The Dark Side of Personal Development | The Billion-Dollar Industry Keeping Women Feeling “Not Enough”

I’ve been quietly breaking up with the personal development machine, and this time, I think it’s for good.

In this deeply personal episode of The Femme Cast, I unpack the darker side of the self-help and spiritual industry: the high-vibe performance culture, emotional bypassing, and the billion-dollar cycle that keeps people chasing the next “healed” version of themselves while quietly reinforcing the belief that they’re still not enough.

We talk about:

🎤 The hidden conditioning inside coaching and spiritual spaces
🎤 Why “doing the work” can turn into an endless fixing loop
🎤 The pressure to package your purpose into promises of money, love, or success
🎤 Fear-based resistance vs. true misalignment
🎤 Burnout, self-trust, and reclaiming your inner authority
🎤 Money wounds, financial fear, and taking your power back
🎤 Women’s empowerment, patriarchal conditioning, and redefining abundance on your own terms
🎤 What happens when you stop being externally led and start becoming internally guided

I also share the moment I realized my work was never meant to fit neatly into the business coaching mold, why I’m stepping away from performative online culture, and how returning to my voice, my story, and my intuition is changing everything.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted from constantly trying to “fix” yourself, if you’ve spent years investing in healing but still feel stuck, or if you’re questioning the narratives you’ve been sold about success, worthiness, abundance, and purpose, this conversation is for you.

Transcript

Welcome And A Season Of Change

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey you guys, what is up? Welcome back to the show. I am so excited and grateful to have you guys here. I'm a little raspy. I'm still in mourning voice, hence, why there's not going to be a video clip of today. Lots of changes happening here at the Femcast as I go through a little bit of a I don't know, transition, transformation, unbecoming, becoming, whatever you want to call it. Definitely in a massive period of moving just into a different version of myself and honestly, not even sure what's waiting for me on the other side. All I know is that change is happening and I'm surrendering to the change. And oddly enough, I've started talking and writing a lot about my story and the original stages of my unbecoming, who I'd always been when I was traveling through Asia. And in doing so, I've realized that I'm like, oh, I'm kind of going through the same process again. So I'm kind of just leaning into it. And so what I wanted to share with you guys today is what you've probably noticed if you follow me online lately and if you've been listening to my podcast episodes, I've been quietly breaking up with personal development. And this has been happening for quite some time. And this is not my first breakup with personal development. We did break up once and we got back together. Broke one of my own rules in that. But I think this is the official breakup. I think we're done. I think we've gone as far as we can go together. And I'm just not available for it anymore. And don't get me wrong, listen, I'm a huge believer of, you know, always bettering ourselves and working on ourselves and healing ourselves and doing the inner work. I'm a huge believer in all of that. But what I don't like is this darker side of spirituality and the personal development community that I've seen over time. This high-vibe spiritual movement, this constant culture of emotional bypassing and making us feel like we're broken or not enough, or that we constantly need to be in this never-ending cycle of fixing ourselves and chasing this version of ourselves. And how it's really become a multi-billion dollar industry. And keeping people on the hook, investing again and again, month after month, year after year, working with more coaches, more mentors, more healers, trying to become this version of themselves that is, I hate to say it, rooted in the very foundation of the not enoughness that probably brought you to the spiritual personal development community in the first place. Because you're constantly being fed this narrative of what fulfillment looks like, of what success looks like, of what enough looks like. It's this bombardment of content telling you love yourself, be authentic, be you, but also, you know, all these other checkboxes. The perfect have the perfect relationship, have the perfect body, have the perfect business, have the perfect career, make a massive income, have X number of zeros behind your salary at the end of the year, have this kind of a house, have this kind of a car, live this kind of a lifestyle. And at the same time, right, while you're chasing all of that, you're being told to ignore, or maybe not ignore, but bypass, skim through the very wounds that brought you to personal development and healing in the first place. The fears, the trauma, the heartbreak, the old wounds, the old patterns that just won't go away, the limiting beliefs that haunt you in the middle of the night that you're afraid to share out loud because people will tell you that you're being negative or low vibe. I've seen this. I've experienced this, and with so much apology, I've probably perpetuated this because that's just become the norm, and I don't know. Hang on, sorry, guys. I don't know when I saw it exactly. It was like a slow, gentle unfolding that I've seen over a long period of time. And