Hello, hello, hello.

I’m laughing because when I say that I immediately think about RuPaul’s Drag Race. You know how RuPaul comes out and says that? That’s literally what popped into my head.

Anyway… moving on.

Something came back to me recently from when I was working as a substance abuse counselor and running group therapy. At the time we were doing everything on Zoom, and so many people refused to turn their cameras on. Just black screens everywhere.

And I remember saying to them, over and over:

Addiction loves that.Addiction loves to hide you.It loves isolation.It loves when you stay unseen.

Because the moment light hits something, things start changing.

So I used to tell them something simple that stuck with a lot of people:

If you don’t share it, you wear it.

And when I say “share,” I’m talking about the things people bury. The pain. The shame. The stuff that feels too uncomfortable or too risky to say out loud.

And I get why people hold back. A lot of people have had really harsh experiences when they were vulnerable. They opened up to someone who didn’t hold it with care. Or it got dismissed. Or judged. Or used against them.

So I understand why people learn to keep things inside.

But the problem is… when you don’t share it, you carry it everywhere.

You start stuffing it into the body. Into all these little nooks and crannies inside yourself.

And as human beings, we were never designed to carry pain like that. Especially in silence.

People love talking about the nervous system these days, and for good reason. Your nervous system literally starts to deteriorate under the weight of unspoken experience.

When emotions have nowhere to go — when they’re never voiced, never processed, never released — the body becomes the storage unit.

You just keep stuffing.

And then the stress hormones start circulating.

The mind keeps looping the story.

Shame starts growing mold in the dark.

Because it has nowhere else to go. It just keeps circulating inside of you.

At some point you’re not just feeling pain anymore.

You’re wearing it.

You wear it in your shoulders.You wear it in your sleep.You wear it in your irritability.You wear it in how you talk to your kids, your partner, your coworkers.

You even start wearing it in a more subtle way — the way joy begins to feel foreign. Gratitude feels harder to access. Things that once brought you happiness start feeling distant.

That’s what it looks like when pain gets trapped in the system.

And despite what people say, silence isn’t strength.

Holding it all in doesn’t make someone strong. It just means the pain has nowhere else to go.

There’s actually a term for this in psychology: emotional suppression.

It’s when someone pushes their feelings down instead of expressing them.

And the research around this is pretty clear. Emotional suppression increases anxiety. It increases depression. It puts stress on the cardiovascular system. It even raises the risk of suicidal thinking.

Because the brain keeps trying to resolve what hasn’t been processed.

It keeps replaying the story like a broken record, trying to complete an emotional loop that never got closure.

So the cycle continues.

If you don’t share it, you wear it.

And one of the most dangerous things that starts happening in that state is a belief that creeps in quietly:

I must be the only one going through this.

Now the isolation deepens.

And isolation is gasoline for shame.

Shame has two close friends: secrecy and silence.

Shame thrives in secrecy the same way mold thrives in darkness.

That’s why I used to push my group members to turn their cameras on.

Turn the camera on. Let yourself be seen. Shine light on what’s happening.

Because when shame gets exposed to light, it starts shrinking. Almost like a vampire getting hit by sunlight.

This is why community matters.

Support groups matter.Therapy matters.Spiritual confession matters.Late-night conversations with someone you trust matter.

Sometimes you just need someone to say two simple words:

Me too.

When someone hears that, the nervous system calms down a little. The brain realizes it’s not alone in the jungle anymore.

And something inside starts to shift.

People talk a lot about suicide rates and emotional suffering. But many times people don’t actually want to die.

They want the pain to stop.

Carrying pain alone is unbearable.

So I don’t want silence — yours or anyone else’s — turning pain into identity.

Because that’s what eventually happens when it goes unspoken. The pain stops being something you experienced and starts becoming who you believe you are.

And that’s a heavy thing to carry through life.

I’m sharing these thoughts because I’ve spent years sitting in rooms with people who were brave enough to tell the truth about what they were going through. As a therapist. As a substance abuse counselor. In group spaces. In community spaces.

And it always struck me the same way every time.

You sit there thinking you’re the only one carrying something… and then someone else shares.

And suddenly you realize:

Oh my gosh.

I’m not alone.

Not even close.

I’ve had that experience myself. I’ve had moments in my own life where I thought I was the only one dealing with something.

And then I found a group. I found community.

And everything shifted.

We’re more connected than we think.

The situations might look different on the outside, but the feelings underneath them — the shame, the grief, the fear, the loneliness — those are shared human experiences.

So find your people.

Find a group.Find a therapist.Find a spiritual space if that speaks to you.Find that friend you trust enough to pull aside and say, “This is what’s really going on with me.”

You don’t have to carry it alone.

I love you very much. I hope this serves.

If this reflection resonated with you, I’m glad you’re here.

You’re welcome to subscribe and walk alongside these conversations as they continue.

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