How to embody self-confidence

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to Happy. This week, I am back talking about imposter syndrome and why it is more than just a mindset problem. Obviously, I'm talking about this because it's what I'm super passionate about. Also, I will be opening my Beyond Confident program very soon. If you have struggled with a lack of self confidence, if you experience imposter syndrome, and if this is a problem that you feel like you've really tried hard to shake, and no amount of effort or trying to think your way out of it, or no amount of success that you achieve, has helped you to overcome these feelings of somehow not being good enough, questioning whether you belong in the position that you're in, whether it's in your work or in your studies, or whatever it might be. Then really I want to share with you today why I think so many solutions that are offered out there and the advice out there is so limited, and where I think you

1:35 should go instead, whether it's with me or with somebody else, or work that you do on your own, give you some tools, give you some help to understand why you've had so much trouble overcoming this problem, and what you perhaps need to look at doing instead. So imposter syndrome, for clarification, is a persistent feeling of inadequacy despite external evidence to the contrary. It's a persistent and evasive feeling that you are not as smart or talented or skilled as other people think you are, even when you're getting results in the external world, when you are doing well at your job, you're succeeding at university, you're getting promoted.

2:17 Everybody looks at you and sees that what you're doing is a success. But on the inside, you feel like somehow or other you're fooling them. And the reason for that is because you have a difficulty internalizing your achievements. Therefore, what you do instead is when you are successful and you can see that you're successful. You've got the piece of baby, you've got the job, you've got the credential. The story that you tell is that you just got lucky. You're in the right place at the right time. Somebody took a shine to you. Upper management just liked you, and they've given you a leg up. You knew somebody who gave you a foot in the door. Or you work really, really hard. You tell yourself that the reason that you have achieved what you have is because you work so much harder than other people to be able to do what you do. So you have a sense that for other people this comes easily. They are the people who are naturally talented or gifted, intelligent, capable, They just can make sense of things, whereas you feel like that's a real effort, and therefore you don't consider yourself to be in that same kind of league as those other people. So there's this constant comparison and coming up short in your own mind. But it is very much an internal experience because, like I said, other people looking at you, they don't see any problem. They just see you doing well, kicking goals, unless, of course, your imposter syndrome is so great that it has actually held you back from achieving things that you would like to achieve,

3:49 from applying for jobs, from going for promotions, from applying for the course that you might want to do at university, because you who have actually it's so big a problem that you've actually told yourself that that wouldn't be possible. So you've protected yourself from what you considered would be an absolute failure and disaster by just not putting yourself out there at all. But most of the time when we see imposter syndrome, we're seeing it in people who are very successful, outwardly successful and at the highest levels of organizations corporations, in their own business, making lots of money, you know, doing all of the things. And I guess the other key characteristic about imposter syndrome is that it doesn't necessarily go away the more successful you become. In fact, when you are unable to internalize your achievements to the point that you dismissed, deny bad a way, tell yourself it was just a fluke, it was a mistake. You just got lucky. Then when you can't internalize your achievements, then the higher you climb, the more successful you become.

4:49 Then the greater the visibility, the greater the exposure, and the greater the fear that at any moment it could all fall apart and people will actually realize that you aren't as smart as they think you are. It can actually, for some people, get worse the more successful you become, because the stakes get higher and the more you feel like you've been faking it. Then the more scary it is that you could potentially be exposed and that could all come tumbling down. So that's imposter syndrome. I know I've talked about it before, but if you knew here, or if you've missed that episode, then there you go. There's a recap. So this has been the focus of a lot of my work for the last couple of years. The reason that I really clocked onto this and wanted to do something about it was because when I noticed it in well, I've noticed it in myself, and I noticed it in other people. Then I got to googling.

5:38 I got to looking at what's what's the evidence based treatment or intervention for this? Like what do we do with this? Number One, there is no evidence based treatment or intervention because this is not a disorder or a condition that you would find in the DSM like this is a form of anxiety. Really, it's a term that was coined back in the nineteen eighty, but it's not actually something that you can see a doctor and be diagnosed with. Everybody sort of knows what it means, but there has not been necessarily a lot of research into what you can do to overcome it. A quick look on the internet and what people who are so called experts in the field will tell you is that this is a thinking problem. That the story that you're telling yourself is untrue, the fact that you're convincing yourself that you are not skilled and capable when you actually are.

