Module 1
Understanding self-doubt
Understanding self-doubt
introduction
This module is designed to give you the foundations for understanding what is actually happening when you experience self-doubt.
You'll find the Coaching Tools in the Self-belief School Playbook:
- Self-doubt Loop
- Emotion Cycle
Spend this week really paying attention to how the Self-doubt Loop plays out for you. Remember how it has unfolded in the past. Get super curious about your experience!
I'm also introducing the Emotion Cycle so you can start to practice feeling your feelings, which sounds so straightforward, doesn't it?! It can be helpful to remember that everything self-doubt is trying to protect us from, relates to an unpleasant or undesired feeling. I want you to practice feeling all of your emotions including the positive ones! This means that when we do come to look at emotions more closely, you have already built some resilience and flexibility.
There is room in your Self-belief School Playbook to journal and reflect. Please do share your learnings, ponderings, and thoughts in the Discussion below.
Self-belief Schoolers
The discussion forum is where you can ask questions, share your thoughts, learnings, confusion and breakthroughs about this Module.
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Module One
Coaching circle links: the zoom to your coaching circles are on the Coaching Circle Page.
It’s so true that most advice is around solving for resistance. I love the idea of getting out of the self-doubt loop before I even hit resistance – teach me how! My self-doubt plays out in two main, and opposing, ways. Mostly I wait (paralysis) with some passive consumption and perfectionism thrown in. I’ve come a long way with perfectionism, but the looong time it often takes for me to start taking action is a sore point for me, one that leads to perceiving myself as lacking drive and commitment. But in other circumstances I procrastinate (productively, ha) and overwork to prove myself.
This is such a juicy combination Nasreen – and I imagine this is so frustrating – particularly if its showing up in your business? I wonder if these are opposing patterns or if they are just sophisticated ways (bobbing and weaving!) your protective self-doubt holds you back?
One thing that strikes me about these forms of resistance – perfectionism, passive behaviours, procrastination – is that they are about WAITING (delaying/avoiding…)
Two questions to reflect on:
- what were you waiting for?
- what did waiting protect you from?
Thanks for this Sas – even though this loop is familiar to me now through SBCA this has helped to cement the learning. Particularly as I have a great big real life example. I want to make a change to one area of my business and honestly I have been thinking about it for the last year. On Sunday (after talking it through with someone) I was like yes, I know what to do now, and even better I have been given permission to do it. It all feels so clear and straightforward, happy days 🤪 But when I woke up the next day I was back in the same loop again…. no, I can’t possibly do that as it might upset people or be unpopular, I might disappoint people, I may have to give people some money back (and that would be a great big mess), blah blah. The fear is real – even though I know exactly what’s happening and why! 😩
Sharon this is such fantastic self-awareness!
You are doing an amazing job of keeping yourself safe from the perceived risk of upsetting or disappointing people, from being unpopular or giving people their money back.
The fear IS real. And yet we don’t actually know if the risk is real. Notice that your protective self-doubt is going to town on a worst-case scenario outcome? But your self-doubt isn’t psychic! It has no idea what will happen, its just trying to hold you back from the risk of what might happen.
I am curious to know if this risk makes sense to you? Are there good reasons why you would be worried about upsetting or disappointing people?
I so relate to this, Sharon! The jumping back and forth between clarity/confidence and then the deflation as doubt sucks the winds of our sails. I think this is such a great example that self-doubt isn’t something we conquer or figure out, but a real, ongoing conversation that ebbs and flows and is anything but linear. Thank you for sharing.
You can find Lisa’s link here: (click here) If that one doesn’t work, try this link (click here)!
Those six P’s are juicy. Where does ‘not engaging’ / ‘not doing it at all’ sit within these responses? It feels like a combo of passive (and) paralysis but wasn’t sure. For example, this morning I was in a call, surrounded by subject-matter experts. I had a thought and a question but felt like there was a risk of embarrassment (and failure maybe?) asking it so I, initially, just chose not to say anything.* I doubted I had anything sensible to ask or say. I find I do the same with social media. Where does this response sit?
*I was encouraged to speak up by a friend also in the call and so did and, funnily enough, it was all fine.
Aren’t they, Fiona! So much useful information for us in which of these we reach for to make ourselves feel more comfortable when our self doubt alarm is activated. Yes, the ‘not engaging / not doing it at all’ sounds like paralysis. And could totally be a combo of both. Passive behaviours are things that we consume, that distract from whatever triggered the alarm and comfort us. They can be kind of a cover up – maybe even a comfort blanket. ‘Ooh I’ll just doom-scroll insta for a bit so I can stop thinking about doing that thing that feels activating and uncomfortable’. And yes, that ‘consuming’ might also be ‘I’ll just sit and listen to everyone else’s thoughts rather than share my own’. I wonder what you believed about yourself in that moment that led you to initially choose not to contribute? We’ll be moving into uncovering the protective beliefs that underpin our self doubt next week, so this might be an interesting example to explore there.
I love that you shared a real time example here from earlier today. It’s great to begin to notice how often we encounter our self doubt day to day, becoming more aware of a process that often happens so fast it can feel largely unconscious and ‘oh this is just who I am’. I love how our awareness of what’s going on can separate it out as a choice rather than identity. And big high fives that you did share and gathered more data… that it was all fine 🙌 Bravo!
The self-doubt loop has shown up in a few tricky conversations I’ve had to have recently. I get so nervous I want to vomit, and avoid having the conversation entirely. In fact, I’ve done this so many times over the years with my parents around my sexuality that I actually opted to just send a message on the family WhatsApp group on Friday sharing some info about Bisexual Visibility Day and explaining how I’m bisexual, am attracted to all genders, and have dated men and women. It felt a bit like a cop out to not do it in person but it was a much more manageable small step, and it still came with a ton of discomfort! It was useful to look at this through the self-doubt loop. Thanks Sas!
I’m really excited to get stuck in to the rest of the programme. Unfortunately, I hadn’t cross referenced my work and non-work diary and I won’t be able to make the first coaching call with Lisa tomorrow. Lisa – I can probably join for the last 20 mins, but would that be disruptive to the group? Happy to wait until the following one if that’s best. Let me know.
Hi Kate, I want to commend your courage (this sounds super formal and really I just mean to say well done!) for sharing more about who you are with your family, and us, in any way. Not a cop out at all. I so admire your bravery. I can imagine you might be feeling vulnerable after sharing something precious of yourself with people, so hope you’re able to show yourself some care and do nice things that bring some joy and/or peace too. Take care!
Thanks Fiona. Weird how sharing things with strangers (though hopefully not for long) on the internet can be easier than with those who have known and loved us forever. And you are right about it not being a cop out – somehow I have internalised this idea that you need to be able to have conversations face to face or not at all.
Coming out to your family is a reflection of so many personal considerations, Kate. It’s like a smorgasbord of risk (I know from experience); Judgement, rejection, potential conflict, failure, loss, disappointment…they’re all there waiting to be served up. You did something that felt extremely risky in a way that was manageable for you and, perhaps, may not have happened at present otherwise. You’re taking really good care of yourself here, Kate, and advocating for your need to be seen and supported. Kudos to you – cheering you on!
I second Fiona here, Kate – cheering on your courage and the beauty of how you found a doable way to honour your Self with your family. Totally acknowledging that it still came with a ton of discomfort and yet you found a doable way to move out of the self doubt loop just enough to share what felt super important. Taking care of our nervous systems is crucial as we work with our self doubt and often that looks like experimenting with ways of breaking it down, finding ways that feel that little bit safer, seeking out ‘next most doable steps’ (one of my favourite Sas terms) that feel less risky as we lean into something that felt impossible before. I wonder how you took care of your nervous system afterwards? – and if you’re not sure whether you did, you can absolutely pile on some love retrospectively. Thank you for sharing this with us.
And yes, please do come for the last 20 minutes if you’re able tomorrow! It will be lovely to land together as a group ☺️ If somebody is in mid-flow sharing, I will hold you in the waiting room for a moment or two – that way it won’t be disruptive at all and you can know I’ll be bringing you in at a good moment. Sound good?
A couple of stand out things for me this week:
1) I am processing through a cluster of difficult emotions. Like when I goto write down what I’m feeling and use the wheel, I’m using most of the words that describe the larger categories of angry, sad, disgusted, bad, and negative surprise. I’m in grief with a lot of loses this last year. The feelings are not loosening up much when acknowledged, in fact, more are flooding out. I think complex grief is a different thing vs other emotions that bubble up during the day, yeah? Is this so? How does the processing of grief and trauma work with the emotion cycle?
2) The Self Doubt loop – I definitely have become frozen in life in general with multiple under-functioning behaviors. I just don’t see a way forward. Maybe because I am having a hard time digesting the avalanche of difficult emotions. I have a Resistance Habit that I don’t see in the 6 p’s, I’m going call it “guerrilla boundaries/scorched earth advocacy”. When I have a too strong “alarm” go off, I become a warrior for myself and my family, mama bear type deal. I am respectful to others always but I am very assertive, push for a reasonable solution but in a very frank, no excuses tolerated way. This pisses people off to the nth degree. It burns bridges and I don’t get what I want out of the whole thing. A teacher at my kid’s school called me “divisive” and kept repeating that I was hurting her feelings, she was denying a bad call she made and several families backed up what my kid experienced too. I think it was very unprofessional that she kept bringing her feeling into the discussion and denying what happened. Are my agro-boundaries just a BS “women should shut up and take it response?” Since I am absolute being respectful but extremely strong is this more about them than me? IDK. I think if I was male-presenting that I wouldn’t get a backlash and be dismissed when challenging wrongs.
Hey Lavet – thanks so much for sharing some of your experiences.
I just really want to affirm your willingness to look at these emotions. And yes, processing grief and trauma can take longer and feel more intense than the feelings that come up through the day. You may also need additional therapeutic support to make sense of this – is that something you have considered?
When we’ve experienced trauma, our self-protection can expand into something that is more like a survival strategy. It sounds like your guerrilla boundaries/scorched earth advocacy (great imagery by the way!), is akin to this.
One of the six P’s is Proving Yourself – when this tips into survival it can look more like what you are describing – hypervigilance against being wronged and needing to have control. It comes from the same place – a really human need to create safety.
So if you take your interaction with the teacher and come back to your experience of it. Does it sound like there was a part of you that was needing her to apologise? What would her apology have meant to you?
Soooo helpful here, thanks Sas. Yes, I’ve done therapy before on different occasions. It’s hard to get into a good therapist where I live but I always reserve that as a viable option.
