How Silence Became a Place of Grounding, Not Fear

Silence used to feel heavy.
Not peaceful

When everything went quiet, my body didn’t relax. It braced. My thoughts raced, my chest tightened, and stillness felt like something to endure rather than trust. Silence meant there was nowhere to hide from what I was feeling, and for a long time, that felt overwhelming.

I didn’t realise then that my discomfort with silence wasn’t about being alone.
It was about safety.

When you’ve spent years in survival mode constantly responding, adapting, holding things together quiet can feel unfamiliar. A nervous system used to chaos doesn’t immediately recognise calm. Instead of rest, it senses danger. Silence feels like the moment before something goes wrong.

So I filled the space.

Music playing. Background noise. Conversations. Movement. Anything to avoid the stillness. Anything to keep my thoughts from catching up with me. Silence felt like losing control.

Healing changed that relationship slowly, gently.

As I learned to regulate my nervous system, to listen to my body instead of overriding it, silence began to soften. I stopped forcing myself to be “okay” in quiet moments and instead met them with curiosity. I learned that grounding doesn’t come from escaping discomfort it comes from staying present through it.

Silence became a place where my breath slowed.
Where my shoulders dropped.
Where my thoughts didn’t need fixing or fighting.

In the quiet, I began to hear myself again. Not the anxious narratives or old survival stories, but my intuition, my needs, my truth. Silence felt like peace rather than a threat.

Now, silence feels like coming back into my body.

It’s where I ground.
It’s where I reset.
It’s where I remember who I am beneath the noise.

Silence didn’t change.
I did.

And in this season of healing and becoming her, silence is no longer something I fear. It’s something I return to again and again as home.