Hiding After Abortion
This week’s guest is Emily Love, she’s a therapist, a past client, and a friend. Her contribution to mental health is priceless in a world where we all need more support. In this conversation we talk about what happens in the brain as we decide whether or not to share or hold our story.
In every episode I read a blog post I’ve written and we follow up with a conversation about the topic at hand and what it means for women and their ability to thrive after abortion. Happy listening and as always feel free to send me your reflections and questions at the PodBlog page on my website.
The post:
When given the opportunity human beings operate directly from their primal brain. It’s the part of their being that reacts to potentially dangerous situations in the interest of self-preservation. The primal or instinctual brain has one main function, to keep you safe.
There’s a whole conversation to be had about how our primal brain impacts our decision of whether or not to have an abortion, but for now we’re talking about how it affects our decisions post abortion.
After abortion our primal brain says:“Stay safe.”“Avoid conflict.”“Fit in.”
If we operate primarily from this part of our brain, we HIDE. Direction from our primal brain is present focused, it drives the short term action of protection. When the primal brain senses danger: judgement, abuse, rejection, it directs us to retreat to safety. It’s acting from a low level consciousness and a fast but very limited processing.
In the culture we’ve created around abortion, lots of women hide, but in some cases the fear of exposure is extra strong. If we’ve grown up in a deeply religious or political tradition, or have unhealthy or abusive relationships, this part of our brain decides that hiding is safer than exposure. The biggest problem here is that it keeps learning and validating safety, based on action and reward. Here’s an example of what that looks like (keep in mind this is just an example and there are as many unique abortion stories as there are women with abortion stories):
Despite knowing she made the best decision for her future, a woman decides not to tell her Catholic family she aborted.
Primal brain feels the reward of avoiding rejection and maintaining connection
The same woman enters a new relationship and instead of telling her now partner about her abortion history, she taps back into the primal instinct of avoiding rejection. She validates her choice with her memory of avoiding the rejection of her family. In her primal memory “keeping her story a secret = receiving love”.
Now she’s wanting to receive love from her partner, but her primal brain says “love = hiding”.
As she continues to hide her story shame builds. Even though she has no personal shame, if she feels she can’t speak her truth then she can’t live as her fullest most authentic self.
Hidden shame from this fear of rejection, not from her choice to abort, eats away at her, but the discomfort of shame feels safer than the risk of losing love from people she cares about.
Now she’s living in a spiraling state of confusion and self-rejection. Every time she chooses to hide she rejects the part of herself that chose abortion.
To receive love from others she has to reject her own truth. Hiding her story seems innocent enough, but every time she thinks about it she feels the dissonance.
She knows that what she did what was the best at the time, but if she can’t tell people for risk of rejection, than a growing voice inside her keeps repeating “hiding is safe”, “exposure equals danger”.
So she keeps hiding. The discomfort of rejecting her own truth, is more comfortable than the feared projection of losing her connection to others.
It’s a vicious cycle that millions of women are living in, and the key to freedom is in the rational brain. The rational brain is slower to process but MUCH smarter. It thinks at a much higher consciousness, and can see a future free from hiding as a much greater reward than a short term fear of rejection.
The rational brain allows us to sculpt our future to meet our desires. It never feels like a victim and always owns its power.
The very same women using her rational brain has many more choices:
She can CHOOSE to avoid rejection by hiding her story, while maintaining self-love and self-acceptance.
She can CHOOSE to hide her story, NOT from fear of rejection, but from a place of intimacy and personal privacy.
She can CHOOSE to selectively tell her story and maintain confidence that she did what was best for her life and her future, remembering that other people’s reactions reflect their truth, not hers.
Or she can choose to wear her story on her sleeve.
