I Still Get Small Around Male Anger

Dear Delyara, A man raising his voice in a parking lot. A sharp tone on the phone. A husband irritated with traffic. A male coworker getting tense in a meeting. Something in my body instantly shrinks. I smile more. Speak less. Move carefully. Make myself emotionally compact. It happens before thought. That’s the humiliation of trauma sometimes — being old enough to understand the pattern and still too fast to stop your body from obeying it. I can know I’m safe and still feel my body getting smaller to fit through an old doorway. It makes me tired of myself and tender toward myself at the same time. I don’t know which feeling wins.