Ingrained Misogyny: The System We Learned Without Knowing

We unpack how ingrained misogyny becomes survival patterns and how to unlearn them with nervous system tools and community support. We end with a grounding somatic practice and a clear path toward self-trust and steadiness.

• defining ingrained misogyny and internalized oppression 
• survival patterns like appeasement and tone management 
• competing with women as attachment fear  
• five practices to unlearn misogyny with compassion 

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Transcript

Welcome & Intentions

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women. This is a space where your voice matters, your body is sacred, and your healing is never rushed nor is it ever minimized. I'm Ana Moran, a licensed professional counselor, yoga instructor, and neurodivergent woman, specializing in trauma and nervous system healing for high-functioning women who look successful on the outside but feel dysregulated, exhausted, or disconnected on the inside. My work integrates trauma therapy, somatic healing, and nervous system regulation to help you move from survival mode into embodied stability, clarity, and power. If you've experienced trauma, late diagnosed neurodivergence, or chronic relational stress, and you're ready to move beyond coping and into deep healing, you're in the right place, my dear. This isn't surface level therapy. This is pattern-changing, body-based, integrative work. And you don't have to do it all alone because I am here every Wednesday. Sometimes Fridays, if the bonus episode comes out, anyways. Bonus episodes are really, they come out on Fridays if I do have them. It's just something extra, something that comes up, some topic that's really relevant. I just like to throw it in outside of my planned episodes. Alright, so here we are. You've read the title. I want you to just take a deep breath. Inhale deeply before you brace, before you prepare to just defend anything, before you think, is this going to attack men? Take a nice deep breath out. Because this is not that episode. This is about something quieter. The ways we learn to shrink, the way we learn to judge ourselves, to prioritize male comfort over our own safety. Most of us learn those things to survive. If you are a trauma experience woman, misogyny may not feel ideological, it may feel protective. And today I want to untangle that in a gentle way. And I'm diving in, jumping in, getting right to the point. And I want to define what is ingrained misogyny. Because misogyny is the systemic devaluing of women and femininity. Ingrained misogyny is when those messages move inside of us. Not because we choose them, but because they were everywhere. It was part of our conditioning, it was part of our upbringing. It was what we heard. It was how we were taught. It was how people acted. Psychology calls this internalized oppression when marginalized groups absorb the beliefs used against them. So this often shows up as I'm too much. I need to be validated. If I'm agreeable, I'm safe. If he's angry, I did something wrong. And let me just take this into a non-binary sense. If they are angry, I did something wrong. It could be a she. I'm not saying this is just for heterosexual relationships. This is for they are mad. I did something wrong. Again, not bashing men. You didn't wake up one day and decide that all this is true. You didn't wake up and say, This is who I am. You learn this. Research shows that children internalize norms simply by observing what gets rewarded and punished. And taking a little side note, when you think about what children internalize simply by observing, you can tell a kid one thing at nauseam, but if you're doing the opposite, or if you're not doing that in action, they're gonna follow what you do, they're gonna follow how you act. So none of this old timey do as I say, not as I do. If that is part of your repertoire, work on that. Chuck that in the fucking bucket. It does not belong in parenting or relationships. All right, back on to it. So if you saw women criticized for being loud, hello. I have always and forever been criticized for being loud. I've always needed to put myself in my own place. If you've seen girls mocked for ambition, even by other women, I've had other women like knock me down or try to knock me down when I have big dreams. Putting doubt into my head, saying passive aggressive things, because it was right. If you saw mothers exhausted but praised for their sacrifice, right? The woman that does and does and does and does, but secretly falls apart, secretly has a few drinks, openly has a few drinks, disconnects, is not available when the show is off. If you saw men excuse for emotional immaturity, that horrible saying, boys will be boys. No, that needs to change. So your nervous system took notes that this was something that you exemplif that you was exemplified for you. And what does this look like? Like just going a little bit deeper, I want to break down some of the things it looks like to have ingrained misogyny because this is something we may have and not know that it's misogyny. So I'm not here to shame, I'm not here to say you're bad, do better, you suck. I'm here to say, hey, these are things I think we're carrying on as women that we can let go of that no longer serve us. So number one is shrinking to stay safe. If you grew up in a home where male anger was unpredictable, you may have learned to be small, be quiet, don't escalate. Your nervous system had to adapt. It's not a sign of weakness. Research shows that appeasement behaviors are survival strategies. People pleasing is a trauma response. We don't get gold stars for that. If anything, it takes away our stars. You may call it being easygoing, but your body knows it's scanning for safety. And now as an adult, that can look like softening your tone constantly, managing your tone, making sure you're professional, making sure you're feminine, making sure you're soft enough so that everyone around you feels safe. Overapologizing. Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Oh, I'm sorry. Over-apologizing. Avoiding confrontation. Those two things right there that I just listed are ways to avoid confrontation. But avoidant tendencies, agreeing, not putting up a fight in the sense of saying your voice or advocating for yourself, you avoid any perceived confrontation, perceived or real. And maybe you laugh when uncomfortable. You know, if you've been on a date, if you've been around people and someone says something inappropriate and you just kind of laugh it off because what a horrible thing to say in front of people, but God, that's uncomfortable. When you really need to say is, I can't believe you just said that out loud. Can you tell me more about your way of thinking? Call them out. Don't let people get away with saying things that make people feel uncomfortable. Let them know that, hey, you need to monitor yourself as well. More to come, got sidetracked. So that's not personality, right? That's pattern. This is patterns that you've learned in order to stay safe, in order to keep people happy. Another way that ingrained misogyny shows up is one that's very painful. This is the one I just mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

