The Prison In Your Mouth
How Language Locks you In
You’ve been lied to.
Not by some government, corporation, or secret society—though they exploit the lie—but by something closer. Something you use every day. Something that shapes how you think, what you feel, what you believe you are. You’ve been lied to by your own language.
From your earliest moments, you were trained to speak like a good citizen of consensus reality. You learned to name things. To label experiences. To define people. To say “I am,” “you are,” “this is.” And with that, the spell began.
You learned to describe the world as if it held still. As if it could be known, judged, and pinned down. You learned to speak not as a witness—but as a judge, a god, an authority.
And the more fluently you spoke, the more trapped you became.
The Map Is Not the Territory
(Alfred Korzybski, 1933)
Let’s begin with this: language is not reality.
It never has been. It never will be.
The Polish-American scholar Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase that reveals the fracture at the root of all modern perception:
“The map is not the territory.”
What does that mean? It means your words—your internal narrative, your beliefs, your categories—are approximations. Sketches. Maps. They are not the land itself. They are not the people. Not the moment. Not you.
But you’ve been conditioned to forget this. To treat your mental maps as objective truth. To say “he is evil” and believe it carries the weight of law. To say “I am broken” and believe it defines your essence.
This is where the tyranny begins. This is how a spell becomes a sentence—in both senses of the word.
The Hidden Trap of “To Be”
English is particularly cruel in this regard. It revolves around the verb “to be.” It lets us declare things into static existence. It allows no room for context, change, or nuance.
“I am anxious.”
“She is disrespectful.”
“They are the enemy.”
“This is just how I am.”
These aren’t observations. They’re identity cages. They collapse time, sensation, and ambiguity into a single, unchanging frame. They fossilize experience.
This is why David Bourland developed E-Prime—a version of English that removes all forms of “to be”: no is, are, was, were, be, being, been.
Instead of “he is wrong,” you say, “I disagree with what he said.”
Instead of “I am depressed,” you say, “I feel waves of depression today.”
Instead of “this is meaningless,” you say, “I haven’t found meaning in this yet.”
See the shift? You move from absolutism to observation, from identity to experience, from doctrine to dialogue.
E-Prime isn’t just a linguistic upgrade. It’s a psychological and spiritual tool. It forces you to stop playing god. To stop freezing people. To re-enter the world as a participant—not a puppeteer.
The Lie of Objectivity
Most people speak as if their words represent facts. They don’t.
“She’s rude.”
“This is stupid.”
“He’s toxic.”
None of these are neutral. They’re loaded evaluations, passed off as truth. And the use of “to be” hides the speaker’s presence. You disappear from your own language. No feeling. No perspective. Just pronouncement.
Try this: say “I felt embarrassed when she interrupted me.” Now you’re in the picture. Now you’re responsible.
Language reveals your level of ownership. Most people speak in ways that hide their bodies, their feelings, and their projections. They become ghost narrators floating above experience.
Undoing this means learning to speak again—as a body, in time, in relation to the world.
The Language Beneath Language
There is the language you speak aloud.
Then there’s the language you’ve absorbed.
The unspoken commandments.
The inherited vocabulary of politeness, power, shame, and seduction.
The sigh you suppress. The tension you hide. The phrases you repeat without thinking.
This is hidden language.
Not just the structure of your sentences, but the rules of what you’re “allowed” to say.
For instance:
When someone says “I’m fine,” but their body says collapse.
When “I love you” means “Don’t leave me.”
When “just joking” hides cruelty.
When “I don’t care” means “I care deeply and feel exposed.”
You know these codes. You use them.
We all do.
But when you begin to wake up—when you begin to undo—you start to hear what people really say beneath the surface.
And more importantly: you begin to hear your own hidden scripts.
The tone you use when you say “I’m okay.”
The words that come out when you’re triggered.
The repetitions that reveal the story you still believe.
This is the deeper grammar of control.
The Language of the Body
But it doesn’t stop there. Because you speak with your body constantly—whether you mean to or not.
When you enter a room, you announce yourself with posture, breath, muscle tension, microexpressions. Your language lives in the angle of your neck, the set of your jaw, the tightness of your hips.
