7. Unbecoming The Princess: The Language of Should

 

Unbecoming The Princess: My Journey Beyond the Mold 

Chapter seven: The Language of Should

​For a long time, I didn't realize that my entire daily life was being secretly run by a single, invisible tyrant: a tiny, one-syllable word. Should.

​I would catch myself saying it without a second thought: "I should work harder, I should be more patient, I should want this, I should feel grateful." It sounded like a harmless motivator, a gentle nudge toward self-improvement. But as I started paying closer attention to the mechanics of my own mind, I discovered something startling.

​In the architecture of human psychology, "should" is never a neutral suggestion; it is an inherited command. It is a linguistic Trojan horse carrying the expectations, fears, and conditioning of parents, society, and culture straight into our nervous system, bypassing our actual desires entirely. Every time I uttered the word, I was outsourcing my authority to an invisible jury.

​I began to dissect how this language operated inside me. I noticed that whenever "should" took the wheel, my body would instantly tense up, choked by a quiet, manufactured guilt. It wasn't guiding me toward growth; it was punishing me for simply being who I was.

​Breaking free from this required a radical linguistic detox. I had to catch myself mid-sentence, pause, and ask a dangerous question: Who is actually speaking right now? Is this my soul's authentic desire, or is it just an old echo of what I was conditioned to believe?

​The moment I replaced "should" with "choose" or "desire"—or simply deleted it altogether—the heavy fog began to lift. I stopped trying to meet an impossible, borrowed standard, and for the first time, my language finally belonged to me.

This chapter of my ongoing memoir series __  is based on my book The System: A Map to Inner Liberation and the Restoration of Sovereignty.

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