Tipping into survival mode… totally can see this. The hyper vigilance and need to create safety are big when my alarms go off. Can totally see this as “Proving” myself as someone who will not be victimized in the world. Thanks for making that connection, I totally didn’t see myself as identifying with that “P” before. Do you have any reading suggestions around this?
For the teacher situation, I wanted her to acknowledge that she did punitively discipline the entire class for the actions of a couple students. It is against the school’s policy to do that. Though at least 4 families reported this occurred, she refused to admit she made that call. Just totally denial. That denial sends my alarm into hyperdrive. But does it have to? Nope. Can’t wait to get to the “Healthy Adult Self” stuff!
Apologies to me, mean an acknowledgement of wrong doing with a concrete plan/honest commitment for behavioral change going forward. A correction of this behavior on her part could have simply been, “It was such a tough day. I didn’t make the best call but I’m committed to positive behavior modifications. Punishing many students for the actions of a few isn’t something we aim to do going forward.” It would entirely set me at ease. It’s very easy for me to have compassion at we all make mistakes. It would have helped me greatly to see the world as a kinder, more trustworthy place to have a positive response from her. The way she reacted, I got my hackles up and they’ve stayed up around other difficult situations with their school. I want to be able to walk through situations like this still advocating but far less alarmed. To me being “Unfucking Stoppable” would include not allowing my hackles to stay up matter how many times I face these sorts of difficult and disappointing conversations.
I am so glad this helped Lavet. And I am so struck by your self-awareness and ability to reflect on what happened – bravo – that is not easy to do when there are a lot of emotions tangled up.
So we are getting to know your Protector – there is a survival strategy aspect to this protector – it just means it’s learnt to work really hard to let you know that something is at risk. Rather than reading about this (which would probably be more generalist than specific to you), I would highly encourage you to reflect on this aspect of your Protector.
Go through your Life Map and notice – where did this part of you get formed? What are the bloody good reasons why you needed to be able to go full warrior bear? I want you to see that it’s here for a really good reason!
This will also help with that desire you have for ease – seeing that this is a response you have learned for really good reasons can make it easy to extend yourself some compassion, to see that you are safe, that you have this beautifully wise Healthy Adult Self that is showing you more options. You get to be kinder to you.
This is such a rich (and challenging) experience to be exploring and to be curious about Lavet.
Something I’ve noticed when my Survivor self is coming forward, I recognize it because there is almost always a quality in my emotions, which is more like panic than just fear and that the panic is amping every other emotion up (and perception of the threat) into a state that feels so damn real.
I hope that the Life Map becomes a valued tool in bringing sense-making and compassion for this part of you.
I really appreciate how you’re distinguishing and naming your experiences, and that you are curious and wanting to discover more about what is happening. I so appreciate being able to read this here, to get to know you better, and to be curious with you about the self-understanding and self-compassion moments that lie ahead.
Thank you Marion. Yes! This Survivor self gives itself away with that intense panicky, sticky, urgent feeling. Such an important observation. Now that I’m learning that, I know that it clouds perception while I’m feeling it. To resist taking action while in that state is super important for me. I’m making a little plan with my spouse that I text him how I am feeling and what the situation is and have a slow little chat with him to get a little perspective first. I can absolutely take actions to advocate and protect myself when I’m in coming from a place of where I know that I’m safe. Soooo looking forward to building that resilient, healthy adult self I can rely on internally when these feelings come up.
Lavet this is wonderful to hear (Marion is such a wise one!).
And I also just want to affirm that you are ALREADY accessing your Healthy Adult Self. She is the part of you that can witness your experience of your Survivor Self, the part that made the decision to experiment with resisting acting from that Surivial Self, and the part that has chosen to text your spouse when you are feeling this.
That HAS is already there, already growing in you 🙂 Bloody brilliant!
Hello Everyone-
Trying to fill out my Life Map for the last 2 weeks has me deeply mired in self doubt.
My discomfort is appearing as a heaviness in my chest and belly.
My resistance patterns are fully engaged and include:
Procrastination by doing everything BUT the Life Map (laundry, cleaning, texting anyone who will respond, scrolling, decluttering, organizing/thinking about organizing)
Perfectionism meaning I can’t bear to mark up the page of my beautifully printed SBS Playbook and I won’t do it 100% correctly (thoroughly, include the right events and accurately divine the meanings I made of these events) so how can I begin?
Passive behaviors including but not limited to eating, sleeping and playing endless games of solitaire on my phone
Paralysis staring at the Playbook; packing the Playbook on both trips of the last 2 weeks and never opening it, confined to my room with Covid (and consequently no work) during orientation week and still not able to start.
Finally, through some combination of adrenaline-fueled desperation and shame, I started the Life Map. I discovered, when I stopped writing, that I had not followed the simple directions for filling out the Map in terms of placement of the answers. <My Perfectionist slaps her palm to her forehead>
I also realized that the majority of my chosen events are in the sad/painful/difficult category. As a response, I have spun a self-doubt story about being too negative and damaged to belong to the SBS. Taking deep breaths now and after rereading Sas’ example, I understand I can add more events and flesh this map out a bit.
Before I erase all of this and flee to the security of my chosen roles as Advocate/Martyr, I think I’ll post and go directly to my job (which is outside my home and where I can spend more time observing my Self-Doubt Loop!! 🙂
Mary! You did it, you did it beautifully and imperfectly.
And I just want to affirm that it sounds like this took a lot of courage and courage always feels like arse (we only ever need courage when we are facing a risk).
I am SO proud of you 🙂
Something to notice here is that you have a Very Sophisticated Protector. It was working really really hard to get you to resist the discomfort of this task.
It won’t always be like this – the more your practice these experiments and play with your self-doubt, the more you will be cultivating your Healthy Adult Self (that’s the part of you that can envision your goals, and encourage you to meet them, and be with your emotions and take action, and has discernment and perspective).
So now you have the beginnings of your Life Map! I highly encourage you to add to it. It is understandable that because this was challenging, your memories were biased towards the difficult and sad. But now that you have ‘cleared your throat’ and added in the memories that were accessible, keep going! Allow yourself to spend some time this week remembering happy, proud, joy-filled memories. Can you let us know how it feels for you as you do this?
I also want to thank you for generously sharing your experience with us. Because I imagine a few folks have found this particularly challenging. BRAVO.
PS: I was involuntarily humming Tina Turner’s epic anthem ‘Proud Mary’ while I wrote this – but I want to rename it as Brave Mary! This would make a great theme tune for you lovely 🙂
Hi lovely SBS-ers! I’ve just been catching up with your wonderful intros on Orientation Week. Such rich reflections there already. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you tomorrow (Tues 7th) morning at 10am UK time in our coaching circle (other circle times with Scott & Marion are available!) – and diving into the juicy material of module one with you. See you soon x
Hi everyone!
I watched the last part today and went through the feelings wheel. Wow! This is a huge learning for me. Last week I did the life map, which I was sooo procrastinating on. Because I knew there will a lot come up and it did… I was getting so angry! Mostly about myself. When I watch at the wheel now I see a lot of hurtful emotions, I felt in the past and they kind of controlling my system. They are mostly in the Angry-Section. So I think it would be good to allow myself to be angry a lot more than I did in the past – but how can I handle feeling angry about myself?
Thanks loves.
Svenja – I’m so sorry I missed your share! There is something funky with my notifications – will get right on that.
I wonder how you’ve found your relationship with your anger since you did your life map?
Its often one of the hardest emotions for us to feel – mostly because we’ve been told lots of stories about it, and anger is a huge source of power – it can feel like a lot!
And anger is such a common and understandable emotion! Its often on the surface of other feelings too. I highly recommend the Anger Iceberg as a way to play with this for yourself. You can just ask what am I angry at? Have a good blurt about it on the page on in your mind, and then ask yourself: what’s underneath the anger?
The only thing I would say is that you get to just be angry! Don’t think you always have to find something else – but there is often that leads to the anger and that can offer some lush insight.
Let me know how that goes Svenja!
I’ve been thinking about these lessons for the past two weeks, and there is so much to unpack. I definitely recognize all six P’s of resistance in my life. I think the dominant ones (now) are proving myself, people-pleasing, paralysis, and perfectionism.
The psychological risks that set off my alarm are rejection, conflict, judgment, failure, and embarrassment (although they all resonate). As a child, I learned that conflict could escalate quickly and become dangerous, and embarrassment and judgment were part of being bullied. I could never do anything “right” to escape this. Even staying silent and trying to blend in didn’t always work. I people please as a way to keep myself safe and avoid these risks. But it gets in the way with everything – I always second-guess myself before sending an email or a message because I’m afraid I might bother someone or ask a “stupid” question.
Proving myself mostly shows up at work. Unfortunately, I have a large wound left from previous experiences that made me feel like I could never meet expectations or do things correctly. I over-compensate by going above and beyond more than necessary in hopes of proving my worth. This is motivated by avoiding loss, judgment, and conflict.
I am fairly good at catching these things in the moment (especially if I’m procrastinating, because I know there’s fear behind it), but that doesn’t make taking action easier. For example, I have to send an email to someone and I’m afraid of looking “bad.” After attempting to perfect it, I just send it because I know I’m overthinking it. But that doesn’t really get to the root of things. I know that I can probably handle the worst outcome (with an email, at least) and that it won’t be that bad, but it still sends me into a spiral of worry.
My biggest block is the emotion cycle. Over the last three years, it’s like I’ve completely disconnected from my emotional circuit. I used to feel big all the time, and I guess it became too much. Whenever I check in with myself, I come up empty. I can at least say it’s frustrating, but I have no idea how to access this layer of myself anymore. Any insight would be appreciated!
Erin – firstly I’m so sorry I missed this share! There is something funky with my notifications – will get right on that.
I know we talked a little about this on the last call, but I just wanted to also reply here because you have laid this out so articulately – your self-awareness is magic to see.
So it might take some time to get practiced at feeling safe to experience the full range of feelings. You can take the Emotion Cycle slowly as you like!
I highly recommend focussing on feeling SAFE. So a daily practice is to sit with yourself when you are regulated and calm, bring up a happy memory – bring it alive in your mind and notice what body sensations come up – there might be a lightness, an expansion. Notice those sensations – do they have a colour, texture, pace/movement, if you could reach in to your body and touch the sensations what might they be like?
Then see if that is related to an emotion for you. Does it have a message for you?
Making this a daily practice is a great way to let yourself feel safe to feel things. I would start with happier/neutral memories. Then see if you can notice when these sensations come up during the day – are there places/beings (usually nature and animals!) that help you access these? Go there often – notice your sensations.
