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Trauma survivors who begin to heal often recognize how much they were not allowed to or safe to vocalize their preferences or wants and needs. Abuse and trauma inflicted by someone in power over you makes so many demands on you that you quickly realize there is no place for your decisions or your desires. Especially for children, self-abandonment is very common. It’s a coping mechanism in order to help you stay safe and not be targeted by your abusers — you learn to reject parts of yourself, to suppress down emotions and feelings and wishes. You lose yourself to your abuser. Many developmental trauma survivors will say they felt like they absorbed the emotions and desires of the abusive figure in their life, and they literally may have lost touch with their own sense of self. This means that not only was there a long period of just suppressing and silencing yourself, but after time, you can truly feel as if you really don’t have emotions or wants. This even can lead to complete self-neglect as you start believing you aren’t worth even basic human needs like food and hygiene.

A big step in the trauma recovery process is learning to become self-aware, reconnecting with your own human body and with your emotions, recognizing that you have preferences and desires, and realizing that you are allowed to make choices for yourself and then voice your own choices to others. This can be a very difficult part of the process and may take a long time to rewire the brain into allowing you to do these once very unsafe things.

If you haven’t heard it yet, you have a choice. You are safe in this space to want something for yourself; you are allowed to have a desire and to go after it. You can decide for yourself — whether it’s a boundary, a preference, saying no, or just walking away. Anything you need, you have the right to ask for it, go get it yourself, work toward it, or seek it from others. You have a choice to not do something that makes you uncomfortable or scared, anything that hurts, something that doesn’t align to your moral compass, or even just something you aren’t in the mood to do at that time. You have a choice. Listen carefully — you have a choice.

Sometimes the work takes time to even get to that point — to even reconnect with your true self enough to even see the light that you want something and that it’s NOT selfish. I am speaking from years of personal experience. Once you get there, next you may encounter another hurdle where you finally know that you actually want or don’t want something, but you don’t feel safe or brave enough yet to speak it out loud. That is okay. Self-awareness is always the first step. This is where I challenge clients to try using their voice in inconsequential situations. Practice a boundary in the grocery store check out line by asking someone too close to you to please give you some space. Practice telling a co-worker “No” when they ask for your help — then try it more times without the excuses or even the apologizing that usually follows a No. Just a “no thanks, I can’t do that right now.” You can also try asking a stranger for help with something — like to reach something high on a shelf. You can buy yourself something nice and then practice self-kindness talk when the guilt tries to kick in to make you feel selfish. If you routinely don’t take a full hour lunch or your breaks, start taking those. They are yours; take back that power by allowing yourself a bit of time to indulge every day. These are small ways you can voice your opinion, ask for what you need, and give yourself some self-care and grace to start feeling more confident in your self-awareness and reconnection with what you want. These small circumstances where you can practice should be people who you don’t really care about or maybe ones you’ll never even see again. There’s no harm in just practicing your voice & choice speeches on them just to get the hang of it.

From there, it will, I promise, get easier to ask your partner for what you need sexually, to tell your in-laws no when they ask to come over, to not cater to your boss’s whims when they keep changing your shifts around without notice, to honor your body when you need a rest and to not feel guilty for taking a self-care moment, and to stand up for yourself when someone is treating you like a pushover. It can seem ridiculously hard if you are still back at the beginning of this journey — but this is where life gets really good. This is where you no longer are willing to suppress your true self, silence your inner longings, and self-abandon.

As a trauma-trained recovery coach who practices trauma-informed care, I constantly remind my clients they always have voice and choice. They get to decide what we talk about and what we work on. They can always say no. Even if they at first say “yes” they want to try X, they can stop at any time. You will never hurt my feelings by not being okay talking about something, and I will continually ask consent before we dive into a topic to make sure this is still how you want to use your time. You even have voice and choice from the very first initial appointment which is, albeit, a very formal, not-client led intake session. My 90-min intake appointment is a bit rigid with me asking the questions so I can get all the forms done so from there on you can use your sessions the way you’d like. However, even in that intake process, you are never obligated to answer any questions or divulge information that you aren’t ready to talk about. And, in my opinion, everyone in your inner circle should be helping you to regain your voice and choice and never hindering your process or forcing you to self-abandon your trueness when they are around. So take an inventory of those closest to you and make sure they are supportive to this part of the process. If they aren’t honoring your newly found voice and choice, it may be time to reconsider their role in your life. Anything I can do to help, feel free to reach out and connect. Keep voicing and choicing your way back to your authentic self!