Finding Your Voice After You’ve Spent Years Losing Yourself

I know what it feels like to lose your voice. I have had so many chapters in my life where I was focused so closely on surviving, understanding and pleasing other people, and getting through something with the hope that I could come back to me when it was over.

I have spent many years self-abandoning, sometimes without even realizing it.

I never stopped to ask myself why.

Or, actually, I would constantly ask why, but come to realize that I live in a system that rewards self-abandonment under the guise of “growth” or “success” or “maturity” or other euphemisms.

We are praised for being easygoing when we tolerate things that hurt us. We are told we are growing when we learn to function within environments that may not be good for us. We call it maturity when we become better at swallowing what we really want to say. We call it success when we override our bodies in pursuit of the next accomplishment.

Of course, growth sometimes is uncomfortable. Maturity does require compromise. Success requires discipline. I don’t think every uncomfortable experience is a sign that we are betraying ourselves.

But I have started to wonder about the line between growing through discomfort and becoming increasingly skilled at abandoning yourself.

I think I crossed that line many times without knowing it and also intentionally and knowingly.

I’ve experienced trauma, addiction, unhealthy relationship dynamics, and periods of my life where survival took precedence over self-expression. Looking back, I don’t think losing myself happened in one dramatic moment.

It happened gradually.

It happened when I questioned my own instincts. When I looked outside of myself for answers I probably already had somewhere inside of me. When understanding someone else became easier than understanding myself. And when coping mechanisms that helped me survive one chapter eventually became things I had to learn to live without.

Years later, I find it almost poetic that so much of my life now revolves around voice.

I sing. I write songs. I speak up when injustice occurs. I work with people around empowerment, creativity, recovery, and reconnecting with themselves. I’ve spent years studying human behavior academically and professionally while simultaneously learning how to understand my own.

And somewhere along the way, I started to realize that finding your voice has very little to do with how loudly you speak.

Sometimes, it’s about finally being able to hear yourself.

You Can Be Expressive and Still Lose Your Voice

When we talk about someone “losing their voice,” we might picture someone who never speaks up.

But I don’t think it’s always that obvious.

You can be outspoken and still abandon yourself.

You can be creative and still censor what you actually want to create.

You can understand everyone around you and have absolutely no idea what you need.

You can become incredibly good at reading other people while becoming increasingly disconnected from yourself.

For some people, that might look like people-pleasing. For others, perfectionism, numbing, overworking, seeking reassurance, staying in relationships that require them to shrink, or constantly analyzing themselves in an attempt to finally become “good enough.”

I think sometimes we become so good at adapting that adaptation starts to feel like our personality.

And then comes a much harder question:

Which parts of me are actually me, and which parts developed because I needed them to survive?

The Things That Helped You Survive Aren’t Necessarily Who You Are

One thing I’ve had to learn is that I don’t have to hate previous versions of myself in order to outgrow them.

A lot of our coping mechanisms make sense when we understand where they came from.

People-pleasing can help preserve connection.

Hyper-independence can protect us from disappointment.

Numbing can give temporary relief from emotions we don’t know how to hold yet.

Perfectionism can make us feel like maybe, if we just do everything correctly, we’ll finally be safe.

Even analyzing everything can become a way of trying to understand something before we’re ready to actually feel it.

That doesn’t mean every coping strategy is healthy. And understanding where a behavior comes from doesn’t mean we don’t have responsibility for changing it.

But I think there’s a big difference between taking responsibility for yourself and shaming yourself for who you had to become to survive.

Something can protect you during one chapter of your life and prevent you from fully living the next one.

And sometimes I wonder how many of the qualities we celebrate in ourselves—being endlessly accommodating, productive, resilient, independent—are actually qualities we learned because at one point we didn’t believe we had another option.

That doesn’t make those qualities bad. But it does make them worth examining.

Recovery Gave Me the Opportunity to Meet Myself Again

Something I’ve learned through recovery is that removing something from your life doesn’t automatically tell you what belongs in its place.

There can be a lot of rebuilding.

Who am I without the thing I used to escape?

What do I actually enjoy?

What kinds of relationships do I want?

What do I believe?

What kind of life am I actually trying to create?

For me, recovery has involved much more than abstaining from substances. It has involved learning how to stay present with myself.

And creativity became a huge part of that.

Music gave me somewhere to put experiences that I didn’t always know how to explain.

That’s one of my favorite things about songwriting. I can take something painful, confusing, infuriating, embarrassing, funny, beautiful, or completely unresolved and turn it into something outside of myself.

Once something becomes a song, I get to interact with it differently.

I can change the ending. I can exaggerate it. I can find the humor in it. I can make it beautiful. I can decide what it means.

I can turn something that once made me feel powerless into something I created.

Maybe that’s part of why I’ve always been so drawn to art. It gives us somewhere to put the things that are too complicated to fit neatly into words.

And music and my music can help others, too.

My Literal Voice Became Part of Finding My Metaphorical One

I love that “finding your voice” is both metaphorical and completely literal for me. I spent so many years self-abandoning, beyond what our culture already naturally pushes so many of us to do, that in order to find my voice, I had to actually use it. I had to practice it physically through somatic voice work.

This largely took the form of singing.

Singing requires breath.