If at anytime, the emotion feels too much, you can remind yourself that you are safe, breathe through it and imagine the feeling getting smaller.
If you aren’t able to feel anything, you can tune into your senses – what can you see, hear, smell, touch – notice what that brings up.
How does that feel as a place to start?
Hi there SBS peoples! I’m on to module 1, and after last weeks coaching call with Marion (5th April), I am practicing giving myself the space to process this content at a pace that feels thorough for me, because I really do want to get things out of this program, and rushing through it doesn’t allow me to take the time to understand the content as properly as I’d want to absorb it. So on that note, I’ve got 3 things to share:
1) I’ve been trying to practice an experiment of being kind to myself through the day. It’s hard because I’m so used to listening to my inner critic. About my critic, her constant criticism is grating and I know she’s supposed to be protecting me from risk, but I genuinely don’t understand why she has to be so mean. Which brings me to my next point…
2) One thing I’ve noticed is that my critic (I think) shows up right before bed, and she tells me mean things. Mostly what she says is that “no one likes you,” and “you don’t have any friends.” These things aren’t true, but she says them, and it happens pretty routinely. I’m not sure what this is all about (or what this is supposed to protect me from) because really it just makes me feel bad, and that right before bed. Like really, Inner Critic, I’m supposed to be going to sleep – what do you expect me to do with this information now?
3) I had a conversation with a friend today about how I’m struggling with work. The whole reason I’ve signed up for this course is how my inner critic shows up in my life, but mostly at work. My trauma from past work experience is something I’ve not healed yet and I carry it with me. I’m really hoping to break this pattern. So, let me tell you how it plays out – let’s say I have a project to do. I do not have the slightest idea of how to start this, because I’m at a new job, with new people, and new processes, and I’m lost. I’m also not fresh out of college, so people aren’t really willing to help me because with the experience I have, I should “just know how to do this.” But of course, I don’t. So I get paralyzed, because what if I do it bad, who do I ask for help. But wait, no one will help me, or I’ll feel dumb asking because they think I should know this, and I don’t want people to think I’m dumb, besides they are all so busy and stressed, so but then if I do the thing and do it badly then I’ll get yelled at, and then I’ll lose my job. Riiiight, great. I’m not even sure I’m aware of this pattern when it happens. Now let’s say I actually get feedback – well, buckle up and get ready for the floodgates to open, because here comes that critic in full effect. My friend tells me that I don’t even hear the feedback in the voice that it’s delivered in, but rather I hear it in the voice of the inner critic. And boy is she mean. This turns into the spiral of shame, the paralysis (or procrastinating), which leads to more bad feedback, and welcome to the endless cycle. It’s like the lyrics in the Eagles song Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave. Last night, my critic reared her head, I had to get out of the bed, and journal about it for a bit, and then I continued to have a bit of a panic about it for another 30 minutes.
I really want to figure out how to help myself through #3, which is really all part of the same cycle I suppose with my inner critic. I need to come up with an experiment for this, I think. I’m open to feedback on this.
And now on to watching the self-doubt loop content. Thanks for listening 🙂
Priti, this is such a great share – I always find it helpful as your coach, to get to know those protector parts of you.
When you get to Module 2, you’ll find we go into the Critic in more detail, but for now I’d love you to start talking about the Critic as a part of you that is trying to protect you.
So it’s not ALL of you – but a part of you. And at bedtime when you hear that Critic Protector, can you see what other parts of you are present? There is the part of you that is noticing the Critic, that can see the patterns and feedback – that to me sounds like your Healthy Adult Self. What does this part of you want to say to the Critic?
In part 3 of your share, you’ve described a really thorough reading of your experience in the Self-doubt Loop. Can you note down for yourself what happens at each stage of the Loop using your example? What insight does this offer you?
Great work 🙂
Hi there! I am observing more things as I go through Module 1 (slowly, thankfully, and with the intent to get as much out of this as I can 🐌🐢☺️). I’m glad I am giving myself permission to do that.
Ok, so rewatching the video lesson, I have some interesting observations to share.
My smoke detector triggers on failure, lose, embarrassment, and maybe rejection & disappointment.
When I thought about the discomfort lesson and the message that says – “don’t do that, you might hurt yourself” – it was important for me to say “again” after this because I am sensitive negative experiences I have had in the past and I’m trying to engineer a world where I don’t experience this risk “again” by doing something…which leads into the next bit about resistance perfectly. I can think of how I’d try to keep people with me by being the perfect version of the person they wanted from me to avoid criticism and keep them liking me/loving me/being my friend/dating me, or whatever that might be.
On the resistance side of things, when I thought about the list of the 6 P’s I realize I do all of these at some point or in different scenarios. I found that interesting.
When I explored a task when I went through self-doubt loop, it was with something at work. This is where self-doubt shows up predominately for me. I felt fear & worry that I’d do something wrong, which would lead to me being criticized or ultimately fired. This discomfort shows up as difficult emotions, memories of past failures & listening to what people have said about me in the past, projecting a future situation. Using the template – “When I experienced this risk of failure, I tried to keep myself safe by perfecting my output, overworking, and people pleasing by doing the thing the way others told me versus thinking it through it myself.” In this case, I didn’t have the option to procrastinate or be paralyzed for more than a few minutes (though I can recall feeling that energy) because there was a time crunch. I will say when this happens – I procrastinate or get paralyzed – this is when the critic shows up criticizing me for not doing the thing at the proper time or if I get feedback and it’s negative, she says why did you make a mistake. I make this mean that I’m not good enough/dumb/can’t do the thing and will not be able to/that I’m not smart enough and everyone is smarter than me and I’ll get fired if I make a mistake.
When the question came up of if I could get out of the loop earlier, I had a ton of resistance even answering the question. When I got to answering it, I thought maybe I could get to the point where I could do the thing with ouch attaching all the worries to it which holds me back. I’m concerned this is going to lead to me bottling up (something I’ve broken the pattern for – longer story), but maybe it’s more so moving through it. And maybe it would help me feel more confident in myself versus showing up as a scared child looking for help and approval. I’d be able to feel the doubt, and tell myself it’s a story, and not reality, so I could move forward versus being stuck for minutes, hours, days.
I wanted to share something more I’ve noticed about my self-doubt loop behaviors. At the risk of being a bit vulnerable here, this tends to manifest as panic/anxiety for me. I’m working through this here and with a support structure locally, but I did want to share more on how this shows up to seek guidance from the coaches here.
For me, the self-doubt isn’t something that shows up and subsides after a few minutes. What happens is, step 1: I contemplate something that isn’t going as planned – Ex: Priti, you haven’t done these X things you need to do for work – then step 2&3: the alarm gets set off – I project that something bad is going to happen at work, I’m going to get called out, criticized, get laid off which is followed by a feeling of discomfort and this manifests as shame. I’ve already predicted the future here and it’s based on experiences I’ve had in the past. For additional context, this generally happens at night, when I’m trying to sleep so that’s not helpful because it disrupts my rest and that causes discomfort for the rest of the day because I’m tired/sleep-deprived. At this point, I’ll have the anxiety, which manifests as a pounding feeling, a buzzing of needing to do something about it, monkey mind of all things I haven’t done and should be doing (which by the way is really helpful when you’re trying to go back to sleep), and it doesn’t stop. In fact, it might slow down for a bit, like Sas said in her video, but then it’ll start up again a couple minutes later and the cycle will repeat. It’s almost like a spiral. At some point, though it’s not a consistent process, I calm myself down to stop the spiral either by breathing through it, talking to myself, getting up and writing all the things down, putting my hand on my heart and trying to comfort myself, or sometimes I think I just get overtired and I fall back asleep.
Anyway, that’s my update on how self-doubt is showing up for me.
On the emotions side of things, I have a lot of resistance to feeling my feelings, especially when asked where is it in our bodies. I’m quite disconnected from that behavior. Not much more to say on that really, other than to mention it so that a picture can get painted.
Priti, I’m struck by how hard your body is working to stop you from feeling your emotions.
Those body sensations are really difficult to be with – and they are such a big distraction from what might be underneath the anxiety.
Something to reflect on is why these responses make complete sense for you? There are likely to be clues to this in what you learned about your emotions, growing up.
Where you ‘allowed’ to have your feelings? If not, what did you do with them? How did you respond?
Where other people in your family allowed to have their feelings? Was there an unspoken family motto about how we deal with emotions?
Sas,
Thanks for your reply. We don’t do feelings in my family, aside from anger, that is. This is something I’ve learned through years of counseling work on the topic and I’m still working through that. What I did with those feelings was bottle them up. At one point, however, while taking a course based on Brené Brown daring way content, this cracked open for me and I wasn’t able to bottle anymore. So yeah, totally makes sense how my body is responding.
Curiously, this work we are doing is really slow for me. I can’t rush it because it takes me time to break down these heavy topics so I can understand them and work through them. It’s good it’s a year long program because module 1&2 are taking 3 months of digging in for me already ☺️
Sas & Coaches,
In orientation week, we were encouraged to explore what it meant to belong to ourselves, did we feel like we belonged to ourselves, and did we think this was important. In the intro video, belonging to ourselves is mentioned again. This concept of belonging to “me” is confusing and I don’t know what it means. Could someone provide more explanation or an example of what it looks like when someone belongs to themselves?
We’ll go into the practical aspects of belonging to ourselves next week when we look at Self-acceptance.
To give you a sense of this, belonging to ourselves is about knowing, liking and accepting who you are: your values, preferences, emotions and needs as well as your history. Belonging is about taking all these parts of you and allowing them to have a space inside you.
With my self-doubt I have experienced all of the six P’s, some of them more than others or just depending on the time in my life or the particular circumstance. Overworking was normal to me, and I remember earlier in my career, not understanding/feeling confused how a colleague said he stopped working for the day at 5 or 6 PM. I knew that was not possible for me. I thought perhaps because he was married and I am not. I would also try to perfect what I was working on not realizing this was not a normal behavior. Overworking is what I’d always done. I very much relate to the embarrassment of spending 40 minutes on an email of 3 lines.
Perfectionism: a former manager told me he knew I was a perfectionist. Again I was confused because I knew my work was never perfect and the amount of hours I spent trying to “get things right,” proved that I couldn’t possibly be a perfectionist.
I have often procrastinated while learning that doing the thing you want to avoid the most should be done first and i’m pretty good at having adapted that behavior now, if not already being fully aware of my wish to procrastinate.
