What Am I Really Saying?

Talking is one of the main ways people stay in touch with themselves and with others. When it is done with awareness, it can clear confusion and build understanding. However, there are times when words continue to flow, but nothing concrete actually happens. The emotional charge remains the same, and we keeping repeating the same the story again and again.

In Indian philosophy, speech "vak shakti" is the power through which consciousness becomes vibration and vibration becomes form. It is one of the core creative energies described in the Vedas. Traditionally, vak is said to have four levels:

Para Vak – the silent potential, the seed of expression before thought. Pre-verbal experience. 

Pashyanti Vak – the subtle seeing of meaning, where emotion starts to take shape.

Madhyama Vak – the inner formulation, where thoughts form into mental words.

Vaikhari Vak – the spoken word, the vibration that reaches the world.

When these four levels flow together, speech feels alive and connected: what is spoken matches what is inside. When one level splits off, speech loses coherence, meaning and power. This is not about judging anyone for how they speak. The same person's speech can be grounded in one situation and defending in another. So, context matters: stress, safety and the listener all influence how a person talks.

The framework of vak shakti comes from Vedic philosophy, where it describes the creative movement of consciousness into form. The reflections here use that lens in a contemporary way, to understand how speech functions in awareness and trauma work. This is not a classical commentary but an interpretation based on my own work with clients. This is not an official framework.

Talking as Disconnection

Talking as disconnection occurs when speech continues but the presence is absent. The body and emotion have stepped back, and the voice simply runs on old programming. The person might describe something painful as if they are giving a report. The story is accurate, but there is no pulse in it.

This pattern often sounds repetitive. The same stories are told in the same words and with the same tone. There are no references to the body or breath. The speaker may use phrases like “I think” or “I realized” instead of “I felt.” They may fill every pause because silence feels unsafe. Often, they lose track of the listener entirely, talking at rather than with.

In terms of vak shakti, this is when Para Vak, the silent source, has gone dormant. The current that connects speech to awareness is missing, so Vaikhari- the outer speech- runs without the fuel.

Self-checks

• Have I told this exact story before, in almost the same words?

• If someone asked what I feel in my body right now, would I say “nothing” or “I don’t know”?

P.S. The Trauma nuance: Third-person telling and Dissociation

When the nervous system has been flooded by trauma, it can disconnect from feeling while still allowing language to function. That is why people sometimes talk about trauma as if it happened to someone else. This distancing can be useful for a while, but if it becomes the ongoing way of speaking, the process of healing stops. So, talking in third person can be either part of beginning to process or a sign of dissociation. If someone needs a step back to tolerate the story, third-person framing can be a useful scaffold. If the same distancing is the pattern that prevents feeling across situations then it’s a form of disconnection.

Self-check for trauma work

• Is this a temporary strategy that helps me stay present long enough to go deeper later or has the distancing become my default?

• Use context and sequential progress to judge whether the distancing is helpful or habitual.

1. Talking as Avoidance

Instead of going flat, the energy speeds up. The person talks quickly and thoroughly, trying to stay ahead of discomfort. They explain, interpret and plan. The language often becomes abstract or overly detailed. A person might sound intelligent and articulate while avoiding the feeling they are describing. Long narratives focus on what happened instead of what it meant emotionally. The attention moves toward solutions before the emotion has even been named or felt.

In avoidance, the part of speech that “sees” and translates inner movement into image or meaning- is hijacked by the mind. Awareness is present but filtered. Speech stays busy, but it does not let the deeper emotion emerge. Avoidance often looks productive but it remains a strategy to manage vulnerability.

Self-checks

• Would it feel uncomfortable/would I collapse if someone asked me to pause in the middle of my speech?

• Did I skip straight from feeling into interpretation or action?

2. Talking as Intellectualisation

Intellectualisation is a refined form of avoidance. In this pattern, thinking itself becomes a shield. The person explains what they feel rather than actually feeling it. Speech becomes full of insight, theory, or psychological language. The mind takes charge to organize emotion, and as a result, the body never gets to complete its work.

The conversation sounds clear and rational, yet it remains emotionally flat. People often leave such conversations feeling “understood” but unchanged.

Self-checks

• Did I move from emotion straight into explanation or theory?

• Am I using ideas to stay at a safe distance from what is raw?

Here, the inner thought-form has become dominant. The person lives entirely in the mental formulation. The energy never reaches Pashyanti or Para, so the spoken Vaikhari ends up sounding accurate but hollow.

3. Talking as Spiritualisation

Spiritualisation is another expression of avoidance, but it uses higher meaning as protection. Instead of staying with grief, fear or anger, the person reaches for "higher" concepts like purpose, karma, destiny or path. The words sound calm and wise, but they skip the immediate human truth underneath.

You might hear phrases like “everything happens for a reason” or “I have made peace with it.” These statements may be sincere, but they often appear too early. The emotional charge has been wrapped in meaning before it has been felt.

In this state, the audible speech runs on its own and the deeper levels are bypassed. This is common in spiritual or coaching circles, where language of healing and transcendence can mask avoidance. The problem is not belief; it is sequence. Meaning belongs after the feeling, not instead of it.

Self-checks

• Am I searching for a lesson before I have actually experienced the feeling?

• If I let go of the spiritual explanation, what would I feel right now?

Mindful Communication

If we follow this framework, mindful communication is vak shakti in alignment.

It’s when the four levels aren’t split, when the silence beneath (para), the inner seeing (pashyanti), the thought form (madhyama) and the spoken word (vaikhari) are moving together as one.

It might look like:

• At its root, it begins in Para Vak, the quiet awareness before language. There is a pause here, even a breath, where you can stay comfortable in silence before forming words.

• It then moves through Pashyanti Vak, where awareness starts to take shape- you notice the feeling, the impulse, the image that wants to be expressed.

• It organises itself through Madhyama Vak, where the mind begins to find language for that experience. Thoughts and emotions align instead of competing.

• Finally, it becomes Vaikhari Vak, the sound that carries that awareness into the world- speech that is both honest and alive.

  
  

When all four levels stay in contact, speech becomes self-regulating. It settles the nervous system instead of scattering it. It invites real listening because it carries coherence: what is said matches what is felt. Speech is powerful and rooted in awareness. When vak shakti flows through all its layers, talking becomes integration instead of noise. The goal is not to speak less or sound wiser, but to speak from all levels of truth, from the quiet that precedes thought to the word that meets another human being. When that alignment is present, that is mindful communication at its core.