at first I kind of tried to deny it, you know. The first time I broke up with spirituality was very, and and personal development was very much about no, no, no, I'm I'm not buying into this high-vibe bullshit. Like I need to feel what I'm feeling. I'm feeling a lot of stuff right now, and I need to be able to move through it. And so I'm detaching from anything that's telling me not to. And I did that. And it wasn't an easy process, but I did it. And I'm so glad that I did. And then once I did do that, I was able to kind of go back into the spiritual community and personal development space and say, hey, here's what I've learned. And that was kind of fine for a while. But then there's this whole other like narrative of you know, what you should be talking about, what you shouldn't be talking about, how you should be talking about, what you want to talk about. I was in a conversation, and I think, I think in general, I think business coaching is where you really get the worst of the worst. I was in this conversation with a group that I had joined not too long ago, actually. It was probably within the last year, I think. Earlier, I think it was probably earlier in 2025, actually, if I'm being completely honest. So probably just over a year ago, at the time that I'm recording this. And, you know, we're having this conversation about, you know, it's all about business coaching and how to get your your coaching practice or your healing practice, you know, out into the world and you know, marketing it to people, which is an important part of business. Like I'm not, if you have a business and you're not doing marketing, you're doing something wrong, right? So, you know, we're in this conversation and you know, we're always fed this narrative that your your your product, your service, whatever it is that you offer the world, always has to promise one of three things. It either has to promise that it'll make people healthy, it'll promise people that it'll bring people love, or it'll promise people that it'll they'll have money. I could never make my con my can never make my work fit into one of those containers. I couldn't. I could not. For me, and we started to have this conversation, you know, about what I was putting out into the world at the time. And I remember the coach asking me, well, okay, well, well, what I I said, you know, you know, it's it's not about any of these things for me, you know. My work and what I put out into the world isn't about any of the above. And so for me to sit here and try and communicate that or find a way to make that make sense, to me, feels out of integrity. And she very snarkly kind of turned to me and she's like okay, well, what is it about then? I go, I want to make an impact. I want to make a difference in people's lives. I want to be able to share a story, to share a message, to share a thought that makes people think about things differently. You know, a lot of what I do is breaking conditioning, breaking the way that we think, the way that we've been taught to think, the way that we've been conditioned to think, the way that we've been conditioned to behave, the ways that keep us small and disempowered, right? And a lot of this, you know, does come from our relationships, it comes from family, it comes from school. But deeper than that, a lot of it is patriarchal conditioning, especially when it comes to women. We need to start rethinking who we are and the power that we have and the potential that we have in the world. And those are the perspectives that I believe need shifting, right? And so we're having this conversation, and you know, she's like, okay, well, what do you, what is it that you want to promise? What's what's your promise? I said, my promise is that I want to make an impact and I want to be able to help women see things differently and see their experience and their life and their potential differently. And that did not bode well. I mean, not it did it's not that it got nasty. It didn't, of course. It was very polite. But you could tell it didn't quite fit the mold. It didn't, it didn't quite fit in with um, I suddenly felt like that girl in high school who had a hard time fitting in with like the popular clique in school. Like it felt exactly like that, you know. And I was just like, fuck it, like I'm just so done. Like, you know, come hell or high water. You know, if if this wasn't, if this, if the if what I'm supposed to share with the world isn't supposed to make any money whatsoever, then fine, like so fucking be it. I just need to share what it is that's on my heart to share, you know, and it's not that I don't believe that each and every one of us, and here's my belief. So I'm gonna share this with you. And I'm and I want you to know that I am really choosing to lean into this now because I have for the longest time turned my back on this belief, and as a result of turning my back on this belief, right, I have faced a lot of financial difficulty. Okay, over the last several years, and it's because you know, I kept giving my power away on how I'm supposed to do things, on how I'm supposed to make money, on how I'm supposed to put myself out into the world, on how it is I'm supposed to be of service to other coaches, guides, healers, or whatever on how to best do that. And so I am taking my power back from all of the advice, from all of the how-to, from all of the five-step programs, ten-step programs, whatever. I'm taking my power back now, and what I am doing is just sharing my message with the world, sharing my story, sharing