I love a car journey – not for fuel price or traffic jam (not a total sadist) but because I love a podcast opportunity. I have ditched listening to the news on my daily commute and, although I am now a poorly informed member of society, I have much lower blood pressure. An open road, a curious mind and a podcast are the way I choose to roll for they allow this Sixty Something to blag the impression that she is ‘holding things together’.

Friends and family are unlikely to seek my advice on current affairs but I can be relied upon to share an eclectic range of woo woo podcast enlightenment or to recommend a dark crime serialisation. Those who know me well will also accept that I have the attention span of a gnat and so will have forgotten my latest counsel by the the next time we meet – I will have moved on by then (insert a driving metaphor if you wish) and will probably struggle to even remember your name. I will not be offended if you ignore my latest podcast wisdom, although… it has not gone unnoticed that Himself has mastered the skill of appearing to listen intently when I decant a couple of hours of podcast heaven and yet show no evidence of incorporating any of ‘my’ useful life hacks into his daily routine. He has so far dodged advice to walk backwards, foot brush, journal or drink vinegar before a meal. Fool.

My most recent podcast deep-dive was on the topic of Self-Silence and this forced me to emergency stop. Apparently women are notorious self-silencers and this can leave us with chronic anxiety and even physical ailments. ‘We‘ are so intent on conforming and people-pleasing that ostensibly we often keep our opinions to ourself or agree with ideas that we should have the confidence to critique in public. I am sure some men would disagree with this viewpoint, but they may prefer to keep these thoughts silent.

My reflection on this podcast is that I appear to have been driving in the opposite direction to my sisterhood. The older I get the less I appear to self-silence; sometimes I wish I could prevent my lips from moving and allowing sounds to escape randomly from my mouth. My motor just appears to keep on running.

I will need to reverse this podcaster’s advice . I will need to show more discipline and actually practise the very self-silence that comes in for such criticism.

I am aware that on reaching this revelation it would be fitting to end the blog right here and let you get on with your day. Sadly my my fingers will stay firmly on the keyboard to express themselves in the same way as my lips keep moving.

Since listening to the podcast I have pondered the following:

• Does my ability to overshare show confidence or anxiety?
• Do I have a type of conversational tic which leaves me to fill any awkward silence?
• What even is a ‘comfortable silence’?
• Do I have a filter and if so, where can I find it?
• Would the world be a less colourful place if I kept my thoughts to myself?

I can recognise where the conditioning to self-silence should have come from; I was weaned on a diet of, ‘if you haven’t got anything nice to say, say nothing at all,’ and as the youngest of four siblings rarely got a word in edgeways. As a child I did keep my thoughts to myself. I was a sullen little thing, hiding behind a thick fringe and disappearing for hours to pretend that I was a librarian (I inscribed all my Ladybird books on the inside front cover with, ‘if this book should ever roam, smack its bum and send it home to…’) and making little cardboard houses for my invisible little ‘woodland folk’ who could not talk back. I was once so angry with my family (I was trying to be seen and not heard so could not tell them this) that I packed a toy suitcase and left home. It tells you how quiet I was that no-one in the family realised that this silent five year old had left the building. I suffered the ignominy of being returned home by a kindly local who discovered me crying (quietly) at the bottom of our lane. I felt I had been gone for hours (probably not) but my family had not noticed my absence. Thank goodness I had my address written on the front of my suitcase: ‘if this case should ever roam…’ although from memory, I wish I had omitted the guidance about bum smacking.

When I tell my current students – or my children – that all my school reports read, ‘she knows the answer but will never volunteer to speak in class,’ they are incredulous. Perhaps I should now be proud rather than embarrassed that I appear to have reached my years of peak amplify. No-one can keep me quiet these days.

Until listening to the podcast I thought that my inability to ‘self-silence’ was just a rite of passage. I have pedigree here for in her latter years my mother never wasted an opportunity to share her opinion in public – and her views were rarely complimentary. When we came out of Lockdown I refused to take my mother shopping unless she promised to curb loud comments such as, ‘people have really let themselves go’, and that, ‘athleisure is the work of the devil.’ After every weekly sermon, my mother also believed it to be her civic duty to share her score card with the Methodist Minister. I saw her break many veteran clergy with her stringent verbal critique while professing herself to be shy and retiring. ‘It is for their own good,’ she would opine.

I believe that my tendency to overthink weakens my ability to self silence. My brain is kept so active replaying conversations and catastrophising about the future that it needs to have an outlet for all its exhausting internal conversation. Self-silencing rarely occurs to me, not because I believe myself to have any answers, but because my utterances are so random that I expect no-one to take heed. At best I provide a little amusement in bleak times (ask my children, they seem to find me hilarious). Even if I do try valiantly to keep my opinions to myself, my face works counter-intuitively – an eyebrow will raise, I will perform an involuntary ‘side-eye’ or exhale dramatically to leak my emotions to an unprepared audience. I can no longer find the norm I am expected to conform to. (Eye roll).

My podcast take away is that self-silence is not something I should beat myself up about. Instead I will congratulate myself for letting it all hang out (I hear you mum), and self-prescribing in order to avoid a litany of physical and mental ailments. For once I have been in the fast lane. I must have saved the NHS thousands with my verbal outpouring – and saved myself a fortune on hairdressing bills since ditching the thick fringe and coming out from behind this security curtain. If I can now just learn to express myself succinctly during these frequent verbal outbursts, I may yet harvest a retirement opportunity in the podcast industry. I will try to consider this – in silence – during my next long car journey. Woo Woo.