve to exist.
[00:29:53] Your breath deserves to be heard.
[00:29:56] You are no one's burden.
[00:30:00] Excellent. Rising is created without a study or funding.
[00:30:06] It's me, this microphone and the commitment to give voice to what's been silenced. If you wish to support, please donate.
[00:30:16] The link will be in the show notes.
[00:30:19] Your support helps me keep sharing these pieces freely for everyone who needs them.
[00:30:25] Without ads, without disruption.
[00:30:30] Until next time.
[00:30:33] Be gentle with yourself.
[00:30:36] Be gentle with yourself.
[00:30:39] I am Anna Mile. This is exiled and rising.
[00:30:45] Much care, much career.