6:26 You just need to change the story. Now, this is old cognitive therapy. This is the cognitive approach to treating any kind of psychological struggle or mental health issue. Change the way you think, you will change the way you feel, and you will change the way you behave This is valid, This is true. We can change our feelings by changing the way we think. We think a lot of unhappy thoughts, We're going to feel a lot of unhappy feelings and that's going to impact the actions that we take in our life. Unfortunately though, that is very limited and many many people have tried that and they still are struggling with this issue. So in my audible original which I wrote called The Imposter Solution, I discussed that we need to be looking at somatic approaches body based approaches. We need to be looking at how you regulate your nervous system.

7:15 I wanted to go into a bit more detail today to explain that to you and to talk about a few different levels. I guess that we need to address if we want to get a lasting solution, a lasting result, and while it may still crop up from time to time we're all human, but something that will actually truly transform your experience so that this is no longer an issue for you. So what do I mean when I talk about somatic or body based treatments or interventions. This is key. We need to be talking about the role that your nervous system plays in your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors. If we're just talking about, oh, I'm telling myself this story. If I tell myself a different story, then I won't feel as anxious or I won't feel as scared, and then I'll be more likely to take the step apply for the job that can work. It's quite simplistic, and what you will probably know, and what I know, is that you can't always change the thoughts that you think. This is why I'm such a fan of mindfulness and mindfulness as an approach to managing thoughts, because it doesn't require us to change your dispute or challenge our thoughts. It teaches us that we can simply observe the story that we're telling ourselves and we don't have to buy into it and were therefore, we don't have to get so hooked on that story being true.

8:35 We can see it for what it is, which is just some passing mental phenomenon, and kind of unhook and let it go. And I find that to be a more effective approach for dealing with unhelpful thoughts than actually disputing and challenging thoughts, because you literally can't help what you think. You will have habitual thoughts that will pop up in your head all of the time, but regardless even with mindfulness, even with observing the thought, unhooking from the thought, observing the emotion that you're experiencing, the resistance or the hesitation that you're feeling, the fear that you might be experiencing. Having strategies to calm that down. You might sort of find that this is a very and that's all very helpful. This is quite a persistent and pervasive problem until you start to understand the role of the nervous system. So let's just talk about that really briefly.

9:20 Your autonomic nervous system is what keeps you alive. It keeps your heart beating, it keeps you breathing, It keeps blood pumping through your body, all of your cells oxygenated, and it is responsible for things like blinking and swallowing and things that you have no conscious awareness of. This is the key, right You don't have any conscious awareness of all of these things happening. They're just happening in the background. Like the operating system of your computer, this is the operating system of your body. Now here's what's really key to understand. We are wired for connection from birth. We are biologically wide to connect to another human being required otherwise we would not literally survive. Human babies don't survive with another person. So we have an in built connection system where we turn towards another person to keep us safe. This is true for every single human being.

10:15 On the planet. So we are seeking through gestures and noises and eye contact, and we're looking for somebody to return to us with a queue of safety. Somebody is going to respond to our needs. This is also the basis of attachment theory, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast, and it's all actually connected. It's all really relevant and connected, as you will soon see. So our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system, is like this inner surveillance system that is constantly scanning for queues of safety. Are we safe, are we welcome? We are we okay? Are we warmed? We have everything that we need? Is there a person here who is attending to my needs?

10:59 And so when we pick up on queues of safety in the environment with other people, in terms of even in our own body, then our connection system is on. When we move out of connection, when our nervous system senses danger or threat, when somebody is not responsive to our needs, or when we pick up any queue in the environment that signals to us that maybe we're not safe, then we move out of connection into protection. We have a connection system and a protection system operating all of the time. These are survival systems. In our body. And this starts from infancy, but these patterns develop over time.

11:39 So then you grow up and you go to school, and you make friends, and you have relationships, and all sorts of things happen in your life, and the whole time, your nervous system is responding to the environment around you, what's happening in the world. It's responding to relationships that are happening, the people that are around you, and it's responding also to just even what's happening within you, within your own body. So your heart racing a little bit, is your mouth dry, So even those sorts of physiological changes in your body, your nervous system is picking up on all of that and interpreting all of that, and it's making adjustments. It's either revving up your energy, it's slowing down your energy. It's constantly making these little tweaks and adjustments in your body in response to whether it perceives that you are their accues of safety or cues of danger in your world. When you go into the protection system, there's two different ways that this can go.