When how do I say it?

Competing With Women For Safety

Distrusting Female Emotion

Over-Accommodating And Emotional Labor

How Misogyny Harms Men

Mid-Roll: Somatic Healing Group

Nervous System Layer Of Healing

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Competing with other women for safety, right? So if a male approval, if male approval was currency in your family or culture, you may have learned that being chosen equals safety. In patriarchal systems, women are often rewarded for distancing themselves from other women. That old saying, I'm not like other girls, I get along with men better. That narrative is often trauma-coded. It says, I am safe because I'm different. But underneath that is fear. If I'm not chosen, I'm vulnerable. That's not cattiness, that's attachment fear. So you feel like when it comes to ingrained misogyny, when it comes to competing with other women for safety, that's when you experience, like I just mentioned a little bit, a little second ago, whenever it was. When I can remember working at this nonprofit, and I really looked up to I really looked up to the management. I really looked up to the owner. I thought they were doing something that was really noble and needed in the community. And part of me fell into the family dynamic of like, this is good, they support me, they like me, there's no competition. Because when I went into the management circle, it seemed like a good little pat me on the back, we're awesome managers type of vibe. But as soon as I decided that I wanted to pivot and go out on my own and do something that superseded, I don't even know if it's superseded, but it was not what my peers were doing. I was going out on my own. I wanted to do virtual therapy. It was something that finally made me feel like I completely and absolutely and 100% love my job. All the barriers were taken away. So I had decided that's what I want to do. And one of the managers that I looked up to was so negative, Nancy, you'll come back. It never works out. You won't make enough money. It was just so disheartening to see. Mind you, at this point, there were other reasons for me to go. People had already shown their true colors. Women had already shown their true colors about how much they would have my back or support me or be part of the team, or how little they would. I was once again an outcast of the management group. And it wasn't because I sucked, because I was the only manager at one point to be celebrated for manager's day, bosses' day. So it wasn't like I was being a horrible employee. I was absolutely on top of my game and did all I could to be well. And they just wanted more from me. I had to keep proving myself as if what I was doing wasn't enough. And that's just a again, competing for safety. All I wanted was to be paid what I felt I was worth. And I wanted to be safe and secure in my job, not to feel like it was all about to go away. And the women that were in charge, I had to compete with them to feel safe. That's in grain misogyny, right? Women against women. Up next is distrusting female emotion. Because if you were labeled dramatic, emotional, hell, even hysterical, right? You may now dismiss other women's pain. Girl, it's not that bad. Girl, it could be worse. Don't even worry about it. You got this. Don't even don't. If you feel irritated by female vulnerability, she's so needy. She always has to have an accommodation. She always has to have a problem. Like she's she's just so whiny, so needy. Grow up. You think that's bad. Try what I've been through. A little calloused misogyny. What if you pride yourself on being low maintenance? You've learned to be quote unquote low maintenance so that you're not identified as dramatic or emotional or too much or needy or girly or soft or heaven forbid weak. Because historically, women's emotional expression has been pathologized. The term hysteria literally comes from the Greek word for uterus. When you distrust female emotion, you may be echoing centuries of conditioning. It's not about shaming you, it's about letting you see what we've inherited. So be softer with yourself so that you can be softer with other women. It all starts with you. As cheesy as that statement sounds, it really is about your internal womb, your internal battlefield, if you will. Like if it's a battlefield, clean that shit up. Make it a dis a utopian landscape inside. Lost my words. I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than saying, if it's a battlefield in your mind and your body, do all that you can do to end the battle, turn it into compassion, peace, and love for yourself so that you can pour it outward to others. What about this next one? This is the one of the final ones of ingrained misogyny, I think I'll say today, and that's over-accommodating men or others. Many trauma-experienced women become emotional caretakers because you anticipate moods, you smooth the tension, you manage the tone, and you absorb the discomfort when it comes up. It has been shown that women perform significantly more emotional labor in heterosexual relationships. And oftentimes, if you've experienced trauma, this labor has begun since childhood. You may have been the mediator, peacekeeper, the emotionally mature one that your parent relied on. You're so much older for your age. You're such an old soul. We're best friends. Take on my pain, help me solve my problems. Get me, pick me up off the floor. And now in adulthood, what happens, sis? You are fucking tired. Not because you're incapable, but because you were trained to regulate everyone else and leave yourself in the dust. So this is ingrained misogyny in women. Like some other things that pop into my mind is like when women have stereotypes for how women are men should be. Men can't have sissy drinks, men can't cry, men can't be weak, men can't be soft, men have to be able to make the decision. It's like, no, they're human too. Let's not be misogynistic. All right, so what does it look like in men? I wanna I want to slow it down here because trauma lives in men too. Many boys are socialized to disconnect from their vulnerability. Don't cry. You're a wuss, or maybe horrible word, worse words. Be a sissy. Maybe even worse words. I can't even go into it, right? I don't