Too often people overestimate the significance of one big defining moment and underestimate the value of making a little progress every day.

You’re probably familiar with what’s known as the Serenity Prayer. It goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

There’s an important lesson here — one that’s very often glossed over…

When a chaotic reality is swirling around us, we often try to relieve our anxiety by exerting our will over external things we cannot control.

It helps us stave off one of the most dreaded feelings: complete powerlessness.

With that in mind, I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that generally speaking, almost everything is outside your control. What other people do, whether it will rain tomorrow, whether or not your efforts will be appreciated — all of these outcomes depend on factors that aren’t YOU.

But that’s also the good news.

The friction and frustration created by trying to change things you cannot change is the crucible where a ton of unhappiness is born. Accepting that most things are outside your influence gives you explicit permission to let them unfold as they may.

Stoic philosopher Epictetus put it this way:

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions.”

Overcoming the “three big un’s” that so many of us struggle with daily — unhappiness, unconvinced things will ever change, unsure what to do next — begins with understanding what you can control and what you cannot.

The mental shift here is not easy. Most of us have spent a lifetime worrying about things that we can’t control. Society practically encourages this. For most, it’s a bona fide habit — one that should be replaced with a healthy understanding of how much we can actually change. Again though, it’s hard to get your mind wrapped around all this when you’re constantly hearing…

“Why don’t you just get over it?” or “Just let it go.”

We’ve all heard some flavor of this advice before. And it passes the sniff test, to a certain extent.

I mean, “time heals all wounds,” right? Well, yes… sort of. But wounds heal differently depending on how they’re treated.

Left alone, a gash in your skin will leave a large scar and be vulnerable to injury again in the future. This is why we get stitches — it helps the wound heal in a way that limits the chance of re-injury down the road.

Emotional wounds work the same way. Given enough time, most emotional pain will diminish — that’s true. But…

Just “Getting Over It” Leaves Scars

In the emotional sense, scars equal baggage — baggage we carry with us into every aspect of our lives. These scars grow and accumulate until one day you wake up suffering from one or more of the “three un’s” (unhappiness, unconvinced things will ever change, unsure what to do next).

So, don’t get over it. Go through it, one step at a time.

Honestly, I understand the desire to “get over” difficult experiences or situations rather than facing them. Revisiting painful memories or facing our present demons is really, really hard. And we as human beings are hard-wired to not cause ourselves pain.

However, as our parents taught us, ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away.

And in addition to the scars, to ignore or downplay a wound puts you at risk for infection, emotionally as well as physically.

Unresolved issues in your life take up residence in your mind and influence your decisions, your relationships, and your attitudes. They rob you of your happiness and potential.

Of course, doing the hard yet necessary things to resolve your issues and heal your wounds can feel impossible. This is how Marc and I felt a decade and a half ago when we were knocked down and stuck in a rut after simultaneously losing two loved ones — including my dear brother — to self-harm and illness. It was nearly impossible to move anywhere significant when we didn’t feel we had the strength to push forward.

So if you’re feeling this way now — like it’s impossible to make significant progress today — you aren’t wrong for feeling what you feel. In many cases, you’re right: significant progress comes gradually with time and consistency. It’s all about taking one tiny positive step at a time, and staying the course.

Consider the following section, which is an excerpt from “The Good Morning Journal”:

The Power of Tiny Changes

Think about the fact that it only takes a one degree change in temperature to convert water to vapor, or ice to water. It’s such a tiny change — just one step in a different direction — and yet the results are dramatic. A tiny change can make all the difference in the world.

Now consider another example where a tiny change is compounded by time and distance. Perhaps you’re trying to travel somewhere specific, but you’re off course by just one tiny degree in the wrong direction…

• After one mile, you would be off course by over 92 feet.
• If you were trying to travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., you would land near Baltimore, Maryland, over 42 miles away from your desired destination.
• Traveling around the world from Washington, D.C. back to Washington D.C., you’d miss by 435 miles and end up landing near Boston instead.
• In a spaceship traveling to the moon, a one-degree error would have you missing the moon by over 4,100 miles.

