Kill The Silence: Episode 17

Kill The Silence: Episode 17

Launching “The Rant”: A New Comedy Podcast and the Power of VulnerabilityThe host shares that this episode of the Kill the Silence podcast is also being posted for subscribers who may miss emailed articles, and announces a new, free comedy podcast called The Rant, described as an unstructured comedy exercise built around ranting to develop material for stage. He reflects on stepping away from performing for 1.5–2 years due to being fired, his best friend’s death, and an ongoing lawsuit alleging a therapist blackmailed and extorted him, insisting he won’t live scared or censor himself because he’s telling the truth and seeks justice and accountability. He discusses growing Kill the Silence on Substack to 4,100 subscribers and 7,500 followers by practicing “brutal vulnerability” and writing about struggles, manipulation, healing, and aligning with one’s own values rather than pleasing others, then asks listeners to subscribe and share The Rant as he heads to Ohio for work.00:00 Welcome and Updates00:29 Life Upheaval and Lawsuit02:41 Starting The Rant Podcast03:38 Comedy Mindset and Freedom04:21 Why Comedy Stays Free04:48 Kill the Silence Growth05:35 Substack Strategy Honesty06:36 Values and Creating Anyway08:19 Subscribe and Closing Get full access to Kill The Silence at killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe [https://killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Why You Keep Apologizing When You Did Nothing Wrong

You didn’t do anything wrong. You know that. Somewhere underneath all the second-guessing and the stomach-dropping anxiety, you know it. And yet there you are — apologizing. Again. For existing. For reacting. For taking up space. This isn’t weakness. It isn’t stupidity. It is one of the most sophisticated survival adaptations the human brain can produce. And someone taught it to you on purpose. Here’s what actually happened. You learned that conflict was dangerous. At some point in your life, probably early, you figured out that when someone got upset, bad things followed. Maybe it was a parent who raged. A partner who punished you with silence. A boss who made your life hell when you disagreed. A therapist who weaponized your own words against you. Your brain did what it was built to do. It found the fastest way to make the danger stop. Apologizing worked. Even when you did nothing wrong, saying sorry de-escalated the situation. The rage cooled. The silent treatment ended. The punishment softened. Your brain logged that as survival data. “Apologizing = safety. Standing your ground = more pain.” Do that enough times and it becomes automatic. You stop even checking whether you actually did something wrong before the apology comes out. The apology is just the reflex now. This is called the fawn response. But forget the label. What matters is the mechanics. You scanned for threat, you found it, and you submitted before the attack came. Every time you did that instead of holding your ground, the pathway got stronger. Now it fires before your conscious brain can intervene. You’re not weak. You’re efficient. You built the fastest possible route to safety and your nervous system took it every single time. The problem is you’re still running a survival program that belongs to an old situation. The people who made apologizing necessary may not even be in your life anymore. But the program is still running. How to actually stop. First, you have to create a gap. When you feel the apology coming, pause. One breath. That’s it. You’re not suppressing anything, you’re just buying one second to ask: did I actually do something wrong here? If the answer is no, do not apologize. Not even a softened version. Not “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Nothing. Silence is better than a false apology. A false apology tells your nervous system the threat was real and submission was the right call. It makes the next apology more automatic, not less. Second, stop explaining yourself to people who have already decided you’re wrong. Explanation feels like the rational alternative to apologizing. It isn’t. With certain people, explanation is just a longer apology. It still signals that you believe you need to justify your existence to them. You don’t. Third, expect the discomfort. Not apologizing when every cell in your body is screaming at you to smooth it over is genuinely uncomfortable. That discomfort is not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign you’re breaking a pattern that kept you safe for years. It’s supposed to feel wrong at first. The apology reflex was built in a place where standing your ground wasn’t an option. You’re not in that place anymore. The work is convincing your nervous system of that. One held boundary at a time. You didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t have to apologize for that. —Cody Taymore Kill The Silence If this gave you clarity, peace, or just helped you feel a little less alone — and you want to support more work like this — you can leave a small tip here. Buy Me a Coffee [https://buymeacoffee.com/codytaymore] Get full access to Kill The Silence at killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe [https://killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