know how men talk to men. I've never experienced that, but I've seen somehow some boys are, and who they are and what they've been trained, are two different things. So there was a guideline, what was it? What did I read? It was something in an APA journal found that rigid masculinity norms correlate with emotional restriction and relational difficulty. If a boy is shamed for crying, if vulnerability is mocked, and if his dominance was rewarded, he may grow into a man who struggles with emotional language. He may grow into a man who avoids responsibility that feels overwhelming. And when I say feels overwhelming, that's a small threshold. And he may grow into a man who deflects discomfort with anger. Anger is a secondary anger is an emotion just like every other emotion. It needs it's to be acknowledged, it needs to be worked through, it needs to be honored, right? But anger is also a secondary emotion in the sense that give me someone that's repeatedly angry, that has a short fuse, that's quick temper and all those, and I'll give you someone that has a wound that needs to be healed. They are hurting in some way, and instead of grieve, instead of be sad, instead of cry or be vulnerable, they choose anger. Their baseline is anger. Maybe it's automatic for them. It's context, right? This is not an excuse for men. This is just context because misogyny harms men too. It teaches them that feelings are weakness, women exist for support, and power must be protected. And when men internalize that, intimacy suffers. Okay, this is what I call, uh, not what I call, I didn't make this up. This is podcast lingo. This is my mid-roll time. So, so for lack of better terms, this is my commercial and it's a quick one, and it's just me talking about my upcoming group. So here we go. If you've been feeling disconnected from your body, second guessing your instincts, or realizing that insight alone hasn't created safety, this spring I'm opening one small somatic healing group. We'll meet Tuesdays from 6 to 7:30 beginning April 21st for six weeks. This will be led by me, therapist-led, for women ready to move from intellectual awareness into embodied self-trust. This group is for women who are insightful and capable but find themselves freezing, overexplaining, or second guessing when something feels off. Over the six weeks, we'll focus on nervous system regulation so you can access clarity and confidence from a steady place. And when your body feels safe, your voice will become clearer. When you're regulated, advocacy doesn't feel explosive or terrifying. It will feel grounded. This is about building confidence from the inside out. By the end of the group, you'll feel more confident recognizing when something isn't right and more grounded in choosing what to do next. This founding cohort is limited to five women. The full investment is$300. Do an enrollment that opens March 23rd. You can go ahead and put your name on a list if you are interested. In the show notes, click the link that is the link tree. And then sign up from there. All right, back to the program. Let's go into the nervous system layer, right? Because this does this isn't about ideology. This is about feeling embodied. This is what I'm talking about with the somatic group. Let's let's go into the nervous system layer. Because if you've learned your safety dependent on being agreeable, attractive, chosen, not threatening the male ego, your body still reacts. You may feel adrenaline, guilt, shame when you set a boundary. You may feel shame when you speak firmly, absolutely, as a matter of fact. And you may feel anxiety when being seen as powerful. Oh my God, they're gonna think I'm a bitch. That doesn't mean you're wrong. It means your nervous system remembers, and healing misogyny for trauma-experienced women is less about politics and more about safety. So there are things we can do to begin to unlearn this misogyny. I broke it down into five little pieces, and then we'll try to do some somatic integration so you get an idea about what's to come. All right. So, how do we move gently toward healing? First, I want you to notice without shaming yourself. Because shaming shuts down growth, self comparison increases it. If you're gonna compare yourself to anyone, compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Is that the saying? I'm only in competition with me, I only want to do better. Be better for myself and the world and others based on who I was yesterday. Always compare to yourself, not others. That's the root of all evil. It never comes out to anything because you don't know anyone's backstory, you don't know their struggles, and you don't know their entitlements. So compare to you only. And when you catch yourself thinking she's too much, I need to tone it down. I shouldn't say that. I want you to take a pause. And I want you to ask yourself, who taught me that? Who taught me that her behavior was too much? Does she remind me of someone? Do I hear so-and-so's voice in my head when I think she's too much? Her and I would have a giggle about this. Or if so-and-so is here, she definitely would have something to say about this. That's where you learned it from. Maybe you watched it. Maybe you just witnessed it. Maybe you heard it. Don't ask yourself to accuse, but ask yourself with curiosity. Awareness is data, and data is where you learn to pivot and move and grow. So collect data first. Notice without shaming yourself. Second up, I want you to reclaim your anger as data. Women, trauma experience women, neurodivergent women, just women in general, suppress our anger. But anger is boundary energy. There is plenty of research that shows that suppressed anger correlates with higher rates of depression in women. I imagine if I had a little bit of time and dove deeper, it would correlate with stress, heart issues, gut issues, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, quality of life, relationships, eight things I can list off the top of my head that I'm pretty sure suppressed anger correlates with higher rates of. So when you feel irritated, when you feel the anger, I want you to ask: is this misogyny or is this misalignment? So your anger may be pointing to dignity. So like if someone if someone tells you to smile, is this