Stop Holding Your Tongue: Fear, Voice, and Finding Courage

Have you ever tried holding your own tongue?

I mean this quite literally.

It isn't really that easy to grab onto. In fact, you might need to use a paper towel or washcloth to get a grip. Then, once you have it, you notice everywhere it attaches to your mouth, where there is tension, and how uncomfortable it is to hold.

This is a tactile lesson.

Usually when we hold our tongues, it is a metaphor. It signifies not saying something, a decision. We decide based on context, setting, and sometimes (often) on our emotional responses. Today I want to specifically look at what we decide not to say because of fear.

Fear is an interesting thing. It is essential to survival and can also paralyze our existence. We all live on its spectrum deciding, or letting fear decide - working with it, around it, through it. And in so doing, we teach our nervous system who we are.

Each time we choose silence over expression, we reinforce neural pathways. It is quite elegant, until it gets overwhelmed. And, my friends, we are all of us in a state of overwhelm right now. Whether you are deeply affected by the state of our world, actively ignoring it, or any number of places in between we are all processing a great deal of noise. And, many -- too many -- of us are holding our tongues.

This remains really uncomfortable. Whether you are feeling some sort of helplessness or cleverly hiding the sensation somewhere in your body (I'm looking at you sore right arm).

This overwhelm is also by design.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day when we remember one of the most talented orators of our history. At a crucial time, he did not hold his tongue and his words fueled a movement. The sheer number of acts of violence, aggression, and shame he had to deal with was overwhelming. Still, he did not have to contend with the level of noise and overwhelm that all of us do in this moment.  The volume of the world has fundamentally changed.

The challenges in that past were staggering and, to be honest, have not yet fully resolved. The challenges before us are still obscured, drowning in a sea of information no human can fully parse. We are being overwhelmed by acts of violence, aggression, and shame. It is easier to hold one's tongue even though it kind of hurts.

So here is the beginning of a solution.

Speak your truths, your fears, your desires at very least to yourself. Do so out loud. Let the words play out in sound and refract in space. Feel them on your skin - this isn't just poetic language. Vocalization activates your vagus nerve, helping regulate your nervous system and creating the physiological foundation for courage. If that is as far as you get, so be it. It will still be better for the words to live outside of you. But maybe, just maybe, you will develop the clarity to share those words further out. To think and process for yourself and make those things known.

To do so, afraid. Because we are never fully safe and our words spoken aloud will always reveal us to the world.

Those words, our voiced words. Are also what is needed to craft the world. To make it a place where fear doesn't determine what we share with each other. To achieve a more perfect union not as conceived by a room full of men hundreds of years ago but as we wish to proceed.

Keep breathing - intentional breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, creating the physiological safety needed for brave speech. Keep speaking (or signing, or writing). Do it afraid.

And, remember, you don't have to do it alone.

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Gina Razón is a recovering opera singer, functional voice coach, keynote speaker, and founder of GROW Voice, a Boston-based voice and communication practice. She is recognized for being the calm voice of clarity as she helps others connect the intention behind their ideas with their desired goals. She speaks on the power of speaking and leading from a center of neurophysiological embodiment. Gina holds a BM from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MM from the University of Denver both in Voice Performance.  She is an Appreciative Inquiry facilitator, an associate teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and trained in Somatic Voicework. She has served as the voice coach for TEDxNewEngland, and speaks at national and local events on the power of embodied voice. Gina is a member of the The Voice Foundation, the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, the National Speakers Association, and the Center for Appreciative Inquiry.

To see how Gina might help you or your team speak with intention contact us.

For Gina’s TEDxCambridge talk click here.

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