Skipping Ropes and Sweaty Palms: The Awkward Art of Speaking Up

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Why Smart Women Podcast
• 1:21 Annie's Experience with Finding Her Voice
• 3:52 Chapter 5: Kat Has a Meeting
• 15:29 Understanding the Fight-Flight-Freeze Response
• 22:17 Steps to Overcome Speaking Anxiety
• 26:47 Perfectionism and Memory's Hidden Impact
• 30:42 Final Thoughts on Speaking Up

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

You are listening to the Why Smart Women Podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances to faux fur jackets and chaos movies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make some good ones. I'm your host, Annie McCubbin, and as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own pair of really bad decisions. Not my own. I don't make him, but I did go through some shockers to find it. And I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording, and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. Well, hello, smart women, and welcome back to the Why Smart Women Podcast. Today I am, as usual, recording from DY, the Northern Beaches in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is still early spring, slightly cool, but um even though we're only, I don't know, three or four weeks out from winter, we've been swimming because you can, because it's Australia. Anyway, so today what I wanted to talk about was um lately I've been coaching some women who are having trouble speaking up either in meetings or in networking events or perhaps in their own relationships, they've lost their sense of their own voice or their capacity to um present their own point of view, who feel, you know, if they're confronted by an aggressive person, um, they don't know what to do about it. Look, it's very, very normal to find these situations confronting. Um, yeah, it's part of the human condition, and it's especially unfortunately often part of being a woman, a female, because we are so schooled in being nice, nice, pleasant, compliant, which doesn't really lend itself to us finding our voices and speaking up. So, what I thought was rather than interview somebody, what I'd do was I'd let an excerpt from my first book speak for itself. So, speaking of my first book, the first time I went into a bookshop to ask if they would host the launch, and the bookshop owner asked me what it was about me, and I'm pretty used to talking, it's sort of what I do for a job. Not only could I not say what the book was about, but I couldn't remember the name of it. Yeah, yeah. I sort of stood there like an idiot and said, Oh, it's about um women and um, you know, they make um you know, poor decision, it was just terrible. Anyway, so um I'm with you. I know it, I know that sensation, I know the feeling when you really want to be clear, concise, and articulate, and you stand there sort of like like a blathering idiot. So um this is chapter five from my first book, Why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions. So big tick to me because I remember the name of it. Um chapter five, the lead character Kat. Um, this is about her difficulty speaking up in a meeting, and the chapter starts off with her remembering how nervous she was when she had to jump into a skipping rope at school. Anyway, enjoy. Talk soon. Bye. Chapter 5. Kat has a meeting. You were in the playground, lunchtime. You're waiting for your turn to skip into the rope that's being held by two other children, Tyler Kaplan and Janet Craft. Alexandra Finch is ahead of you, and Toby Cooper is behind. You are sandwiched between the two most popular kids in your year. The rope is being turned quickly. Alexandra Finch has just leapt confidently into the rope without hesitation. She's jumping flawlessly in time with the chanting and still finding the time to laugh engagingly. The sun is glinting off her blonde bob. She effortlessly exits the game after ten immaculate jumps. You arrive at the rope. Your heart is beating out of your chest, your hands are sweaty, and you think you might vomit. The rope is a rapid blur. You spread your arms, bob with each turn of the rope, but it's moving so quickly your opportunity keeps passing you by. Alexandra Finch has now taken over rope-turning duty from Janet Craft, whose arms have tired. Alexandra Finch has unflagging energy. Go, you say to yourself. Go, go, go. Three, four more times the rope turns, and three, four more times you lean towards it, desperate to prove you can do it. Your legs are so shaky, you're terrified they'll get tangled. You will fall. The game will stop. Everyone will think you're hopeless. You stand there, sweating, your heart now beating so loudly you're sure everyone will hear it. You're frozen with fear, miserably balking at the rope. Jump. You say to yourself, just jump, cat.

SPEAKER_00: 5:32

Just jump. Speak. Speak, cat. Just speak. Go on, cat. Speak. Speak. Just say it.

