Latest / Adult Child of Dysfunction / E 372: Tammys Takes #46: When Did You Stop Trusting Your Own Voice?

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E 372: Tammys Takes #46: When Did You Stop Trusting Your Own Voice? · Adult Child of Dysfunction

• 0:02
  Well, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Tammy's Takes.
• 0:05
  So if you listened to yesterday's episode with Denis Dubois, there was something he said at the top of the very end that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
• 0:13
  I asked him what one piece of advice he would leave everybody with.
• 0:16
  He said, "Never let someone silence your voice."
• 0:19
  And I absolutely love that.
• 0:21
  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized something.
• 0:23
  For so many people that grew up in chaotic households, dysfunction, and utter turmoil, nobody has to silence us.
• 0:31
  We learned how to do it ourselves.
• 0:34
  Think about that for a second.
• 0:35
  How many times have you had something you wanted to say and you didn't?
• 0:39
  How many times have you known that something didn't quite feel right, but you talked yourself out of it?
• 0:44
  How many times have you wanted to say no, but you heard yourself say yes?
• 0:49
  Or somebody hurt your feelings and instead of saying, "Hey, that hurt me," you told yourself, "It's fine.
• 0:53
  I'm probably overreacting.
• 0:55
  They didn't mean it that way, or maybe I deserved it.
• 0:58
  It's not worth starting something."
• 1:00
  And then you swallowed it, and that's what I wanna talk about today.
• 1:03
  Because I think sometimes we believe losing our voice means somebody literally told us to shut up, but that's not how it usually happens.
• 1:10
  Sometimes losing your voice happens little by little.
• 1:13
  You learn that certain emotions make people uncomfortable.
• 1:15
  You learn that asking for something might create conflict.
• 1:18
  You learn that disagreeing with somebody might make them angry.
• 1:22
  You learn that being easygoing keeps the peace.
• 1:26
  And most importantly, you learn that other people's feelings are more important than yours.
• 1:30
  And eventually, you don't need anybody else to tell you to be quiet because your nervous system does it for you.
• 1:36
  Before you can even consciously think, "Maybe I shouldn't say that," your body has already scanned the room.
• 1:41
  Is this safe?
• 1:42
  Will they be mad?
• 1:43
  Will they leave?
• 1:43
  Will they judge me?
• 1:44
  Will I look selfish?
• 1:45
  Will I hurt their feelings?
• 1:46
  And suddenly you're not asking yourself, "What do I actually think?"
• 1:51
  You're asking yourself, "What do I need to say to make sure that everything is okay?"
• 1:57
  Those are two totally different questions.
• 1:59
  And when you spend years doing that, something happens inside of you.
• 2:03
  You start losing touch with what you actually think.
• 2:05
  You stop thinking about what you want, what you need, what you believe, what feels right to you in the moment.
• 2:11
  And I see this all the time with the people that I work with.
• 2:14
  Someone will say to me, "Tammy, I don't know what I want."
• 2:17
  And I don't necessarily believe that they don't know.
• 2:21
  I just believe that we've spent so many years overriding what they want that they can't hear it anymore.
• 2:27
  Their voices didn't disappear.
• 2:29
  They just stopped trusting their voices, and that's a huge distinction.
• 2:34
  Because if you spent your whole life believing that your feelings are too much, your needs are inconvenient, your perception is wrong, or keeping everyone else happy is your responsibility, of course you're going to start questioning yourself.
• 2:46
  Denis talked about this in our conversation when he described struggling not only to trust other people, but even to trust your own judgment.
• 2:54
  And I said that sometimes it can feel like your brain has been gaslighting itself for years.
• 3:00
  That's what happens when you've been trained to override your own experiences.
• 3:03
  Finding your voice does not mean I'm going to say whatever the hell I want, and everybody else can deal with it.
• 3:07
  That's not what I'm talking about.
• 3:09
  Your authentic voice isn't always the loudest voice in the room.
• 3:13
  It doesn't need to attack people.
• 3:14
  It doesn't need to prove anything.
• 3:16
  Sometimes your authentic voice is actually really quiet.
• 3:19
  It says, "No, that doesn't work for me.
• 3:22
  I think I need some time to think about it.
• 3:24
  That hurt my feelings.
• 3:26
  I don't agree with you.
• 3:27
  I need help," or maybe, "This is what I want."
• 3:31
  And for somebody who grew up in dysfunction, those little sentences can feel absolutely enormous because you're doing something your nervous system has spent years and maybe even decades trying to prevent.
• 3:43
  You're choosing self-connection over self-protection.
• 3:46
  And I wanna give you a really simple exercise today.
• 3:49
  You know how I like these simple exercises, things that you can take, you can do, you can implement, and you can change something today.
• 3:57
  First thing I want you to do is something I call the first answer.
• 4:01
  Not the answer you give everybody else, the answer that happens inside of you before you edit it.
• 4:07
  Someone asks, "Do you wanna go?"
• 4:09
  Your first internal response is, "No."
• 4:12
  Then two seconds later, "Well, I probably should.
• 4:15
  If I don't, they'll be disappointed.
• 4:17
  I haven't seen them.
• 4:18
  maybe they'll think..."
• 4:19
  And you start filling in the story.
• 4:21
  I want you to stop right there.
• 4:23
  What was the first answer?
• 4:25
  Someone asks you for a favor.
• 4:27
  Your body immediately tightens, then your brain starts, "It's really not that big of a deal.
• 4:31
  I can squeeze it in."
• 4:33
  Stop.
• 4:34
  Again, stop.
• 4:35
  What was your first response?
• 4:37
  That is your gut response.
• 4:39
  What did your body say before your people-pleasing brain got involved?
• 4:44
  Or maybe somebody else says something to you and you immediately feel hurt, then it comes the thinking, "Oh my gosh, they probably didn't mean it.