misogyny or is this person just misaligned with your values? Someone telling you to smile is misogyny. You don't have to smile, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. If someone says, girl, calm down, you're being too much. Is that misogyny? Do you need to be small, pretty, petite, and silent to make everyone else feel better? Are you making other people feel uncomfortable because you're having an emotion? Or is this misalignment? Mary doesn't like this type of behavior because it triggers her because of this. Do you see what I'm saying? If the misogyny is there, chuck it in the fuck it bucket. That is data. That is, if it makes you feel mad, if it makes you feel angry, if it makes your chest tighten, your stomach tighten or do flips, your shoulders clinch up, your jaws clench. If it makes your face change, there's something going on. Listen to that, be in tune with that. You don't have to solve it, you don't have to know the why, but you can say when Bob flicks his fork around, I feel tightness in my chest. When Mary plops down, no, let's not say plops down because that's not misogynistic. His actions could be threatening, like the fork of the man, and them that can be like some fear, right? I lost my train of thought. But again, just stop and ask. Like if you're having the anger, that is something that's worth noting. Because anger means something is being repressed. In a sense, right? Okay. Up next, practice female solidarity. Build relationships with women who don't compete, who don't belittle, and who don't police your expression. When you have a strong female relationship, a strong female support network, you can have lower internalized sexism and higher well-being. Community rewires conditioning. If you have friends currently in your life that are of the female nature, that belittle you, that make passive aggressive comments, that bring up their money if it makes you feel some sort of way. If you walk away from interactions with them, feeling small, feeling belittled, feeling unheard, unsupported, it's time to pivot. That is data. That's not a supportive female relationship. Supportive female relationships, you will walk away from their interactions, feeling supported, feeling love, feeling energized, feeling connected. That's the goal in friendships, not just to have them, but to have real connections. So if you only have one, two, or three, that's way better than five, seven, eight, ten of people that don't even connect, that are just surface level, that are nasty, that are just there for their own benefit. Grief comes with that. That is a sad realization because if you get rid of Mary, then maybe you won't have any friends and then you'll be all alone. So I'll just settle with Mary because I don't want to be alone. I don't know about you, but I'll say this ad nauseum. I would much rather be alone by myself and happy and not feeling like someone doesn't like me than be alone in a relationship where I feel alone when I have someone sitting right next to me. When I have someone just a phone call away but can't go deep. That loneliness sucks balls. Alright. So meetup.com, Facebook events. There is another one someone just told me about. You get together and it's a curated weekly meeting. I don't know what it was. I'd have to look in my notes. But there's another one. You kind of sit around and someone kind of coordinates it, mediates it, or whatever, prompts you what things to say, and then you kind of get together. I can't think of what it's called. Volunteering. There are ways to get out in the community, networking groups, women's coffee dates, women's exercise dates, community exercise, community events. This is a big one. This one coming up is a big one. Simple, not easy. Decenter being chosen. This is often said like decentering men from your life. This is deep work. I want you to ask. If I wasn't trying to be chosen, what would I choose? I want you to ask yourself that and be real with yourself. Take some solid time with this question. If I wasn't trying to be chosen, what would I choose? Who would I be? How would I show up? And finally, if you can in any way teach the next generation differently. If you are raising sons, if you have nephews, if you have young boys in your life, normalize tears, normalize repair after rupture, and normalize consent on all levels. If you are raising daughters, if you were around nieces or have little girls in your life, normalize voice, normalize anger, and please normalize ambition because healing misogyny is intergenerational. This gets passed down without us even knowing it, and we need to undo it. All right, so let's do a little somatic exercise. Take a breath in and out. Take a few breaths, wiggle, shake, jiggle, kind of get comfy. We're coming to a spot where we're going to do some breathing. So if you're in a place that you can sit comfortably or sit still or take a beat, please do. If you have to continue on what you're doing, then please stay aware, but try to relax as much as possible. If your hands are available, one hand on your chest. And I want you to inhale deeply. Let that chest rise. Let that belly rise. And I want you to say quietly to yourself, I do not have to shrink to be safe. And then exhale. Say to yourself, being feminine is not a liability. And notice what your body does. Does it tighten anywhere when you say that being feminine is not a liability? Being feminine is not a sign of weakness. Being feminine is not a failure. So inhale. What do you feel when you think I do not have to shrink to be safe? Let it out. Being feminine is not a liability. If anything comes up, any tightness, any doubt, that's old protection. Just simply thank it for serving you and let it know that we're gonna soften slowly and let it go, that it no longer serves you. Thank you and goodbye. Inhale, I do not have to shrink to be safe. Any thoughts of shrinking, please exhale them out. Goodbye. I'm allowed to take up space. Inhale deeply. Say to yourself, being feminine is not a bad thing. Exhale out. Any doubt. No longer serves me to be masculine and aggressive. I'm okay to soften and be gentle and compassionate and to slow down.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Take a nice deep inhale. Slow steady exhale.

