Did You Learn It Was Safe to Share What You Think and Feel?

On reality and whose version of things counted

Something happens. You see it, hear it, feel it in your body. And almost instantly, you make sense of it. A story forms. A thought. A feeling follows the thought. And then you respond in some way, big or small.

That whole quick sequence is how you experience reality. It is how you know what is true for you in any given moment.

But the way you make sense of things today was shaped a long time ago. By what you learned, early on, about whether your version of things was allowed to exist at all.

What you learned about your own reality

There are a few questions I often ask clients to help them understand reality.

When you were a kid, did you learn it was safe and appropriate to share what you were thinking and feeling? That your perception of a situation mattered, even when it was different from someone else’s?

Or did you learn the opposite? That sharing what you thought or felt led to dismissal, or conflict, ridicule or teasing, or being told you were wrong about your own lived experience?

Did you learn that you had to go along with other people’s version of reality, setting your own aside to keep things calm? To avoid the teasing or conflict?

Or did you learn something else entirely. That you had to convince other people to see it your way, because if they didn’t agree with your reality, something inside you couldn’t settle?

Most women recognize themselves somewhere in those questions. Some recognize themselves in more than one, depending on the relationship or the season of life.

Why this matters

If you learned early that your reality was not safe to share, you likely became very good at deferring. At assuming the other person’s read on a situation was more accurate than yours. At staying quiet rather than risk being told, again, that you were too sensitive or remembering it wrong or making something out of nothing.

Over time, that becomes automatic. You stop checking in with your own perception because some part of you already expects it to be overridden, ignored, or told it is “bad” or “wrong”.

If you learned the opposite, that you had to convince people to see things your way, that often comes from a different kind of insecurity. A fear that if your reality isn’t mirrored back to you, it doesn’t fully count. So, agreement becomes the goal, not because you need to control others, but because their agreement is what lets you feel steady.

Both patterns come from the same place. A reality that was never fully respected as valid on its own.

Two realities can both be true

Still standing. Still facing the light. Even in the middle of the storm.

Here is the piece that tends to be the most freeing, once it actually lands.

Your experience of something can be real and true for you. And someone else’s experience of the same moment can be real and true for them. Those two things are not in competition. They do not cancel each other out.

You do not have to convince someone to feel what you feel in order for your feeling to be legitimate. And you do not have to abandon your own perception in order to make room for theirs.

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Both can simply exist. That is not always comfortable. It is, however, accurate.

What this looks like now

It often shows up in small moments. A disagreement where you immediately assume you must be remembering it wrong. A conversation where you feel a quiet pull to keep explaining yourself until the other person finally agrees. A friend who pushes back gently and you instantly doubt what you just said, even though, a moment ago, you were sure of it.

None of that means something is wrong with you. It means you learned, early, that your reality needed permission from someone else before you could trust it.

Learning to trust your own perception again takes practice. It starts small. Noticing when you are deferring out of habit rather than genuine reconsideration. Noticing when you are working hard to be agreed with rather than simply understood.

It is slow work. It is also some of the most steadying work there is.

—A

Next in this series we will look at dependency, the exhausting work of needing everyone around you to be okay before you can be okay. Still Valley works directly with reality and all five core issues in a small-group retreat setting. Three spots remain for September. Learn more at stillvalleyretreat.com.