It requires your body.

It requires making sound and allowing that sound to take up space.

It requires being heard.

And if you’ve spent years learning to shrink, appease, perform, disconnect, or protect yourself, taking up that kind of space can actually feel pretty vulnerable.

Working with my own voice has also taught me something that applies far beyond music:

More force doesn’t always create a better result.

More speed doesn’t get you there faster.

More striving for perfection doesn’t make you more worthy of being liked.

This is something I personally have to learn over and over again.

Sometimes pushing harder actually makes things harder.

A healthy voice requires awareness, breath, support, rest, technique, patience, and knowing when to push versus when pushing is exactly the problem.

I think people are similar.

Finding your voice doesn’t necessarily mean becoming louder, tougher, more assertive, or confident all the time.

Sometimes it’s admitting something hurt you.

Sometimes it’s changing your mind.

Sometimes it’s saying no without writing a five-paragraph explanation afterward.

Sometimes it’s creating something just because you like it.

Sometimes it’s allowing yourself to want something that other people don’t understand.

Sometimes it’s rejecting diet culture.

Sometimes it’s speaking up.

And sometimes it’s realizing that the answer you keep searching for outside of yourself has been quietly repeating itself inside of you.

Sometimes the Body Knows Before We Have the Words

We can understand something intellectually and still struggle to actually live it.

You can know you’re allowed to set a boundary and still feel terrified when you do.

You can understand why a relationship wasn’t good for you and still miss the person.

You can logically know you’re safe while your body is preparing for something to go wrong.

You can know exactly what you want to say and feel your throat tighten when it’s finally time to say it.

That’s part of why I’ve become so interested in approaches that go beyond thinking our way through everything.

Meditation, somatic voice work, Reiki, creativity, songwriting, movement, recovery work, coaching, depth work, and spiritual practices can all be very different doorways into ourselves.

And not every doorway is going to be right for every person.

I actually think that’s the point.

There Isn’t One Right Way Back to Yourself

I think I used to be much more interested in finding the answer.

Now I’m much more interested in discovering what works for the individual person.

Human beings are complicated. I don’t believe there is one healing practice, philosophy, therapeutic approach, spiritual practice, or creative exercise that is going to be right for everyone.

What helps you reconnect with yourself during one chapter might not be what you need during another.

Maybe you need to talk.

Maybe you need to create.

Maybe you need community.

Maybe you need to spend some time alone.

Maybe you need to learn something completely new.

Or maybe you’ve spent so much time trying to improve yourself that what you actually need is permission to stop working on yourself for five minutes and just be.

And I think this is where the difference between growth and self-abandonment becomes important again.

Growth should expand your capacity to be yourself, not require you to disappear.

There will absolutely be times when growth asks us to tolerate discomfort, hear something we don’t want to hear, take accountability, compromise, or do things we would rather avoid. But I don’t think the purpose of growth is to become infinitely tolerant of circumstances that disconnect us from ourselves.

The point isn’t to perfectly follow somebody else’s path back to themselves.

It’s to become curious about what brings you closer to you.

So, What Does Your Voice Actually Sound Like?

If you’ve spent years adapting to other people, you might not immediately know.

I think that’s okay.

Maybe finding your voice starts with smaller questions:

What do I want when nobody else is answering the question?

Where am I saying yes while something inside of me is saying no?

Which parts of myself only come out when I feel completely safe?

What am I afraid would happen if I became more visible?

What would I create if nobody were going to judge it?

Whose voice do I hear when I criticize myself?

And maybe my favorite:

When was the last time I sounded like myself?

You don’t have to know all the answers immediately.

Learning to hear yourself is a practice.

Maybe You Were Never Voiceless

I don’t think finding your voice means creating a completely new version of yourself.

Maybe it’s less about becoming someone and more about removing enough noise to recognize who has been there all along.

I’m still learning what my own voice sounds like.

As an artist. As a helping professional, an associate social worker. As a woman. As someone in recovery. As someone who has survived things, outgrown things, created things, gotten things wrong, started over, and changed her mind more than once.

And I think that’s important, too.

There probably isn’t some final, perfectly healed version of ourselves waiting at the end of all this work.

Our voices are allowed to evolve with us.

The goal doesn’t have to be becoming so healed, self-aware, spiritual, successful, or confident that you never lose touch with yourself again.

Maybe the goal is learning to notice when you have—and knowing how to find your way back.

Your voice isn’t just worth hearing. It’s worth building a life around.

If you’re ready to reconnect with your own voice and Self, I can help you explore what your body, intuition, spirit, soul, and being may have known all along.

I am so looking forward to connecting with you.

Let’s connect.

Love,
Paige Raskin

Paige Raskin offers an individualized, concierge approach to trauma-informed women’s holistic empowerment coaching. Her work is bespoke and tailored to the individual and may incorporate creative and wellness modalities, including somatic voice work, songwriting, creative exploration, consulting and business support, meditation, Reiki, and IFS-informed self-exploration..

Coaching and wellness services are non-clinical and are not psychotherapy, medical care, or substitutes for mental health or medical treatment.. IFS-informed coaching and self-exploration are not IFS psychotherapy. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis or need clinical treatment, please seek support from an appropriately licensed healthcare professional.