I definitely have a pattern of people pleasing, definitely to a flaw. I used to use food or drink as a way to avoid what I was fearing. I stopped drinking 8 years ago and food is less of an issue. Now I either chain myself to my desk (unhealthy) or go for a walk in the neighborhood (improvement).
What sets off my alarm: When I feel vulnerable and unsure of my audience, I worry that I will be judged and people will think of me less positively. I get worried that people will see me as the imposter despite my tons and years of experience I often feel.
Amanda, I really appreciate your reflections here – and I know you are far from alone in these responses.
It sounds like you have a very sophisticated protector that’s desperate to keep you safe from being judged – and you are working super hard at this.
I’ve found that 100% of the time there is a really good reason why our Protective Self-doubt feels necessary.
I’m curious about what that reason is for you.
Where do you think you learned this?
Some q’s to spark your thinking:
When do you first remember feeling conscious of other people’s opinions of you?
What did you learn from growing up in your family about making mistakes?
Is there someone who comes to mind when you think about being judged?
Right here with you xx
So I grew up with a dad who was an alcoholic. And with that came the need to be well behaved, feeling the need to be perfect and getting things right the first time and doing whatever it took to be my best (while often not feeling it). And while as an adult, intellectually I know this is not a good way to be, it’s a pattern I’ve had my whole life pretty much whatever I take on. Unfortunately even if things might be really good, I still feel doubt about what’s not right.
I remember when I was anywhere between the ages of 6-8 maybe and later in teenage years, there was math homework and my dad was a computer engineer. Mom would say your dad has to help you with math homework. Both my sister and me developed math anxiety. If the answer wasn’t right, the first time around, Dad would be like, why didn’t you get that right and this is how it is done. Period. This is how this works… and generally unhelpful with a critical tone. What I remember about math homework is a lot of crying.
So when at work in my first sales role, I had to figure out discounting for sales proposals the first time, I went into panic (no one seeing it happening). I talked to a trusted mail colleague to get the formulas and this helped and it was fine. In my last job there were a lot of numbers (and computer engineers). They had a confusing way of doing pricing and all I could think was, I’ll never learn this (and frankly I never did learn it as I was let go before it even happened).
I particularly have worries about pleasing men in authority positions (like a boss) and fear the critical part that may result and probably because I worry about it so much, I do all this overcompensating and ultimately in the last 2 jobs I have had, I self-sabotaged myself and let myself believe I was less than despite all the experience I know I have, so the bosses didn’t help me and then there was micromanaging and then it really sucked to the point of termination. Like no, I couldn’t quit and find other work, I had to stick it out and try to be successful (which worked once).
That was the other thing I learned in my upbringing: don’t be a quitter. Like even when it would be healthy to quit. Don’t quit. No one likes a quitter.
It’s like some men see this weakness in me and decide to exploit it in some way and I end up feeling like this scared little girl again, like they know I’m not confident enough. I know this is not all men. I know I can do better than this, but it is an area of struggle and has been for a long time.
What’s frustrating is I know the source and rationally it all makes sense, but when it comes to changing it, a part of me feels like, it’s too late. I’m already 51. I’ve been thinking this way forever; this is ingrained in me. And some bad things have happened to me and while I’m a survivor and got through all that hard shit, I still have these patterns that surface when I feel vulnerable and not sure of my footing. I know these things aren’t my fault but how do I shake these patterns for good? I very much want to lose these patterns.
My dad isn’t even alive anymore and my mom has Alzheimer’s and is in a home for memory care. She’ll say to me, are you still biting your nails. And I’ll say, no, they’re just short right now. And when I’m away from my mom, I think, Fuck, yes, I am biting my nails. I’m feeling insecure in my life right now. I stopped drinking 8 years ago on my own and yes, I still have some shit habits like biting my nails. I’m a human being doing the best I can where I am right now. But I don’t say any of that. I know my parents did the best they could, while I need to fix myself and I’m the only one who can do it.
My mom wanted to be very involved in my life and I wanted space and there was a time when I was out of the family for a couple years. Then there was a death in the family and I felt I had to go to the funeral and then I was back in the mess all over again which was obviously going to happen b/c they were still the same. The distance was healthier for me, while I still have the thinking patterns. And I’m back in the family now and my sister has taken on some traits of my parents. Like she doesn’t know I lost my job almost a month ago. And I’m doing the best I can to make sure she doesn’t find out.
I want to see the good in me. I know it is there but there’s that part of me that wants to put me down, that feeling of not measuring up and when I listen to my mom talk about herself and try to comfort her that she’s better than she thinks, I knew exactly where I learned it from.
It was a joy to chat with you Amanda, and I am so glad you are here.
As we talked about on our call, I recommend moving through the programme to look at this dynamic of overcompensating/proving yourself.
Really looking forward to supporting you through this process 🙂
Yes. The overcompensating/proving myself is a definite pattern I want to break.
I moved onto Module 2 and My protector is the Critic Bystander. Really strong with the Critic.
My experiment will be awareness of what I say to myself and apologizing when it’s cruel/unkind.
I almost didn’t notice it earlier. I was coming out of my garage and was thinking how I need to fix the garage door and was berating myself about how it’s not closing properly and if I had done things differently I wouldn’t be in this situation… And I went up the steps from the basement to the kitchen feeling mad at myself. Then I watched your video (I listened to it on my walk earlier today) and thought, wow, I just berated myself about the garage door and I was pretty mean and i went on for awhile.
Then I listened further – you said self-respect is giving yourself compassion. So then I reconsidered what I was saying to myself and turned it around with how much I was dealing with at the time that I had a problem with the garage door and why I should be compassionate and how noticed how different that feels.
I have some of the other protectors (Scapegoat) in more minor ways like having trouble completing tasks I don’t like/want to do. (Recycle a laptop that no longer works that’s been sitting on the counter for months).
Bystander Experiment: I could do a meditation where I focus on relaxing all the body parts from one to the next to help with going to sleep or just relaxing for a computer break. Or I do yoga and I’m focused on the breathing while moving through the poses the whole time. Like a 6 count breath on the inhale and an 8 count breath on the exhale. And do my yoga practice for 10-15 minutes.
This isn’t a real experiment but I have an interview tomorrow and because I never know what they ask, I tend to prepare for several hours. The interview is only one hour and The hiring manager and the sales manager are both interviewing me. (Usually it starts with a short interview with HR). There’s a chance they could ask me about product knowledge. They may also ask, tell me a time when you did x and how did you resolve it. I prepared just company and product knowledge for 4.5 hours. That was just looking at the website. I told myself not to spend more than 2 hours preparing but that didn’t work. I still have more to prepare tomorrow for questions about me they could ask. This is just a first interview, usually there are 3-4 interviews before an offer. I haven’t interviewed in a few months and I don’t fufill all of the requirements yet they requested an interview about 3 days after I submitted my application (typically it’s 2 weeks). I made myself stop at 8:30 because I hadn’t had dinner and I was definitely in need of a break even earlier. And I was feeling overwhelmed.
How do you know when it’s healthy working vs. unhealthy? Is it a matter or listening to your body?
When you have more than two Protectors you heavily identify with, it’s a sign that you have a sophisticated protector. And it’s likely the beliefs that are fuelling your protector have been running things for years, possibly even decades. So it will take some time to begin to shift these beliefs – for more healthy responses to feel natural and easy.
I think its great that you noticed that feeling of overwhelm.
One thing I would recommend is practising checking in with yourself really regularly – you could even set the alarm to do this every hour. Notice what you need and what you feel: how can you take care of yourself?
This is a core practice of self-acceptance – which is great for diffusing a strong critic.
I’m not sure where to post this so starting at the beginning module seemed sensible.
I have such a hard time listening to myself. As in, I do the exercises and try to reflect and dig for authentic answers, but I’m never sure if I’m really being honest with myself or if I’m just finding ways to give the ‘right’ answer, or a surface response, or a response that I feel like is solvable. I feel like I can’t hear what my soul is saying. And it makes me feel like I never know what I truly think or want or could turn into a goal. So much resistance.
I know that part of this is down to Protectors that say ‘don’t want anything and you won’t be disappointed’ and ‘you must put others’ needs before your own, so align your desires with theirs’. But it’s so f*ing frustrating! Like I can’t get past that and find my true self. And it becomes so challenging and tedious to even try that I give up and just let the daily grind take over and never do the deep work or set and work towards longer term goals. I don’t want to do that anymore but I’m having trouble finding the most doable baby steps towards figuring out how to change.
Hey Christine – I am so glad you left a comment here. It’s the perfect spot.
Feeling like you can’t hear your soul – ah that is so evocative of your experience. So frustrating yes! And also, it makes so much sense that if you feel this, you give up – what’s the point if you can’t even hear yourself?!
I get it.
So I suspect you are totally on to something with the idea that this is your resistance.
I imagine your resistance dancing around waving its hands, saying, ‘Don’t look over here – find the ‘right’ answer instead!’ Don’t peek under that, stick to the surface stuff!’ Does that feel right?
So, instead of trying to move past it, I wonder if you could spend some time with your resistance. Give it some attention.
Does it feel possible to have a conversation with it? You could start by imagining this dancing resistance as sitting with you. You can do this on paper, or just sit quietly and close your eyes. See what comes up.
I’m curious to know how old your resistance feels to you? Sometimes having an age helps us to speak to it as we would a child/young person/a friend at that age. You could ask why it’s here, what it wants you to know, what it’s resisting and why.
It might be that you don’t get a lot of information, but you might! The more important thing is the willingness to be with it.
Let me know how you get on!
If you can make it to one of the coaching calls, I’d love to support you further. xx
Welcome to Module One folks – I highly recommend watching the Self-doubt Loop video early in the week and then spending time observing how this is playing out for you. The discussion forum is open for all your questions and shares.
Coaching circle links: the zoom to your coaching circles are on the Coaching Circle Page.
It’s so true that most advice is around solving for resistance. I love the idea of getting out of the self-doubt loop before I even hit resistance – teach me how! My self-doubt plays out in two main, and opposing, ways. Mostly I wait (paralysis) with some passive consumption and perfectionism thrown in. I’ve come a long way with perfectionism, but the looong time it often takes for me to start taking action is a sore point for me, one that leads to perceiving myself as lacking drive and commitment. But in other circumstances I procrastinate (productively, ha) and overwork to prove myself.
This is such a juicy combination Nasreen – and I imagine this is so frustrating – particularly if its showing up in your business? I wonder if these are opposing patterns or if they are just sophisticated ways (bobbing and weaving!) your protective self-doubt holds you back?