You get the idea — over time and distance, a mere one-degree change in course makes a significant difference…

This same philosophy holds true in various aspects of our lives. The tiniest and most fundamental things we do each day — positive and negative alike — can make all the difference. They either bring us closer or farther away from where we ultimately want to be. And yet, we mostly ignore this reality. We default to behaving as if our daily actions won’t ever be significant enough. Or, again, we try to exert control over the bigger things we have no control over.

Think about it…

• How many people uphold unhealthy and unproductive habits?
• How many people wait around and procrastinate on the next positive step?
• How many people live every day of their lives moving one degree away from where they ultimately want to be?

Don’t be one of them!

Truth be told, everyone travels 24 hours a day whether they’re moving in the right direction or not.

How much richer would your life be if you committed yourself to making just one degree of effort toward improving something about your situation each day?

And even though it will surely be harder than doing nothing, it doesn’t even have to be anything that hard. You just need to muster up the courage to break free from the status quo and take one small, fundamental step forward today, and then do it again tomorrow.

Pick something tiny and productive to improve upon, and then make it a daily habit.

Doing so will make all the difference in the world — it could literally change your life — just a few short weeks down the road.

Now it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to focus on those fundamental yet life-changing steps today. So give yourself some credit right now for how far you’ve come, and then take the next step forward.

But before you go, please leave Marc and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

“Being present for your own life is the most radical act of self-compassion you can offer yourself.” ~Sylvia Boorstein

In 2004, I experienced a powerful breakthrough in understanding what it meant to love myself. I could finally understand that self-love is about the relationship that you have with yourself, and that relationship is expressed in how you speak to yourself, treat yourself, and see yourself. I also understood that self-love is about knowing yourself and paying attention to what you need.

These discoveries, and others, changed my life and led me into a new direction. But as the years went by, I began to feel exhausted by life. Despite all that I had learned, I could feel myself burning out. It became clear to me then that there was a depth of self-love and healing I still wasn’t able to reach.

What I didn’t realize yet was that I had been living with complex trauma my entire life. It stemmed from a painful childhood, and it had created blind spots in how I saw myself and others. Because of complex trauma, I moved through life in a fog—feeling lost, disconnected from myself, and seeking self-worth through external validations.

So, I continued on with life—struggling, yet still hoping to find my answers. Then one day the fog began to lift, and the healing process began. I couldn’t see it all at once, but little by little, it became clear what I needed to learn in order to reach a deeper level of self-love and healing. Here’s a glimpse into my journey.

From 2011, I spent the next five years helping my dad take care of my mom because she had advanced Alzheimer’s disease. I was helping three to four days a week, even though I was dealing with chronic health issues and severe anxiety. This was an extremely difficult time that pushed me past my limits—yet it was a sacred time as well.

Six months after my mom died in 2016, my health collapsed due to a serious fungal infection in my esophagus. I had never felt so broken—physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was desperately searching for ways to recover my health, I was grieving the death of my mom, and I was struggling with a lost sense of identity. Because of this, and more, the goals and dreams I once had for my life vanished—as if the grief had caused some kind of amnesia.

A few years later, I had my first breakthrough. I was texting with a friend, and he was complaining to me about his ex-girlfriend, who has narcissistic personality traits.

He told me about the gaslighting, manipulation, ghosting, lack of empathy, occasional love-bombing, devaluing, discarding, and her attempts to pull him back in without taking accountability for the ways that she had mistreated him.

His description sounded oddly familiar. It reminded me of the dynamic I had with many of my family members in different variations. I had always sensed that something was off in the way my family treated me, but I was so conditioned to normalize their behavior that I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong.

Once I became aware of narcissistic personality traits, I started doing my own research by listening to narcissistic behavior experts such as Dr.Ramani Durvasula, and it was very liberating.

I learned that parents who have narcissistic personality traits, often treat their children in ways that serve their own emotional needs instead of meeting the emotional needs of their children. And this can cause negative programming in the way those children think about themselves and others.

For example, since my dad treated me like my emotional needs didn’t matter, this may have modeled to the rest of my family to treat me in the same way. And it most definitely taught me how to treat myself, especially when I was around my family.

I also learned that narcissistic relationships can cause you to lose yourself, because they can systematically break down your identity, confidence, and state of reality.

