Let Me Tell You a Story: The Conditioning That Became Our Protection

Part I: How We Learn to Be Small

For most of my life, I thought I was just being good.

A good daughter.

A good student.

A good friend.

A good partner.

A good employee.

A good mom.

I thought the constant scanning of other people’s moods was normal.

I thought saying yes to everything was required to be a good person.

I thought shrinking in conversations was expected.

I thought perfectionism was essential and would be rewarded.

I thought going along with the plan was being accommodating.

I thought that keeping my pain to myself was best.

I didn’t know it was all survival.

I didn’t know I was managing people’s emotions to keep myself safe.

I didn’t know I was unconsciously studying the room, searching for the dominant energy, and adjusting myself to fit what was needed.

I didn’t know that trying to make other people happy was my way of making me feel less at risk.

It didn’t feel like fear.

It felt like control.

But under the surface, I was terrified.

Of rejection.

Of abandonment.

Of saying the wrong thing.

Of taking up too much space.

Of being seen and then discarded.

I drank to dull it.

I micromanaged everything.

I tried to become what I thought people wanted from me.

And somewhere along the way, I forgot who I actually was.

It wasn’t until years into my healing that I finally realized—I wasn’t flawed.

I was conditioned.

Part II: The Science of Conditioning and Protection

What we often call our “personality” is, in many cases, a bundle of learned survival responses.

Your brain is shaped by what you repeatedly experience.

If you grew up in chaos, in criticism, in emotional neglect or instability—even subtle forms—your nervous system adapted.

It learned to protect you by:

• Staying quiet so you wouldn’t provoke anyone

• Taking care of everyone else so no one would leave

• Controlling the details so nothing could fall apart

• Making yourself invisible so no one could hurt you

• Keeping the peace so you could keep belonging

These behaviors get rehearsed over and over until they become automatic.

And they don’t always look like distress.

They look like:

• You walk into a room and immediately sense who’s upset

• You finish other people’s sentences to avoid awkwardness

• You apologize when you didn’t do anything wrong

• You over-explain everything you say

• You feel like you’re “too much” and “not enough” at the same time

• You constantly monitor how others are reacting to you

• You feel safer performing than being yourself

This is not because there's something wrong with you.

This is your body’s intelligence doing what it was trained to do: survive.

Part III: The Energetics of Protection

These patterns don’t just shape your mind—they shape your energy.

Let’s look at what this kind of conditioning does in the subtle body:

Throat Chakra (Communication + Truth)

• Your voice feels unreliable.

• You rehearse everything you’re going to say.

• You censor your truth before anyone else can reject it.

• You avoid difficult conversations.

• You lose your voice when emotional.

Heart Chakra (Love + Safety)

• You hunch your shoulders to shield your chest.

• You carry tension in your upper back and shoulders.

• You withhold affection or vulnerability to avoid heartbreak.

• You keep people at arm’s length even when you’re desperate for connection.

I think of a woman I know. She had her heart broken and never recovered. And, if you look at her body now, she’s quite literally curled inward.

Her shoulders are rounded forward. Her chest is sunken.

It’s like her body formed a permanent shield around the place that got hurt the most.

This isn’t symbolic. It’s physical.

And I’ve seen it in myself, too.

As I’ve grown more confident—

more safe in my body—my posture has changed.

My voice is louder. My chest is open.

I’m no longer protecting myself in every room I enter.

But the energy of that protection?

It takes time to unwind.

Solar Plexus (Identity + Worth)

• You feel responsible for everyone else’s experience

• You over-give to earn love

• You don’t know what you want, only what you “should” do

• You feel resentment you don’t express

• You perform competence and confidence while feeling like a fraud

Energetically, it’s like your system is always saying:

If I can just get this right, I’ll finally be safe.

Part IV: Let Me Tell You a Story

There was once a priestess.

She was beautiful.

She was devoted.

She made a vow of celibacy to serve the goddess Athena.

Men desired her, but she held her boundary.

She lived in service and integrity.

And then—she was raped by Poseidon.

In the sacred temple she served.

When she went to Athena—her goddess, her protector—she wasn’t believed.

She wasn’t comforted.

She wasn’t held.

She was punished.

Athena cursed her.

Turned her beauty into horror.

Her hair into serpents.

Her gaze into stone.

Her body into a weapon.

So she fled.

She hid.

Not to hurt others—

but to protect them (and herself) from what she was now capable of.

Because of what she’d been turned into.

Not by her own doing—

but by a curse laid on her pain and her truthfulness.

And of course, most of us have never been told this version of Medusa’s story.

But, now you know—

A woman spoke her truth, and she was punished for it.

Her pain became a threat.

Her truth was too harmful to hear.

Her trauma was shameful.

And so she learned to protect herself—not by lashing out,

but by hiding.

By retreating.

By keeping her power locked away where no one could twist it again.

If you’ve ever felt like you had to disappear just to stay safe...If you’ve ever been punished for telling the truth...If you’ve ever been labeled the problem because of your pain...

You’ve lived Medusa’s story in your own way.

She was never a monster.

She was a priestess who was betrayed in the worst possible ways.

We have been carrying that legacy in our bones, and it impacts us still today.

Part V: The Invitation

You’re not imagining it.

The shrinking. The fawning. The fear of being seen.

You didn’t invent it.

It was passed down. Modeled. Reinforced. Praised.

And your body remembered.

But now that you can see it…Can you meet it with compassion?

Not shame.

Not urgency.

Not a demand to “fix” it.

But a quiet knowing:

This is what I did to survive.

And I’m safe enough now to begin doing something else.

This is not a how-to.

This is not a quick fix.

This is a remembering.

You are not broken.

You are not too much.

You are not the villain in your own story.

And maybe—you don’t have to keep hiding.

Part VI: The Closing

You weren’t born to perform.

You were conditioned to survive.

You weren’t born to shrink, to over-accommodate, to censor yourself just to stay safe.

You learned that.

Your nervous system memorized it.

Your body shaped itself around it.

And your energy adapted to it.

But now you can see it.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

So the question becomes:

Now that you know it’s not your personality—What do you want to do with it?

This is the work.

The unlearning.

The reclamation.

The deep unraveling of everything you thought you had to be just to be loved.

And you don’t have to do it alone.

If your body whispered yes as you read,

If something in you felt like it was being named for the first time—

Then I am here to support you.

Let’s move from recognition into reclamation.

Let’s do the work your system has been waiting for.

Let Me Tell You a Story is a weaving of three truths: the lived, the studied, and the mythic.

Each post moves through personal reflection, deep insight, and ancestral wisdom—braiding what we've experienced with what we've inherited, and what we're reclaiming.

These aren’t how-tos.

They’re mirrors, lanterns, and keys.