One thing that strikes me about these forms of resistance – perfectionism, passive behaviours, procrastination – is that they are about WAITING (delaying/avoiding…)
Two questions to reflect on:
Thanks for this Sas – even though this loop is familiar to me now through SBCA this has helped to cement the learning. Particularly as I have a great big real life example. I want to make a change to one area of my business and honestly I have been thinking about it for the last year. On Sunday (after talking it through with someone) I was like yes, I know what to do now, and even better I have been given permission to do it. It all feels so clear and straightforward, happy days 🤪 But when I woke up the next day I was back in the same loop again…. no, I can’t possibly do that as it might upset people or be unpopular, I might disappoint people, I may have to give people some money back (and that would be a great big mess), blah blah. The fear is real – even though I know exactly what’s happening and why! 😩
That must be frustrating Sharon. I have been there – both with having made a decision then waiting for ages to take action, and also with finally saying Yes let’s go! only to find myself back at square 1 (ie not taking action) very soon 😤
Why do we do it to ourselves? 😩
Sharon this is such fantastic self-awareness!
You are doing an amazing job of keeping yourself safe from the perceived risk of upsetting or disappointing people, from being unpopular or giving people their money back.
The fear IS real. And yet we don’t actually know if the risk is real. Notice that your protective self-doubt is going to town on a worst-case scenario outcome? But your self-doubt isn’t psychic! It has no idea what will happen, its just trying to hold you back from the risk of what might happen.
I am curious to know if this risk makes sense to you? Are there good reasons why you would be worried about upsetting or disappointing people?
I so relate to this, Sharon! The jumping back and forth between clarity/confidence and then the deflation as doubt sucks the winds of our sails. I think this is such a great example that self-doubt isn’t something we conquer or figure out, but a real, ongoing conversation that ebbs and flows and is anything but linear. Thank you for sharing.
Is there a coaching circle call with Lisa today? I can’t find a link anywhere. I signed up for the Tuesday 10am call and thought it started today.
HI Laura – Yes, the coaching circles start this week (so your call is starting now)
Yes I thought so and have been trying to find a link for the last twenty minutes but no joy
You can find Lisa’s link here: (click here) If that one doesn’t work, try this link (click here)!
Thank you for your help Scott, I was in a real panic. I’m not sure how I’ve missed the information but I managed to join using the link. Thanks for saving the day 🙂
So great that you made it into the call Laura – I’m so glad you’re here!
Great catch Scott – thank you 🙂
So glad you got the link Laura (Scott – brilliant catch!)
And hopefully it wasn’t too much of a thing – I know I can easily find a big old story to tell myself when I feel like I’m late.
I know Lisa loved the call and was so happy to meet you x
100% all good, Laura – happens to the best of us! I heard your call was lovely and so glad you were able to attend!
Those six P’s are juicy. Where does ‘not engaging’ / ‘not doing it at all’ sit within these responses? It feels like a combo of passive (and) paralysis but wasn’t sure. For example, this morning I was in a call, surrounded by subject-matter experts. I had a thought and a question but felt like there was a risk of embarrassment (and failure maybe?) asking it so I, initially, just chose not to say anything.* I doubted I had anything sensible to ask or say. I find I do the same with social media. Where does this response sit?
*I was encouraged to speak up by a friend also in the call and so did and, funnily enough, it was all fine.
Aren’t they, Fiona! So much useful information for us in which of these we reach for to make ourselves feel more comfortable when our self doubt alarm is activated. Yes, the ‘not engaging / not doing it at all’ sounds like paralysis. And could totally be a combo of both. Passive behaviours are things that we consume, that distract from whatever triggered the alarm and comfort us. They can be kind of a cover up – maybe even a comfort blanket. ‘Ooh I’ll just doom-scroll insta for a bit so I can stop thinking about doing that thing that feels activating and uncomfortable’. And yes, that ‘consuming’ might also be ‘I’ll just sit and listen to everyone else’s thoughts rather than share my own’. I wonder what you believed about yourself in that moment that led you to initially choose not to contribute? We’ll be moving into uncovering the protective beliefs that underpin our self doubt next week, so this might be an interesting example to explore there.
I love that you shared a real time example here from earlier today. It’s great to begin to notice how often we encounter our self doubt day to day, becoming more aware of a process that often happens so fast it can feel largely unconscious and ‘oh this is just who I am’. I love how our awareness of what’s going on can separate it out as a choice rather than identity. And big high fives that you did share and gathered more data… that it was all fine 🙌 Bravo!
Thanks Lisa, that makes sense. It’s a good question and one I’ll mull over – I’m not sure what I believed about myself in that moment, beyond not being enough of an expert to hold space. There’s something under there that’s worth gently looking at. Thank you!
The self-doubt loop has shown up in a few tricky conversations I’ve had to have recently. I get so nervous I want to vomit, and avoid having the conversation entirely. In fact, I’ve done this so many times over the years with my parents around my sexuality that I actually opted to just send a message on the family WhatsApp group on Friday sharing some info about Bisexual Visibility Day and explaining how I’m bisexual, am attracted to all genders, and have dated men and women. It felt a bit like a cop out to not do it in person but it was a much more manageable small step, and it still came with a ton of discomfort! It was useful to look at this through the self-doubt loop. Thanks Sas!
I’m really excited to get stuck in to the rest of the programme. Unfortunately, I hadn’t cross referenced my work and non-work diary and I won’t be able to make the first coaching call with Lisa tomorrow. Lisa – I can probably join for the last 20 mins, but would that be disruptive to the group? Happy to wait until the following one if that’s best. Let me know.
Hi Kate, I want to commend your courage (this sounds super formal and really I just mean to say well done!) for sharing more about who you are with your family, and us, in any way. Not a cop out at all. I so admire your bravery. I can imagine you might be feeling vulnerable after sharing something precious of yourself with people, so hope you’re able to show yourself some care and do nice things that bring some joy and/or peace too. Take care!
Thanks Fiona. Weird how sharing things with strangers (though hopefully not for long) on the internet can be easier than with those who have known and loved us forever. And you are right about it not being a cop out – somehow I have internalised this idea that you need to be able to have conversations face to face or not at all.
Coming out to your family is a reflection of so many personal considerations, Kate. It’s like a smorgasbord of risk (I know from experience); Judgement, rejection, potential conflict, failure, loss, disappointment…they’re all there waiting to be served up. You did something that felt extremely risky in a way that was manageable for you and, perhaps, may not have happened at present otherwise. You’re taking really good care of yourself here, Kate, and advocating for your need to be seen and supported. Kudos to you – cheering you on!
I second Fiona here, Kate – cheering on your courage and the beauty of how you found a doable way to honour your Self with your family. Totally acknowledging that it still came with a ton of discomfort and yet you found a doable way to move out of the self doubt loop just enough to share what felt super important. Taking care of our nervous systems is crucial as we work with our self doubt and often that looks like experimenting with ways of breaking it down, finding ways that feel that little bit safer, seeking out ‘next most doable steps’ (one of my favourite Sas terms) that feel less risky as we lean into something that felt impossible before. I wonder how you took care of your nervous system afterwards? – and if you’re not sure whether you did, you can absolutely pile on some love retrospectively. Thank you for sharing this with us.
And yes, please do come for the last 20 minutes if you’re able tomorrow! It will be lovely to land together as a group ☺️ If somebody is in mid-flow sharing, I will hold you in the waiting room for a moment or two – that way it won’t be disruptive at all and you can know I’ll be bringing you in at a good moment. Sound good?
Thanks Lisa. And it was lovely to meet you and the rest of the group on the call earlier.
It was so great to meet you Kate and I’m so glad you were able to be there! 🙂
Hi all, I’m sad I won’t be able to join the call will Lisa tomorrow.
I’m running a throwing workshop all day.
I’ll be there next week
Lorna x
Don’t worry Lorna, we will keep your seat warm for you tomorrow and will be extra glad to have you with us next week ☺️ Have a great throwing workshop! Massive pottery fan here so I’m assuming we’re talking pots? Otherwise very curious what’s being thrown!
A couple of stand out things for me this week:
1) I am processing through a cluster of difficult emotions. Like when I goto write down what I’m feeling and use the wheel, I’m using most of the words that describe the larger categories of angry, sad, disgusted, bad, and negative surprise. I’m in grief with a lot of loses this last year. The feelings are not loosening up much when acknowledged, in fact, more are flooding out. I think complex grief is a different thing vs other emotions that bubble up during the day, yeah? Is this so? How does the processing of grief and trauma work with the emotion cycle?
2) The Self Doubt loop – I definitely have become frozen in life in general with multiple under-functioning behaviors. I just don’t see a way forward. Maybe because I am having a hard time digesting the avalanche of difficult emotions. I have a Resistance Habit that I don’t see in the 6 p’s, I’m going call it “guerrilla boundaries/scorched earth advocacy”. When I have a too strong “alarm” go off, I become a warrior for myself and my family, mama bear type deal. I am respectful to others always but I am very assertive, push for a reasonable solution but in a very frank, no excuses tolerated way. This pisses people off to the nth degree. It burns bridges and I don’t get what I want out of the whole thing. A teacher at my kid’s school called me “divisive” and kept repeating that I was hurting her feelings, she was denying a bad call she made and several families backed up what my kid experienced too. I think it was very unprofessional that she kept bringing her feeling into the discussion and denying what happened. Are my agro-boundaries just a BS “women should shut up and take it response?” Since I am absolute being respectful but extremely strong is this more about them than me? IDK. I think if I was male-presenting that I wouldn’t get a backlash and be dismissed when challenging wrongs.
Hey Lavet – thanks so much for sharing some of your experiences.
I just really want to affirm your willingness to look at these emotions. And yes, processing grief and trauma can take longer and feel more intense than the feelings that come up through the day. You may also need additional therapeutic support to make sense of this – is that something you have considered?
When we’ve experienced trauma, our self-protection can expand into something that is more like a survival strategy. It sounds like your guerrilla boundaries/scorched earth advocacy (great imagery by the way!), is akin to this.
One of the six P’s is Proving Yourself – when this tips into survival it can look more like what you are describing – hypervigilance against being wronged and needing to have control. It comes from the same place – a really human need to create safety.
So if you take your interaction with the teacher and come back to your experience of it. Does it sound like there was a part of you that was needing her to apologise? What would her apology have meant to you?
Soooo helpful here, thanks Sas. Yes, I’ve done therapy before on different occasions. It’s hard to get into a good therapist where I live but I always reserve that as a viable option.