At the same time, I also learned that narcissistic behavior often stems from a deep sense of insecurity, usually rooted in a painful and abusive childhood. Recognizing this helped me to see my family members through a more compassionate lens—not to excuse their behavior, but to understand where it might be coming from.

Learning about narcissistic personality traits has deepened my ability to love myself because of the clarity it has given me. I finally understand my family dynamic and how I used to abandon myself when I was around them.

I would always give them my full and undivided attention, hoping it would be reciprocated, but it never was. Instead, in their presence, I became invisible—as if what I thought, felt, or needed didn’t matter. Around them, I learned to silence myself in order to stay connected, even if it meant disconnecting from myself.

Understanding narcissistic patterns and the impact that they can have helped me to face reality. My family members were unlikely to ever change, and I would always need to protect my emotional well-being when I was around them.

As I learned about narcissistic personality traits, I started to come across information about other related topics, such as complex trauma and how it can dysregulate the nervous system. Peter Levine and Gabor Maté are two of my favorite teachers on this subject.

I discovered that many of my health issues—including inflammation of the stomach, panic attacks, chronic anxiety, chronic fatigue, depression, lowered immune function, pain, and chemical sensitivities—could be linked to a dysregulated nervous system.

This can happen when the nervous system is chronically stuck in survival mode. In survival mode, the body deprioritizes functions like digestion in order to stay alert and survive. Over time, this can cause fatigue and other problems by draining energy and disrupting key systems needed for rest, repair, and vitality.

Learning about complex trauma has deepened my ability to love myself because it has opened my understanding to why I might be chronically ill and always in a state of anxiety. Knowing this gives me clues in how I can help myself.

I also learned that complex trauma is caused less by the traumatic events themselves and more by how those events are processed in the nervous system and in the mind.

According to the experts, if you are not given context, connection, and choice during traumatic events—especially when those events occur repeatedly or over an extended period of time—it’s more likely to result in complex trauma.

For example, if during my own childhood, it had been explained to me why my dad was always so angry and sometimes violent… and if I would have had someone to talk to about how his words and actions affected me and made me feel unsafe… and if I would have been given a choice in the matter and wasn’t stuck in harm’s way, then I would have been much less likely to have walked away with complex trauma.

But since those needs were not met, I internalized the message that I wasn’t safe in the world, which caused my nervous system to become stuck in a state of dysregulation. As a result, constant fear became an undercurrent in my daily life—often stronger than I knew how to manage.

When I wasn’t in school, I would often retreat into my wild imagination—daydreaming of a perfect fairy tale life one minute and scaring myself with worst-case scenario fears the next. Fortunately, my wild imagination also fueled my creativity and artistic expression, which was my greatest solace. To protect myself, I developed the ability to fawn and to people-please. All of these survival responses have been with me ever since.

Before I learned about complex trauma, I was told that the only course of action you can take in regard to healing from past emotional abuse was to forgive those who have abused you. But that’s not correct. Forgiveness is fine if you feel like forgiving, but it doesn’t magically rewire years of complex trauma and nervous system dysregulation. The real course of action is to identify and to gently work on healing the damage that was caused by the abuse.

As I explored the internet in search of ways to begin healing my dysregulated nervous system, I came across two insightful teachers, Deb Dana and Sarah Baldwin. They teach nervous system regulation using polyvagal theory, and I found their classes and Deb Dana’s books to be extremely informative.

Polyvagal theory, developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, helps people to understand and befriend their nervous systems so they can create a sense of safety within themselves.

Learning about polyvagal theory has deepened my ability to love myself by teaching me how my nervous system works and by helping me understand why I feel the way I feel. It also teaches exercises that help me to send signals of safety to my body, gently communicating to my nervous system that it doesn’t need to stay in survival mode all of the time.

Nervous system rewiring is a slow process, and while I still have a long way to go before I get to where I want to be, I’m already feeling subtle shifts in the way I respond to stressful situations. This breakthrough has given me new hope for healing and has provided a new path forward.

I also learned from complex trauma experts that fawning and people-pleasing can actually be trauma responses. These responses were the reason why I was so willing to sacrifice my health to help my dad take care of my mom. It was because I had been conditioned to always please my parents and to put their needs ahead of my own.

