How do you create a safe space for yourself when all you feel is a sense of doom?
One of the things I faced most often when I was younger was a sense of reinforced helplessness as I dealt with people who couldn’t understand me because of my speech impediment. As a person who grew up with an extremely rare congenital neurological disorder known as Moebius syndrome, I’d be teased, ignored, and underestimated by people as they assumed my garbled speech and facial paralysis amounted to nothing more than stupidity. This in turn reinforced my own fears of being inadequate, which continued for many years even into adulthood. After all, if people are questioning your speech, how do you know that you will ever be heard? And even if you do speak up, will you be respected for doing so?
These days it feels like we’re all experiencing a sense of reinforced helplessness as we watch our government go from bad to worse to the bottom of the barrel under the leadership of President Trump. Last month, I spoke to one of my Toastmasters clubs about how recent events had caused me to freeze up in my writing for several weeks after the leader of the free world stated, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” This was part of his demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz where he called for the “complete demolition” of Iran’s infrastructure if his deadline was not met.
Hearing the leader of the free world state that he would be responsible for the destruction of an entire society is a truly heinous thing to witness. There is no simile, metaphor, or hyperbole that can encompass how awful this statement was. It should have been enough to remove President Trump from office. Instead, nothing happened. No one was held accountable, and despite many more people speaking up and protesting, seemingly no one was heard. My fear went beyond worrying about whether this government would become the next Nazi Germany because in my own mind this has already happened. My fear was that we were past the point of no return where America could take a step back from its own self-destructive behavior and realize that we were so far down the rabbit hole that it would take generations for our country to recover from the rampant destruction of our civil rights.
In my speech to my club, I mentioned three things that we could do to help remind ourselves that we are neither helpless nor alone: Think globally, act locally; recognize that you are not responsible for the actions of other people; and use your freedom of speech to demand your rights, even if it’s “only” at the voting booth. All these things are true. And yet, I recognize that despite using all these tools, for many of us, those methods aren’t working. The people running our government have basically stated, we will not hear you. Sit down and shut up.
My answer to that was simple, and I would issue the following reply: If they tell you not to speak, speak anyway. Our voices matter. Our citizens matter. And although some people may not like hearing what you have to say, you have the power as issued by the Constitution of the United States of America to exercise your freedom of speech. No one should feel as though they’re living in an unsafe space, particularly when so many of our rights are being trampled by people who wish to return us back to the Jim Crow laws, McCarthyism, or worse.
Reinforced helplessness only works when you believe you have nothing to gain by speaking up or walking away from the situation. When that situation becomes untenable, you have the right to say, “Enough.” You can create your own safe space as well as help others create theirs. And no one should ever feel that their voice shouldn’t be heard.
If they tell you not to speak, speak anyway. Your voice matters. And so does your vote.
Freedman on the Go 