Don't Miss Out: Why You Can't Say I Felt Keeps You Trapped

You sit down to write about your mother. About the cancer treatment where she managed your care but never explained what was happening to your body. About the coldness you received while watching her shower your sisters with warmth. About the decades of criticism that trained you to expect judgment instead of praise.

Your therapist asked you to write it differently this time. Not "you would feel scared" but "I felt scared." Not "one might feel invisible" but "I felt invisible."

When you tried it, your chest tightened. Tears came. It hurt in a way that writing about these experiences had never hurt before.

What you couldn't see in that moment was the invisible mechanism that had been protecting you-and simultaneously keeping you trapped-for decades.

The Truth About Saying You Instead of I

When you write "you would feel scared during cancer treatment," something specific happens in your brain. You're describing a painful experience, but you're describing it as if it happened to someone else.

Researchers studying trauma survivors discovered something unexpected about this pattern. They call it "linguistic distancing"-using third-person language to talk about first-person experiences. And here's what makes it significant: when people use this distancing language about painful events, their stress hormones stay elevated longer than when they use first-person language.

Your body processes "you would feel scared" and "I felt scared" as fundamentally different statements.

One keeps the threat active. The other allows it to be processed.

Think about it this way: when you say "you would feel," you're describing a hypothetical situation that could happen to anyone. Your nervous system never gets the signal that this experience is over, claimed, and ready to be filed away as history.

But when you write "I felt scared"-when you claim it as yours-something shifts. The experience moves from present threat to past event. From danger to story. From something happening to something that happened.

This is why your chest got tight when you switched to first-person. Your nervous system was finally processing what it had been holding at arm's length.

Why Protecting Yourself From Pain Backfires

You developed this pattern for a reason. When you were going through cancer treatment and couldn't communicate with nurses or your mother, those feelings had nowhere to go. They bottled up inside. And at some point, your brain learned that distancing yourself from those feelings made them more bearable.

"You would feel terrified" is easier to write than "I felt terrified."

It keeps you safe. Or at least, it feels like it does.

But here's the mechanism most people don't see: that same protection that helped you survive a painful childhood is now preventing you from healing as an adult.

When you distance from your emotions in language, you're also protecting someone else. You wrote it yourself: "If I don't claim it, she doesn't have to be responsible for it."

Every time you write "you would feel" instead of "I felt," you're unconsciously absolving your mother of responsibility for your pain. You're carrying her emotional baggage in a suitcase labeled "not mine."

And as long as it's not yours, you can't unpack it.

The First-Person Language Secret Nobody Talks About

Here's the piece that rarely gets discussed in trauma recovery: the specific words you use aren't just describing your internal state-they're actively shaping it.

Studies on expressive writing show that when people write about traumatic experiences using first-person language and emotion words, their immune function measurably improves. Not just their mood. Their actual physical health.

The mechanism works like this: Your brain has been running a background program that says "this painful thing is still happening." Every time you use distancing language, you reinforce that program. But when you switch to "I felt," you're sending a different signal: "This happened to me. It was real. It hurt. And it's over."

That signal-repeated consistently-begins to rewire the neural pathways that have kept you stuck in shame and inadequacy.

Your therapist mentioned that this practice could sever the chain to those feelings. The research backs this up: consistent practice of claiming emotions in direct language can change default patterns in the brain within about eight weeks.

Eight weeks of "I felt" instead of "you would feel."

Eight weeks of claiming your experience instead of distancing from it.

Eight weeks to start breaking free from a pattern that's been running for decades.

What Nobody Tells You About Being the Family Scapegoat

But there's another mechanism at work here-one that's even more invisible than the linguistic distancing.

Your mother criticized you constantly. No matter what you accomplished, she pointed out what was wrong. She offered warmth to your sisters while remaining cold with you. Even now, in your thirties, she restricts your independence and focuses negatively on your work performance.

Most people would explain this as simply having a critical parent. But family systems research reveals something more specific: scapegoating serves a function in family dynamics.

When one person is consistently singled out for negative treatment while others are treated positively, it's rarely random. That pattern stabilizes the family system by directing all tension toward a single person.

You were assigned a role. The problem. The one who isn't quite good enough. The one who needs criticism while others deserve praise.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: if your mother acknowledged your accomplishments, your competence, your fundamental worthiness-the entire family structure she's maintained would have to shift.