America Is Having A Nervous Breakdown And We’re All Pretending It’s Fine

Something is wrong. You feel it. I feel it. Everyone feels it. But nobody’s saying it out loud because we’re all too busy pretending we’re okay while the whole country quietly falls apart. 75% of Americans say they’re more stressed than ever about the future. Not “somewhat concerned.” Not “a little worried.” More stressed than ever. Three out of four people you pass on the street are terrified about what’s coming and smiling anyway. This isn’t politics. This isn’t left or right. This is everyone, everywhere, barely holding on and performing normal because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. I’m done pretending. The Numbers Nobody Wants To Talk About Let me show you what’s actually happening. 82% of American workers are at risk of burnout right now. Not “feeling a little tired.” At risk of burnout. Eight out of ten people at your job are one bad week away from breaking. 69% of adults said they needed more emotional support this year than they received. That’s not a small percentage of fragile people. That’s the majority of the country saying “I needed help and didn’t get it.” One in three American adults report feeling lonely often or always. Not occasionally. Often or always. 52 million people walking around feeling completely alone while surrounded by other people who feel exactly the same way. And here’s the one that stopped me cold: Gen Z hits peak burnout at 25 years old now. Not 42 like previous generations. 25. We broke an entire generation before they even got started. But sure. Everything’s fine. The Loneliness Nobody Admits The Surgeon General declared loneliness a national epidemic. Said it carries the same health risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Increases your risk of heart disease by 29%. Stroke by 32%. Dementia by 50%. Loneliness is literally killing people. And we designed a society that manufactures it. No front porches. No third places. No community centers. No church attendance. No bowling leagues. No neighborhood cookouts. Just algorithms and isolation dressed up as independence. 50% of young adults aged 18 to 24 report feeling lonely often or always. Half. Half of the youngest adults in this country feel persistently alone. And when researchers asked what factors contribute to physical health problems, Americans overwhelmingly pointed to mental health. 50% said stress. 43% said anxiety. 42% said poor sleep. 35% said depression. We know what’s wrong. We just don’t know how to fix it. Or we’re too exhausted to try. The Money Problem Nobody Can Solve 44% of Americans cannot cover a $1,000 emergency. Not “would struggle to cover.” Cannot cover. One flat tire. One ER visit. One broken appliance. And nearly half the country is financially destroyed. Meanwhile, 25% of workers have a second job right now. Another 37% are actively looking for one. That’s not hustle culture. That’s desperation wearing a productivity mask. Consumer confidence just dropped again. People are sour on the economy AND their ability to find jobs. The vibe is off and the math doesn’t work and everyone knows it but we keep showing up and grinding because what else are we supposed to do. You want to know why everyone’s burned out? Because one income doesn’t cover one life anymore and we’re all working ourselves to death trying to close the gap. The Division That’s Making Us Sick The American Psychological Association just released their annual stress report. They called it “A Crisis of Connection.” Here’s what they found: People who are stressed by societal division are significantly more likely to feel isolated. 61% versus 43%. The division isn’t just annoying. It’s physically separating us from each other. When they asked Americans to describe the country right now, they let people choose as many words as they wanted from a list. Here’s what people selected: Freedom: 41% Corruption: 38% Opportunity: 37% Division: 36% Hope: 35% Fear: 32% Look at that. The same Americans, choosing from the same list, picked freedom AND corruption. Opportunity AND division. Hope AND fear. These aren’t different groups disagreeing. This is individuals holding contradictions inside themselves at the same time. That’s a country that doesn’t know what it is anymore. We can’t even form a coherent thought about who we are collectively. We feel hopeful and terrified in the same breath. We see opportunity and division with the same eyes. We used to argue about politics and then have dinner together. Now we can’t even be in the same room. Families fractured. Friendships ended. Communities split down the middle over shit that didn’t matter five years ago. The division is a choice someone made. The loneliness is the cost we all pay. The Trust That’s