The Disappearing Act You Never Knew You Were Performing

Blog 24: When did your voice become something to apologize for?

You step into the room and can feel your voice receding. Your jaw tightens and your breath catches before you even begin to speak. This disappearing act isn't loud or dramatic. It's quiet. A slow descent into shadows you've cultivated over years so you won't upset the balance around you. It’s basically survival, you just never realized what it was costing you.

Your body knows this truth. The tension in your shoulders from years spent trying to take up less space. The knot that forms in your throat whenever you hesitate to speak. That automatic apology that escapes before you've even asked for what belongs to you.

Think about the times you’ve measured your words as you say them, watering down your opinions before they're fully formed. "I might be wrong, but…" "This is probably stupid, but…" "I don't know if this makes sense, but…"

When did your voice become something you had to soften before even using it?

It happened early. When you figured out which parts of yourself were safe to reveal and which would bring consequences. You learned real quick when speaking up created tension. Tension led to fallout, sometimes a virtual shit-storm. So you swallowed your truth to survive and that makes perfect sense. Especially at the time

Some of you were the black sheep - the ones who said what others only thought. Probably not hard to recognize yourself. You learned fast that honesty came with labels: drama queen, troublemaker, the one stirring the pot. So you stopped and you disappeared instead. It wasn’t because you wanted to, it was because it felt safer.

Others became shapeshifters, molding yourselves to what the room needed - be it the good daughter at home, dedicated employee at work, peacekeeper with friends. You got so good at reading what people wanted and delivering it that you forgot what was real underneath the performance. I mean, how could you even tell anymore?

But being useful isn't the same as being seen. Is it?

Women erase themselves to survive, then wonder why they feel empty inside. It's not who you are - it's what you were shaped to be. Trained to make yourself smaller whenever your presence became inconvenient to others.

Think about the last time you folded. That moment when you abandoned something you knew was true because the truth felt too risky. That’s it right there.

And it's come at a cost. Not just in your thoughts - in your actual body.

Your jaw carries tension from swallowing words you wanted to say. Your shoulders have hunched forward from decades of trying to take up less space. Your breathing stays shallow because taking deep breaths feels like claiming too much air. Your body has forgotten what relaxation feels like after running on high alert for so long. The cortisol never fully drops an you wake up tired no matter how much sleep you get. Actually, your nervous system has been running on survival mode for so long that what feels "normal" to you would feel like anxiety to someone else.

You can't fix your voice by working on your throat. This goes way deeper, because your body learned to brace before your mind even figured out what was coming.

It's a brutal awakening once you actually see this. Then, you can't pretend you don't know anymore and you certainly can't go back to just performing without thinking about it or without feeling what it's doing to you.

Your body is done with the act.

Something inside you is done negotiating.

Love,
Sherry

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About the Author

Sherry writes from experience - someone who lived this pattern, worked through it over years, and can now name what she sees clearly. At 70, she's past the personal processing phase and focused on helping other women recognize what they're living through.

She's worked with women for over twenty years and keeps seeing the same thing - women who learned to make themselves smaller to survive, then wonder why they feel so empty. She writes for women who sense something's off but don't have words for it yet.

She's not here to heal or coach anyone. She's here to help women see the patterns they've been unconsciously living, to give them language for what they're experiencing. To bridge that gap between "something feels wrong" and "oh, this is exactly what's happening."

Her blog, It Exists (For Now), is for women who are done disappearing. She lives in Pennsylvania, grows things, and refuses to apologize for taking up space.

This is the voice that emerged when she stopped performing all the others.

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