The Biology Behind Staying Quiet at Work

By Natacha Montemuino, MD  ·  3 minute read  ·  Issue #1 

I was seven years old in math class, playing with my new pink Hello Kitty eraser, hoping my teacher would not call on me.

He called on me anyway.

My mind went blank. My heart started racing. I felt the heat rise from my chest into my face. Before I could say a word, tears clouded my vision and started streaming down my cheeks. My teacher looked away and called on someone else. I kept crying at my desk, trying to disappear.

The one clear thought I had that day was: My classmates must think I am stupid.

I think about that moment often. The body of a seven-year-old in a classroom, doing exactly what bodies do when they're shoved in the spotlight. Decades later, in rooms where the stakes are higher and the people in the chairs have titles instead of math homework, the same biology shows up. The room changes. The body does not.

Prosper's version of the same room

A few decades and a continent away from that classroom, one of my Elevate Your Voice Academy clients described a version of the same moment in a very different room.

Prosper is an IT leader. Before he joined the program, he described his meetings to me this way:

"I have ideas I should share in my head. But I don't say them out loud."

When I asked him what was holding him back, he summed it up in one sentence: I'm afraid I won't sound credible.

Different room. Different decade. Same mechanism in the body.

What was actually happening

There is a name for what was happening to a seven-year-old me at my desk and to Prosper in his meetings. It's called social threat.

Humans have a deeply rooted biological need for connection and belonging. When you feel safe in a group, visibility feels easy. You contribute. You share an idea. You volunteer for the opportunity.

When your sense of belonging is uncertain, speaking up feels risky. Your brain reads the potential for group criticism as a dangerous situation and warns you to be careful.

The signal underneath the warning is this: you might not belong here.

To protect you, your nervous system triggers a survival response. Your heart rate goes up. Your breathing gets shallow. Your mind goes blank. Your hands shake.

For me at seven, it was the heat in my face and the tears I could not stop. For you in the boardroom, it might be the dryness in your throat and the moment your mind goes blank. 

This response has kept humans safe for as long as we have lived in groups.

The pattern

The body that read math class as risky and the body that reads a corporate staff meeting as risky are operating from the same instructions.

Social threat is one of three factors that train you to hold back in rooms where you have already earned the right to speak. I will walk you through the other two in the coming weeks. For now, the first one has a name and a mechanism.

The discomfort you feel in those rooms is your nervous system reading visibility as risky.

Where this leaves us

When you understand social threat, two things change.

You disarm the self-criticism that comes after you hold back because now you understand that the unhelpful "I'm not credible" thought is responding to the body's nervous system that was reading the situation as risky.

You also stop assigning the 'something is wrong with me' meaning to your body's signals. You start giving them new information so visibility stops feeling like a threat.

This is the work I do with quiet high-achieving leaders inside Elevate Your Voice Academy. The goal is for you to share your thoughts unapologetically in every room you walk into.

Something to try this week

Next time you feel your body tell you to stay quiet in a meeting, name it silently in your own head.

Say: My nervous system is reading this as a risky situation. This is biology. It has nothing to do with my personality. The naming alone helps you develop awareness of what is going on.

Repeat it as often as you notice the pattern. Awareness is the first step in building new habits.

That's all for this week. See you next Wednesday.

Best,

Dr. Natacha

PS: I'm planning a free live training for quiet high-achieving leaders who want their voice to carry the same weight as their expertise. I'll share more details soon.