what's on my heart to share, following my intuition on what steps I need to take next, and trusting that all of the abundance that I desire, everything that you know I've been working so hard for will show up for me when I just learn to be internally guided instead of externally led. And for the most part, you know, this was a huge lesson for me in my relationships, which is where my relationship coaching, you know, started from, is being able to do just that. But it's been a deeper evolution because the one last piece, the one last piece that I was having a hard time letting go of was trusting myself with money. And a lot of that came from my upbringing because I did grow up around a lot of financial uncertainty. And so there was a real fear there about trusting myself when it came to money and being able to support myself. And the more I gave my power away, the more financial hardship I experienced. Okay. And, you know, in the last several months, I've really had to take a good hard look at what was happening and what I was doing and what brought me to this point. And okay, I was like, nope, this is not, no, we're not doing this no more. This doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel right. Done, not doing it anymore. What does feel right? And it might have been little things, right? Like in the beginning, it was okay, what does feel right right now is to, you know, focus on on, you know, going back into tech. You know, for the longest time, I was kind of what's the best way to put it? Patchworking my career. I was doing a little bit on the podcast, a little bit of coaching, finding kind of, you know, easy sort of sidekick jobs that I could do to just kind of, you know, keep myself afloat. And now it's like, no, you know what, dude? Like it's time to get back in the game again. Like you have some really hardcore skills, like you have some mad skills that the world needs right now, especially with everything going on in tech and AI. Like you need to be out there making your impact in those areas. And I'm like, okay, fine. So polished up my resume, dusted it off, got back into my networking, got got back in my networking group, started a career program. I guess you can call it like a career development program, which by the way has been fucking amazing. I actually want to have the teacher of that career development program on the show at some point when I start having interviews again. I've actually put a pause on interviews for now with everything that's been going on. So, you know, you know, doing that, and it's like, okay, great, that we're we're making some headway there. Now, what's next? Instagram, I'm not feeling it anymore. I feel like it's gotten so performative. I'm like, I feel forced being there. Time to look for another solution. The podcast, yeah, still loving the podcast, still love talking to you guys every week. But I don't want to talk to a content strategy. I just want to talk about what I'm thinking, what I'm seeing, and what my perspective is on everything. And that's what that's what I want to share with you. I want to share with you guys what what I'm seeing happening in the world, what I'm moving through, and you know, what sort of mindset shifts, conditionings I'm breaking free from, or I see that we need to be breaking breaking free from in order to step into this next evolution of women. Evolution, revolution, not sure, right? But there is definitely something happening in the collective, right? And I think we all play an important part of that as we step into our power. So that gets to be the focus. And, you know, no more of feeding this personal development machine that is designed to keep us feeling not enough. We go there because we feel like we're not enough. We go there because we feel like we're stuck in patterns and limiting beliefs that we can't break out of, right? We go there because we want to create a better life or experience for ourselves. And then we're constantly fed these narratives of what that of what we should want, right? How much money we should want, the partner we should want, the home we should want. Like I said, all the things I listed off the floor, what those things should look like, right? Everything is top tier, right? And top tier and not at all aligned with what you truly want. Because I truly believe that each and every one of us has a purpose in this life. Number one. Number two, that we have desires within ourselves that 1000% align with and support that purpose, right? And number three, some things that we need to move through in order to discover who we really are so that we can fulfill that purpose. I truly believe that for everybody. And this is where I think the spiritual community and personal development community really get it wrong. They start to narrate to you what it is that you want and what it is that you should want. And if you don't want these big, grandiose things, it means you don't believe you're worthy of it. But that's not always the case. People don't always want the same things. It's okay to want different things, to have different visions for yourself, to have a different definition of what abundance means to you, right? But oftentimes the personal development space and spiritual communities don't leave space for that, right? I've actually been told, oh, I don't think you're, I don't think you're, I don't think you really recognize your your worth because I don't think you're asking for enough. You should be asking for so much more. Which to me, yes, yes, there is there is there's