Season 3 Episode 4 : You're Not "Behind" You're Addicted to Not Feeling Enough

Most podcasts will tell you to believe in yourself more.

This one will tell you why you don't and what actually to do about it.

Every episode is a conversation your best friend would have with you if she had a psychology degree, zero tolerance for bullshit and genuinely wanted your life to change.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Fearless Femme podcast with your host, Becky Jane Stevenson. And today's episode is going to be one of those that is quite spicy, is maybe going to be a little bit uncomfortable. So I aren't even going to waste your time in waffling about what this episode is going to be about, what you're going to walk away from, and all that yada yada. This one is likely gonna make you feel like you want to close it off and not listen to me. It might be that you feel a little bit uncomfortable, and that is okay. It is okay. Close it off and come back when you feel like you're ready to hear it. Because today's episode is all about how you are not behind, but that you are in love with the idea that you are, and it's this whole addiction to feeling like we're not enough and constantly moving the goalposts. So, what I'm gonna dig into is that thing that has probably been keeping you stuck longer than any pattern that you've clocked, any wound, any belief that you've ever worked on, and uprooted. So that's that's where we're starting, that's where we're going today. We are going there, and before your brain wades in and says, bitch, excuse me, I've been working on myself for years. I've invested in me, I've done been doing the work, and that's the thing. I know you have, because I have too. But that is not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is why it never feels like it counts, why it never feels like you have done enough when you've invested, when you've healed, when you've grown, when you've put boundaries in place, spoken your truth, taken up space, however that looks, why it never feels like you are doing enough, like it doesn't count enough. So what I've been watching and what I've observed even in myself is that as women we do the things like real things, hard shit, things that maybe even six months ago, a year ago, a few years ago, things that probably would have flawed you and had you rocking in the corner in the fetal position like a baby would have flawed you. That now, from who you are now listening to this, you've done them, you've navigated them, you've moved through them without this feeling the same level of absolute carnage and chaos. Like you do these things now, you go into that with a sense of strength, a sense of courage, and a sense of conviction and confidence in yourself. You know you are growing. There are things that are paying off for you with the steps that you take and the moves that you're making, you're showing up and you're you're even clocking and catching yourself in patterns that maybe a year ago, two years ago, you wouldn't have known you were doing, or you wouldn't have spotted them. But on the flip side of all of that, why is it then that the dominant feeling that you experience is that you should be further ahead, that you should be further than where you thought you would be, that you've got such a long way to go yet, till you are where you want to be, until you've arrived. And that is not a progress problem. We think it is, but it isn't. It's not a progress problem, it is an identity loop, and we need to talk about that, we need to dig into that, why it becomes this identity loop instead of a progress thing. So in this episode, I really want to get into the psychology of this because I I honestly find it so genuinely fascinating, but also mildly infuriating just as much because I see this pattern in myself as well. It's something that I have to catch myself in. Like, it's it's not that I'm immune to this stuff. Like, our brain doesn't just like being right, it doesn't like to be confirmed right. I know as women we like to be right, you know, that's a whole other topic. Your brain doesn't just like being right, it likes to be consistent, it likes patterns, it likes recognition, it likes repetition. So if somewhere along the way could have been your childhood, could have been a relationship, or it could have just been the accumulation of a thousand tiny moments that have confirmed to you that you weren't quite enough, that you weren't where you should be yet. And if you picked up that belief that you're behind, that you're not where you should be, that everyone else has figured this out, and it's something that you haven't, your brain is going to work over time and cherry-pick all of those moments that proves it to be true. So your brain will filter everything to prove that that is right, to prove that you're not where you should be, that everyone else has figured something out, that you haven't, that you aren't quite enough, that you aren't there yet. And your brain's not doing it because of H. It's not working against you. It is doing it because it thinks that consistency means safety, that what feels familiar means safety, so what you know means survivable. So in essence, it's actually genuinely trying to protect you from not feeling safe, from not stepping outside of that comfort zone, from not stepping out of what may stretch you a little bit. It's just been working from very outdated information for a