#62 - Stand Up And Tell The World How You Feel

By KC Johnson

Have You Lost Your Voice To Speak Out?

How do you lose your voice to speak your truth, to tell the world who you are, what you believe in, and what your boundaries are?  We admire those among us who have the courage to speak out, to be certain about themselves.  Too many of us cringe at telling others how we feel about controversial subjects.  Is it a sign of weakness, a sense impotence, or maybe a lack of belief in ourselves?  Do you fear possible consequences or anger or ridicule?

Certainly, civility and a respect for another person’s views plays a role in our reticent actions.  After all, most of us don’t want to purposely cause unrest or discomfort in others simply because we want to express ourselves.  But when there are issues or circumstances requiring us to stand up, whether to a bully, or to a loud-mouth spewing hate, or to someone affecting another person’s rights, then it becomes an important matter to speak up.  Have you felt incapable of responding bravely in these situations?

Perhaps you suffer from not fully understanding your personal values and boundaries, not recognizing when you are conflicted by an intruder.  You live in a variety of micro-communities that need you to exercise your voice if your micro-communities are to remain strong and free from arrogant and destructive abusers.  More than ever we are suffering from manipulators trying to control us to satisfy their personal emotional need for sameness, for everyone to be like them just to make themselves feel safer.  There are even a significant number of controlling insecure-minded people around us willing to scrap democracy altogether in the name of creating a world they can dominate.

So why do we find ourselves in this situation of having mainly one side of a position becoming the dominant force?  Why do so many people dissolve behind a wall of silence in the face of direct challenges to obvious threats to their right for having personal points of view publicly aired.  We seem to be devolving into a ‘bully culture’ where emotionally weak individuals exploit the goodwill and patience of the more non-confrontational types who prefer to avoid the aggressive violence of abusive speech and behavior.  How does this goodwill-citizen approach open the door to abusers living off of others?

This Strange Dynamic

This question hits at both sides of the dynamics playing out in this scenario.  One side feels the need to dominate others in order to feel safer and the other suppresses responses in order to feel safer.

In a healthy personality that has experienced appropriate and sufficient nurturing there doesn’t develop a need to control others.  An emotionally secure person can be comfortable within their true-self even in the face of dissenting opinions.  If they feel a need to speak-out, they will do so with ease.  There is not a need to gather as many like-minded others around oneself to feel safe as does an insecure person and even abusers.  A person who passively responds to conflict likely suffers from a poorly nurtured past that did not support a strong sense of self.  The sense of feeling insecure and not wanting to upset the situation, or face any form of emotional distress is using a defensive effort to protect a fragile inner child unprepared to handle conflict.  Acquiescence is the safest route to avoiding the conflict. 

The abuser is a manipulator-type that adopts many forms of behavior.  Abusers experienced inadequate nurturing in childhood leaving them feeling unloved to some degree and feeling powerless.  They will resort to using others to gain some sense of personal power.  The desire for power can be distorted into seeking money, control over others as within a business, or through aggressive speech and actions.  Abusers don’t heal themselves as they gain more power because that form of power does not ease the gnawing feeling of being unloved and accepted.  It just gets worse as more power is sought.  That is why speaking out is so important.  People speaking up to oppose power abusers removes the easy opportunities to abuse further.

Expressing your true self is difficult, and expressing your true boundaries requires real work discovering who your true self is.  That requires intentional efforts to examine your boundaries, values, and identities you want to show the world.  As you discover what boundaries are most important to you, it becomes easier to stand up for yourself.  When you are unclear about your boundaries, you will likely remain quiet and passive in the faces of conflicting points of view.  You may not feel certain enough to expose your uncertainty.  But you can live an exemplary life using other methods for self-expression such as voting, being compassionate, healing others, and supporting those who do speak out in your place.

Dealing With Being A Manipulator

You may discover your need to manipulate others to satisfy your fears.  This is a huge awareness step.  Manipulation is a behavior based on feeling insecure.  Rather than withdrawing from a conflict, the manipulator tries to feel safer by controlling others to become a supporter using words or force.  It is a fragile self-image that needs to use others for self-gain. 

Releasing that need requires significant effort to ease the held childhood fears and learning to become more accepting of another person’s needs and views.  The passive person needs to do similar work releasing held fears and examining values.  Discovering one’s inner voice can feel deeply threatening, but once the values and boundaries are better understood the actions to support those values become easier to follow.  When abusive personalities invade our lives we can speak to the abusers forcefully and directly.  Even for the passive person who is the opposite of an abuser the more personal inner work for healing that is done, the stronger the person becomes for speaking out and expressing thoughts and feelings.

Ideally we all receive profuse nurturing and guidance as we develop a healthy sense of self in our childhoods.  When incomplete nurturing leaves us filled with fears and self-doubt we needed to consciously rebuild ourselves into the person we want to be by repairing the ‘emotional holes’ we continue to carry. 

Every child needs to feel safe, loved, and accepted as a valuable part of the family/human community.  Without these needs being met to an adequate level, emotional holes will develop.  Since our inner child never stops being a part of our adult self, we spend our life trying to fill the holes through behaviors, through our relationships, and through the decisions and activities we engage in.  The type of childhood experiences determines whether we gravitate towards manipulation, passivity, or balanced healthy actions.

If we strive to be more loving we will discover the ability to find happiness.  If we strive to be an abuser we will only continue to be lost in the emotional need of trying to find relief at the expense of others.  What ever direction we gravitate towards, please know that we have the power to heal ourselves, to find the loving balance we need.  It is possible to unlayer the fears and traumas we experienced in childhood.  It isn’t an easy process, but it is the healing path we need to follow to discover how to love and be loved.

Either we become healers or we become takers.  Either we find the inner strength to speak up for our beliefs or we hide from the pain of exposing our true selves. - kc