Learning about how fawning and people-pleasing can be trauma responses has deepened my ability to love myself by giving me new insight into my own behavior. In the past, it had always bothered me if I thought anyone didn’t like me, and now I can understand why I felt that way. It was because those thoughts triggered old feelings of fear from childhood, when not pleasing my dad felt dangerous. This taught me to never say ‘no’ to people in order to always feel safe.

By becoming aware of these trauma responses and wanting to reclaim my power, I have gained the ability to say ‘no’ with much more ease, and I’m much better at setting healthy boundaries. I’m also learning to accept that not everyone is going to like me or think well of me—and that’s okay.

During the later years of my dad’s life, we developed a much better relationship. Both my mom and dad were grateful for the help I gave to them when my mom was sick.

After my dad died in 2023, I no longer had the buffer of his presence to ease the stress of family visits. But I also no longer felt obligated to be around family members for the sake of pleasing my dad. So, a few months after his passing, when I received disturbing correspondence from a certain family member, I was able to make the difficult decision to go no contact. Spending time with family members had become too destabilizing for my nervous system—and to be completely honest with you, I had absolutely nothing left inside of me to give.

At first, I felt a lot of guilt and shame for going no contact, being the people-pleaser and fawner that I have been. But then I learned from complex trauma experts that guilt and shame can also be trauma responses.

When we are guilted and shamed in our childhoods for speaking up for ourselves, it can teach us that it’s not safe to go against the ideology of the family, that we should only do what is expected of us, and that our true voices and opinions don’t matter. This kind of programming is meant to keep us small—so that we are less likely to stand up for ourselves and more likely to remain convenient and free resources for the benefit of others.

I experienced a lot of rumination and intrusive thoughts the first year of going no contact, but with time and support I was able to get through the hardest parts. Watching Facebook and Instagram reels from insightful teachers, such as Lorna Dougan, were incredibly helpful and kept me strong.

A truth I had to keep reminding myself of was that my well-being was just as important as theirs, and that it was okay for me to prioritize my mental health—even if they could never understand.

Giving myself permission to go no contact with family members has deepened my ability to love myself because it has allowed me to help myself in a way that I had never been able to do before.

I now have a real chance to protect my mental health, to heal my nervous system, and to live the life that is most meaningful for me and for my husband. I no longer have to drain my last ounce of energy on family visits and then ruminate about how they treated me for the next 72 hours. It has also opened up my capacity to deal with other challenges in my life, like facing the new political landscape that is now emerging.

In conclusion, it was only when I began to tend to my complex trauma and examine my family relationships that I was finally able to recognize and understand the blind spots that had obscured my ability to know and to love myself more deeply.

Looking back on my journey, I’m grateful for how far I have come:

I now know and understand myself better. I have a greater understanding of what I need in order to heal.

I am able to think for myself and make decisions that align with my core values.

I like myself again, and I know that I’m a good person. I no longer believe that I’m too much or too sensitive—I just need to be around people who are compatible.

I am able to set healthy boundaries and to choose my own chosen family—people who treat me with genuine kindness and respect.

And I feel more confident facing life’s challenges now that I know how to turn inward and support my nervous system with compassion and care.

About Rita Loyd

Rita Loyd is a writer and a watercolor painter dedicated to teaching unconditional self-love. Through her website, NurturingArt.com, she offers a variety of tools to support your self-love journey—including two inspirational books, an unconditional self-love message card deck, and a colorful greeting card line.

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!

If you’ve ever gone through a breakup, you’ve likely received the brutal advice of going “no contact” with your ex. But does this rule actually help us? And if so, how?

“No contact” is a rule many people follow post-breakup. Basically, it’s exactly as it sounds: you cut off all contact with your ex, in an attempt to get over them. That might look like muting or blocking them on social media, not responding to calls or texts, and basically pretending they’re dead to you—not to punish them, but to give yourself time away from them so you can heal.

Creating this space—both physical and emotional—from your ex-partner allows you to move on without constantly factoring them into your decisions and your future. Naturally, after a breakup, we are still wired to think about that person constantly. No matter how long you dated them for, they were once a regular part of your everyday life. You likely spoke with them each morning and night, scheduled multiple hangouts throughout the week if you lived close, attended outings together, and relied on each other for support and love. 