very long time. So it's it's like our brains create an entire Netflix series called The Girl who's almost always there, but not quite, always just about getting to where she thinks she needs to be. Multiple seasons, proper characters, and a theme tune that you you probably hate. But every time you do something that doesn't fit the storyline, i.e., your brain, every time you show up in a way that contradicts that narrative, your brain is literally going, something doesn't match. So let's edit that out. So let's just say you handled something that used to send you into a spiral and you decided you didn't spiral. It is going to contradict the information that your brain knows, that your brain recognizes. You show up for yourself in a moment where maybe you previously would have completely abandoned yourself, again, it's out of alignment with what your brain is recognizing. It's contradicting the story you tell yourself. Because if those things counted, if you actually let them count, the whole identity that your brain is running on right now would start to crumble and call it recalibration, call it identity, death, whatever, we become fearful of that. We become fearful of that identity that we've been living in falling away because we don't know what comes after it, we don't know who we're going to be at the other side of it. And this is what nobody really talks about. This is the part of you that is not ready to let that identity go. That is not allowing for that recalibration to happen. So before you close this and go do something else, I want you to stay with me on this one. Because this isn't an attack. This is not me telling you that you're choosing to feel like you're behind on purpose. This isn't me saying, Oh, well, you know, you must not want it enough, or blah blah blah. It's it's just that not enough, feeling like you are not enough, you're not further along. It is familiar. That's what I know. It is familiar, it's known, it has been your internal kind of weather system, if you like, for so long that you don't even clock it as it's a weather system anymore. You just you just think it's the sky, for want of a better metaphor. It's like a let's use a better one, a more feral one. It's like that toxic ex that you know is absolutely terrible for you, but you've still got their number memorized. You're not going back, you you're not even tempted at going back to this toxic ex. But the number is is it's just there, it it's stored, it's familiar. And not enough is a little bit like that. It's it's knowing it's there, knowing you don't want that, but it's there, and this is why letting it go can feel genuinely terrifying, even when you desperately want to be free of it, when you know letting go of this is gonna move you so much more forward to where you want to be. Because if you letting go of the story of not being enough or not being far enough, yeah, if you let go of that, you know you're gonna have to face something in else entirely, and that's accountability, responsibility, visibility, power, whatever, whichever way that whatever that falls into for you, and when you actually see yourself clearly, when you let yourself see the evidence of how far you've come, who you've become, and what you're capable of, when you truly see yourself and accept that about yourself, you can't hide anymore. You can't hide behind the identity loop, you can't then play small and call it healing. You then can't keep delaying your life and calling it working on yourself. You'd actually have to then step into the identity of a woman that you keep saying that you're becoming. When you finally stand in that mirror and say, I like I am a powerful fucking badass. I am capable of doing more than I ever believed. Look how far I've come, look how far I've progressed, look how far I have moved, look at all of these things that I have cultivated in myself, the confidence, the courage, the ability to walk with fear and do the scary things anyway. Once you open your eyes and you actually see that clearly and accept it about yourself, something is going to have to shift. You won't be able to keep hiding behind healing and hiding behind working on yourself because you have finally started to accept the woman that you are becoming. And that in itself can be really confronting in a way that not being enough never really is because not enough keeps you waiting, keeps you healing, keeps you growing, keeps you investing. Saying not enough or not being far enough, it keeps you preparing to step into that next version, it keeps you researching that next version, it keeps you feeling almost ready. And even almost being there, almost being ready is uncomfortable, it's still recognized, it's still within that kind of safety pattern within your brain. It is still safe. So nobody can really judge your performance when you're in that safety because you haven't performed yet, because you haven't stepped into it yet, you haven't taken those moves yet. So nobody can really judge you, nobody can really say, Well, this isn't enough. So let's talk about what you have actually done, because I don't think as women that we actually stop to appreciate for ourselves what we've actually done. We're often in this feedback loop of needing someone else to validate it, needing someone else to see it, because we don't stop to see ourselves. But I'm gonna say it because I think you need to hear this. Like you've already had