The Cost of Silence: When Asking for Help Feels Like a Burden

Ana Mael explores why trauma teaches us to stay silent, and how reclaiming your voice becomes the first act of healing.

 

What happens when your body believes that asking for help will hurt someone else?

In this episode of Exiled & Rising, somatic experiencing therapist Ana Mael unpacks one of the most devastating trauma responses — the fear of being a burden. She explores how childhood conditioning, shame, and nervous-system survival patterns teach us to stay quiet even when we’re drowning.

Ana explains the psychology behind silence: how trauma imprints the belief that expressing need equals danger, rejection, or punishment. This episode reveals why many survivors apologize for existing, why help-seeking feels unsafe, and how the nervous system learns to equate visibility with threat.

 

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Through Ana’s signature blend of somatic insight, poetic reflection, and trauma education, you’ll learn:

• Why trauma makes it hard to ask for help

• How the “fawn” and “freeze” responses silence the body’s voice

• The cost of chronic self-sufficiency and hyper-responsibility

• Somatic practices to rebuild safety in asking, breathing, and being seen

• How to shift from self-blame to self-compassion and co-regulation

If you’ve ever felt guilty for needing, or feared that your pain would inconvenience others, this episode is your invitation to reclaim your right to speak, to ask, and to exist without apology.

 

Topics Covered:

• Silence as a survival response

• The fear of disturbing others

• Internalized shame and self-attack

• Somatic understanding of “freeze” and “fawn”

• Reclaiming voice and relational safety

Mentioned Concepts:
Somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, trauma recovery, PTSD healing, emotional repression, help-seeking, shame, people-pleasing, fear of being a burden, co-regulation.

 

About Ana Mael

 

why Ana Mael’s voice feels so singular.

Her approach to storytelling, teaching, and education in trauma work stands apart because she fuses clinical precision, poetic embodiment, and moral awareness in a way that is rare — even within the field of somatic therapy.

What makes Ana’s approach different from other trauma educators and writers:

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1. She writes from the body, not about the body.

• Most trauma educators describe somatic principles — she enacts them.

• Her language is sensory, rhythmic, and bodily:

  “As thick as mo...

Chapters

• (00:00:00) - Because I Am Drowning, I Will Remain Silent
• (00:01:07) - Excuse me, I Am Drowning but I Will Remain
• (00:04:36) - The burden of needing to live
• (00:16:48) - Second, the burden story
• (00:26:19) - Exiled and Rising: How to Talk About Shame