Tipping into survival mode… totally can see this. The hyper vigilance and need to create safety are big when my alarms go off. Can totally see this as “Proving” myself as someone who will not be victimized in the world. Thanks for making that connection, I totally didn’t see myself as identifying with that “P” before. Do you have any reading suggestions around this?
For the teacher situation, I wanted her to acknowledge that she did punitively discipline the entire class for the actions of a couple students. It is against the school’s policy to do that. Though at least 4 families reported this occurred, she refused to admit she made that call. Just totally denial. That denial sends my alarm into hyperdrive. But does it have to? Nope. Can’t wait to get to the “Healthy Adult Self” stuff!
Apologies to me, mean an acknowledgement of wrong doing with a concrete plan/honest commitment for behavioral change going forward. A correction of this behavior on her part could have simply been, “It was such a tough day. I didn’t make the best call but I’m committed to positive behavior modifications. Punishing many students for the actions of a few isn’t something we aim to do going forward.” It would entirely set me at ease. It’s very easy for me to have compassion at we all make mistakes. It would have helped me greatly to see the world as a kinder, more trustworthy place to have a positive response from her. The way she reacted, I got my hackles up and they’ve stayed up around other difficult situations with their school. I want to be able to walk through situations like this still advocating but far less alarmed. To me being “Unfucking Stoppable” would include not allowing my hackles to stay up matter how many times I face these sorts of difficult and disappointing conversations.
I am so glad this helped Lavet. And I am so struck by your self-awareness and ability to reflect on what happened – bravo – that is not easy to do when there are a lot of emotions tangled up.
So we are getting to know your Protector – there is a survival strategy aspect to this protector – it just means it’s learnt to work really hard to let you know that something is at risk. Rather than reading about this (which would probably be more generalist than specific to you), I would highly encourage you to reflect on this aspect of your Protector.
Go through your Life Map and notice – where did this part of you get formed? What are the bloody good reasons why you needed to be able to go full warrior bear? I want you to see that it’s here for a really good reason!
This will also help with that desire you have for ease – seeing that this is a response you have learned for really good reasons can make it easy to extend yourself some compassion, to see that you are safe, that you have this beautifully wise Healthy Adult Self that is showing you more options. You get to be kinder to you.
Wow. Yes. This is what it is all about.
This is such a rich (and challenging) experience to be exploring and to be curious about Lavet.
Something I’ve noticed when my Survivor self is coming forward, I recognize it because there is almost always a quality in my emotions, which is more like panic than just fear and that the panic is amping every other emotion up (and perception of the threat) into a state that feels so damn real.
I hope that the Life Map becomes a valued tool in bringing sense-making and compassion for this part of you.
I really appreciate how you’re distinguishing and naming your experiences, and that you are curious and wanting to discover more about what is happening. I so appreciate being able to read this here, to get to know you better, and to be curious with you about the self-understanding and self-compassion moments that lie ahead.
Thank you Marion. Yes! This Survivor self gives itself away with that intense panicky, sticky, urgent feeling. Such an important observation. Now that I’m learning that, I know that it clouds perception while I’m feeling it. To resist taking action while in that state is super important for me. I’m making a little plan with my spouse that I text him how I am feeling and what the situation is and have a slow little chat with him to get a little perspective first. I can absolutely take actions to advocate and protect myself when I’m in coming from a place of where I know that I’m safe. Soooo looking forward to building that resilient, healthy adult self I can rely on internally when these feelings come up.
Lavet this is wonderful to hear (Marion is such a wise one!).
And I also just want to affirm that you are ALREADY accessing your Healthy Adult Self. She is the part of you that can witness your experience of your Survivor Self, the part that made the decision to experiment with resisting acting from that Surivial Self, and the part that has chosen to text your spouse when you are feeling this.
That HAS is already there, already growing in you 🙂 Bloody brilliant!
Hello Everyone-
Trying to fill out my Life Map for the last 2 weeks has me deeply mired in self doubt.
My discomfort is appearing as a heaviness in my chest and belly.
My resistance patterns are fully engaged and include:
Procrastination by doing everything BUT the Life Map (laundry, cleaning, texting anyone who will respond, scrolling, decluttering, organizing/thinking about organizing)
Perfectionism meaning I can’t bear to mark up the page of my beautifully printed SBS Playbook and I won’t do it 100% correctly (thoroughly, include the right events and accurately divine the meanings I made of these events) so how can I begin?
Passive behaviors including but not limited to eating, sleeping and playing endless games of solitaire on my phone
Paralysis staring at the Playbook; packing the Playbook on both trips of the last 2 weeks and never opening it, confined to my room with Covid (and consequently no work) during orientation week and still not able to start.
Finally, through some combination of adrenaline-fueled desperation and shame, I started the Life Map. I discovered, when I stopped writing, that I had not followed the simple directions for filling out the Map in terms of placement of the answers. <My Perfectionist slaps her palm to her forehead>
I also realized that the majority of my chosen events are in the sad/painful/difficult category. As a response, I have spun a self-doubt story about being too negative and damaged to belong to the SBS. Taking deep breaths now and after rereading Sas’ example, I understand I can add more events and flesh this map out a bit.
Before I erase all of this and flee to the security of my chosen roles as Advocate/Martyr, I think I’ll post and go directly to my job (which is outside my home and where I can spend more time observing my Self-Doubt Loop!! 🙂
Mary! You did it, you did it beautifully and imperfectly.
And I just want to affirm that it sounds like this took a lot of courage and courage always feels like arse (we only ever need courage when we are facing a risk).
I am SO proud of you 🙂
Something to notice here is that you have a Very Sophisticated Protector. It was working really really hard to get you to resist the discomfort of this task.
It won’t always be like this – the more your practice these experiments and play with your self-doubt, the more you will be cultivating your Healthy Adult Self (that’s the part of you that can envision your goals, and encourage you to meet them, and be with your emotions and take action, and has discernment and perspective).
So now you have the beginnings of your Life Map! I highly encourage you to add to it. It is understandable that because this was challenging, your memories were biased towards the difficult and sad. But now that you have ‘cleared your throat’ and added in the memories that were accessible, keep going! Allow yourself to spend some time this week remembering happy, proud, joy-filled memories. Can you let us know how it feels for you as you do this?
I also want to thank you for generously sharing your experience with us. Because I imagine a few folks have found this particularly challenging. BRAVO.
PS: I was involuntarily humming Tina Turner’s epic anthem ‘Proud Mary’ while I wrote this – but I want to rename it as Brave Mary! This would make a great theme tune for you lovely 🙂
I have had Sia’s Unstoppable on repeat recently when driving with the windows open and the volume turned up. I think we need a SBS playlist. 😊
We do! I’m going to start this 🙂
I love this idea so much, Mary!
With the coaching circles – do we sign up to just one like last time, or can we drop in on any that suit our schedule each week? Looking forward to getting stuck into round two!
Thanks!
Hi Hannah, yes you can just drop into which suits you each fortnight. We’re anticipating some people will choose one particular circle and stick with it and others will move between sessions as suits them. Happy round two!
Hi lovely SBS-ers! I’ve just been catching up with your wonderful intros on Orientation Week. Such rich reflections there already. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you tomorrow (Tues 7th) morning at 10am UK time in our coaching circle (other circle times with Scott & Marion are available!) – and diving into the juicy material of module one with you. See you soon x
Hello Lisa-
I think your circle is at noon UK time. Please advise if there has been a change.
Thank you!
Mary
Hi everyone!
I watched the last part today and went through the feelings wheel. Wow! This is a huge learning for me. Last week I did the life map, which I was sooo procrastinating on. Because I knew there will a lot come up and it did… I was getting so angry! Mostly about myself. When I watch at the wheel now I see a lot of hurtful emotions, I felt in the past and they kind of controlling my system. They are mostly in the Angry-Section. So I think it would be good to allow myself to be angry a lot more than I did in the past – but how can I handle feeling angry about myself?
Thanks loves.
Svenja – I’m so sorry I missed your share! There is something funky with my notifications – will get right on that.
I wonder how you’ve found your relationship with your anger since you did your life map?
Its often one of the hardest emotions for us to feel – mostly because we’ve been told lots of stories about it, and anger is a huge source of power – it can feel like a lot!
And anger is such a common and understandable emotion! Its often on the surface of other feelings too. I highly recommend the Anger Iceberg as a way to play with this for yourself. You can just ask what am I angry at? Have a good blurt about it on the page on in your mind, and then ask yourself: what’s underneath the anger?
The only thing I would say is that you get to just be angry! Don’t think you always have to find something else – but there is often that leads to the anger and that can offer some lush insight.
Let me know how that goes Svenja!
I’ve been thinking about these lessons for the past two weeks, and there is so much to unpack. I definitely recognize all six P’s of resistance in my life. I think the dominant ones (now) are proving myself, people-pleasing, paralysis, and perfectionism.
The psychological risks that set off my alarm are rejection, conflict, judgment, failure, and embarrassment (although they all resonate). As a child, I learned that conflict could escalate quickly and become dangerous, and embarrassment and judgment were part of being bullied. I could never do anything “right” to escape this. Even staying silent and trying to blend in didn’t always work. I people please as a way to keep myself safe and avoid these risks. But it gets in the way with everything – I always second-guess myself before sending an email or a message because I’m afraid I might bother someone or ask a “stupid” question.
Proving myself mostly shows up at work. Unfortunately, I have a large wound left from previous experiences that made me feel like I could never meet expectations or do things correctly. I over-compensate by going above and beyond more than necessary in hopes of proving my worth. This is motivated by avoiding loss, judgment, and conflict.
I am fairly good at catching these things in the moment (especially if I’m procrastinating, because I know there’s fear behind it), but that doesn’t make taking action easier. For example, I have to send an email to someone and I’m afraid of looking “bad.” After attempting to perfect it, I just send it because I know I’m overthinking it. But that doesn’t really get to the root of things. I know that I can probably handle the worst outcome (with an email, at least) and that it won’t be that bad, but it still sends me into a spiral of worry.
My biggest block is the emotion cycle. Over the last three years, it’s like I’ve completely disconnected from my emotional circuit. I used to feel big all the time, and I guess it became too much. Whenever I check in with myself, I come up empty. I can at least say it’s frustrating, but I have no idea how to access this layer of myself anymore. Any insight would be appreciated!
Erin – firstly I’m so sorry I missed this share! There is something funky with my notifications – will get right on that.
I know we talked a little about this on the last call, but I just wanted to also reply here because you have laid this out so articulately – your self-awareness is magic to see.
