YOUR "PROFESSiONALiSM" iS YOU TRAUMA iN A PANTSUiT.

Before you start drafting that defensive email in your head—stay with me. Because this isn’t shade, it’s a spotlight. And I want to show you something we rarely get taught to see:

Shame doesn’t disappear because you have a bulletproof elevator pitch.You can’t strategize your way out of internalized fear.You can’t “speak with confidence” your way past the damage of being told your voice was too loud, too bold, too complicated—or just… too much.

Shame is Not a Personality. It’s Programming.

What many people label as "communication issues" or "confidence gaps" are often just coping strategies in business casual.We’ve normalized “professional” behaviors that are actually trauma responses:

• Overexplaining everything = fear of being misunderstood or discredited.

• Avoiding directness = fear of being seen as aggressive or inappropriate.

• Always softening, buffering, apologizing = fear of being labeled difficult, emotional, or unlikable.

That’s not your personality.That’s programming.Often inherited, reinforced, and polished until it looks like “executive presence.”

Why “Speak Up” Isn’t Enough

There’s a booming market for communication tips, public speaking hacks, and confidence-building PDFs (usually from some random-ass coaching site you clicked at 2am). And listen—some of them are cute. Useful, even.

But none of them will work if you’re trying to layer clarity over shame.If you haven’t addressed what’s underneath—the swallowed anger, the muted desires, the learned silence—then all those tips are just window dressing on an armored version of you.

That’s why my practice starts with one thing: Unlearning.

Tenet #1: We Start with the Shadows

I’ve got 7 foundational tenets in my coaching approach.(Seven is also the number of completion. Don’t play with me. 😏)

And number one is Unlearning.We don’t start with posture. Or phrasing. Or how to hold the room.

We start with shadow work.

That means getting real about:

• The anger you were told to suppress.

• The confidence you were shamed for.

• The brilliance you postponed until it was “appropriate.”

Shadow work isn’t a trend.It’s a return.A violent return to the truth of who you are—before you edited, filtered, and trimmed it into something palatable.

And contrary to what most people think, we don’t avoid shadow work because it’s painful—we avoid it because it’s powerful.

What Looks Like a Confidence Problem Is Usually a Programming Problem

If you:

• Constantly hold back in conversations,

• Downplay your ideas,

• Apologize before you speak,

…it’s not just nerves.

That’s a communication style shaped by survival.And for many of us, especially those socialized to be agreeable, quiet, and “easy to manage,” that survival was mandatory.

You were taught—explicitly or implicitly—that being expressive was risky.That being direct made you rude.That being passionate made you emotional.That being your full damn self made you a problem.

So now? You perform safety instead of presence.

And it’s time to unlearn that.

Speak Without Shrinking. Lead Without Softening.

This work isn’t about sounding better.It’s about becoming more rooted—so that when you speak, it’s not from fear. It’s from knowing. From embodiment. From wholeness.

“Too much” becomes fully expressed.Quiet becomes intentional—not automatic.Communication becomes not just cleare