• 4:52
  I'm just being too sensitive."
• 4:54
  Again, stop.
• 4:56
  What happened before you invalidated yourself?
• 4:59
  That's the practice I want you to get used to doing.
• 5:01
  I'm not saying your first reaction is always right, and it isn't.
• 5:05
  Sometimes our first reaction comes from fear or old survival wiring, and we absolutely wanna learn how to recognize that too.
• 5:13
  But instead of immediately dismissing your first gut reaction, get curious about it.
• 5:18
  So what did I tell myself immediately?
• 5:21
  Why did I tell myself I wanted to say no?
• 5:25
  Why did my stomach tighten when they said that?
• 5:27
  These are the questions you wanna start asking yourself.
• 5:29
  Why am I afraid to tell this person what I really think?
• 5:32
  What am I actually afraid is going to happen if I say what I actually need?
• 5:36
  Now we're getting somewhere, 'cause those are the questions we wanna be asking ourselves.
• 5:40
  Because you're starting to, at this point, have a relationship with yourself again, and rebuilding self-trust doesn't happen overnight.
• 5:47
  Because one day you don't suddenly wake up and go, "Wow, I'm incredibly confident where I hadn't been for years and years and years."
• 5:55
  It happens through these tiny, tiny moments when you notice yourself, when you listen to yourself, when you validate yourself.
• 6:02
  And then when it's appropriate, you act in alignment with yourself.
• 6:08
  Every time you do that, honestly, you're teaching your nervous system something really tiny, but it gets bigger, and it grows, and grows, and grows.
• 6:16
  You're teaching yourself that your voice matters, that your feelings matter, that your needs are allowed to exist, and that you don't have to disappear to stay connected to other people.
• 6:28
  So I want you to think about something else, too.
• 6:30
  How many versions of yourself exist depending on who's in the room?
• 6:35
  There's a version around your parents.
• 6:36
  There's a version around your partner.
• 6:37
  There's a version of you at work.
• 6:39
  There's a version around certain friends.
• 6:41
  There's all of these different versions of yourself, and you behave differently in every single one of those environments, and that's normal.
• 6:51
  But here's the question.
• 6:53
  Are you adjusting your behavior or are you abandoning yourself?
• 6:57
  Because those aren't the same things, my friend.
• 7:00
  If I walk into a professional setting, if I'm at work, obviously I'm going to behave differently than I'm going to if I'm sitting on the couch with my girlfriends, right?
• 7:07
  That's just social awareness.
• 7:10
  But if I'm afraid to have an opinion because someone might reject me, if I can't set a boundary because somebody might be disappointed in me, or if I have to pretend I'm okay when I'm not, that's something worth
• 7:22
  exploring.
• 7:22
  And this is where Denise's statement becomes so powerful.
• 7:27
  When he said, "Never let someone silence your voice," I would add, don't keep silencing it for them after they're gone.
• 7:36
  Maybe somebody taught you a long time ago that your voice was dangerous, that using it was dangerous.
• 7:40
  Maybe somebody dismissed your emotions on a regular basis.
• 7:44
  Maybe somebody laughed at your dreams.
• 7:47
  Maybe somebody told that you were too sensitive, or you were too much, or too dramatic, or too needy, or too loud, or just whatever they told you.
• 7:56
  Maybe that speaking up and using your voice caused conflict.
• 8:01
  Maybe nobody ever asked you what you thought in the first place.
• 8:04
  That might explain why you became quiet, but it doesn't have to decide how you live now.
• 8:10
  And I wanna leave you with a little challenge this week.
• 8:13
  Once a day, I want you to ask yourself, "What do I actually think, need, feel, or want right now?"
• 8:19
  Don't immediately do anything with the answer.
• 8:21
  Don't judge it.
• 8:22
  Don't explain it.
• 8:23
  Don't decide whether it's reasonable.
• 8:25
  Just listen.
• 8:27
  Because before you can speak your truth to anybody else, you have to become somebody who is willing to hear it yourself.
• 8:36
  And maybe that's where finding your authentic voice actually begins.
• 8:39
  Not by becoming louder, not by becoming more assertive overnight, but by rebuilding enough self-trust that when that little voice inside of you says, "This matters to me," you stop immediately telling yourself why it shouldn't.
• 8:52
  You were born with a voice.
• 8:54
  Life might have taught you something different.
• 8:56
  Life might have taught you to question it.
• 8:58
  Dysfunction may have taught you to hide it.
• 9:00
  survival may have taught you to change it depending on who was in the room.
• 9:05
  But that little voice, that little voice is still there, and you deserve to hear it again.
• 9:09
  You do.
• 9:10
  And if you're sitting here thinking, God, Tammy, I don't even know what my authentic voice sounds like anymore," that's exactly the kind of thing we can start unpacking together.
• 9:19
  Maybe you know you're people-pleasing.
• 9:20
  Maybe you're constantly second-guessing yourself.
• 9:23
  Maybe you struggle with boundaries or don't even know what you want anymore because you've spent so much of your time and so much of your life taking care of everybody else.
• 9:31
  Book a free call with me.
• 9:33
  Let's talk about what's showing up in your life, where these patterns may have started, and what it could look like to begin finally rebuilding your self-trust and reconnecting with the person underneath all of those survival patterns.
• 9:44
  So I really, really hope this resonated.
• 9:47
  I hope some of you are tuning in, and you're going, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to be like this anymore.
• 9:52
  I know.
• 9:53
  I've read the books.
• 9:54
  I've listened to the podcasts.
• 9:54
  I've done all the things."
• 9:57
  Maybe you're missing just one thing.
• 9:59
  Reach out, and let's talk about it.
• 10:01
  Love you guys.
• 10:02
  See you next week.