SPEAKER_02: 5:41

You are in a meeting. It's been four months, five days, and eighteen hours since the hipster left. The office table is scattered with half-drunk takeaway coffee cups and empty cupcake shells. There's an inspirational poster on the wall. Make your life a masterpiece. Imagine no limitations on what you can be, have, or do. Inspirational sayings dog you wherever you go. You don't feel your life is a masterpiece, more like a crayon drawing made by an exhausted post-tantrum four-year-old. It's Peter from Marketing's birthday. You all sang a half-hearted, off-key happy birthday at the beginning of the meeting. You've been sitting in the meeting now for 26 minutes and 47 seconds. You know this because your Fitbit is telling you. Your Fitbit was a birthday present from your neighbours. You didn't know old people even knew such things existed. Mrs. Hume presented it to you at a dinner cooked by Mrs. Kovacik and Nika. Since the hipster left, the neighbours are constantly asking you to dinner. It's probably why you can't lose the 2.75 kilos. They all took turns trying the Fitbit on. Mrs. Yee's resting heart rate was fifty-two. The hipster's resting heart rate had been fifty. He'd said it was because of his commitment to meditation and mindfulness, and that all stressors were the universe offering you the opportunity to remain calm. However, it seemed that not being able to find the TV remote had been outside the universe's syllabus. You would re-enter the lounge room once he's raging at your inability to simply put the remote back in the correct place, petered out. You would find him sprawled on the couch, one foot on the floor, flicking through the channels. He would turn towards you, smile, proffer a beer, but no apology for the screaming, like you'd imagined the whole episode. You found the remote? You'd venture.

SPEAKER_00: 7:35

Yeah, yeah, all good.

SPEAKER_02: 7:37

He'd say. The cat, stiff with disapproval, would stalk past him. You would accept the proffered beer and stand behind him looking blankly at the TV, your knees pressed into the couch. You were too shaken to tell him you always put the remote back. It was him who lost track of it after a few beers. Back in the meeting, your resting heart rate is currently tracking between 75 and 93, actually 94. That's not good. Also, is it really a resting heart rate if you're in a meeting with plagiarizing Liam from Finance? You check your Fitbit again. You've only done 3,768 steps. You are regretting not putting the Fitbit back on for an hour after your shower this morning, so you're mentally giving yourself another thousand steps. If it's not recorded though, it doesn't count. Like life, really. You've gone to speak six times in the past twenty-six minutes. Actually now twenty-seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The meeting is only slated for an hour. You have thirty-three minutes and twenty two seconds left in which to speak. Your heart is slamming against your ribs, your hands are sweaty and you feel sick. What is wrong with you? It's just a meeting, just speak. Laura from Legal has just started speaking. She has lovely hair, but you find her cold. She has one of those quiet voices that commands attention. People have stopped looking at their phones and are looking intently at her. You are quietly spoken as well, but people don't look so much at you as through you. You know your own hair is marvellous, but Laura is also very slim, slim but remote. You estimate fifty eight kilos, which at one hundred and seventy five centimeters tall is optimum. You've seen her tap across the foyer in her workout gear and cycling shoes in the morning. People shouldn't parade themselves around when their colleagues are trying to cram a cinnamon scroll in their mouths at the cafe downstairs to keep their energy up before the long day ahead. She's currently punctuating her well thought out points with her attractive hands. She is wearing a Fitbit too. You would give anything to see her step count. You wonder if she has those scales that don't just tell you your weight, they tell you about fat and water percentages too. You slump further in your seat and check your Fitbit again. The hipster didn't approve of wearable devices or really any devices or appliances. He thought modern society was killing us with its chemicals, processed foods and pharmaceuticals. He'd talked about living off the grid, in a hut made of logs he'd hand hewn. You'd apparently be eating organic oats and spinach, which you'd lovingly tendered from dawn to dusk on your seven-hectare property. You had imagined yourself in some sort of frontier dress with an apron, your hand resting on a white picket fence, your Victorian messy bun hair glinting in the late afternoon sunshine. Then you'd remembered you disliked the country and had no gardening interest or skills. You'd smiled encouragingly anyway, while imagining the horror of no coffee or cinnamon scrolls. Still you thought you'd be thin. Back in the meeting, 22 minutes, 45 seconds to go, no step increases. Sometimes your Fitbit mistakes are movements for steps. Not today, though. Also, you still haven't spoken. Every time you attempt to, you break out in a sweat. Simon, your manager, gave you feedback at your last performance review.

SPEAKER_03: 11:09

You're a bit too reticent, Cat. You've got good ideas. Let's hear some of them.