Five Practices To Unlearn Misogyny

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Ingrained misogyny is not proof that you were broken. It's proof that you adapted. You learn the rules of the system in order to survive. But survival rules are not always life rules. You are allowed to take up space. Please take up as much space as you need. You are allowed to trust other women. Just make sure they're safe women. Don't ignore the red flags. You are allowed to speak firmly. You are allowed to be sure of yourself. And you are allowed to stop managing male comfort. I know this is simple, not easy, but you're allowed to not cater to others in the sense of doing for them, enabling them, keeping them safe, making sure they're not upset, wiping their own ass for them. And you can unlearn all this, unlearn all of this very slowly, very gently, in community, not perfectly, but very much intentionally. If this episode resonated with you, the best way to support this podcast is to follow it, leave a review, or share it with a woman who needs to hear it. This helps this work reach more women who are quietly healing, solo or in a group. And if you're ready to deeper for deeper support, I'm opening a small somatic healing group this spring. Just like I said in the mid-reel, five women, six weeks, 90 minutes weekly. This group is for women who are insightful and self-aware but still feel disconnected from their bodies. If you've ever ignored hunger, overridden exhaustion, stayed in situations that didn't feel right, or second-guessed your instincts, this space is for you. Over the six weeks, we'll gently work with the nervous system regulation, boundary awareness, and rebuilding self-trust so you can recognize when something isn't right and respond with steadiness instead of fear. This will be led by me, therapist led. What am I in? 10, 15 years qualified now? It's going to be a small intentional container limited to five women. The full investment is$300. Do an enrollment to secure your spot. Enrollment opens March 23rd. You can join the wait list now through the link in the show notes. Because spots are limited to the five women for five women, it will fill up fast. If you prefer individual work, you can book a free 15-minute consultation at the same link with me. Everything you need is in the show notes, is at the link tree. You can find a good Apple Spotify playlist that is all about empowering women, good vibes, happy music. Until next time, my dears, I want you to know that you are never too much, you're never too late, and you don't have to figure it out all alone because I will be here every Wednesday guiding you through this beautiful life we have. May you be happy and free. May our healing ripple outward to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.