real truth in being afraid to ask for what you want because you feel bad for it. Yes, right. And that becomes part of conditioning, right? But there's also, we each have a different definition of abundance. And to tell somebody that their definition of abundance isn't enough, that they should be seeking more, now puts you on the hook for, oh great, how can I get more? Can you help me? Absolutely. Here, just fork over this many thousand dollars and I will help you get there. This is what I've been seeing happening over and over again because I've been in the spiritual community and the personal development space for many, many, many years now. And I keep seeing the same people working with the same coaches or similar coaches forking over thousands of dollars every single fucking year for the last 10 years. That money adds up. And I've seen it, and I've seen it time and time and time again. And they're always working to this next level version of themselves, right? This never, this ever unattainable next level version of themselves. Every time they get there, they're always they're on to the next version, the next version, the next version, spending thousands and thousands of dollars. And some people are doing really well, but some people are literally spending all their money on coaching and healing and guidance and all the things. And the only thing that they're getting more of is more coaching and more healing, and it becomes this never-ending cycle because you're constantly being fed this narrative that you're not enough, that you need to want more, you need to be more, you need to have more. You're constantly being being taught to avoid the very things that are keeping you from stepping into the fullest expression of yourself because to address it, to feel it, to move through it, to acknowledge it, now you're low vibe, now you're being negative, right? Now you're not thinking in that positive mindset that's going to keep you on the hamster wheel that they want to keep you on so that you can keep forking over your money. I'm sorry, guys, this is literally what I've seen. And it's not, I I want to be clear, it's not every coach, and it's not every healer, but it is a lot of them. Like a lot. And sometimes I don't even think they realize that they're doing it. But it's literally a system that is designed to keep you coming back again and again and again, and never actually, you know, getting to the end of the tunnel, getting to getting the carrot at the end of the race. Like you're constantly chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing. And although many of them share this message of empowerment and authenticity and blah, blah, blah, a lot of it is just another way that again is keeping you chasing something that is being externally where you're being externally led instead of internally guided, which is where all your wisdom and power lies. If we each have a purpose, our desires are designed are designed to move us along the path for that purpose. And doing the inner work is what begins this whole unraveling, then trusting ourselves, being internally guided instead of externally led is imperative. And what I'm seeing in the world that we live in right now is that there's just too much noise to keep us external, to keep us from hearing that internal voice within ourselves to guide us along our path. We have coaches, we have healers, we have TED Talks, we have podcasts, we have YouTube, we have television, we have Netflix, we have everything to keep us disconnected from that voice inside of us that is here to guide us to our greatest fulfillment, our greatest life, the greatest impact that we're meant to make into the world and our lives and our families and our communities. Because we're constantly listening to all the noise outside ourselves. So if you take anything from this episode today, it's please take time out from listening and consuming, not listening, sorry, consuming, and listening to everybody else, and start listening to yourself and what you've been saying. Because I know that for me in the last several months, even several years, there's been a part of me that's just like, no, we don't want to do it this way. No, this doesn't feel right. But that's what everybody's doing. That's what everybody said. Oh, maybe, you know, maybe we're just kind of sabotaging ourselves, maybe we're blocking ourselves, maybe we're resisting because, you know, we're afraid of our own potential. Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. There's a real difference in how we experience resistance because, you know, there's a block there, there's limiting belief that we're coming up against, versus this is just not an alignment kind of resistance. Right? The block because you think you're not ready or you're not worthy or it's too dangerous for you. You know, that'll always come up as fear or panic. Right? It feels, it feels agitated. It feels, I just want to get out of this. How do I get out of this? Oh, I don't want to go, I don't want to do this. Right? It feels agitated. There's something, there's something underneath it. And it would benefit you greatly to look to see what's underneath that and ask yourself some questions around that. But when it starts to feel draining and it starts to feel like it's burning you out, and you feel like you're swimming through quicksand, which is a feeling I've, you know, in the last 20 years of my life, 30 years of my life, I've I've 20 years, I've come to know all too well. That feeling of like I feel like I am swimming