Just because you can logically tell yourself the relationship is over doesn’t mean your mind and body will process it right away. In fact, it will continue to search for ways to connect with that person and salvage some sort of contact with them, even if it’s just happening in your brain.

If you don’t allow yourself distance from your ex (including cutting off texts and phone calls), you might have a harder time accepting the breakup and fully allowing yourself to move on.

Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean it’s easy. Oftentimes, going no contact feels like enduring severe emotional withdrawals from the person you love and the connection you shared. Especially when there’s sex and intimacy involved, this can cause extreme, sometimes unbearable pain and mourning.

However, this cold-turkey approach will accelerate the process and allow you to fully grieve the loss without living in a state of hopeful limbo. 

Take it from me: I attempted to stay in touch with an ex a few years back, telling myself I was strong enough to move on while still being able to touch base with him occasionally. However, subconsciously, I was still holding out hope. Every time he would ask to see me or message me a song he thought I’d like, I would fall right back into a downward spiral. All my progress and healing seemingly vanished. He knew that—and he took advantage of that, with no intention of ever rekindling. And within a few weeks, he began dating someone else.

I was devastated. If only I had cut off contact when we originally broke up…I would have been able to prepare for his moving on and perhaps even done so myself. But no, I wanted to stay in touch. I made excuses, telling myself, “But he still loves me! He even said so!” “We can still support each other.” “Maybe one day…”

It feels good to fuel yourself with false hope—momentarily, at least. That reassurance can only last so long.

Staying in contact with an ex can worsen the breakup and delay any progress you could have made during it. If you decide, instead, to temporarily cut off communication with your ex, you get to rediscover who you are without them. How exciting, if you really think about it? 

Oftentimes, in relationships, we inevitably sacrifice certain parts of ourselves to salvage the connection. Maybe we don’t see friends or travel as often, or perhaps we push our hobbies aside to make more time for our lovers. 

Being single and dedicating all your free time to yourself and your wants, needs, and desires will allow you to blossom and glow in ways you didn’t even know were possible. 

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to breakups. You should always trust yourself and do what you’re comfortable with (within legal limits, obviously…). If you want to maintain some contact, that’s your prerogative. 

However, if you want to rip the band-aid off and start healing, you might want to consider the no-contact rule. This doesn’t have to last forever; it’s just until you can find your grounding without them again.

“You can’t heal what you won’t allow yourself to feel.” ~Unknown

I used to act strong all the time. On the outside, I looked like I had it all together. I was competent, composed, and capable. I was the one other people came to for advice or support.

The stickiness was that my version of strength created distance. I couldn’t allow myself to appear weak because I was terrified that if I let myself break down, I wouldn’t be able to pull myself back together.

Maybe underneath it all, I was so fragile I might actually break.

So I held it in. All of it—my grief, my fear, my loneliness. This is what strong people do, right?

I learned to be strong early because I had to.

My mother was depressed and suicidal for the younger years of my life. From a young age, I felt like it was up to me to keep her alive. I became the caretaker, the one who made things okay, even when nothing was.

My father left before I was born. I didn’t meet him until I was six, and when I did, it wasn’t safe. He was abusive and schizophrenic. One time, he tried to strangle me. That moment embedded something deep: every moment is a risk. To survive, I learned to stay alert, in control, and numb.

Later, my mum entered a same-sex relationship—a bold move in the eighties, when that kind of love wasn’t accepted. Her partner, a former homicide detective turned trauma therapist, was emotionally volatile and narcissistic. My home didn’t feel safe. There wasn’t a lot of room for me to be a child.

So, I became hyper-responsible. A perfectionist. A fixer. I micromanaged not only my life but also the emotions of others when I could. My version of “strength” became what I hid behind and my identity.

But underneath it all, I was scared. My “strength” was survival, not freedom.

Years later, I moved to Australia and found myself with a friend in a power vinyasa yoga class. It was hot, sweaty, and intense. I hated it. The carpet smelled. The teacher talked the entire time. I was angry.

And then it hit me: I was always angry.

Beneath the appearance of having it all together, I was exhausted and resentful. The yoga mat didn’t create these feelings—it just revealed what I had been carrying all along.

That night, something shifted. I realized my “strength” wasn’t really strength; it was my wall. A wall that had kept me safe but also kept me from feeling.