So it might take some time to get practiced at feeling safe to experience the full range of feelings. You can take the Emotion Cycle slowly as you like!
I highly recommend focussing on feeling SAFE. So a daily practice is to sit with yourself when you are regulated and calm, bring up a happy memory – bring it alive in your mind and notice what body sensations come up – there might be a lightness, an expansion. Notice those sensations – do they have a colour, texture, pace/movement, if you could reach in to your body and touch the sensations what might they be like?
Then see if that is related to an emotion for you. Does it have a message for you?
Making this a daily practice is a great way to let yourself feel safe to feel things. I would start with happier/neutral memories. Then see if you can notice when these sensations come up during the day – are there places/beings (usually nature and animals!) that help you access these? Go there often – notice your sensations.
If at anytime, the emotion feels too much, you can remind yourself that you are safe, breathe through it and imagine the feeling getting smaller.
If you aren’t able to feel anything, you can tune into your senses – what can you see, hear, smell, touch – notice what that brings up.
How does that feel as a place to start?
Hi there SBS peoples! I’m on to module 1, and after last weeks coaching call with Marion (5th April), I am practicing giving myself the space to process this content at a pace that feels thorough for me, because I really do want to get things out of this program, and rushing through it doesn’t allow me to take the time to understand the content as properly as I’d want to absorb it. So on that note, I’ve got 3 things to share:
1) I’ve been trying to practice an experiment of being kind to myself through the day. It’s hard because I’m so used to listening to my inner critic. About my critic, her constant criticism is grating and I know she’s supposed to be protecting me from risk, but I genuinely don’t understand why she has to be so mean. Which brings me to my next point…
2) One thing I’ve noticed is that my critic (I think) shows up right before bed, and she tells me mean things. Mostly what she says is that “no one likes you,” and “you don’t have any friends.” These things aren’t true, but she says them, and it happens pretty routinely. I’m not sure what this is all about (or what this is supposed to protect me from) because really it just makes me feel bad, and that right before bed. Like really, Inner Critic, I’m supposed to be going to sleep – what do you expect me to do with this information now?
3) I had a conversation with a friend today about how I’m struggling with work. The whole reason I’ve signed up for this course is how my inner critic shows up in my life, but mostly at work. My trauma from past work experience is something I’ve not healed yet and I carry it with me. I’m really hoping to break this pattern. So, let me tell you how it plays out – let’s say I have a project to do. I do not have the slightest idea of how to start this, because I’m at a new job, with new people, and new processes, and I’m lost. I’m also not fresh out of college, so people aren’t really willing to help me because with the experience I have, I should “just know how to do this.” But of course, I don’t. So I get paralyzed, because what if I do it bad, who do I ask for help. But wait, no one will help me, or I’ll feel dumb asking because they think I should know this, and I don’t want people to think I’m dumb, besides they are all so busy and stressed, so but then if I do the thing and do it badly then I’ll get yelled at, and then I’ll lose my job. Riiiight, great. I’m not even sure I’m aware of this pattern when it happens. Now let’s say I actually get feedback – well, buckle up and get ready for the floodgates to open, because here comes that critic in full effect. My friend tells me that I don’t even hear the feedback in the voice that it’s delivered in, but rather I hear it in the voice of the inner critic. And boy is she mean. This turns into the spiral of shame, the paralysis (or procrastinating), which leads to more bad feedback, and welcome to the endless cycle. It’s like the lyrics in the Eagles song Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave. Last night, my critic reared her head, I had to get out of the bed, and journal about it for a bit, and then I continued to have a bit of a panic about it for another 30 minutes.
I really want to figure out how to help myself through #3, which is really all part of the same cycle I suppose with my inner critic. I need to come up with an experiment for this, I think. I’m open to feedback on this.
And now on to watching the self-doubt loop content. Thanks for listening 🙂
Priti, this is such a great share – I always find it helpful as your coach, to get to know those protector parts of you.
When you get to Module 2, you’ll find we go into the Critic in more detail, but for now I’d love you to start talking about the Critic as a part of you that is trying to protect you.
So it’s not ALL of you – but a part of you. And at bedtime when you hear that Critic Protector, can you see what other parts of you are present? There is the part of you that is noticing the Critic, that can see the patterns and feedback – that to me sounds like your Healthy Adult Self. What does this part of you want to say to the Critic?
In part 3 of your share, you’ve described a really thorough reading of your experience in the Self-doubt Loop. Can you note down for yourself what happens at each stage of the Loop using your example? What insight does this offer you?
Great work 🙂
❤️ Thanks for the encouragement and support Sas!
Hi there! I am observing more things as I go through Module 1 (slowly, thankfully, and with the intent to get as much out of this as I can 🐌🐢☺️). I’m glad I am giving myself permission to do that.
Ok, so rewatching the video lesson, I have some interesting observations to share.
My smoke detector triggers on failure, lose, embarrassment, and maybe rejection & disappointment.
When I thought about the discomfort lesson and the message that says – “don’t do that, you might hurt yourself” – it was important for me to say “again” after this because I am sensitive negative experiences I have had in the past and I’m trying to engineer a world where I don’t experience this risk “again” by doing something…which leads into the next bit about resistance perfectly. I can think of how I’d try to keep people with me by being the perfect version of the person they wanted from me to avoid criticism and keep them liking me/loving me/being my friend/dating me, or whatever that might be.
On the resistance side of things, when I thought about the list of the 6 P’s I realize I do all of these at some point or in different scenarios. I found that interesting.
When I explored a task when I went through self-doubt loop, it was with something at work. This is where self-doubt shows up predominately for me. I felt fear & worry that I’d do something wrong, which would lead to me being criticized or ultimately fired. This discomfort shows up as difficult emotions, memories of past failures & listening to what people have said about me in the past, projecting a future situation. Using the template – “When I experienced this risk of failure, I tried to keep myself safe by perfecting my output, overworking, and people pleasing by doing the thing the way others told me versus thinking it through it myself.” In this case, I didn’t have the option to procrastinate or be paralyzed for more than a few minutes (though I can recall feeling that energy) because there was a time crunch. I will say when this happens – I procrastinate or get paralyzed – this is when the critic shows up criticizing me for not doing the thing at the proper time or if I get feedback and it’s negative, she says why did you make a mistake. I make this mean that I’m not good enough/dumb/can’t do the thing and will not be able to/that I’m not smart enough and everyone is smarter than me and I’ll get fired if I make a mistake.
When the question came up of if I could get out of the loop earlier, I had a ton of resistance even answering the question. When I got to answering it, I thought maybe I could get to the point where I could do the thing with ouch attaching all the worries to it which holds me back. I’m concerned this is going to lead to me bottling up (something I’ve broken the pattern for – longer story), but maybe it’s more so moving through it. And maybe it would help me feel more confident in myself versus showing up as a scared child looking for help and approval. I’d be able to feel the doubt, and tell myself it’s a story, and not reality, so I could move forward versus being stuck for minutes, hours, days.
I wanted to share something more I’ve noticed about my self-doubt loop behaviors. At the risk of being a bit vulnerable here, this tends to manifest as panic/anxiety for me. I’m working through this here and with a support structure locally, but I did want to share more on how this shows up to seek guidance from the coaches here.
For me, the self-doubt isn’t something that shows up and subsides after a few minutes. What happens is, step 1: I contemplate something that isn’t going as planned – Ex: Priti, you haven’t done these X things you need to do for work – then step 2&3: the alarm gets set off – I project that something bad is going to happen at work, I’m going to get called out, criticized, get laid off which is followed by a feeling of discomfort and this manifests as shame. I’ve already predicted the future here and it’s based on experiences I’ve had in the past. For additional context, this generally happens at night, when I’m trying to sleep so that’s not helpful because it disrupts my rest and that causes discomfort for the rest of the day because I’m tired/sleep-deprived. At this point, I’ll have the anxiety, which manifests as a pounding feeling, a buzzing of needing to do something about it, monkey mind of all things I haven’t done and should be doing (which by the way is really helpful when you’re trying to go back to sleep), and it doesn’t stop. In fact, it might slow down for a bit, like Sas said in her video, but then it’ll start up again a couple minutes later and the cycle will repeat. It’s almost like a spiral. At some point, though it’s not a consistent process, I calm myself down to stop the spiral either by breathing through it, talking to myself, getting up and writing all the things down, putting my hand on my heart and trying to comfort myself, or sometimes I think I just get overtired and I fall back asleep.
Anyway, that’s my update on how self-doubt is showing up for me.
On the emotions side of things, I have a lot of resistance to feeling my feelings, especially when asked where is it in our bodies. I’m quite disconnected from that behavior. Not much more to say on that really, other than to mention it so that a picture can get painted.
Priti, I’m struck by how hard your body is working to stop you from feeling your emotions.
Those body sensations are really difficult to be with – and they are such a big distraction from what might be underneath the anxiety.
Something to reflect on is why these responses make complete sense for you? There are likely to be clues to this in what you learned about your emotions, growing up.
Where you ‘allowed’ to have your feelings? If not, what did you do with them? How did you respond?
Where other people in your family allowed to have their feelings? Was there an unspoken family motto about how we deal with emotions?
Sas,
Thanks for your reply. We don’t do feelings in my family, aside from anger, that is. This is something I’ve learned through years of counseling work on the topic and I’m still working through that. What I did with those feelings was bottle them up. At one point, however, while taking a course based on Brené Brown daring way content, this cracked open for me and I wasn’t able to bottle anymore. So yeah, totally makes sense how my body is responding.
Curiously, this work we are doing is really slow for me. I can’t rush it because it takes me time to break down these heavy topics so I can understand them and work through them. It’s good it’s a year long program because module 1&2 are taking 3 months of digging in for me already ☺️
Sas & Coaches,
In orientation week, we were encouraged to explore what it meant to belong to ourselves, did we feel like we belonged to ourselves, and did we think this was important. In the intro video, belonging to ourselves is mentioned again. This concept of belonging to “me” is confusing and I don’t know what it means. Could someone provide more explanation or an example of what it looks like when someone belongs to themselves?
We’ll go into the practical aspects of belonging to ourselves next week when we look at Self-acceptance.
To give you a sense of this, belonging to ourselves is about knowing, liking and accepting who you are: your values, preferences, emotions and needs as well as your history. Belonging is about taking all these parts of you and allowing them to have a space inside you.
