Sarah Wysong

Reclaiming My Voice

In 2019, my brother went into the army. My first question to him when he got out of

basic training was, “What is it like?”. His response took me back to a dark place in my mind.

“It’s a lot like growing up at Mom’s. You get yelled at for a lot of things you don’t understand,

you show any emotion and you get yelled at, you mess up you get yelled at, basically you get

yelled at a lot. A lot of the guys were breaking down and didn’t understand you just have to tune

it out and show no emotion to it.” Growing up in a mentally abusive home, that’s a lot of what it

was. Tuning it out and turning it off. It became an automatic response, in order to survive. I grew

up this way, and unfortunately, as an adult I still have trauma from an unforgiving past. Though I

have healed a lot, I’m still human.

2020 has been a funny year for me. This year, my new year’s resolution was to heal from

my dark past. To fully grow and heal from it. I was presented a couple different situations that

did exactly that. However, there was one situation that means the most, and that was finding my

voice. My research essay helped, in a way, of understanding how to overcome some of my past. I

am also going to marry the love of my life and my best friend, Kyle, this year. Just like every

relationship, we also have our spats, and though we have worked through everything, I knew I

needed to fix a part of me that has been broken for a long time.

My research essay was the keys to having a lasting marriage, that can also cause

relationships to fail. The main topic was communication fails, based off the theories of Dr. John

Gottman and his “Four Horsemen” (Lisitsa). His topic of “stonewalling” was the most interesting

to me. Withdrawing from the conversation, tuning it out, whatever you want to call it. The
writing made it seem as if you only get to that tuning out, by the other “Horseman”. I know this

isn’t always the case. Coming from a childhood filled with emotional neglect and repression, and

mental and emotional abuse, I understood stonewalling to a different level. Stonewalling has two

different aspects to it. On one side, you have not showing emotions, and the other side you have

tuning everything out. The two go together, hand in hand. You can’t have emotions if you’re

going to tune out someone else’s. Having to use these as a survival tool for most of my life, it’s

not easy letting go of old habits, and it has affected my adulthood relationships as well.

While I found other relationship topics for my essay, I felt I chose the wrong thing to talk

about. I should have had written about overcoming mental and emotional abuse in order to thrive

in a current relationship. I was stuck in the topic, more than my actual research essay topic.

Doing more research, I found that other people have the same problems as me. Not being able to

focus in a heated conversation even if no danger is present, immediately wondering if someone is

mad after I talked about my feelings, not wanting to share my emotions, immediately locking

down and turning off my emotions, over thinking everything, and the list goes on. I have noticed

this in myself before, my toxic habits. I decided to change that, and that it wasn’t fair to Kyle, or

my children, that I held on to my past.

The first thing I started to conquer in my mind, was the overthinking. Since I was a kid, I

have kept an overthinking journal. I was never allowed to talk about any of my emotions, so I

would write all my over whelming emotions and overflowing thoughts down, never to be heard

or soothed. I started to change this. Every night, I started asking simple questions, that were

based off the over running thoughts in my head. As simple as that sounds, I still could never get

myself to ask until me and Kyle were on the verge of sleep. Every night I would put my mind to

rest though, and I even noticed that I fell asleep faster. After a couple nights, I didn’t have to
even ask, I already knew the answer, because I had calmed my mind for the three days prior. I

still haven’t had over running thoughts in my head.

I then started working on talking about my feelings more. It’s hard for someone to talk

about their feelings when they never have talked about them before. I must give props to Kyle,

because conversating with a person about their feelings, when they don’t know how to express

them all that well, takes a lot of patience. To start out with, I started working out my emotions on

my own. I was so used to repressing my feelings and not talking about them, I forgot how to

explain them out loud. I started making video journals to practice working out my emotions out

loud. I only did this for three days and had started to notice me sharing my emotions more.

Though I haven’t been working on communicating, healing, and my emotions for long, I

have noticed a change. Overcoming mental and emotional abuse takes time, and it’s different for

everyone. What works for me, may not work for someone else. Find support from the people you

care about and see if they can help you along. It’s important to know you aren’t alone, or crazy,

and it’s not your fault. I have started reclaiming my voice, and I won’t lose it again.

In closing, I am glad I chose the topic I did for my research essay, even if I got bad grade

from getting sidetracked. I saw information that was given to me, saw a flaw in the suggested

writing, questioned it, and was able to find a new understanding to what problems I needed to

change within me. I also came out with a topic I would like to write about in future instances. So,

maybe everything does happen for a reason.

Lisitsa, Ellie. https://www.gottman.com/blog/category/column/the-four-horsemen/. May/April

2013. Website Blog. 21 March 2020.