So, I kept going back. First to yoga, then to a deeper journey of healing.

The process came in layers.

Along my healing journey, I explored many different modalities. The first was EFT (emotional freedom technique), where I touched emotions I had buried for decades. Later, kinesthetic processing showed me that it was safe to feel everything—every emotion, every memory—through my body. This was the beginning of softness integrating into my life, not just as an idea, but as a lived experience.

For so long, my strength had been armor—the courage to survive. But softness opened something new: the courage to thrive, because my heart was no longer closed.

There was no single breakthrough, no magic moment.

With each layer that fell away, I began to replace resistance with openness, walls with connection. Slowly, I came to trust that softness wasn’t something to fear—it was something I could lean into.

And what I learned is this: my healing required softness, which meant vulnerability and allowing myself to fully feel.

Softness isn’t weakness.

It’s staying open when everything in you wants to shut down.

It’s allowing yourself to be seen without the mask.

It’s choosing presence over performance.

True power isn’t control. It’s vulnerability. It’s feeling your way through life and trusting yourself—trusting your thoughts, your decisions, and your impulses so you stop second-guessing and stop relying on constant external validation. Trust allows you to act from clarity instead of fear.

It’s trusting your body, noticing what nourishes you versus what depletes you, and setting boundaries without guilt. It’s trusting life’s natural flow, letting go of the pressure to force things to happen according to a strict schedule. It’s trusting your own inner truth. Trust and softness go hand in hand; the more you trust yourself, the more you can stay open and present without fear.

If you’ve been holding it all together for too long, maybe strength doesn’t look like pushing through. Maybe it looks like slowing down. Like taking a breath. Like feeling what’s been waiting to be felt.

And maybe, just maybe, your sensitivity isn’t something to hide or harden.

Maybe your sensitivity is your superpower.

In a world that teaches us to be strong, brave, and unshakable, we can forget that our greatest wisdom often comes in stillness.

It comes when we soften. When we listen. When we let go of who we think we should be and come home to who we already are.

Strength isn’t about being unbreakable. It’s about being real.

When I started listening to myself, I realized how often I had ignored my own needs and desires, pushing through life according to what I thought I “should” do. I learned to honor my feelings, trust my instincts, and make choices that nourished me instead of drained me. As a result, my relationships deepened, my confidence grew, and I found a sense of ease and flow I never thought possible.

Sometimes the greatest thing you can do for yourself is listen to the quiet, unchanging wisdom within you and trust what you hear.

About Shauna Hawkes

Shauna Hawkes is a women’s embodiment mentor, Gene Keys guide, and yoga teacher with over fifteen years of experience. She helps women at a crossroads break free from self-sabotage, find clarity, and step confidently into the next chapter of their lives through mentorship, workshops, yoga retreats, and Gene Keys readings. Curious to discover more about yourself? Take her free archetypes quiz at shaunahawkes.com or click this link direct – Take Quiz

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!

 “Your silence will not protect you.” ~Audre Lorde

When I was little, I learned that being “good” meant being quiet.

Not just with my voice, but with my needs. My emotions. Even the space I took up.

I don’t remember anyone sitting me down and saying, “Don’t speak unless spoken to.” But I felt it—in the flinches when I was too loud, the tension when I cried, the subtle praise when I stayed calm, agreeable, small. I felt it in the way adults sighed with relief when I didn’t make a fuss. I felt it in the way I stopped asking for what I wanted.

Goodness, to me, became about not rocking the boat.

I remember once being told, “You’re such a good girl—you never complain.” And I carried that like a medal. I remember crying in my room instead of speaking up at dinner. Saying “I’m fine” even when my chest hurt with unsaid words. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I wanted to be easy to love.

So I smiled through discomfort. Nodded when I wanted to say no. Bit my tongue when I had something true to say. I became pleasant, adaptable, well-liked.

And utterly disconnected from myself.

The Body Keeps the Quiet

For a long time, I thought this was just a personality trait. I told myself I was just easygoing. Sensitive. A peacemaker.

But the truth is, I had internalized a nervous system survival strategy: fawning. A subtle, often invisible adaptation where safety is sought not through flight or fight but through appeasement. Becoming who others want you to be. Saying what they want to hear.

