Putting Yourself Back in the Narrative

Anxiety, self-advocacy, and finding your place in a post-lockdown world

By Dillon Mathew Gilmore, LMSW | April 15th, 2026

You leave a conversation and rethink your sentence ten minutes too late. Or perhaps even in the moment, you catch yourself not saying something you wanted to say and watch as the conversation continues, feeling like you have missed your moment to speak up.

Maybe you only stress about it for ten minutes, or maybe it keeps you up at night.

If you had just paused at that point or rephrased that sentence, what you wanted to say could have been simple. Clear. Not even confrontational. And now it is over, and you are left replaying the moment, adjusting your tone in your head, rewriting the version of you that spoke.

As a therapist and as someone who has spent a lot of time in therapy, I am no stranger to anxiety.

From both sides of the room, I’ve learned that anxiety does not always look like panic. Sometimes, it looks like silence.

It shows up in the moments you do not speak. When something feels off. When a boundary is crossed. When you leave an interaction feeling like you were not quite fully in it.

For many of us, especially in a post-lockdown world, anxiety has shifted. It is less about isolated episodes and more about a constant internal negotiation. Is it worth it to say something? Will this make things worse? What if I am misunderstood?

At the center of this is something we do not often name. The absence of ourselves in our own story.

Anxiety has a way of editing us out. Instead of participating, we observe. We anticipate reactions, manage tone, soften what we actually think, and prioritize keeping things smooth over being real.

Over time, that creates distance. Things are happening, but we are not fully in them.

Putting yourself back in the narrative is not always about becoming more assertive in a traditional sense. It is about staying connected to yourself in real time. Sometimes it begins with a quiet awareness that you are there at all, and that you matter in what is unfolding.

The COVID-19 lockdown changed how many of us relate to each other. There was more isolation, less practice communicating in-person, and long stretches of uncertainty. Now, even ordinary interactions can feel heavier.

There can be more second-guessing. More mental back-and-forth. A sense that you need to figure out the right response before you say anything at all.

For neurodivergent people, this can feel especially intense. Social cues may already take more effort to process, and now they can feel less predictable than before.

So when it is hard to speak up, it makes sense. It is not a personal failure. It often means your system is already working overtime.

From a queer perspective, this is layered even further. Many of us have learned to read the room quickly. To scan for safety. To decide in real time what is worth addressing and what is not.

Those instincts are adaptive. They have a reason.

But they can also make it easy to leave ourselves out of the moment. To manage the interaction so well that we disappear from it.

There is a common idea that speaking up requires confidence and having the right words at the moment. For a lot of people, that is not how it works.

Especially if your brain is offering you multiple versions of the conversation all at once.

Self-advocacy, in practice, is often simpler than that.

It starts with noticing yourself. What feels off? What feels important? What do you need or want? (Yes, you’re allowed to have wants!)

And then responding in a way that reflects that, even if it is small.

You do not have to find the best response. You only have to stop abandoning yourself in your response.

Because the longer you stay only in your head, the more options your brain will generate. And the harder it becomes to act at all. Sometimes, claiming even a small amount of space is what quiets the noise.

That might be as simple as saying you see things differently. It might be pausing instead of smoothing something over. It might be letting a moment sit instead of rushing past it.

It also does not have to be heavy to be real.

For some people, being a little playful or even a little silly is what makes this possible. Humor can create just enough space to stay in the interaction without getting overwhelmed. It can soften something awkward, redirect a question that does not feel good to answer, or signal that something is off without turning it into something bigger than it needs to be.

It is also a way of staying human in the moment. Not perfectly composed. Not rehearsed. Just present.

And often, that is what helps other people meet you there, too.

Self-advocacy does not always look like a clear statement or a defined boundary. Sometimes it is quieter than that. A pause. A decision not to rush past your own reaction. A return to something later when there is more clarity.

What matters is not how it looks from the outside. It is whether you are still included in it.

A lot of anxiety around speaking up comes from the fear of making things worse. Sometimes it also carries the belief that naming a need is selfish, or that taking up space is inherently too much.

But often, what is actually happening is something different.

When you allow yourself to be more honest, even briefly, you create the conditions for something more real between you and another person. The interaction shifts from performance into contact.

You are not only expressing yourself. You are offering trust. And in a world that can feel isolating, that kind of honesty is often what makes connection possible.

On a personal level, avoiding putting yourself in the narrative has a cost. It does not remove the discomfort. It just moves it inward.

The goal is not to control how every interaction unfolds. It is to stay present enough that you are not disappearing from your own experience while it happens.

Even something small can shift that. From observing life to participating in it.

Speaking up will not make anxiety disappear. At first, it may even heighten it. You are interrupting a pattern that has likely been there for a long time. Therapy can be a great place to practice these small shifts and learn that it is safe to speak up.

But over time, something begins to change. You start to trust that you can remain in contact with yourself even when things feel uncertain. That discomfort is not the same as danger. That connection does not require self-erasure.

And slowly, the moment stops being something you survive from the outside and becomes something you are actually inside of.

Putting yourself back in the narrative is not a final state. It is something you return to again and again.

You notice when you leave yourself out. You feel into what you need. And when you can, you try again.

Not perfectly. Just a little more present than before.

And over time, the story stops being something you are trying to get right from a distance. It becomes something you are actually living, while you are in it.

And over time, it becomes a life you are actually inside of.