The Burden of Being the "Strong One": The Avoidance And The Insult Behind the Praise

The Insult That Silences Your Truth. In this episode of Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael delivers a rare, political critique of the “strong archytpe” narrative that dominates Western psychology and social media.
Speaking as both a trauma therapist and a survivor of the Balkan wars and genocide of the 1990s, Ana exposes how the language of resilience often conceals collective avoidance, gendered expectations, and systemic neglect.

She asks: What if the praise for strength is just society’s way of not facing what it did to us?

Through her lived history of displacement and decades of somatic trauma work, Ana dismantles the myth that survival equals healing. She traces how post-war cultures, patriarchal family systems, and even therapy spaces reward survivors for silence, composure, and productivity — while pathologizing grief, rage, and need.

Blending body-based psychology, feminist theory, and historical memory, Ana argues that praising strength without confronting oppression is another form of violence.
She links the “strong one” identity to larger forces:

• the normalization of war trauma and refugee endurance,

• the colonial valorization of stoicism over emotion,

• the capitalist pressure to perform recovery rather than receive repair.

Listeners are guided through reflective and somatic exercises that help transform strength from a mask into a bridge toward relational safety and justice.

Ana’s thesis is clear:

“Strength is not consent. It’s evidence of how long you’ve survived without protection.”

This episode is both a personal testimony and a social commentary — a therapist’s call to stop individualizing pain that was created collectively. 

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Why This Episode Matters

Few trauma educators speak from within the legacy of war, displacement, and systemic violence.
Ana’s voice is part witness, part clinician, part political philosopher.
Her work reminds us that healing cannot exist without context — and resilience means nothing without justice.

Chapters

• (00:00:00) - Being Called and Labelled as a Strong One
• (00:03:47) - How the Strong One is Created
• (00:12:25) - The Praise of the Strong One
• (00:21:12) - What is the Strong One?
• (00:28:03) - Systems Love Strong Survivors
• (00:33:47) - What Does a Strong Body Feel Like?
• (00:36:20) - Somatic Lessons for PTSD Recovery (For The Strong One)
• (00:42:53) - Being the Strong One