through quicksand. I cannot get through another five minutes of this routine that I'm living right now, this life that I'm living, like it just feels draining. It's hard, it feels something just feels off. And I feel like I have to put in so much effort to do the littlest fucking things, like the stupidest little things, like sending an email. That's when you know you're out of alignment. And so that's what I've been feeling. And I've been trying to push through it and push through it and push through it. And ultimately that's when burnout happens. And so I did. I actually burnt out this year quite a bit. And so I've been kind of, you know, just kind of sitting with that and letting that heal. I'm still kind of moving through the burnout. But I've taken a step back from everything that's been burning me out. And a lot of that was the spiritual community and the personal development space. I'm gonna be honest, because it did not feel aligned anymore. It did not feel right. And when I looked at, okay, but why? Why doesn't it feel aligned? What doesn't it feel? Why doesn't it feel right? What is it, what is the resistance that I'm having with this space? And when I was able to articulate it, when I was able to really see it, what had been trying to unfold for me, what had been trying to reveal itself to me for the longest time, I couldn't unsee it. And so when I did, I I had to just take a step back and say, okay, what does this mean for us now? Because, like I said, I still love the podcast, I still love putting out content, I still love all of that, but I don't love what the industry has become. My my wish, my goal is to give every woman her power back that this world tried to take away from her dead like centuries ago. When a lot of these patriarchal ideologies came to be. Because I really do believe that as women, we are meant to lead. We are meant to lead, heal, guide, nurture. And I just think that the world has done too good of a job at not at hiding from us just how powerful we are. And you know, obviously, a lot of a lot of people, a lot of women are starting to become more aware of that now. But I think, I really do think we've only just begun to pick the surface of how powerful we actually are. And I think we're gonna be shocked. If you listen to my last episode, What if God is a woman? I I really do believe, I am really starting to believe that God is a woman. And that this has been the big secret that's been being kept from us all these years. So more on that in episodes to come. But I just want you to take a moment. And I just, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you've been listening to a lot of other spiritual, you know, personal development podcasts and spiritual podcasts. Where have you been giving your power away? Where have you been letting other people guide you? Where have you been ignoring your own inner voice, your own inner guidance, trusting your desires, trusting what you want, what you don't want, and trusting it to unfold for you and really being present with what you're feeling and what you're moving through, and what what you what needs to be acknowledged within yourself. Because that is where the real work is. And that's where we're constantly taught to ignore, or at least I this this was my experience with so many people that I worked with. You know, we're constantly, I was constantly being bombarded with this message of your desires, not enough. Everything that you're feeling, you're being negative, right? Your potential, what you want to do, what you want to be within the world, yeah, it's not gonna fly. And I was like, wait a second. No. I know in my heart the message that I want to share with the world. I know in my heart what I'm feeling and what I'm moving through. And I know that if I truly, truly, truly, deeply, madly love myself, I'm okay with feeling some uncomfortable things. I'm okay with what's going on on the inside because I know it's an important part of who I am and who I'm meant to be in this world. And yes, it gets very uncomfortable. And yes, we wish we could just rush through it and and and and you know, make it kind of go away. And I I know I was there, especially a couple months ago. That was there last week. But I also know it's an important part of my evolution here. I know that everything is happening for me. I know that everything that I want and desire in this moment is perfectly aligned to lead me down the path that I'm meant to be moving along, and I'm trusting that. Will that evolve? Sure. May that look different next week, next month, next year? Absolutely, and I'm okay with that. The point is self-trust, authenticity, and being internally guided. Those are the most important things. And I think that this relationship that I had with personal development and the healing community, I think really did sever my self-trust for a very long time. And had me, especially when it came to things that were very tangible, like money, right? When I did my relationship work, it felt easy. When I did my self-love work, that felt easy. All that felt, it made sense. But for some reason, money took so much longer for me to really grasp it. And I think it's because, you know, money is tied to so much, to survival so much in the world that we live in, right? And we are taught to work hard for it, and we are taught to, from a very young age, to kind of give up a part of ourselves, whether it's our time, our beliefs, our desires, our goals, whatever it is, in order in exchange for the money, right? This was a different kind of