Self-silencing - A response to trauma or narcissistic abuse

[Music] hi everyone this is Athena from Courage coaching thank you so much for stopping by today in today's video I'm going to focus on what is known as self silencing it is something that a lot of people do that leads to mental and sometimes physical illness now what does selfs silencing mean well it's the tendency to engage in compulsive caretaking people pleasing and not expressing oneself most often people that selfs silence do this in order to preserve a significant relationship and this happens in relationships that are mostly dysfunctional we self- silence ourselves when we are in a relationship with somebody who has a personality disorder or some other mental illness where we feel scared of that person person where our voice does not matter generally while both men and women selfs silence women are the ones that are more socialized to do so especially in Intimate Relationships and it is basically a societal Norm that women need to be unselfish very compassionate very loving and to be people Pleasers so in order for them to ensure that a relationship remains intact they constantly censor themselves and they don't voice their true opinion they don't tell the other person how frustrated they are or how alone they feel they keep this to themselves in order to make sure that their relationship is an easy one but the problem is that if you are not authentically the person that you are supposed to be and you constantly silence that part of yourself this will eventually lead to mental illness to anxiety to depression and it will also lead to autoimmune disease which is something that Gabor mate has spoken about a lot in his books and in his lectures now it is not unusual for a woman to grow up in a family that has taught her to self silence and in this way the family may be really loving they may not actually be dysfunctional or as toxic as a family with a narcissistic parent could be but because of society because of how their parents brought them up they will teach their children their daughters that it's important to be a good girl that it's important to have good manners that it's important to always listen and always help others and care for others it is important for a young girl to be sensitive towards others and to not expect too much but to offer now of course not every child feels comfortable doing this there are a lot of children out there who have their own strong personality and they don't want to be put in a box of being this caregiving kind um girl loving girl they may want to be a tomboy they may have strong opinions they may want to go and play and not do any of those things and they will be punished if they aren't that good girl if they aren't that sensitive girl the problem is this is not right every child female or male needs to be allowed to be authentically who they are otherwise they are suppressing their true self and this will lead to illness now fear is the primary reason that young girls young women do not use their voice authentically in relationships they may have low self-esteem and because because of this they may hide their feelings to prevent being rejected they may be financially dependent on their Partners so for that reason they may choose to suppress their thoughts and their feelings rather than threaten the relationship so there may be a lot of reasons why a woman or a partner may decide to do this in an intimate relationship now what are 10 signs that you are somebody who self- silences number one you you are influenced by others opinions more than your own number two you don't really know how you truly feel because you are so focused on other people's feelings number three you feel responsible for other people's feelings a lot of the time number four you don't speak up in an intimate partnership because of fear of conflict number five you find it really hard being yourself in an intimate relationship number six you may look happy on the surface but underneath you are feeling angry and agitated number seven you constantly have a fear of appearing too selfish number eight you are consistently putting your partner or other people's needs before your own number nine you feel that your partner doesn't know your true self and number 10 you never measure up to the standards that you set yourself now when a person consistently selfs silences themselves this will create identity confusion this will create unnecessary Stress and Anxiety this will make a person experience a loss of self they don't know who they are depression is one of the most common results of silencing oneself and this was research done by a psychologist in Harvard known as Dana Jack Dana Jack actually created ated a silencing the self scale a self-report which includes 31 statements and this scale reflects the different relational beliefs that are held by depressed women self-silencing in general helps to explain the huge gender gap in psychiatric disorders of depression and eating disorders it is usually women that are consistently diagnosed with the these conditions at higher rates than men if you have experienced this then please feel free to share and if you have any questions at all then please feel free to send me an email to courage is all you need at gmail.com thank you so much for your attention to this video and I will see you very very soon