With my self-doubt I have experienced all of the six P’s, some of them more than others or just depending on the time in my life or the particular circumstance. Overworking was normal to me, and I remember earlier in my career, not understanding/feeling confused how a colleague said he stopped working for the day at 5 or 6 PM. I knew that was not possible for me. I thought perhaps because he was married and I am not. I would also try to perfect what I was working on not realizing this was not a normal behavior. Overworking is what I’d always done. I very much relate to the embarrassment of spending 40 minutes on an email of 3 lines.
Perfectionism: a former manager told me he knew I was a perfectionist. Again I was confused because I knew my work was never perfect and the amount of hours I spent trying to “get things right,” proved that I couldn’t possibly be a perfectionist.
I have often procrastinated while learning that doing the thing you want to avoid the most should be done first and i’m pretty good at having adapted that behavior now, if not already being fully aware of my wish to procrastinate.
I definitely have a pattern of people pleasing, definitely to a flaw. I used to use food or drink as a way to avoid what I was fearing. I stopped drinking 8 years ago and food is less of an issue. Now I either chain myself to my desk (unhealthy) or go for a walk in the neighborhood (improvement).
What sets off my alarm: When I feel vulnerable and unsure of my audience, I worry that I will be judged and people will think of me less positively. I get worried that people will see me as the imposter despite my tons and years of experience I often feel.
Amanda, I really appreciate your reflections here – and I know you are far from alone in these responses.
It sounds like you have a very sophisticated protector that’s desperate to keep you safe from being judged – and you are working super hard at this.
I’ve found that 100% of the time there is a really good reason why our Protective Self-doubt feels necessary.
I’m curious about what that reason is for you.
Where do you think you learned this?
Some q’s to spark your thinking:
When do you first remember feeling conscious of other people’s opinions of you?
What did you learn from growing up in your family about making mistakes?
Is there someone who comes to mind when you think about being judged?
Right here with you xx
So I grew up with a dad who was an alcoholic. And with that came the need to be well behaved, feeling the need to be perfect and getting things right the first time and doing whatever it took to be my best (while often not feeling it). And while as an adult, intellectually I know this is not a good way to be, it’s a pattern I’ve had my whole life pretty much whatever I take on. Unfortunately even if things might be really good, I still feel doubt about what’s not right.
I remember when I was anywhere between the ages of 6-8 maybe and later in teenage years, there was math homework and my dad was a computer engineer. Mom would say your dad has to help you with math homework. Both my sister and me developed math anxiety. If the answer wasn’t right, the first time around, Dad would be like, why didn’t you get that right and this is how it is done. Period. This is how this works… and generally unhelpful with a critical tone. What I remember about math homework is a lot of crying.
So when at work in my first sales role, I had to figure out discounting for sales proposals the first time, I went into panic (no one seeing it happening). I talked to a trusted mail colleague to get the formulas and this helped and it was fine. In my last job there were a lot of numbers (and computer engineers). They had a confusing way of doing pricing and all I could think was, I’ll never learn this (and frankly I never did learn it as I was let go before it even happened).
I particularly have worries about pleasing men in authority positions (like a boss) and fear the critical part that may result and probably because I worry about it so much, I do all this overcompensating and ultimately in the last 2 jobs I have had, I self-sabotaged myself and let myself believe I was less than despite all the experience I know I have, so the bosses didn’t help me and then there was micromanaging and then it really sucked to the point of termination. Like no, I couldn’t quit and find other work, I had to stick it out and try to be successful (which worked once).
That was the other thing I learned in my upbringing: don’t be a quitter. Like even when it would be healthy to quit. Don’t quit. No one likes a quitter.
It’s like some men see this weakness in me and decide to exploit it in some way and I end up feeling like this scared little girl again, like they know I’m not confident enough. I know this is not all men. I know I can do better than this, but it is an area of struggle and has been for a long time.
What’s frustrating is I know the source and rationally it all makes sense, but when it comes to changing it, a part of me feels like, it’s too late. I’m already 51. I’ve been thinking this way forever; this is ingrained in me. And some bad things have happened to me and while I’m a survivor and got through all that hard shit, I still have these patterns that surface when I feel vulnerable and not sure of my footing. I know these things aren’t my fault but how do I shake these patterns for good? I very much want to lose these patterns.
My dad isn’t even alive anymore and my mom has Alzheimer’s and is in a home for memory care. She’ll say to me, are you still biting your nails. And I’ll say, no, they’re just short right now. And when I’m away from my mom, I think, Fuck, yes, I am biting my nails. I’m feeling insecure in my life right now. I stopped drinking 8 years ago on my own and yes, I still have some shit habits like biting my nails. I’m a human being doing the best I can where I am right now. But I don’t say any of that. I know my parents did the best they could, while I need to fix myself and I’m the only one who can do it.
My mom wanted to be very involved in my life and I wanted space and there was a time when I was out of the family for a couple years. Then there was a death in the family and I felt I had to go to the funeral and then I was back in the mess all over again which was obviously going to happen b/c they were still the same. The distance was healthier for me, while I still have the thinking patterns. And I’m back in the family now and my sister has taken on some traits of my parents. Like she doesn’t know I lost my job almost a month ago. And I’m doing the best I can to make sure she doesn’t find out.
I want to see the good in me. I know it is there but there’s that part of me that wants to put me down, that feeling of not measuring up and when I listen to my mom talk about herself and try to comfort her that she’s better than she thinks, I knew exactly where I learned it from.
It was a joy to chat with you Amanda, and I am so glad you are here.
As we talked about on our call, I recommend moving through the programme to look at this dynamic of overcompensating/proving yourself.
Really looking forward to supporting you through this process 🙂
Yes. The overcompensating/proving myself is a definite pattern I want to break.
I moved onto Module 2 and My protector is the Critic Bystander. Really strong with the Critic.
My experiment will be awareness of what I say to myself and apologizing when it’s cruel/unkind.
I almost didn’t notice it earlier. I was coming out of my garage and was thinking how I need to fix the garage door and was berating myself about how it’s not closing properly and if I had done things differently I wouldn’t be in this situation… And I went up the steps from the basement to the kitchen feeling mad at myself. Then I watched your video (I listened to it on my walk earlier today) and thought, wow, I just berated myself about the garage door and I was pretty mean and i went on for awhile.
Then I listened further – you said self-respect is giving yourself compassion. So then I reconsidered what I was saying to myself and turned it around with how much I was dealing with at the time that I had a problem with the garage door and why I should be compassionate and how noticed how different that feels.
I have some of the other protectors (Scapegoat) in more minor ways like having trouble completing tasks I don’t like/want to do. (Recycle a laptop that no longer works that’s been sitting on the counter for months).
Bystander Experiment: I could do a meditation where I focus on relaxing all the body parts from one to the next to help with going to sleep or just relaxing for a computer break. Or I do yoga and I’m focused on the breathing while moving through the poses the whole time. Like a 6 count breath on the inhale and an 8 count breath on the exhale. And do my yoga practice for 10-15 minutes.
This isn’t a real experiment but I have an interview tomorrow and because I never know what they ask, I tend to prepare for several hours. The interview is only one hour and The hiring manager and the sales manager are both interviewing me. (Usually it starts with a short interview with HR). There’s a chance they could ask me about product knowledge. They may also ask, tell me a time when you did x and how did you resolve it. I prepared just company and product knowledge for 4.5 hours. That was just looking at the website. I told myself not to spend more than 2 hours preparing but that didn’t work. I still have more to prepare tomorrow for questions about me they could ask. This is just a first interview, usually there are 3-4 interviews before an offer. I haven’t interviewed in a few months and I don’t fufill all of the requirements yet they requested an interview about 3 days after I submitted my application (typically it’s 2 weeks). I made myself stop at 8:30 because I hadn’t had dinner and I was definitely in need of a break even earlier. And I was feeling overwhelmed.
How do you know when it’s healthy working vs. unhealthy? Is it a matter or listening to your body?
When you have more than two Protectors you heavily identify with, it’s a sign that you have a sophisticated protector. And it’s likely the beliefs that are fuelling your protector have been running things for years, possibly even decades. So it will take some time to begin to shift these beliefs – for more healthy responses to feel natural and easy.
I think its great that you noticed that feeling of overwhelm.
One thing I would recommend is practising checking in with yourself really regularly – you could even set the alarm to do this every hour. Notice what you need and what you feel: how can you take care of yourself?
This is a core practice of self-acceptance – which is great for diffusing a strong critic.
Sas, I meant to ask about two things – what do you advise about imposter syndrome and what do you recommend about a scarcity mindset and/or all or nothing thinking. I believe these concepts relate to self-doubt. Right?
Yep – I see these as symptoms of self-doubt, so everything we do here helps to interrupt those patterns 🙂
I’m not sure where to post this so starting at the beginning module seemed sensible.
I have such a hard time listening to myself. As in, I do the exercises and try to reflect and dig for authentic answers, but I’m never sure if I’m really being honest with myself or if I’m just finding ways to give the ‘right’ answer, or a surface response, or a response that I feel like is solvable. I feel like I can’t hear what my soul is saying. And it makes me feel like I never know what I truly think or want or could turn into a goal. So much resistance.
I know that part of this is down to Protectors that say ‘don’t want anything and you won’t be disappointed’ and ‘you must put others’ needs before your own, so align your desires with theirs’. But it’s so f*ing frustrating! Like I can’t get past that and find my true self. And it becomes so challenging and tedious to even try that I give up and just let the daily grind take over and never do the deep work or set and work towards longer term goals. I don’t want to do that anymore but I’m having trouble finding the most doable baby steps towards figuring out how to change.
Hey Christine – I am so glad you left a comment here. It’s the perfect spot.
Feeling like you can’t hear your soul – ah that is so evocative of your experience. So frustrating yes! And also, it makes so much sense that if you feel this, you give up – what’s the point if you can’t even hear yourself?!
I get it.
So I suspect you are totally on to something with the idea that this is your resistance.
I imagine your resistance dancing around waving its hands, saying, ‘Don’t look over here – find the ‘right’ answer instead!’ Don’t peek under that, stick to the surface stuff!’ Does that feel right?
So, instead of trying to move past it, I wonder if you could spend some time with your resistance. Give it some attention.
Does it feel possible to have a conversation with it? You could start by imagining this dancing resistance as sitting with you. You can do this on paper, or just sit quietly and close your eyes. See what comes up.
I’m curious to know how old your resistance feels to you? Sometimes having an age helps us to speak to it as we would a child/young person/a friend at that age. You could ask why it’s here, what it wants you to know, what it’s resisting and why.
It might be that you don’t get a lot of information, but you might! The more important thing is the willingness to be with it.
Let me know how you get on!
If you can make it to one of the coaching calls, I’d love to support you further. xx