12:33 You can either move into what we know as fight or flight. This is where you become elevated hyper aroused. This is where you experience anxiety, maybe irritation, anger. You know, this is an upward, upward regulating kind of response. This is when you're moving upwards. If you think about the window of tolerance, which I've talked about on this show before as well, this is when you're moving up into hyper arousal. And that is one protection response that we have available to us. The other protection response we have available to us, it was when we go the opposite way and we go into shutdown. I withdraw, I disconnect, I disengage from people. I go into avoidance. I go into what is called collapse. This is hypo arousal. And this is what you would be on the bottom of the window of tolerance. If you want to go back to attachment theory, you might call that anxious and avoidance.

13:26 They all tie together. So what is important to understand is these are survival patterns and what will happen is over time, through your experiences, your personal history, the relationships you have with your caregivers, the relationships that you have at school, or whether you were bullied, or what happened in you, you know, with important figures in your life or in your external environment. The environment that you grew up in, how safe or unsafe it was. Then you will naturally kind of lean towards one or the other of these. You will either go to this agitated fight flight response, or you will have a tendency to default towards a disconnected withdrawn state. But what happens from there is you have the capacity to come back into safety.

14:11 Safety is regulated, safety is calm, Safety is inside your window of tolerance. So these become our natural kind of habits of responding to any queue, no matter how subtle, no matter how rational or not rational, any sense in our nervous system, that we might be at risk, that there might be some threat. Now, remember that we're not at threat of being muled by a tiger, where most of us are not at risk of losing our home. We are not in physical danger. So when I talk about accues of threat, what we're often talking about is that somebody might not be happy with us, That we might be judged negatively, that we might embarrass ourselves or do something that's kind of humiliating, that we might be rejected, that we might be disappointed. Often, our safety or not is in terms of our psychological and our emotional safety.

15:03 So this is what's important to understand. Your nervous system operating in the background surveillance system. You're going through your day, you're going through your life. You've got all sorts of stuff that is programmed into your nervous system, into your operating system based on your own personal history, your past experiences, things that have happened in your life. They're all stored away there. So the most subtle things, the most subtle cues in your environment can be the thing that trigger without you even being conscious of it. Can be something that triggers you into a out of safety and out of connection into a protection kind of phase, and you will normally kind of default to either fight, flight, agitated, aroused, anxious, angry, irritated kind of response, or like I said, withdrawn and shut down. You will know yourself, You probably know yourself which one that you likely tend towards. Now, if you are not consciously aware of this, what can happen is you have a reaction in a moment to something like you will have a thought and a feeling and a behavior, and you don't necessarily know where that came from because you're only consciously aware of I've got a thought. It creates a feeling I've got a thought, I'm a failure, I've stuffed it up, I've done something wrong, creates a feeling of shame, humiliation, embarrassment, fear, And therefore I behave in a particular way. I either go into hyper over thinking, over working, over preparing, trying to fix things, seeking reassurance, opinion hopping, you know, all of those sorts of things that we do, or we're going to shut down, pull

16:34 the blanket over our head, I don't want to talk to anybody, withdrawal from the world, disconnect. So we are aware of that level. We are aware of the level of I'm having a thought, this is how I'm feeling, and this is how I'm responding. What we're often not aware of is the fact that that was triggered by something in your nervous system that sent that message to your brain. The top down approach to coaching and therapy is let's look at the thought, let's look at the feeling, and then what did you do. If we change that thought, we can change that feeling and we can change the response the outcome. That's top down, that's looking at your brain and how your thoughts impact your feelings in your body and your body sensations, and oh, when I'm having a thought that I'm a loser, when I'm having a thought that I'm going to make an idiot of myself, that makes me feel kind of nauseous in my stomach.

