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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live, Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time outta your day. To spend here with me and today I wanna talk about and have a conversation, um, that I see in relational patterns. Um, I, I see it often in, in the people that I work with.
I wanna talk about something that, um, people rarely name. People look at someone who has become quieter over time and assume something about their [00:01:00] personality. Maybe they think that that person became shy, or maybe they assume that they lost their confidence. Maybe they think that they just don't have much to say, but often the real story is something very different.
Many people didn't just become quiet, they became careful. Careful about what they say. Careful about how they say it. Careful about how someone might interpret their words. Careful about whether speaking up might create tension they would rather avoid. And so over time communication stops feeling natural.
It becomes strategic and calculated. And if you've ever noticed yourself editing what you say before, the words even leave your mouth, this might resonate with you because what often looks like quietness is actually something else entirely. It's actually an adaptation. So for some people, communication feels relatively easy.
You know, they share their ideas, they express their opinions, they disagree when something doesn't feel right. And even when conversations become uncomfortable, there's this underlying belief that the relationship that they're in can handle it. But not everyone has lived in an environment. Like that. Some people have [00:02:00] spent years in relationships where reactions were actually unpredictable, where a small comment could turn into this huge argument that you weren't expecting.
And where disagreement was met with criticism and, and truly kind of de demeaning, uh, verbal attacks, you know, maybe their emotions were ex escalated quickly or expressing yourself seems to make things worse instead of better. And when someone lives in that kind of environment long enough, their nervous system begins to learn something.
Really important words can create consequences. And so before speaking, the brain starts running these calculations. Okay, what is it safe to say? How might this person react? Should I phrase this differently? Would it be easier to stay quiet? And this process can, process can happen so quickly that people don't even realize that they're doing it.
It becomes so, it becomes such an autopilot thing because over time communication becomes less about actually expressing your ideas or expressing what's going on for you. And it's more about. Emotional management, and I don't mean managing your own emotions, I mean managing the other person's response.[00:03:00]
Now many people develop this careful communication style. Um. Not because they always did it, it it really actually happened over time. Right? So often maybe they recognized that there was a time where they did speak out. They were more outspoken. They were more expressive, they were willing to share their opinions.
But somewhere along the way, something changed. Maybe there was a relationship where. Disagreements escalated quickly. Maybe it was a workplace where speaking up led to criticism or subtle punishment. Maybe it was a family dynamic where emotions felt unpredictable. So the person adjusted, not consciously, but instinctively.
It was a survival mechanism. They began to soften their words. They added explanations, reassuring everyone else before they, before anything could go wrong, choosing their timing carefully, right? If you've ever noticed yourself calculating. When you're gonna share something with somebody that's an indication that maybe you could be doing some of this.
Um, sometimes deciding that silence felt easier than speaking, and those adjustments probably worked in the short term because they helped avoid [00:04:00] conflict. They kept the environment calmer, um, but they also required something subtle. What they were. What this requires is the person shrinking and losing their natural voice and what it is that they actually wanna say.
And this is where the deeper challenge appears. When communication becomes focused on preventing someone else's reaction, something really important begins to shift. Instead of asking, okay, what is it that I wanna say here? The mind starts asking, how will they respond? So instead of expressing thoughts, naturally people just start to adjust themselves, and they adjust themselves constantly.
And that's when softening ideas happen. Over explaining starts to happen, choosing words that will create the least disruption, and sometimes just choosing silence altogether. Not because they lack opinions, and not because they don't have insight, but because their nervous system has learned that staying quiet keeps the peace and keeps them safe.
And so over time, people who have adapted in this way can begin believing something about themselves. They may assume that they're naturally reserved. They [00:05:00] are not. Someone who speaks up, they believe that they prefer to stay in the background, but often that isn't really the whole story. Often what happened is that their communication style evolved in response to the environment that they were in.
It became a way of maintaining safety. So oftentimes when somebody says to me, I'm an introvert, I get curious about that now and, and to be fair, sometimes it is something that's been there all the time, but sometimes it's the result. Of an environment they've been in. And I do see this pattern in people that I work with, you know, um, sometimes they'll say something like.
