Brazil Learns to Speak Up After Being Taught Feelings Don’t Matter

Many people believe that a proper adult communicates clearly and assertively. By that standard, one person spent most of her life not fitting that description. There was a time when she could not even ask someone for a glass of water.

She knew that might seem strange to some. For a long time, she felt crazy for it. She asked herself why she could not do what others did without thinking. Why could she not say what she needed to say? Why could she not be normal?

Those questions fed a spiral of shame she was trapped in at that time. But she realized she should have been asking a different question. Instead of wondering how to overcome being damaged and flawed, she should have asked how her struggles made sense based on how she was raised.

Based on that, she was perfect. Her behaviors made perfect sense. She was the child taught to be seen and not heard. She was the child whose feelings made others angry and violent. She was the child whose anger got her shamed and rejected by the person she needed most.

She was the child who got hit again and again until she did not cry anymore. She was the child whose needs inconvenienced those in charge of taking care of her. She was the child whose wants were called selfish, attention-seeking, or ridiculous. She was the child who was made wrong for everything she felt, wanted, or needed.

She was the child called a monster for being who she was, a child. She was the child who grew up feeling unwanted, alone, and entirely repulsive. So why would that child ever speak? Why would she ever share anything about herself? She would not. It all made sense. It was a way of living. A way of surviving.

She had been taught that she did not matter. That what she wanted or needed and how she felt was something so abhorrent it needed to be hidden at any cost. She did that to avoid getting hurt, shamed, and rejected. Even when she was with different people. Even when she was an adult.

That pattern ran her life. She could not get herself to say the things she wanted and needed to say. It felt too scary. It felt too dangerous. It was too shame-inducing.

For anyone who struggles to express themselves and feels embarrassed about that, she understands. She did too. But she wants people to know it is not their fault. It was never their fault.

Life is harder when you did not get to be who you were growing up. When the only way you could protect yourself was by being less of you. When you could never grow into yourself because that would have gotten you hurt. When you could not learn to love yourself because that was the biggest risk of all.

Today, that risk only lives on within you. In your conditioning. That is where the inner healing work comes in. For her, that meant getting professional support to help her learn how to safely connect to herself and her truth. It meant banishing 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 so she could 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. That meant her relationships either improved dramatically or she found out that the other people did not really care about her and how she felt.

It also meant opening up emotionally and learning to understand what her feelings were trying to tell her. Since she had learned to avoid and suppress her emotions growing up, she knew it would be challenging to truly get to know herself. She had the great opportunity of reparenting herself, giving herself the love, affection, and attention she did not receive as a kid.

That ultimately allowed her to finally feel safe enough to express herself. The relationship she had with herself started to become like 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 of her. The safer she became for herself, the safer the people in her life became. That 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. She knows it is possible because today she is the most authentic and expressed version of herself she has ever been. Today she no longer chokes on the words she was always meant to speak. She speaks them. Today she no longer holds back her feelings. She feels them. She shares them. Freely. Today she no longer denies her needs and plays down her desires. She owns them. She meets them. She fulfills them.

Today she owns who she is. She does not feel held back by toxic shame in the ways that she once did. Back then she would have never thought this was possible for her. She hopes that in sharing her story and her transformation, others will follow the spark of desire in them that wants them to express themselves. To share their thoughts and desires. To express what it is like to be them. To finally get to meet more of themselves and eventually all of themselves.

That is what people need to listen to. Not the voice of fear or shame. Not their conditioning. Not anything or anyone that reinforces their inhibitions or trauma. People were born to be fully expressed. That was their birthright. That is the world’s gift. Just because the people who raised them did not understand them as the unique miracle that they are, that does not mean they have to deprive the world, and themselves, of experiencing them. More of them. All of them. It is never too late to open your heart and share yourself in ways that feel healing, liberating, empowering, and loving to you.