In my body, this looked like:

• Holding my breath in tense conversations
• Smiling when I felt anxious
• Swallowing words that rose in my throat
• Feeling exhausted after social interactions, not knowing why

It wasn’t just social anxiety or shyness. It was a deeply ingrained survival pattern—one that shaped everything from how I moved in the world to how I related to others.

I didn’t yet have the language for what was happening. But I could feel the cost.

The silence I carried started to ache—not just emotionally, but physically.

My jaw clenched. My shoulders rounded forward.  My chest felt like a locked room. I felt foggy in conversations, distant in relationships, unsure of where I began and ended.

It turns out, when you chronically silence yourself to stay safe, your body starts whispering what your voice can’t say.

The First Time I Said “No”

It wasn’t a dramatic moment. There was no shouting or storming out.

It was a quiet dinner with someone I didn’t feel fully safe around. They asked for something that crossed a line. And for the first time in my adult life, instead of automatically saying yes, I paused.

I heard the old script start to run: Be nice. Don’t upset them. Just say yes, it’s easier.

But something in me—a wiser, quieter part—held steady.

I took a breath. I said, “No, I’m not okay with that.”

And even though my body trembled, I didn’t crumble. Nothing catastrophic happened. I went home and cried—not from fear, but from relief.

It was one of the first moments I realized I could choose myself. Even when it felt unnatural. Even when I wasn’t sure what would happen next.

That one moment changed something in me. Not overnight. But it planted a seed.

Reclaiming My Voice, One Breath at a Time

Reclaiming my voice hasn’t been a big, bold revolution. It’s been a slow unfolding.

It looks like:

• Taking a few seconds before I respond, even if silence feels uncomfortable
• Letting myself speak with emotion, not filtering everything to sound “reasonable”
• Naming what I need, even if my voice shakes
• Resting after interactions that leave me drained—honoring the impact
• Journaling the things I wanted to say, even if I never say them out loud

Some days I still go quiet. I still feel the old fear that speaking truth will cause rupture, rejection, or harm. Sometimes I still rehearse what I want to say five times before I say it once.

But I’ve learned that every time I listen to myself, even if just with a hand on my heart, I’m creating safety from the inside out.

And slowly, my body began to shift. I stood a little taller. My breath came a little easier. I started to feel more here—more like myself, not just a reflection of who I thought I needed to be.

What Helped Me Begin

Sometimes, what rises first isn’t courage but grief. Grief for all the moments we didn’t speak, for the versions of ourselves that held it all inside. I had to learn to meet that grief gently, not as failure, but as evidence of how hard I was trying to stay safe.

This journey didn’t begin with confidence—it began with compassion.

Noticing the times I silenced myself with curiosity instead of shame.

Asking: What did I fear might happen if I spoke? What used to happen?

Placing a hand on my chest and saying gently, “You’re not bad for being quiet. You were trying to stay safe.”

And then, when I felt ready, experimenting with small expansions:

• Leaving a voice note for a friend instead of texting
• Telling someone “I need a moment to think” instead of rushing an answer
• Saying “I actually disagree” in a conversation where I normally would’ve nodded along

None of these were big leaps. But each one taught my nervous system a new truth: it’s safe to have a voice.

If You’ve Been Quiet Too

If you’re reading this and recognizing your own silence, I want you to know:

You’re not bad for going quiet. You were wise. Your nervous system was doing its best to keep you safe.

And if you’re beginning to feel the tug to speak—to take up a little more space, to say “no” or “I don’t know” or “I need a moment”—you can trust that too.

You don’t need to become loud or forceful. Reclaiming voice doesn’t mean overpowering anyone else. It just means including yourself. Honoring your truth. Letting your body exhale.

You are allowed to be heard. You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to unfold, one breath at a time.

Your voice is not a threat. It’s a bridge—back to yourself. Your silence once kept you safe. But now, your truth might set you free.

About Maya Fleischer

Maya Fleischer is a somatic guide and creator of Unfold Consciously, a gentle space for healing emotional patterns and reconnecting with the body’s wisdom. She shares slow, heart-based practices for nervous system healing, softness, and self-trust. You can receive her free 5-day audio journey, A Gentle Practice Series for the Sensitive and Self-Censored, at subscribepage.io/audio-journey.

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!