I was reading Nick Wignall’s article on self-doubt today and it really blew me away that this is one of the biggest areas of work that I do; and I believe any of us do, on a daily basis. Self-doubt keeps us away from the things that scare us, sometimes it comes through definitely in negative voices, like I’m not good enough, or why is the happening to me, or I’m not worthy of us, sometimes it might even come through in positive voicing: “Better not do that, you’re good at this instead.”
Nick’s article focused on these main areas:
- Narcissistic parents
- The Drill Sergeant Theory of Motivation.
- Learned deference.
Three ways self-doubt shows up in our lives:
- Imposter Syndrome
- Self-sabotage
- Indecisiveness
He also states that there are some common signs or indicators that self-doubt is a problem in your life:
- Difficulty taking compliments
- Reassurance-seeking
- Low self-esteem
- Difficulty giving yourself credit
- Feeling like you’re never good enough
If you’re interested, it’s a great article to read.
Here are five ways that I overcome self-doubt, again and again:
Drop into the body
One of the ways that I get through self-doubt is to drop into my body, it’s so common to live life in our heads; in our intelligence. Often we miss out on the feelings and the experiences that our bodies are having. It’s really celebrated for us in our Western culture, our jobs demand that of us. We idolize people with great mental skills and we often shame people for having strong emotions, or any emotions. This represses the emotion.
Whilst repressing emotion might be a good short term solution if we don’t have immediate time to deal with something, or it is overwhelming, long term it is not so good for us, it causes stress and strain, and it also gives us self doubt. Let me explain why: repressing emotion leads to a number of coping mechanisms that actually rupture trust in relationship, a couple of them; chandeliering and stockpiling, actually commonly lead to aggressive or violent eruptions of emotion. After a few of these occasions we can either step up to what’s happening to us, or we can find coping mechanisms or excuses for how to deal with the eruptions. We have an innate sense of what we can and can’t handle, and as this repressed emotion builds we start to get a sense that we might not be able to function in different social situations; certainly not high pressure, high stress. Instead of recognizing that we need help — perhaps visiting a professional therapist, and asking a friend for support, we can build more stories around the uncertainty explaining away why it is the way it is, and it’s fine, I’m good, and I don’t need to do anything about it — It was all them anyway. They triggered me.
This is a way to live, however, you will know somatically that you have something that you’re not dealing with, that you’re living inauthentically, and that you’re covering something up. You’ll also probably feel guilt on some level for blaming the other for that situation when you know it was your fault. That’s a rupture of self-trust.
The stress of repressed emotion can affect many aspects of the body.
Dropping into the body is not always easy, and it might need to be done with a therapist or a coach to begin with if I don’t feel safe or I do have a lot of repressed emotion, however, if I start to build practises around doing it, it can allow me to get more and more intellect around my embodied experience, and that awareness can allow me to unlock more energy to achieve the life that fits around my purpose. For my own story, I still slouch, and I still lean sometimes, I had a tonne of repressed emotion that I’m starting to understand, I’ve been working on it in psychotherapy for a year and I got to the point in March this year where I was able to go forward and work with coaches like Connor Beaton, and Chen Lizra, in order to improve my awareness of my body.
Now I know the feeling tones around anger, hopelessness, despair, grief, joy, excitement, wisdom. I only need to deepen that. I also know the ways in which to feel around these things, question, and reframe. Every emotion that troubles us is a teacher, and a guide to somewhere that we long to be, every single one has a repair feeling tone: for shame there’s empathy, for hopelessness there’s deep relational trust. Emotions need to be felt.
Journaling
Journalling reversals and feelings that surround self-doubt is really useful, usually I just provide a stream of consciousness with no attachment to the outcome, I don’t check it back, I just let it all flow onto the page, I let whatever emotion wants to come out of me come out, and I explore that in the moment with curious questioning.
I do sometimes revisit the journal after the fact but not often, once it’s down it’s down, and if a feeling wants to revisit me then I have the experience to say that it will in the next journaling session, stacking this experience of emotional process deepens my understanding of my life and the way I relate to it, and what voicing is coming through. I never journal more than three pages, and I do it once a day.
I keep an eye out for anything that might look like the three types of self-doubt, and if I see them, which I don’t always, I’ll journal curious questioning in amongst that.
Affirmations
I notice limiting beliefs often, my most common ones are:
What’s the point?
Who am I to create this?
It’ll never be good enough to make an impact, so why bother?
Really all of those boil down to two things, and I know the queen of affirmations, Louise Hay, used to say that almost everyone’s limits come down to these two phrases:
I am not enough, and I am not worthy.
Notice how you feel when you think of these sentences. What changes in your body? What memories come to mind? What voices surface around those two things? Journal them.