moments, glimpses when you have been that next version of you, the woman that you are working towards, the one that you are convinced is still far, far ahead in the future. Like you've already had moments where you've stepped into that, moments where you have shown you can handle something in a way that would have been completely impossible before, where your brain started the familiar spiral and you actually caught it. Maybe it's moments where you didn't abandon yourself and you chose differently. That could be a boundary, it could be using your voice, it could be saying, you know, I want this is something I want to do and held yourself in that where you chose not to retreat, where you chose differently, not when the conditions were perfect, but those moments should have been anchors for you. They should have been things that ground like really anchored you into that version and allowed you to build, and allowing not just allowing you to build on it, but allowing yourself to build on those anchors, they were proof and they were evidence and they were data points that your brain could file under a new pattern where it can literally stop and say, Oh, we're different. This is how we're doing things now. But as women, what we do is we file them under being a one-off, we file them under being a fluke or a coincidence or feeling good, like feeling good on that particular day, feeling a little bit more badass than we usually do. For women, we find it very, very easy to justify the progress we're making and attribute it to something else, some outside force, because it can't possibly be coming from ourselves. Like we the same way that we do it with compliments, when somebody gives us a compliment, as women, we have this ability to reject it, to say, oh, this whole thing has just been hiding in the back of the wardrobe, oh this whole thing I got in a charity shop. Like, we do the same with those moments where the version of ourselves that we're stepping into that we're we're becoming, we we pass off the acceptance that it's us that's doing it, and we say, Well, you know, this helped and that helped, and we try to credit some other force outside of ourselves, or you may you may acknowledge them for a short while, and then you move the goalposts, you move the goalpost so far and expect so much from yourself, and that you've got so much further to go, that those moments where you s where you showed up for yourself and who you're becoming don't count anymore, they don't feel as as powerful. Like, what is that? Why? Why why do we as women do that? So I I really want to get a bit deeper into this because I know some of you that are listening to this right now know what it is to have a mind that genuinely doesn't feel like a safe space to be. And I like I will hold my hands up, you can't see them on the screen, but I'm holding my hands up, like I am such a person too, at various stages in my life where it hasn't felt completely safe to trust who we're becoming or to trust the actions that we we do or the steps that we take, where your thoughts could take you somewhere quite dark if you weren't careful, where being tired, overwhelmed, underfueled, any of it makes everything feel so much louder and so much harder to manage. And I know that you have done work around that, like not just the work, it's being it's not being pretty, you've been in the trenches with it, and it's not the kind of work that you post about on social media, it is the very quiet and glamorous sitting with yourself in the discomfort and keep going any kind any kind of way work that you've done, and you've likely learned things about yourself that changed how you respond, that changed what you allow yourself to tolerate, you've changed who you allow in and what you allow your what kind of environments and rooms you allow yourself to stay in. And instead of honoring all of that work that you've done, all of those moments that have just been so discomforting and so tough, where it's felt like you're wading through tree call. Instead of honoring that, instead of feeling like a fucking powerhouse that you are, you've normalized it and minimized it and filed it under. Well, I should be further by now, I should be better by now, I should be this, that, the other by now. Respectfully, no, you are better now, but you're refusing, like actively refusing to let yourself feel it, to see yourself in that mirror and think, yeah, it was a fucking drag path, but I got through it. I worked through it. Like I've done the same. Even my one of my business mentors will literally tell you at the first time, or maybe it was the second time that we'd met in person. Um, and she was saying all these beautiful things about how incredible I was and the things that I talk about and how I show up and this and that and the other. And I literally had zero response. I stood there and I shrugged. I'm like, like, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm I'm just me. Like, I'm not doing anything special. I'm just being myself, my whole self. And it did, it got me thinking, like, how often are you doing that? How often are you saying your strength and your ability to get through things, to work through things, to heal, to grow, to challenge yourself? How often are you shrugging that off as something that is not important? Like, that is not incredible. How many times are you doing that? If I was to say to you now, you are absolutely incredible for