If you're not the problem, then maybe the problem is somewhere else.

This is why your mother's criticism isn't really about your performance at all. When you clean together and she points out only what you missed-never what you did well-she's not evaluating your cleaning. She's maintaining the system.

The scapegoat role requires you to be inadequate. Your adequacy would destabilize everything.

The Secret to Breaking Free From Shame

So when you write "I felt unworthy" instead of "you would feel unworthy," you're doing something more radical than it might appear.

You're not just claiming an emotion. You're refusing to carry responsibility for someone else's emotional limitations.

You're saying: that unworthiness happened TO me. It is not who I am. It was installed by someone else's actions and someone else's needs.

The experience is yours to own and process. But the shame? That was never yours to carry.

You noticed this yourself when you wrote to your mother using "I felt" statements. You said: "It's like... I'm saying that unworthiness happened TO me, not that it IS me."

That distinction-between what happened to you and who you are-is everything.

Your partner Brett celebrates your accomplishments. He sees you. He's proud of you. But you wrote that sometimes you don't even know how to receive it because you're waiting for the criticism to come.

That's the old operating system running. It was programmed for a family system that needed you to be inadequate. But you're not in that system anymore, even if you still have contact with it.

Every time you practice first-person emotional ownership-"I felt scared," "I felt invisible," "I felt worthy of more than this"-you're literally overwriting that old program.

How to Start Claiming Your Feelings This Week

Your assignment is deceptively simple but profoundly powerful:

Notice when you slip into distancing language.

Pay attention to moments when you say or think "you would feel," "one might experience," "people often think." These phrases show up not just in writing about your mother, but everywhere-when you're talking about work stress, relationship concerns, even casual conversations.

Each time you catch yourself using distancing language, pause. Rewrite it internally or on paper: "I felt," "I experienced," "I thought."

Then notice what happens in your body. Does your chest tighten? Do tears come? Does your breathing change?

Keep a log. Not to judge yourself, but to map the territory of your healing.

Write down:

• What you were describing when you caught the distancing language
• How you rewrote it in first-person
• What physical sensations arose
• What emotions surfaced

This isn't just an exercise in better communication. This is a neurological intervention. Every instance of claiming your feelings in direct language is building new neural pathways-pathways that lead away from shame and toward integration.

The tightness in your chest, the tears that come-these aren't signs that you're doing it wrong. They're signs that your nervous system is finally processing what it's been holding for decades.

The pain of claiming your experience is temporary. The pain of distancing from it lasts a lifetime.

What Happens When You Finally Claim Your Pain

You asked your therapist: "Why does it have to hurt so much?"

Here's why: You've been carrying your mother's emotional limitations, your family's need for a scapegoat, and decades of unexpressed feelings from cancer treatment and ongoing criticism. All of it in a suitcase you pretended wasn't yours.

When you finally open it and say "this is mine to process," the weight becomes real for the first time.

But here's what else becomes real:

You can put it down.

Not by distancing from it, but by fully claiming it and then choosing to release the shame that was never yours to begin with.

You can receive Brett's love without waiting for criticism because you'll know the difference between someone who sees your worth and someone who needs you to be inadequate.

You can accomplish things at work and actually feel proud instead of immediately scanning for what you did wrong.

You can make mistakes without feeling fundamentally broken because you'll understand that you're not broken-you were just trained to believe you were.

This practice of linguistic ownership-of claiming "I felt" instead of hiding behind "you would feel"-is your path out of the role you were assigned and into the identity you actually deserve.

What Comes Next

As you practice claiming your emotions this week, something will likely happen. The family system that assigned you the scapegoat role won't simply celebrate your growth. Systems resist change because change threatens stability.

You might notice increased criticism. Your mother might escalate her focus on your flaws. Other family members might pressure you, subtly or overtly, to return to the familiar dynamic.

Because when you stop playing the role of the problem, someone has to confront the actual problem.

The question becomes: How do you maintain this practice of emotional ownership when everyone around you is invested in you abandoning it?

How do you protect these fragile new neural pathways when the old family system applies pressure to revert to the old patterns?

That's the territory we'll need to map next. But for now, start with the language. Start with claiming what's yours. Start with "I felt."

The rest will follow.