I usually write those voices out and provide myself with reversals. The truth is, if I don’t work on the root cause then I won’t evolve. I could spend my whole life journaling around the symptoms that come from not feeling enough, and not feeling worthy. My counter to this is to change those statements simply whenever I’m aware of them.
I am not enough becomes I am enough.
I am not worthy becomes I am worthy.
Every time I change them I have to navigate the voicing that appears; the memories and feelings that are attached to those.
Instead of waiting for something in our physical environments to prove that we are worthy or enough, we can cultivate that confidence, assured nature, and patience of body and mind within ourselves. Once we cultivate this feeling tone; this energy within us, we can bring it to our tasks, there may even be tasks in my life that fall away, because they subtly involved negativity around these beliefs. Some of the things that build my life might come from a place of not feeling worthy, not feeling enough. For example, I might go for a job: in the live music industry I was a sound engineer, if I don’t feel worthy perhaps I go for the job of second in command on the team, and I keep working that job forever. If I apply for another job, say in an office environment, I might see myself as being a worker, and not a leader. We all have our own individual talents, some of us are not natural leaders, some of us are, yet we can all lead ourselves in our life journey. If you envision being first you have a chance of coming first. If you envision being a leader, a nurse, a doctor, an executive, a musician, then you start the path to becoming one. A common misconception in life is that if I aim for the position just below where I want to go, then the steps on that path will prepare me for the position that I actually want. Not true.
Each path is it’s own path, with it’s own unique challenges, we can’t know what they are, or what is required within us to reach those goals, unless we start walking the one we actually want to walk.
Somatics
Somatics is a topic that I’m really getting into. Soma means the body so somatic means anything bodily; somatic experiencing is really knowing and experiencing our body and how it feels, and moves, in different states.
I’m a part of an amazing group with Chen Lizra, Chen is teaching us all how to embody our experience through community, tips, and techniques.
Somatics doesn’t just include regular exercise and the way we do that, it includes the way we sit in a chair; do we slouch or lean backwards, the way we stand, the way our body relations with others in conversation, how confident we feel to be elegant in each moment. How safe and secure we feel in our nervous system when we’re expressing our opinions. I know I have much to learn here and I’m very grateful for that.
In terms of self-doubt, it usually shows up for me when I put my arm on my neck to soothe myself, or my fingers will go up to my brow, and my brow might tilt forward a little. Noticing these clues, and if I have time to get curious to what’s going on, allows me to explore my self-doubts.
Somatic experiencing is really embodying emotion in a movement basis as well, we are partly animals that want to express themselves in movement, as long as you’re not hurting anyone then move your hands and be expressive, dance, sing, play music, enjoy life.
Align to my purpose
Aligning to my purpose let me know that I am on a road to somewhere bigger and that messing something up isn’t the end of the world, it might be the beginning. We all fail, and failure gives life lessons to learn from, in fact, the key to growth is often in the darkness of the failure; from those lessons, we get to embody that wisdom, and we can learn how to listen to our gut and heart signals.
Aligning to my ‘why’ and cultivating my purpose through values, goals, and talents. Stepping into that builds skills, and tools which will get me to the next phase of living my life. Wignall mentions in his article that self-doubt loves a vacuum (although this is metaphorical because we can’t actually experience a vacuum), what he says is that we avoid almost everything and zone out; distract ourselves with anything and everything in order to not feel what we’re feeling and experience what we’re experiencing. It may feel good to watch TV series every single night of the week, however, if you use it to numb out, it’s a really quick way to find yourself in a rut. Life is dynamic and if we check out of it, it’s easy to find ourselves behind in what it is we want to achieve. Again, that’s O.K., but you’ll have to live with the decision that you chose to not go after your dreams. People say that one of the biggest regrets of the dying is not chasing the one big dream that they had.
I’m following my purpose now and it’s evolving constantly, I believe we get little clues and synergies to stay open and curious to in our life. So I suppose the regret comes from that moment that they had to close themselves off to them. I know I’ve had to do that a lot in my life, and I’m choosing to not live that way anymore.
Closing thoughts
Self-doubt is such a natural part of life, indeed, Wignall mentions in his article that there is a healthy version:
“…the ability to doubt ourselves can be a good thing. Without it, we’d become overly confident and end up making all sorts of bad decisions and unhealthy choices.”
However, there is very definitely the unhealthy, and toxic, kind of self-doubt that keeps us stuck and stagnant. I mention stacking decisions a lot because overwhelm is such a huge force in our world, and indecisiveness is one of the three types of self-doubt that keep us stuck and stagnant. Stacking decisions can help us little and often to start to growing habitual routines that serve us. We can start choosing to reframe those self-doubts.
What habits do you have to evolve through unhealthy self-doubt?
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Previously published on “Change Becomes You”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: niklas_hamann on Unsplash