The Ladder Wasn't Built for Everyone

When the systems we’re asked to climb don’t match the truth of how we’re built to move

This is Part 4 in my series on visibility, exploring how nervous-system wisdom, fear, and culture shape the ways we show up in the world. This piece turns toward how the body responds when the pace of the world asks more than it can authentically give.

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When I was in elementary school, I hated being called on in class. My heart would race, my mind would go blank, and sometimes I’d leave my body altogether. Speaking in front of more than a few people felt unbearable. That fear followed me all the way through school as a constant hum of threat just beneath the surface.

I remember sitting in my college English lit class one day when the teaching assistant announced that we’d be going around the table to share our analysis of a poem. In an instant, that old undercurrent of fear rushed to the surface. My mind went blank and I froze up just like when I was a kid. She added, quite sternly, that participation was required to pass this portion of the class.

As students took turns sharing their insights, the tension in my body grew. My heart was pounding, my stomach twisting and turning. Everything in me screamed, I don’t want to do this. It wasn’t just about fear of speaking: I didn’t want to analyze things in a purely intellectual, rational, or linear way. But this is what we were graded on. This is how our value was measured. I couldn’t do it. Something in me refused. But I didn’t want to fail, and it felt impossible to make something up—it just wasn’t who I was.

When my turn came, I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. The silent space was filled with a mix of my own shame, their expectation, and of protocol—doing what you’re supposed to do. The air felt thick, heavy with rules and rigidity. There was no room for hesitation, no space to be messy or fumble through. Everything in me knew that there was no space for me. I tried to access something, anything, but nothing would come. One woman whispered, “What’s wrong with her?” I could sense the TA’s impatience growing by the second. So I did the only thing I could think of: I stood up and said, “I have a bad stomach ache and have to leave.” The TA looked at me as if I’d done something terribly offensive. I walked out and never went back. I didn’t feel like I had another choice.

For years I thought this was a personal flaw and that I just needed to “get over” my fear of speaking and learn to perform like everyone else. But looking back, I see something else: my body was telling the truth. The environment I was in rewarded quick analysis and confident performance, not the kind of knowing that lives in, or flows from, intuition or deep observation.

As an Asian woman growing up in the US in the 1970s and 80s, in a world that prized certainty, productivity, and self-promotion, I learned early on that being quiet was safer than being misunderstood. The fear I carried was my body protecting me in a culture that didn’t value how I was built to be.

I’ve come to see that my experience wasn’t unique. Many of us learned to equate safety with silence, adapting our nervous systems to a world that rewards performance over presence.

In American education, especially after World War II, the ability to speak up and think out loud came to define what it meant to be intelligent and confident. These values aligned neatly with modern capitalist and patriarchal ideals that prize performance, achievement, and control. The body, emotion, and uncertainty had little place in that model of learning.

In contrast, some cultural lineages place greater value on humility, collective harmony, and an understanding of relational order. Speaking quickly or asserting an opinion too boldly can be seen as disruptive to the whole. This doesn’t mean disengagement; it reflects a different kind of intelligence rooted in observation and reflection.

When a value system shaped by visibility and assertion meets one that is held by reverence and attunement, those of us whose knowing lives more internally or in nuance can feel at odds with what the world celebrates. When those worlds meet inside a single person, the conflict lives in the body.

For a long time, I believed a story that I was holding myself back and that fear was the obstacle to overcome. But the more I’ve studied the nervous system, the more I see how fear can also be a teacher. It reveals where our environment asks us to move faster, harder, or louder than our nature allows. Sometimes what we call fear is simply the body saying no to a rhythm that’s out of alignment.

For me, a highly sensitive woman of color who thinks non-linearly, the fear has been real. But it hasn’t just been the fear of being seen. It’s been the fear of being seen in a way that isn’t true to who I am, and of what might happen if I am.

I know now that this fear never meant something was wrong with me.
It’s information.
The body’s way of showing me what isn’t safe to conform to. Our culture pathologizes stillness, uncertainty, and sensitivity, but these states are part of the body’s intelligence. They allow us to slow down enough to sense what’s true.

The same pattern continues long after we leave the classroom. In most workplaces and cultural spaces, visibility still equals value. Those who speak the loudest or move the fastest are seen as leaders, while those who orient toward listening, presence, and relational awareness are often overlooked.

We’re taught that success is something to climb toward: a ladder measured in titles, production, and recognition. But the ladder itself was built inside systems that reward expansion over integrity. These are the same values that informed our classrooms, and the same ones that ask us to perform rather than to be true to who we are.

For me, the fear of being visible wasn’t only about self-doubt. It’s been about sensing that to be seen often meant twisting myself into a shape that didn’t fit. The faster I tried to move, the more I lost touch with myself. My nervous system has been protesting against extraction.

Many of us weren’t built to sustain a pace that keeps us out of sync with our own timing. Sometimes, what looks like resistance or fear is the body’s refusal to join in systems that deplete it.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that success comes from striving. That if we just become louder, bigger, more visible, we’ll finally be valued. But maybe what’s needed is less pretzel contortion and more honesty about what fits and what doesn’t. More permission to move at the pace that allows our integrity to stay intact.

I’ve come to see that agency isn’t about pushing through. It’s about listening, noticing what’s ready, what’s not, and letting that be enough. Each time we move at the pace our body can actually hold, we begin to unlearn the story that our value depends on output. We remember that worth isn’t measured by what gets done, but by how aligned we are when we do it.

Sometimes I think about that hum that used to live underneath everything I did. It’s still there at times, but it feels different now. Less threat, more truth.

The fear hasn’t disappeared. It’s simply become part of how I listen. It reminds me when something isn’t aligned. When the pace is too fast, or when belonging is being confused with performance.

Maybe visibility is about having the choice to stay connected to ourselves, to let ourselves be witnessed - by life, by the moment. By what’s present. And it’s something that happens naturally when we’re true to what’s real inside us.

When I slow down and let myself feel, something reorganizes.
The world feels a little different.
Even if no one else notices.
That’s the kind of visibility I trust now.
Maybe that’s how culture changes too, one nervous system at a time.

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Read the earlier essays in this series:
The Myth of Visibility · Is It Fear or Wisdom? · Nervous System Regulation at the Edge of Fear

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