what's it called? This was a different version of the same thing. I didn't feel like I could trust myself with that. And now I'm saying, no, no more, because that has not served me at all. And I have been chasing this carrot, right, year after year after year, chasing more and more and more, having less, less, less. And I'm like, this stops now. I'm stopping. The train stops. I'm going to go back to what I know works for me. And this is what I did when I went through so many stages of unbecoming, right? Is taking a step back, disconnecting, letting go, like no more consuming what everybody else, everybody else's opinions and thoughts and ideas, and coming back to, okay, what does my soul know? What do I know internally? What is my guidance telling me to do? What feels aligned for me right now? What feels like my truth? And trusting that that will bring me to the abundance that I truly desire and that will bring me the fulfillment when I follow my internal guidance, when I'm internally guided and not externally led. So get off that train of being externally led, because that is the train that is keeping people addicted to these spaces, doing the spiritual bypassing and the emotional self-neglect and self-abandonment, and constantly perpetuating this cycle of investing more and more and more and more to essentially, I hate to say it, make everybody make a lot of these coaches and healers as rich as they can possibly be while you sit there and consume their content and buy their programs and wonder why it's not working. I know it's worked for a lot of people. I know there's some amazing coaches out there, and believe me, I've met them. And if you ever like need a referral for like a certain kind of, I don't know coaches in every space and healers in every space, but I have met a few that are legit and they are good. And if you ever need a like guy, you know, a specific kind of coach or whatever healer, just head to the website, send me a note. And if I have somebody in my network, I will absolutely refer you. People that I've worked with and that I know are the real thing. But it's not all of them, it's a very small percentage, and believe me, I've worked with so many coaches and healers. So many. And it's a very small percentage that are actually the real thing that I would actually put their name out into the world and say, hey, you should you should work with this person. I think they're great. Very few. Most of them are just looking for like and I don't even know if they do this consciously, but you know, they're they're putting out program after program after program after program. They're making a fortune. And although some people are seeing results, I can tell you right now that the majority of people are not. And they are struggling, and they are chasing, and they are spending, and they are wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. And I want to shake each and every one of them because there's nothing fucking wrong with you. You just keep consuming everybody else's content and not listening to the content that your soul is trying to give you and trying to guide you and trying to tell you to lead you in the direction that you're meant to go. And that's how this industry has been designed. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, that's what's happening. And I see it again and again and again. So please, yes, do the work. Go within, do your healing, clean up your side of the fence. Listen, we've all got work to do in this life. I believe everybody could benefit from some coaching, healing, and therapy. But know when to draw the line. And know when to right know when to recognize, right? Energetically, be very, and this takes a lot of self-awareness. Know when you're being internally guided versus externally led. Very important distinction. Very important distinction distinction. Always take the advice, listen to the content, take the courses, do the sessions, whatever, but then take it within and say, okay, what feels aligned for me to do with this information next? Never give that power away to a coach or a healer to decide for you. Okay. Remember that everything that you're meant to do, be and create in the world is already within you. There is nobody in the world that can tell you what that is. I don't care how powerful they are. There is nobody in the world that can tell you who it is that you are meant to be in the world other than your own internal knowing. And the more we start to trust that internal knowing, even with the scary things like our career and our finances, like I experienced, the better off we will all be. Okay. There's just a lot of fear attached to things like money and career that make it sometimes a lot harder for us to trust our own inner voice in that capacity. Okay, so that was a really long rant. So I'm gonna end it there. Let me know your thoughts and remember. Remember, remember, remember, be internally guided, not externally led, and be aware when you are in either of the two and always bring yourself back. You know exactly who you came here to be. Your desires are meant to lead you along the path, and the work that you're here to do will come up for you to address when the time is right. And your only job is to acknowledge and move through it and trust that it is leading you exactly where it is you're meant to be. Okay? I love you guys. Let me know in the comments wherever you're seeing this, if it resonates for you, and leave a positive rating or review wherever you're seeing this. Until next time, you guys, massive love.