I Trained Myself To Vanish
Speaking your truth regulates the nervous system. The body trusts what it can say out loud and survive. A small sentence can mark the edge where silence used to stand alone.
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I practiced being easy to carry.
Said yes through a locked jaw.
Chose quiet in arguments I never joined.
Nodded through apologies I didn’t owe.
Named it maturity.
Named it love.
My body kept the receipts.
The breath thinned around certain names.
The shoulders rose before I did.
Tonight, I speak.
I’m done shrinking to keep the room calm.
“Some of us didn’t learn boundaries. We learned silence. We thought disappearing was how you kept the peace.”
When I was a kid, quiet kept the lights steady. If I stayed small, the night went smoother. That pattern felt like safety, so I kept it. Years later I caught myself doing the same thing with friends, bosses, and partners. I would feel my ribs go tight and the words park behind my tongue. My body tried to keep the room calm, even when the cost was me.
You might know that automatic pull toward silence. It starts in the chest, then drops into the gut. Hypervigilance flips on, and the mind starts scanning faces for danger that isn’t here. The nervous system reads tone before it reads content. It is loyal like that. It believes its training more than it believes your new intentions, which is why “speaking up” feels like a fire alarm even in a kind room.
For a long time I mistook disappearing for emotional skill. I told myself restraint equals strength. What I had learned was dissociation. What I called patience was avoidance. Regulation is different. Regulation lets you stay present with discomfort without abandoning yourself or steamrolling anyone else. It looks like breath that you can actually feel. It sounds like a steady voice even when your hands are cold.
Boundaries arrived late for me. First, inside. I had to notice the micro-moments when my jaw locked and my eyes drifted to the exit. That is the early signal. Then came containment. I practiced naming the smallest honest thing with a sentence. “I can keep talking, but I’m getting tense.” The room didn’t explode. The sky didn’t crack. My body learned from repetition, not promises.
If you grew up managing adults, silence can feel noble. It paid off once. It doesn’t pay now. The work is to update the data. Let your system gather proof that saying one true sentence can end a cycle that hiding never touched. Your people will need time to learn the new you. So will you. Keep the boundary with your own tongue first. Let the rest catch up.
I still want to make everyone comfortable. But I don’t. I try to make the conversation accurate. That shift keeps me in the room. It keeps the peace honest. It keeps my nervous system in the present, not in the old house where quiet was currency.
I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for order now. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.
When your mouth goes quiet, what is your body protecting, and what would a single clear sentence protect instead?
If you’re peeling back wounds like this one,
the 365-Day Shadow Work Journals were made for moments like these.
They speak the same language you do. Truth before comfort.
Explore the journals →
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If this hit a nerve, you’re not alone. Healing Thoughts is where I say the quiet parts loudly. If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s the time. It’s only getting rawer from here.
“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim.” — James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)