How to Make Yourself Heard in Difficult Conversations

It might take more than one conversation to make yourself understood

Leigh Victoria Phan, MS
Forge

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Illustration Courtesy of VectorMine on Adobe Stock

I’m the type of person who will suffer in silence for a while before I approach my breaking point and try to raise my voice about something. I suspect it’s largely because I grew up dealing with a family who had so many of their own problems that they really didn’t want to hear about my youthful emotional drama. Then, once I moved out at 21 and had to survive in the workforce, I had a lot of supervisors who were not really interested in what their subordinates thought about working conditions.

Regardless of how it happened, it’s a terrible habit that I’m working on resolving. But like most changes we try to make in our lives, I can’t wave a magic wand and have it happen overnight. If you struggle with raising your voice when you’re faced with unfair or unnecessarily difficult circumstances, it’s really challenging to get to square one of even raising an issue.

It feels like it’s easier just to shut up and take it.

Illustration Courtesy of VectorMine on Adobe Stock

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Leigh Victoria Phan, MS
Forge
Writer for

Brooklyn-based writer and poet. Designer in NYC. Drinks books and loves coffee. Has an MS from NYU in Integrated Design & Media. Working on an MFA in Fiction.