SPEAKER_02: 11:14

The hipster, in the last couple of months before he left with Rebecca from the real estate, used to give you feedback on being too tentative. Come on, Cat, argue with me. Tell me what you think. This was a trap. Even mildly disagreeing with him resulted in him giving you a tight smile with his tiny teeth on display and a look as warm as a frozen tundra. What if you open your mouth and your opinion is under par? Stop being negative, cat, stop putting yourself down, be positive. You take yourself in hand, give yourself a mental slap across the cheek. Stop being so pathetic, cat. Just open your mouth and say it. You sit up in your seat, reframe the opening sentence. Decide to start with these measures are, as opposed to the more insipid, I think there are some issues. You take two calming deep breaths, which don't work. You inhale for a third time, slowly. You're building up to it, you're going to jump. One more second and you're there. You're about to do it. You inhale, lean forward. Toby Cooper taps you on the shoulder. He moves past you and jumps without preamble into the rope. Your mouth is forming the word these too late. Peter from Marketing is speaking. He has no qualms about expressing himself. Words come spilling out of his mouth in torrents. He seems much admired. You don't admire him. Even though it's his birthday, you're finding it hard to look at him in an interested way. He uses the words synergy and passion relentlessly, which you loathe. Also, his ideas are completely bereft of originality. So much for innovating. Heart rate now 110. You need to exercise more. If you got off the train one station early, you'd get your steps up. You could start cycling. You'd have to attach the fit bit to your shoes, though, so the wheel revolutions would count as steps. You look up. James and Matthew have apparently been speaking after Peter. They've done a dual graph on the whiteboard. While you'd been strategizing around your steps, you missed the presentation from the three disciples. Nine minutes, 23 seconds to go. It's too late to speak now, you'll look desperate. The upside of that though is that nobody can judge you. That's a good thing. Judgment is awful. You invariably fall short. Actually, in all truth, it's not just negative judgment you're afraid of. You want people being stopped in their tracks by your incisive comments and quiet, understated gravitas. Maybe you didn't speak, but at least you didn't out yourself as being mediocre. You unclench your hands and begin to close your redundant notepad. You walk away miserably, a tap on your shoulder. It's Alexandra Finch. Cat, she says, taking your hand. I'll jump with you. You hesitate, pivot, comply. You move in tandem across the playground. You arrive at the rope. She grips your hand more tightly and leaps. You leap with her. Laura from Legal is speaking. Again, why doesn't she just fill a bust for a living?

SPEAKER_01: 14:15

I read an analysis of the project written by Kat. Laura from Legal is saying. I thought her assessment of the issue was incredibly accurate. Kat, she adds. Why don't you give a summary of your assessment?