17:26 So I'm aware that I have the thought in my head and it creates a feeling in my body. That's top down. What's actually happening is is all these little things going on in your nervous system, picking up on cuesing your environment, sending those messages up to your brain, and then because your brain's job is to make meaning, then your brain layers the story over the top of it. So oftentimes it's not the fact that your brain is creating a response in your body. It's actually the fact that there is something happening in your body which is sending signals to your brain, and then your brain is making up the story in response. It's a thing called story follows state. The story in your mind follows the state of your nervous system. So if we are trying to address this at the thinking level, then we're missing the mark completely. We actually have to be responding to this at the state level, at the nervous system level, learning to tune in to what is happening in my body and how do I cultivate feelings of safety in my body so that I'm not going into these protection modes, these self protection modes, that I'm not having these anxious reactions or these shutdown responses because I can keep myself inside my window of tolerance. Now you might be wondering what has all this got to do with imposter syndrome and self confidence. Well, imposter syndrome is fear. It's fear of judgment. It's a fear I don't belong Remember I said that we are wired for connection. So any feeling that I don't belong here, that these people are going to reject me, these people are going to find me out.

18:48 This is a fear that a connection is being threatened. That's that's like essential to survival. And so even though we perceive it as I shouldn't be doing this job or I'm going to make a fool of myself or going to be so embarrassing when they realize that I don't belong here, that's going to be humiliating. Like that's the story that we're telling ourselves in actual fact, what's happening is our nervous system is perceiving that our safety in connection and belonging is under threat, and so we're going into this survival state, this protection state, and we're going into patterns that are either like I said, perfectionism, over working, overthinking, over analyzing, this hyper aroused state, or we're going into avoidance, shut down, procrastination, withdrawal, hypo aroused.

19:30 So we're seeing these outward behaviors, we're thinking, we know what is causing it an actual fact, it's all coming from our nervous system feeling unsafe. So we talk about somatic approaches and somatic responses. Then what we're talking about is using things like calm, deep breathing. We're using things like tuning into our body, checking in with where we're at in our nervous system, things like yoga, things like eft tapping, anything that kind of affects a change at the nervous system level, like calms and regulates your nervous system so that then you can have a different experience in your thoughts and feelings and behaviors instead of coming at this from the other way around. And as you know, if you put all of this together. You know, I've talked before about widening that window of tolerance so that you have increased capacity to be able to handle situations you might feel stressed and pressured and overwhelmed, like we're all going to feel that at times, We're all going to be in situations that feel uncomfortable. But the wider that window of tolerance, the wider that optimal zone of arousal, the more you can comfortably handle while maintaining that sense of safety. Safety in your nervous system, not safety as in physical safety, but nervous system safety. Safety and connection is hardwired into your biology. So it's not about never being stressed or never being out of your comfort zone,

21:01 or never having difficulties or challenges, or having to have conversations that you don't want to have or do things that feel awkward and uncomfortable and scary. It is about being able to recognize what's happening in your nervous system, to have enough curiosity and compassion and kindness to be able to be with that, to be able to have tools to regulate that response, and still be able to do the thing that feels uncomfortable. When we have a nervous system response that takes us out of connection and into one of these adaptive protection systems. You know by now what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fight, flight, shut down, withdraw, disconnect, avoid, whatever. When we don't have thoughtful awareness of what's happening, we just see our response, and then we go into self judgment and self criticism.

21:48 And this is the least helpful thing we can possibly do, because when we judge and criticize ourselves again, our nervous system responds as if it is another person attacking or judging or criticizing us. So all we do is almost keep ourselves out of that connection and in protection are we become the attacker and the attack. When we go into self judgment and self criticism, we become our own worst enemy, and our nervous system doesn't know the difference. Our nervous system responds the same way whether it is you attacking you or somebody else attacking you or judging or criticizing you. So curiosity and self compassion is fundamental to all of this as well. So that is a little explanation of how we need to approach any kind of change somatically as well as cognitively want to touch briefly now on emotions as well. I think the other thing that's really key to understand when we talk about our instinctive survival strategies and our instinctive protective responses. Like I said, these are adaptive survival strategies that we learn very early on. So when you feel fearful of doing something, when you feel there is this inner resistance and you can't really put your finger on it, but you know within you that there is something that feels scary for you to do, to put yourself out there, to launch your business, to charge a higher fee, to go for the job, to know to set a boundary with somebody, even there is something in you that stops you. There is this fear and this resistance. And again, sometimes what

23:18 we immediately do is we go to judging and criticizing ourselves for that. I've heard people saying, my god, I'm thirty five years old, I'm forty years old, and I'm still doing this, Like what is wrong with me? This judgment and criticism. It's so much more important that you are able to go to that part of you like go and this again this is also somatic work, but go to where do you feel that in your body? Where do you feel that fear and that resistance, and meet it with curiosity and kindness. Any resistance or fear that you feel is part of you, and maybe an old, old, old part, like maybe a little little child's part that is trying to protect you from something the best of intentions in the world. It is trying to protect you from something. And the more you shut it down and try to deny it and judge it and shame it, then the more it's just going to dig in and the more it's going to feel unseen, unheard, unwelcome and unsafe.