facing things that you have, for working through things that you have, for how far you've come so far. Like you're just sit and clock that as I'm speaking. Just sit and realize how easy it is to automatically begin to dismiss it. And the reason I'm talking about this is exactly what I'm Building exists, and I can't tell you much about it yet, but it is incredibly exciting, and I'm so excited to start talking about it a little bit more. But this is the reason why I'm creating them because you cannot rely on a mind that is committed to keeping you in that not enough space to start validating you. It's not gonna flip, not without some effort from you. It's like asking a broken sat nav to take you somewhere new where it while it keeps recalculating you back to a same old route. It will do it with complete confidence and it will do it with absolute certainty. It will take you exactly where you've already been. So we can't remind we can't rely on a brain that is reinforcing those patterns with the steps that we're taking, the actions and how we're choosing to see ourselves. If we are keeping on with the dismissing how far you've come of not recognizing the things that you've faced and how you've grown and the things you've healed, if we're not recognizing that, our brain is gonna stay with what it recognizes, and what I'm creating works a little bit differently, not in your mind, and it's not gonna be another framework for you to understand yourself better or another tool to add to the pile of things that you probably will use for a few days and then forget about. This is gonna be something that interrupts that pattern before it starts running the whole show. This is gonna be something physical that exists outside of your thoughts, so that when the narrative and that pattern that your brain is starting to run on, like I'm behind, I haven't changed that much, everyone else seems to be further ahead. What I'm creating will give you the moment to catch it. It's gonna be an interrupt before it takes over. And like I said, I'm not ready to share exactly what that is yet. But if everything I've said today has really landed somewhere very real within you, I want you to stay close. Make sure you click in the links to my Facebook, my profile on Facebook or my Instagram, wherever you want to come find me, because what I'm creating is built exactly for this. So the question in the meantime is still the same one that I'm gonna leave you with is show me the evidence, like show your brain the evidence so that it can start forming a new pattern, that it can start forming a new narrative to run on. So I'm gonna give you some homework if you're open to it. This is what I would really love you to do with this episode, and I mean, actually do it, not just nod along and think, yeah, that's very interesting, and then go scrolling on Instagram. I want you to consciously make a choice to sit down with yourself, grab a brew, a drink of water, whatever is your choice, get a pen and some paper. And I want you to be really honest with yourself, even when it feels uncomfortable. I want you to sit with that discomfort. And I want you to write down three moments where you handled something differently to what you always usually would. Like three moments where the old version of you would have reacted or spiraled or disappeared or abandoned yourself, and you didn't. So I want you to make them very real, very specific, not the whole I've been doing better in general. Like actually name that moment, a conversation, a decision, a boundary, something you did for yourself, like something that you chose when the safe option was right in front of you and easier to choose. I want you to write down a moment where you chose different, where you push that comfort zone. And then for each of those three, I want you to ask the answer this question: what would the old version of you done? What would have been the safer thing that you might have done? And when you've done that, I want you to really think about the contrast, really look at what you've written. So you're writing three moments where you've done something differently, stepped out of your comfort zone and showed up for yourself. Like I want you to be really detailed, really specific. And then under each one, I want you to write down what the old version of you would have done. And I want you to see the difference. I actually want you to see the contrast is the distance that you've travelled that you keep refusing to notice, that you keep shrugging your shoulders at because the truth of this episode wasn't that you are stuck, we just become very loyal and deeply unconsciously loyal to a version of yourself that actually no longer fully exists. Who you were was real, who you were made sense at the time, and she was doing the best that she could with the information and ability that she had, but she is not who you are now. So before you move those goalposts again, before you find the next reason why something doesn't count or why you're still not there yet, I want you to ask yourself honestly that if you weren't committed to the identity of not enough, what would you actually see when you looked at yourself right now? And have the courage to see it like truly have the courage to see because who you are becoming has always been there under the surface, we're just often editing it out. So until next time, enjoy and I look forward to bringing you the next episode.