Body language isn’t a gimmick or a trick—it’s the primordial syntax your nervous system uses to gauge threat, establish connection, and display power.
A slouched back says submission.
A raised chin says pride or defensiveness.
Mirroring says, “I belong here.”
Stillness says, “I’m in control.”
Shaking says, “I haven’t let it go.”
This is why Radical Undoing begins in the breath. In the twitch. In the fart. In the shake.
Your body has memorized a language of suppression. And it repeats that language every day. Every time you stay quiet. Every time you smile when you want to scream. Every time you nod when you feel disgust.
Undoing means learning to hear the body’s sentence—and breaking it.
Mirroring and Mimicry
Even your sense of self—your “personality”—is a form of linguistic mimicry.
You mirror the speech patterns of your tribe.
You pick up beliefs like a virus.
You imitate rhythms, phrases, tones—long before you “understand” them.
A child doesn’t learn language through logic. They absorb it through mirroring—facial expressions, sound patterns, tension states.
And it never stops.
Even now, you unconsciously adjust your vocabulary, your voice, your posture depending on who you’re speaking to.
It’s automatic. But it’s also programmable.
The most powerful people in the world know this. That’s why politics, advertising, and media all operate through linguistic entrainment—repeating phrases, emotional cues, slogans, and tone until the brain stops questioning and starts obeying.
Obedience is a Language
“Sit still.”
“Say thank you.”
“Use your inside voice.”
“Don’t interrupt.”
“Be nice.”
This is the first grammar you learned.
Before you learned to express, you learned to suppress.
Before you discovered meaning, you were taught manners.
Your language is built on layers of inherited obedience.
Even now, you speak to avoid conflict. You contort your sentences to preserve politeness. You soften truth with disclaimers. You apologize for feeling.
This is not just cultural. It’s systemic.
Language is not neutral. It’s a behavioral operating system, designed to keep you predictable, agreeable, and exhausted.
Radical self-ownership begins by breaking that code.
Kill the Word “Is”
This is where we begin. With one word.
Kill “is.”
For the next seven days, remove all forms of “to be” from your speech and writing.
No “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” “been,” “being.”
Instead:
Describe what you see.
Speak what you feel.
Track what changes.
Own your perception.
Do this, and you’ll begin to hear what you actually think.
Do this, and you’ll begin to speak like someone alive.
Do this, and the world will stop holding still.
Because it never did.
Only your language made it seem so.
Final Word
Every word you use is a spell.
Most people walk around muttering incantations they inherited from their parents, teachers, and trauma. They cast the same spells every day:
“I’m tired.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“They never listen.”
“It’s always like this.”
“This is who I am.”
If you want to change your life, change your language.
If you want to find your will, feel your body.
If you want freedom, speak like it.
Start now.
Before another word speaks you.
Further Reading
The Forbidden Tongue
Language is not a neutral medium. It is a force-field. A tool of control. A site of revolt. A nervous-system-altering technology of perception, meaning, and power. We are taught to treat it as a mirror of thought, a channel for information—but this is a comforting illusion. Language is spellwork. And the words we are told not to say are often the most p…
Appendix:
Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933)
— “The map is not the territory.” A foundational insight into General Semantics.
David Bourland, E-Prime: The Madness-Sanitizing Tool
— Introduces English Prime, a version of English that eliminates all forms of “to be.”
Robert Anton Wilson, Quantum Psychology
— “To be implies stasis. But the universe never holds still.” Promotes E-Prime as a tool for cognitive liberation.
Christopher S. Hyatt, Undoing Yourself
— Brutal, body-based psychological deprogramming. Focus on embodiment, tension release, and radical self-responsibility.
Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand
— Explores hidden gendered patterns of communication.
Joe Navarro, What Every Body Is Saying
— Deep dive into nonverbal communication, threat detection, and posture-based signaling.
S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action
— A powerful breakdown of the symbolic nature of language and how it shapes perception.
Exercises:
Speak for one day without using “is” (E-Prime challenge).
Track body tension during conversations—when do you hold breath, clench jaw, tense shoulders?
Record your speech and analyze hidden scripts (“I’m just saying,” “to be honest,” “I guess…”).