24:15 And this is a part of you. So we have to go to that part, work out what is it that you're trying to protect me from, validate it, acknowledge it, and then off offer kindness and protection. This might sound really weird to you, but it's really important no matter how you sort of phrase this in your own mind, but be able to have a process, to be able to connect with that part of you, to acknowledge it and validate it, forgive it. Forgiveness is key, and to then be able to embody that feeling of safety, to be able to reassure that part of you that it's okay. Now understand that you've been trying to protect me from this. It's okay, Like I'm a grown up now I've got this.

24:58 Everything's okay. However weird that might sound to you, But some sort of process where you can meet that fearful part of you with acceptance. I talked last week about mindfulness and acceptance, and this is part of that as well. It's like having some the ability to be accepting and curious and kind and compassionate to the parts of yourself that you are judging as being unhelpful to you or getting in your way. Accept this feeling because it's here. And what other choice do you have, because otherwise all you're doing is resisting it. And what you resist persists. That is a fact. What you resist persists. If you keep on trying to shove that down, ignore it, deny it, shame at judge it, it's just going to dig its heels in, its little heels in even more strongly. So that's just food for thought as well. So when we're talking about making change, cultivating self confidence, a sense of worthiness and wholeness, a sense of belonging, a sense that we are capable and that we deserve whatever success it is that we are looking to achieve in life, then we've got to just think more broadly than just changing how we think and expecting that that's going to change our world. We have to be coming at this through multiple levels, somatic, emotional. There are so many other processes that we can bring into this process as well, like strategies and tools that we can bring in as well to be really coming at this from a multi layered

26:31 perspective and therefore getting some really deep and lasting change. And when you achieve that deep and lasting change, if you become more confident in yourself, if you become more centered and grounded, and more confident in your value and your worth and your worthiness regardless of anything on the outside, regardless of any job or piece of paper, or degree or salary or partner or house you whatever it is, anything on the outside world. When you have a really solid sense of your worthiness and wholeness, regardless of external surroundings or other people's opinions, then from that place, everything in your life changes. It's not just about the job and speaking up in the meeting and getting the salary or launching the business or raising the rates. It's about boundaries in your personal life. It's about expressing opinions in any room and knowing that you have a voice and that you can contribute to a conversation, knowing that you don't need to be the expert on anything to have something to contribute. That's a value. It changes everything. It is a game changer, not just in your work, but in your entire life. And that is the reason why I'm making it the focus of my work right now, because I believe that too many people, women in particular, but not just women, are held back by these core feelings of unworthiness and undeserving the which are showing up in these unhelpful patterns of protection. We're trying our hardest

28:04 to keep ourselves safe in the world and to avoid judgment, rejection, criticism, feelings of not belonging. And if we just had the strategies and the tools and the understanding, then we could get through this, have this not been an issue anymore, and we would have a whole lot of more empowered, inspiring, strong confident women doing amazing work in the world. And that is what I'm working towards. That is why I'm sharing this with you and if you feel like this is of relevance to you, and if you would like to work more deeply and either with me one on one to do this work, or if you would like to join my group program. I am currently calling for people who are interested to just express interest. Beautiful thing about the group program is that there is such a solid sense of community in that as well. It's connecting with other people and other women, particularly who experience the same thing, who can champion you, champion your sixcess, help you see your own blind spots to work through this together.

29:03 That is just a little introduction to how to cultivate embodied self confidence and some ideas for where you can start if you would like to make some changes in that area yourself, but by all means, please hit me up if you're interested in doing more work around that with me. And like I said, this is just a taste. There is so much more. But I do hope that that helps you to understand that there is so much more to this than just changing your thinking, and there is a solution. That absolutely is a solution, And once you get to know these strategies and have them work for you, it is absolutely a game changer. I hope that this has been of value to you. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to catch you next week on another episode of Crap You to Happy