Gone Only 48% of employees believe their employers care about their mental health. That’s down from 54% last year. Let that sink in. Every year, fewer people believe the place they spend most of their waking hours gives a single shit about whether they’re okay. And they’re right. Most employers don’t. They want your productivity. They want your output. They want your availability. They do not want to know that you’re drowning. So you don’t tell them. You perform. You hit your metrics. You answer emails at 11pm. You show up to meetings with a camera on and a face that looks fine. And you die a little bit every day because the gap between how you feel and how you perform keeps getting wider. Trust in institutions is collapsing. Trust in employers. Trust in healthcare. Trust in government. Trust in media. Trust in each other. We don’t believe anyone’s looking out for us anymore. Because mostly, they’re not. The Fear That’s Growing 57% of Americans are stressed about the rise of AI. That’s up from 49% last year. 69% are stressed about the spread of misinformation. Up from 62%. People are scared of technology they don’t understand taking their jobs while being lied to by technology they can’t identify. The future feels less like opportunity and more like threat. And nobody’s helping. Nobody’s explaining. Nobody’s preparing people for what’s coming. Just vague reassurances from people who will be fine no matter what happens to the rest of us. The fear is rational. The anxiety is appropriate. The stress makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is pretending everything’s normal while the ground shifts under our feet. What We’re Actually Experiencing Here’s what I think is happening. We’re all going through something massive and collective and nobody’s naming it. So everyone thinks they’re the only one struggling. Everyone thinks they’re failing at something other people have figured out. You’re not failing. The system is failing. You’re not bad at life. Life got harder while wages stayed flat and costs exploded and community disappeared and technology accelerated and nobody taught us how to cope with any of it. You’re not weak for struggling. You’re human in an environment designed to extract maximum productivity at minimum cost with zero support. The burnout isn’t a personal problem. It’s a policy choice. The loneliness isn’t a character flaw. It’s an architectural decision. The anxiety isn’t irrational. It’s pattern recognition. The Lie We Keep Telling Every day, millions of Americans wake up exhausted, drag themselves to jobs that don’t pay enough, perform wellness while feeling terrible, scroll through highlight reels of other people’s fake lives, feel guilty for not being happier, and go to bed wondering if this is all there is. And every day, we tell each other we’re fine. Fine. The word we use when we’re not fine but don’t have the energy to explain. The word we use when we’re drowning but don’t want to burden anyone. The word we use when we’ve given up on anyone actually wanting to know the answer. “How are you?” “Fine.” Both people lying. Both people knowing. Both people too tired to go deeper. That’s where we are. A nation of people saying “fine” while falling apart. A collective delusion maintained by exhaustion. What Happens Now I don’t have solutions. I’m not a policy expert. I can’t fix the economy or rebuild community or make employers care about their workers. But I can do one thing. I can stop pretending. I can say out loud that something is deeply wrong and most of us feel it and the performance of normalcy is making it worse. Because here’s what the research also showed: 84% of Americans still believe they can create a good life. 73% believe they can help shape the country’s future. Underneath all the fear and exhaustion and loneliness, people still have hope. Buried under the bullshit, something stubborn survives. That’s not nothing. That’s actually remarkable. We’re terrified and hopeful at the same time. Exhausted and still trying. Isolated and still reaching for connection. That’s not weakness. That’s the human spirit refusing to quit even when quitting makes sense. My Point America is having a nervous breakdown. We’re lonely. We’re broke. We’re burned out. We’re divided. We’re scared. We’re losing trust in everything. And we’re all pretending we’re fine because nobody gave us permission to say otherwise. Consider this your permission. You’re not crazy. Everything actually is harder than it used to be. The struggle is real and it’s shared and you’re not the only one feeling it. The first step to fixing something is admitting it’s broken. America is broken. Now what are we going to do about it? —Cody Taymore Kill The Silence If this gave you clarity, peace, or just helped you feel a little less alone — and you want to support more work like this — you can leave a small tip here. Buy Me a Coffee [https://buymeacoffee.com/codytaymore] Sources American Psychological Association. “Stress in America 2025: A Crisis of Connection.” November 2025. Aflac. “2025 WorkForces Report: U.S. Worker Burnout Hits Six-Year High.” October 2025. The Cigna Group. “Loneliness in America 2025.” June 2025. Wysa Research. “The Hidden Health Crisis: How Loneliness Is Making America Sick.” November 2025. U.S. Surgeon General. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” 2023. Grant Thornton. “2024 State of Work in America Survey.” November 2024. The Conference Board. “Consumer Confidence Index.” November 2025. Gallup. “Americans and Loneliness.” 2025. New Atlas. “Stress in America 2025: Loneliness and Division Impact Wellbeing.” November 2025. NPR. “Social Divisions Are Making Americans Feel Stressed and Lonely.” November 2025. Get full access to Kill The Silence at killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe [https://killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Your Parents Did Their Best And Their Best Still F*cked You Up (And That's Allowed To Be True)

Two things can be true at the same time. They loved you. And they damaged you. They tried. And they failed. They did better than their parents did. And they still passed down wounds you’re carrying right now. This isn’t about blame. It’s about honesty. And most of us have never been allowed to be honest about this. The Script We’re Given From the time you could understand words, you were handed a script about your parents. “They sacrificed everything for you.” “They did their best with what they had.” “You should be grateful.” “Family is everything.” “Honor your mother and father.” And if you felt something other than gratitude, something was wrong with you. Ungrateful. Selfish. Spoiled. So you learned to bury it. You learned to feel guilty for your own pain. To minimize what happened. To make excuses for behavior that would be unacceptable from anyone else but somehow gets a pass because it came from family. You learned that loyalty means silence. And you’ve been silent ever since. What We’re Actually Talking About I’m not talking about monsters. This isn’t about the obvious cases of abuse that everyone agrees are wrong. I’m talking about regular parents. Good enough parents. Parents who showed up to your games and made sure you had food and genuinely believed they were doing right by you. This isn’t about broken homes. This is about homes. Parents who also: Criticized you until your inner voice sounds exactly like them. Dismissed your emotions until you stopped trusting yourself to feel. Compared you to siblings or cousins or neighbors’ kids until you believed you were never enough. Controlled every decision until you couldn’t make one without anxiety. Made you the parent when you were still a child because they couldn’t hold their own shit together. Projected their unlived dreams onto you until you didn’t know which goals were yours. Used guilt as a management tool until obligation became your primary emotion. Made love conditional on performance until you became an achievement machine that can’t feel joy. None of this makes them evil. All of it made you who you are. And some of what you are is wounded. That’s not drama. That’s just true. Why We Protect Them Here’s what I’ve learned about why we defend the people who hurt us. It’s not about them. It’s about us. If your parents were flawed but trying, your childhood makes sense. It was imperfect but it was real and it was survivable. But if your parents harmed you, then something terrible happened. And that means you were a child who was harmed. And that’s a harder thing to sit with. Defending them protects us from having to grieve. Grieving that the childhood we deserved isn’t the one we got. Grieving that the people who were supposed to protect us were sometimes the source of the danger. Grieving the relationship we wanted with the parents we actually have. That grief is brutal. So we skip it. We defend instead. “They meant well.” “They didn’t know any better.” “It wasn’t that bad.” “Other people have it worse.” All of these might be true. None of them erase the wound. The Guilt Is A Lie You feel guilty for even reading this. I know because I would have felt guilty too. The guilt says: How dare you criticize the people who raised you. How dare you focus on the negative when they gave you so much. How dare you be anything other than grateful. The guilt is a control mechanism. And it was installed on purpose. Children who feel guilty are easier to manage. They don’t ask questions. They don’t push back. They don’t hold adults accountable because they’re too busy feeling bad about their own existence. That guilt followed you into adulthood. It shows up every time you try to set a boundary. Every time you consider distance. Every time you acknowledge that something they did still affects you. The guilt says you’re betraying them by being honest. Honesty isn’t betrayal. Silence is self-betrayal. The Permission You’re Looking For Here it is: You’re allowed to love your parents and be angry at them. You’re allowed to appreciate what they gave you and grieve what they couldn’t. You’re allowed to understand their limitations and still hold them responsible for the impact. You’re allowed to acknowledge that they were doing their best and that their best wasn’t good enough. You’re allowed to stop pretending it didn’t hurt just because it wasn’t intentional. Intent doesn’t erase impact. Someone can step on your foot by accident and your foot still bleeds. