Finding My Real Voice
by Linda Calahan

Expressing myself has never been easy. Sometime between childhood and adulthood, I lost the spontaneity of meaningful and honest expression of feelings. Growing up in a household where one's emotions were not to be let loose, explored or talked about, I soon learned to shove down all the bad feelings far down into my body's inner depths, then stuff tons of food on top to keep them down under control.

Years went by when I did not shed a tear, since I had been told as a child to "Shut up or I'll give you something to cry about". I recall many times during my teens when I felt that I would go crazy from all the disturbing feelings that were tumbling around in my body, begging to be heard. There was no one willing to listen, so obviously I thought these feelings were unimportant and stupid. I would stuff more food into myself, temporarily relieving the pain. I came to believe that I was an insignificant person.

At an early age I learned to smile and say what I thought people wanted to hear, but as time passed and more feelings went unexpressed, more swallowed, I began to experience a lump blocking my throat, choking off my voice, whenever I was put in a conversational setting. I couldn't share myself. I felt what I had to say was boring and trivial.

Abused as a child and teenager, I could never chance exposing what was happening in my life. This caused more denial of feelings. I built a shell around myself to keep feelings inside and the hurt and pain out.

Years went by and I was unable to free myself from this shell. This fear that would overtake me when I was placed in a room with people: parents, family, friends or strangers, and expected to talk. I always projected the attitude that no one could hurt me, although I was in extreme pain from holding my emotions tightly in control.

Marrying and raising children served as a distraction from my pain for many years, but my inability to show and express my tried emotions caused problems in my relationship with my husband and children. Many times when I was alone with my children I would want to have a conversation with them to see how they were feeling about things. Since I had few skills in this area because of my own childhood, I often found myself at a loss for words. I don't think the kids noticed, but I felt uncomfortable and I felt something was wrong with me because of my lack of words. I couldn't understand why the words wouldn't come out. It felt as if there was a tight wire around my throat cutting off everything except my breath.

Parents should be careful when expressing the well worn phrase that "children should be seen and not heard" because it may truly be the last time that small voice, with its honest need to express itself, may be heard out loud.

Growing up in my house meant there was never an exchange of conversation. My parents weren't interested in how my day had gone. We never discussed whether the day was good or bad, or if I had learned anything of interest or had met any interesting people. When my family sat at the dinner table, only my father spoke. He would express his anger at his job, would give us our orders for the next day, or criticize what we had done on that particular day. There was no chance for me to experience a normal give and take conversation. There was also a great fear of speaking up and saying how I felt. My father had a quick hand that I would feel on my face if I spoke out. It was very restricting and out of those experiences grew my reluctance to express myself, and the feeling that what I thought and felt were wrong and of no importance.

I've found it very difficult to discover and understand many things about myself because I have never had a means to examine my life and feelings. Everything went in and nothing came out.