Introduction: Who Stole Your Freedom?
Chapter 1: Why You Fear Your Desires
How We Were Taught to Suppress Ourselves from Childhood
From the very beginning of life, you were told who you should be: quiet, obedient, "good." These words sounded like care, but in reality, they laid the foundation for suppressing your natural impulses. "Don’t do that, it’s shameful," "You must be exemplary" – these are not just phrases but the first bricks in the wall separating you from your own desires.
A child’s brain works like a sponge: it absorbs not only words but also the emotional context in which they are spoken. If you did something adults considered wrong, you were punished. Not necessarily physically – a stern look or a judgmental remark was enough to instill guilt. The hippocampus recorded these moments as "dangerous," and the amygdala associated them with the emotion of fear. Every time you tried to express yourself, a red light flashed in your mind: "Stop, this is forbidden, this is bad."
School only amplified this process. You were expected to sit quietly, raise your hand, speak only when allowed. You were evaluated for your behavior, not your personality. Too active? "Hyperactive." Too emotional? "Problematic." These labels taught you that being yourself was wrong.
Society’s treatment of the body was particularly cruel. From an early age, you were taught that certain parts of your body were "indecent." You shouldn’t touch yourself, you shouldn’t ask "ugly" questions. Girls were taught to be "modest," boys to be "strong." Desires were suppressed even before you could understand what they were.
The fear of judgment became your constant companion. You learned to restrain yourself, hide your emotions, suppress your desires because you feared rejection. This became your second nature. You stopped asking questions because the answers would still be "wrong."
But it’s important to understand: this is not your fault. It’s a system designed to raise compliant people. People who don’t ask too many questions. People who are afraid to stand out. Your individuality was crushed under the weight of social expectations until you began to think of it as normal. But suppression is not normal. It’s a trap you can escape if you recognize its existence.
Fear and Shame as Social Tools
Fear and shame are subtle tools that society has learned to use with remarkable efficiency. These emotions are so deeply embedded in your psyche that you don’t even notice how they control you. You think these are your own feelings, that they are natural. But in reality, they were skillfully instilled in you to make you predictable, obedient, convenient.
Fear creates the illusion that your desire is a threat. As soon as you begin to want something, your brain automatically sounds an alarm. The amygdala, responsible for instinctive reactions, perceives any deviation from the norm as danger. But this "danger" is just an invention. Society has reprogrammed your brain to fear stepping out of bounds. You are afraid not because it’s scary, but because you were taught to feel this way.
Shame goes even deeper. It’s not just a momentary emotion but an embedded mechanism of self-censorship. You don’t need external control if you’re already afraid that something is wrong with you. Shame creates a constant internal dialogue: "I’m not good enough," "My desire is shameful." It makes you doubt yourself, abandon your thoughts and aspirations before they even take shape.
These emotions take root through social practices. In childhood, shame is instilled with seemingly harmless phrases: "What will people think?" "You can’t do that, it’s inappropriate." In school, fear becomes discipline: grades, punishments, labels. Culture and religion elevate this to the level of absolute control. Desires are declared sinful, the body a source of filth, and freedom a chaos to be avoided.
You grow up feeling that your own aspirations are a mistake to be corrected. The harder you try to meet others’ expectations, the more you lose connection with yourself. Your desires begin to seem foreign, frightening, wrong. You suppress them, but along with them, you suppress your energy, your nature, your "self."
Fear and shame are not your feelings. They are constructs designed to rob you of freedom. They turn your pursuit of happiness into guilt, your uniqueness into a problem, your strength into weakness. And until you realize this, they will continue to control you, forcing you to live not for yourself but for a system that never cared about your interests.
Religious and Cultural Control Over the Body
Your body has never belonged to you. Religion and culture have dictated the rules for centuries, turning it into an object of control and your desires into a source of shame. These systems are built on one idea: if a person fears their body, they are easier to subjugate. The body became a symbol of sin, imperfection, and weakness, and the more you accepted this, the deeper you lost connection with yourself.
Religion was the first to declare the body an enemy of the soul. Christianity proclaimed that the flesh is sinful and desires lead to degradation. The female body was particularly demonized: the image of Eve cemented the idea that female sexuality is a source of destruction. The medieval church reinforced this control, turning the body into an instrument of guilt. Masturbation was considered a mortal sin, sexual thoughts a crime. A woman’s body didn’t even belong to her: it "belonged" either to God or to her husband. Every desire was punished with fear, leaving an indelible mark on consciousness.
Culture took up this baton, making control subtler but no less cruel. In Victorian England, sexuality was so taboo that any mention of the body was deemed indecent. Women who expressed sexual desires were labeled hysterical and isolated in psychiatric hospitals. Men were scared with "diseases" from masturbation to suppress their nature. But this was not about morality but direct suppression of freedom.
Modern culture has changed its tone. Now it doesn’t forbid but dictates. Your body is no longer "sinful" but "insufficient." Advertising, media, and social networks show what it should look like: slim, toned, perfect. They instill that your body deserves respect only after changes. If before control was based on the fear of sin, now it’s based on the fear of being "not enough."
These mechanisms work because they affect your psyche on a deep level. According to research published in the Journal of Psychology & Health (2021), suppressing sexuality and feeling shame for the body increases the risk of anxiety disorders by 40% and depression by 30%. Your body becomes a source of fear because the brain has learned to associate desires with threat. The hippocampus remembers every instance of condemnation, and the amygdala triggers anxiety at any attempt to step out of bounds.
