Too Scared to Speak

Hi everyone,

I am just now trying to figure out the root cause of my anxiety. I have many fears, and one of them is speaking. For a long time, I said to myself, "the root of my social anxiety is a fear of rejection." But that doesn't explain where the anxiety originated. To find the answer, I am now looking at the very beginning of my life.

I was born into an abusive household. My father beat my mother everyday for "saying thr wrong thing". But as a baby, I didn't understand language; all I understood was that speaking = getting hit or stabbed. My mom said when I was about 8 months old, I started screaming and crying when my dad would hit her, and if she happened to be holding me, I'd put out my hand and push him. So I know that at that age, I understood that there was something was terribly wrong with his behavior.

At some point, my mom decided it was time to escape. My father had us boarded into the house and he designed the front door so that it would lock from the inside. My mom had to break the doorknob off and it was absolutely necessary that I be quiet as a mouse, or we would all get killed. So there goes the idea once again that speaking would put me in terrible danger.

We escaped successfully and my mom was able to get to another island on the country I'm from. She found a low-paying job that didn't pay enough for her to get a baby-sitter, so me and my siblings had to be left home alone. My sister was 9, my brother was 6, and I was 2. My mom didn't want anyone to know we were home alone, so we had to be very quiet in the house or else we'd be taken away. Once again, speaking = danger.

When I began pre-school, it was discovered that I was an elective mute, meaning I would only speak to certain people and go mute to other people. So if my teachers or another child spoke directly to me, I would simply say nothing at all. But if my mom or siblings spoke to me, I was lively and talkative.

In the country I'm from, corporal punishment was and still is practiced in school from kindergarten to 12th grade. I remember watching kids get hit with sticks by the teacher for talking in class. And once again, the idea that speaking and pain were related was reinforced in my brain. I made it through my K-12 without ever being hit for talking, because I simply didn't talk. And I still don't.

Even though I am now aware that no authority will hit me for speaking, those first years of my life have still stuck with me. So no matter how I try to rationalize with myself, nothing helps rid me of my social anxiety. I try to tell myself "no one will hurt you for speaking!!!", but the little girl that still exists in my brain believes otherwise.