This post is part three of a series.

In the last article, I introduced stage two of “truthing,” the process of learning to speak your truth out loud. In this stage, your mind often “knows” that you’ll be okay if you’re honest and express an unwanted truth, but your body doesn’t actually believe it.

No matter what your mind (or anyone else) tells you, in stage two, there is still deep fear, dread, and even grief at the prospect of being honest, a dread that doesn’t budge no matter how much information it receives. There’s also a characteristic pattern of self-recrimination—an ongoing narrative of self-criticism for abandoning oneself and not being empowered or brave enough to push through and be fully “authentic.”

So, what creates this fear and the gap between the actual threat that speaking up for yourself poses and the experience that your body is living? From where does this deep distrust of sharing an unlikable truth stem? Essentially, how did disapproval become synonymous with death?

The core belief/chain of thought is this: If I tell the truth, I won’t be liked. If I’m not liked, people will go away. If people go away, my needs won’t be met. If my needs aren’t met, I won’t survive.

To understand this better, we can start at the beginning of a girl’s life. From the time we’re born, we’re taught to be pleasing and agreeable. We’re included and loved for being who other people want us to be—taking care of other people’s needs. If we share an unlikable truth, however, it means that we won’t be who they need us to be; we won’t make them happy, and therefore we won’t be loved. The problem is that we need other people to love and value us so they take care of us, so we get our needs met. Relationships make us safe. Anything that disturbs the security of connection—an unwanted truth, conflict, or a negative experience—threatens our fundamental security. It is not an exaggeration to say that the prospect of someone important not liking us, or being displeased with us, even temporarily, stirs up a kind of primal terror.

It’s also important to recognize that throughout history, a woman did in fact need approval to survive, specifically from a partner who would support her financially. The demands of pregnancy and child-rearing, and the limited educational and professional possibilities, made it impossible for women to survive unless someone “chose” them. That was real. We just recently achieved the opportunity and freedom to support ourselves and exist independently from a partner’s support.

While this situation of dependency and powerlessness, and the need to be taken care of by another, may no longer be true, our nervous system still carries a kind of generational fear. Our bodies have not caught up with our new reality just yet. We still fear for our basic survival should our partner’s love be withdrawn.

Furthermore, women are naturally more relationally wired than men. We’re profoundly attuned to the emotional weather in our relationships, and I don’t believe that’s just about conditioning. Our nervous system is designed to be sensitive to harmony and connection in our relationships. We’re always attending, at some level, to the state of the bond. That said, we feel dysregulated by conflict and disruption in relationships, or even their potential, no matter how minor. We’re not “right,” fully calm and well, until and unless the relationship is “right” and the connection is solid. Inner peace, for many women, relies on relational peace.

At the same time, because women have traditionally been in charge of taking care of the family, the emotional well-being and stability of the family is also something to which we’re highly sensitive. Keeping the family environment harmonious is something that falls in our purview and we feel responsible for maintaining; our children’s experience is our responsibility. We worry deeply about the consequences that disruption and relational conflict might cause, not just for ourselves but for our children. All this to say, the emotional climate of the home is a large factor in our internal climate.

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Simultaneously, the family is a big part of a woman’s identity; the role she plays and how she takes care of her family are intertwined with her purpose, life meaning, and who she fundamentally is. Her role in the family is what makes her matter. So too, the family determines the basic rhythm and movement of life. Without the family, who she is and what her life is about* *feels shaky and unclear. And so an existential terror emerges: without the family, do I matter—and do I even exist?

There is also the reality of societal belonging and the potential repercussions that come with the loss of a relationship or the family unit. We live in a culture that favors those in relationships; for a woman, having a partner and/or a family comes with membership to an important “club.” Doors open. Many women feel like they have more options and invitations, like they belong and are included, when they’re in a relationship. Despite our society’s psychological growth and widening boundaries of inclusion, when a woman loses what we still consider the “normal” structure of life, she stands to lose the rewards of “normalcy” and with it, her place in the social order. She no longer belongs, and so once again, her survival, like an animal that needs to stay with the herd, is threatened.

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There are numerous other aspects that make the idea of speaking an unlikable truth feel frightening. At the root, however, the fear is almost always coming from our drive to survive. If we’re not pleasing, we’re not safe; if we’re not safe, we will die. It’s primal. That said, get off your case—there are good reasons for your fear, and for choosing, sometimes, to keep some of your truths to yourself. The alarm bells in your nervous system are ringing and need to be heard and acknowledged.

Going forward, I’ll lead you into stage three of the “truthing” process. In the next stage, you can move through the fear, but in a way that not only honors the fear but also respects reality. It will be about speaking the truth in the real world. Stay tuned…