I used to be more outspoken or I used to say what I thought more easily. I just dunno what's happened to me, or I don't know what's wrong with me. Uh, and then we start exploring it. You know, maybe there was a relationship where their words were frequently misunderstood or misinterpreted. Maybe they were criticized for expressing themselves.
Sometimes they were told that they were being too sensitive or they were too emotional or too difficult. And so eventually these people learned, um. It was easier to say less. It was [00:06:00] easier to just say what they thought the other person wanted to hear, or truthfully just avoid the conversation entirely and just stay silent.
And the strategies made sense at the time. I mean, they helped stabilize a relationship. They reduced the tension. Things seemed quieter at the time, but what ended up happening over the course of months and years is that the person. Was constantly monitoring themselves, anticipating reactions, managing the emotional climate of the conversations, and that vigilance actually is exhausting.
I mean, think about that. If you're constantly in that calculating mode, what is your nervous system doing day in and day out? It's constantly on guard. Psychologically. This pattern is closely related to what I talk a lot about, which is psychological safety and psychological safety means that people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks.
What do I mean by that? Interpersonal risks to express their ideas, to ask questions, to disagree without fear of humiliation, a punishment or retaliation or abandonment. You know, [00:07:00] when their psychological safety, communication becomes easier. People don't have to calculate every single word that they say.
They can express themselves honestly and trust that the other person that they're in relationship with can actually handle it. But when psychological safety is missing, communication becomes. Such a huge effort. Every sentence requires thought. Every conversation requires preparation. And people become highly attuned to these emotional signals.
They scan for changes in tone. They notice subtle shifts in mood, and they sense tension in the room before anyone even says anything. And these skills can take someone, um, first of all for, you know, these skills are amazing because they allow you to be super perceptive, but they often, uh, are exhausting and they're often a result of the, in the environment requiring it.
So if this pattern feels familiar, here are a couple things that I might offer up as questions that you can ask yourself when you speak. Are you expressing what you actually think or are you primarily trying to prevent someone's reaction or manage the reaction? Do you find yourself rehearsing conversations [00:08:00] in advance or editing your words mid-sentence or explaining yourself more than necessary, really with this intention of trying to avoid being misunderstood and perhaps the most important thing to ask yourself are, are there relationships in your life?
Where you feel safe enough to speak without constantly managing the other person's emotions, because healthy relationships do not require that amount of vigilance. They make space for honesty and for you to speak what you need to speak. So if you recognize this pattern in your own communication, here are a couple shifts that might help.
The very first one is awareness, right? We can't do anything if we're not aware. Simply notice when you're editing yourself. Notice when you soften something, automatically notice when you add extra excl explanation that may not actually be necessary. Not with judgment, but with curiosity. The second thing I would offer is experiment with slightly more direct communication in the environments that feel safer.
You don't have to say everything all at once, but just begin allowing yourself. Your natural voice to show up a little bit more. And then the third shift is paying attention to how people [00:09:00] respond. When you do speak, honestly, notice if they make room for it. And if someone consistently reacts with hostility or dismissal or emotional es escalation, uh, that tells you something important about that particular relational environment.
'cause again, communication should not require constant emotional self-protection. If you've spent years being careful with your words, it makes sense that your nervous system still wants to protect you, and those patterns develop for a reason. So I'm not here to say that there's something wrong with you.
It's, it makes sense. They helped you navigate environments where the reactions felt unpredictable because. As your environment changes, your communication style had to evolve to, you're allowed to have thoughts, you're allowed to express disagreements, and you're allowed to take up space in conversations and people who value you will not require you to shrink your voice in order to maintain that relationship.
Sometimes people think that they became quieter just as they got older, but often that quietness is not a personality. It's a part of you that's protecting you. Protecting you. Maybe from some learned environments where emotional reactions felt [00:10:00] unpredictable, but healthy relationships, they do operate differently.
They create space for that honesty, space for some disagreements, space for people to speak without constantly calculating the emotional consequences. And when that kind of safety begins to exist something. Amazing happens, right? That voice that once once felt so careful starts to feel natural again, not louder, just a little freer.
If you'd like to chat with me about how coaching can help you, maybe find that voice again. Feel free to book a time with me anytime at coachwithkamini.com. Until next time, stay well.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you [00:11:00] for listening!