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt just because they didn’t mean to. Your parents stepped on parts of you. Maybe they didn’t mean to. It still left marks. What This Isn’t This isn’t permission to become a victim forever. Your wounds are real and at some point the healing becomes your responsibility even though the injury wasn’t your fault. This isn’t an excuse to blame every problem in your life on your childhood. You’re an adult. You make choices. Some of your shit is on you. This isn’t a script for confrontation. You don’t have to tell your parents anything. Acknowledgment can be internal. Healing doesn’t require their participation or their permission. This isn’t about cutting people off. Some people need distance. Some people can repair. That’s your call based on your situation. This is just about truth. The truth that something can be well-intentioned and still cause harm. That good people can create bad outcomes. That the people who loved you most might also be the source of some of your deepest wounds. And that acknowledging that isn’t betrayal. It’s the beginning of healing shit you’ve been carrying alone. The Thing Nobody Tells You Here’s what I wish someone told me earlier: You can grieve parents who are still alive. You can mourn the relationship you wanted while still having some version of one. You can love people and recognize they’re not safe for you. You can understand their trauma and still not accept it as an excuse for how they treated you. You can forgive them and still have boundaries. You can hold all of this at once without choosing sides. And yeah, it’s exhausting. Welcome to being a person who actually looks at their shit instead of burying it like everyone else at Thanksgiving. The people who tell you it’s one or the other, that you either defend your parents completely or you’re an ungrateful child, are people who haven’t done their own work. They need you to stay silent so they don’t have to look at their own shit. That’s not your responsibility to manage. What Happens When You Tell The Truth When you stop pretending, you stop performing. When you stop performing, you start feeling. When you start feeling, you grieve. When you grieve, you process. When you process, you release. When you release, you stop passing it down. That’s the whole point. Not to punish your parents. Not to be a victim. Not to dwell in the past forever. The point is to stop the cycle. Your parents probably inherited wounds from their parents who inherited wounds from their parents. Unprocessed pain gets passed down like genetics. Nobody means to do it. It just happens when you don’t look at it. Looking at it is how it stops. Telling the truth about what happened to you is how you stop happening to someone else. The Real Conversation This is the conversation your family never had. This is the thing that gets avoided at holidays and buried under small talk and drowned in whatever coping mechanism your family uses to not feel. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to be the one who says it out loud. So everyone pretends. And the pretending becomes the culture. And the culture becomes the next generation. Until someone breaks. That’s not failure. That’s courage. The one who says “this happened and it affected me” is the one who changes everything for everyone who comes after. Even if your family never acknowledges it. Even if they call you dramatic. Even if they close ranks and make you the problem for having the audacity to name reality. You still told the truth. And that truth lives in you as something clean now. The Only Point Your parents did their best. Their best still f*cked you up. Both are true. You’re allowed to say it out loud. And maybe that’s the truest thing you’ve let yourself think in a while. —Cody Taymore Kill The Silence If this gave you clarity, peace, or just helped you feel a little less alone — and you want to support more work like this — you can leave a small tip here. Buy Me a Coffee [https://buymeacoffee.com/codytaymore] Get full access to Kill The Silence at killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe [https://killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Kill The Silence: Episode 16

In this episode, I talk about a wild week in Detroit, ADHD chaos, and the ongoing fight against the therapist who extorted me. It’s raw, honest, and a reminder that even when life’s on fire, you can still stay functional—and find a way to laugh through it. —Cody Taymore Kill The Silence Get full access to Kill The Silence at killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe [https://killthesilenceofficial.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]