When Katie Delimon discovered the man who raised her was not her biological father, the biggest shock of the revelation was actually the silence that followed. She shares how silence follows women everywhere, including those she works with as a coach. And what can be done about.
The women I work with are high-performing, emotionally intelligent, and self-aware. They have done the therapy, read the books, and built careers they are proud of. They speak in meetings, lead teams, and hold families together with quiet competence.
And yet something isn’t working.
They can’t quite name it: a low-grade exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix, and a body that keeps sending signals the mind has learned to override. They call it stress. Their doctors call it burnout. Their therapists call it anxiety.
But often, what sits beneath it – in both the research and my own lived experience — is the accumulated cost of self-silencing.
I know this intimately. Not just as a coach who has spent over a decade working with women navigating exactly this. But as a woman who grew up in a family where silence was inherited.
At thirty-eight, a DNA test revealed that the man who raised me was not my biological father. It was a truth buried for decades. But what struck me most wasn’t just the revelation itself, it was the response around me: silence.
Both my mother and biological father had taken this secret to their grave and I was urged not to speak about it. To protect others. To “leave it alone.”
That moment cracked something open in me. Because I had heard that instruction my entire life — just never so plainly spoken. A childhood wrapped in secrets, silence, and shame. An aunt murdered and never spoken of again. A brother adopted in silence and never told. A mother who carried the weight of things she could never say — and who died of ovarian cancer at fifty-five, her body having stored what her mouth could never speak.
I didn’t understand the connection then. But the science I’ve learnt since has made it impossible to ignore.
Women are taught to keep the peace. We’re taught to not be “too much”, and to suppress discomfort to maintain relationships, roles, and expectations.
But that silence comes at a cost.
Have you ever wondered why around 80n per cent of autoimmune disease sufferers are women? Researchers believe stress and emotional suppression is a significant contributing factor. When we consistently override our internal signals — when we swallow our feelings, silence our needs, and shrink ourselves to keep the peace — the body eventually turns on itself. The immune system, confused by years of stored, unprocessed emotion, begins attacking what it cannot identify as safe.
The body doesn’t distinguish between the words you didn’t say in a meeting and the grief you never let yourself feel. It simply registers: something is being held. Something is not moving through.
Then there’s the Framingham Heart Study, one of the longest-running cardiovascular studies in history, which tracked thousands of women in unhappy marriages and found that those who suppressed their feelings during conflict were four times more likely to die than women who expressed themselves. Not a little more likely. Four times.
In my work as a trauma-informed coach and speaker, I see how unspoken thoughts, unexpressed boundaries, and unresolved emotional stress show up in ways many women don’t immediately connect back to silence. It looks like burnout, anxiety, indecision, overthinking, and a constant feeling of being overwhelmed.
When women don’t speak up in meetings, tolerate misalignment in workplaces, or avoid difficult conversations, it is not always a confidence issue. Often, it is a nervous system response – one shaped to prioritise safety over self-expression.
Many women have never felt emotionally safe enough to speak up.
Whether it’s been shaped by family dynamics, past experiences, or workplace cultures that reward compliance over courage, the body learns quickly: stay quiet, stay accepted, stay safe.
The problem is, what protects us in one environment can quietly limit us in another.
When we consistently override our internal signals—when we don’t say what we think, ask for what we need, or set the boundaries we require—we don’t just suppress our voice. We suppress ourselves and over time, that suppression doesn’t disappear. It accumulates like compound interest.
This is why so many high-performing, capable women still find themselves feeling stuck, overlooked, or disconnected from their work later on in life. It’s not because they lack ambition or ability—it’s because their internal capacity to tolerate discomfort hasn’t been built in a way that supports expression.
The solution isn’t to simply “speak up more.” It’s to understand why you haven’t, and to build the capacity to do so sustainably.
Here are a few ways to start:
1. Notice where you’re self-silencing
Pay attention to the moments you hesitate—when you hold back a thought, soften your opinion, or avoid a conversation. Awareness is the first step to change.
2. Pause instead of push through
When discomfort arises, most people either shut down or force themselves to act. Instead, pause. Take a breath. Give your body a moment to settle before responding. Regulation creates choice.
3. Start with low-stakes truth-telling
You don’t have to start with the hardest conversation of your life. Begin with small moments of honesty—expressing a preference, offering a perspective, or saying no when something doesn’t align.
4. Reframe boundaries as leadership
Boundaries are often misunderstood as conflict or rejection. In reality, they are clarity. Women who communicate clearly, respectfully, and consistently are not difficult—they are effective.
Learning to speak up isn’t about becoming louder or more assertive overnight. It’s about becoming more aligned—internally and externally.
Because when your inner world and outer expression match, something powerful happens. And workplaces do not need more high functioning, self-silencing women holding everything together at their own expense. They need women who feel safe enough to speak clearly, lead honestly, and participate fully – without betraying themselves in the process.