SPEAKER_02: 14:26

She smiles at you warmly. Seven minutes, thirty-six seconds to go. You look at her, smile. You regret the cold, remote filibuster judgment. You rise, reopen your notebook, you start to speak, you are speaking. You are jumping. Alexandra has let go of your hand. The children are chanting, the fear transmutes seamlessly into exhilaration. You jump high, feel the whirr of the rope fly past your legs, the bell rings. You could jump forever. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that. I hope there were moments when you went, yeah, I've had very, very, I've had very, very similar experiences when I wanted to speak up and I haven't. So there's there's excellent um explanations for why we struggle. So what's actually going on in our brains when we are confronted by our own sort of tendencies and inadequacies. So here's a bit of an explanation of why it happens and what you can do about it. If you have trouble speaking in meetings, this is probably why. Anxiety is just about the most common mental health issue around. And while we might not call it anxiety, we all experience fear sometimes. Sometimes the anxiety or fear we feel surprises us by its intensity and can seem wildly disproportionate to the event. On top of the fear, there's a lot of expectation that we should be positive in living our dreams. Just do it! Climb that mountain, fight that bear, leave that crappy relationship, speak up in that meeting, live your best life. So let's look at what's driving it and what we can do about it. Miriam and her friend Harriet are out on the savannah again. Miriam and her friend Harriet, who were having difficulty finding SIE superfood berries back in chapter four, are out on the savannah again. They hear a rustling in the bushes. Let's see how the limbic system and the frontal lobe respond to the noise. We've all heard of the fight-flight-freeze response. Miriam and Harriet's limbic systems interpret the rustling as dangerous. In response, there to amygdalae, the part of their limbic system that responds to fear, release a cascade of chemicals to prepare them to do one of three things. One, fight, as in going into battle. Two, flight, as in running as fast as you can. Three, freeze, as in a rabbit in a headlight. So, the rustling happens in the bush just to the left of Miriam. Before her frontal lobe has time to reason out the possibilities, whether it's just a light breeze or a lion, her limbic system assumes lion and triggers a flight response. So she runs away, scattering precious berries as she goes. When Harriet's limbic system fires off, she is triggered into a freeze response. She stands dead still, holding her breath in the mistaken hope that the lion won't see her. The lion sees her. There'll be no lightly sauteed superfood berries or roasted impala for Harriet that night, or ever. Miriam kept running and lived to 46. Her limbic system kept her alive long enough for her to have progeny, and then they had progeny, and on and on until you were born in a reading this. Her friend Harriet never got the chance to create progeny, so your friend Eloise never had the chance to exist. Shame, as she would have been nice and a pretty good laugh. The point is your brain and Kat's brain contains the same operating system as Miriam's and Harriet's. Our amygdalae are likely to be triggered in the same way as theirs. Your brain could interpret any of the following contexts as equal provocation for a fight, flight, or freeze response, just as the rustling in the bushes did for Miriam and Harriet. You're presenting to the board. You're about to go into an interview. You walk into a networking event. You have to jump into a skipping rope at school. You have to speak up in a meeting. You walk into a party. You're about to meet your in-laws for the first time. Someone yells at you. Someone asks you to marry them at the same moment you're about to break up with them. There are obviously thousands more contexts in which your fight, flight, freeze response can be activated. Once the activation has taken place, a cocktail of chemicals causes a series of inconvenient physical symptoms which you might find familiar. These include racing thoughts, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and sweaty palms. You might also develop dry mouth, butterflies in the stomach and nausea. These responses are due to your body diverting blood flow from the digestive system to the mechanisms that support you to go into fight, flight, freeze. In other words, out of nowhere, you find yourself a sweaty, nauseated, incoherent mess. It's all very inconvenient. The problem is, we are living in a modern environment with a brain that's designed for darker, more dangerous days. Our limbic system is frequently wide of the mark. Approaching someone you don't know at a party may well fire off your limbic system's anxiety response, but this is the moment you need to use your critical thinking skills. What to do when you find yourself in fight, flight, freeze? When the inevitable happens and you find yourself in fight, flight-freeze, here's what to do. One, acknowledge that you're in the grip of a fight, flight, freeze response. Two, don't judge yourself. Avoid giving yourself a hard time. Watch yourself talk. Is it saying, oh look, there I am again. I'm such an idiot for letting myself get in this state. Just relax. Telling yourself to relax and criticizing yourself doesn't help. It just keeps you trapped in your limbic system. Three, divert your attention. You need to get your cognitive process out of the limbic system and into the frontal lobe. You could. A count backwards from 300 by sevens. B. Spell your name backwards. C. Find something in the environment you can focus on. Look out the window. Is it a plane flying overhead? If so, you can wonder where the plane is going and who might be on it. D. Look at a piece of jewelry on the person opposite you. Really examine it. Is it gold? Is there a pattern? Don't, however, stare at them in a creepy manner. E. Do anything else that gets your thinking out of the spooked part of your brain and into the rational part of your brain. Four, gently challenge the reality of the danger in the situation. For example, I'm about to speak in a meeting. This has made me anxious. This is understandable. However, the reality is I know what I'm talking about and my opinions are worth listening to. Five, go back to what you were doing. Speak up in the meeting. Break into the group at the party. Do whatever it is that's spooking you. That is pretty much the only way through. The more you do things that scare you, the easier they become. 6. After the scary thing is done, congratulate yourself and make a mental note that you didn't die. That's always a bonus. Another thing you can do if you're in a limbic system spin-out is to eat something. Obviously not a three-course meal, but something small. This engages your digestive system, which is shut down during the fight-flight-freeze response to prepare you for action. If your digestive system is up and running, it's difficult for your limbic system to stay in a state of heightened arousal. Don't, however, set yourself up for failure. Being a human is complicated. Give yourself a break. When to go with the fight-flight-freeze response. If the situation arises that you're alone in a car park late at night and you hear a noise, or you're about to get into a lift and you get an uncomfortable feeling about the lone person already in there, or you're at a party and the person you're talking to offers you a lift but something feels amiss, respect that feeling. Do not analyze this, just take action. Don't get in the lift. It doesn't matter if it's a false positive, better safe than sorry. Remember that your subconscious is scanning the environment all the time, looking for potential signs of danger. We are unaware of this most of the time. We'd be unable to function if we consciously had to process everything our subconscious is picking up. So this is where our intuition should definitely be respected. Perfectionism is driving that fight-flight-freeze response. As in chapter four, Kat's perfectionism is added again. It feels justified. In conversation, she would defend her need to achieve perfection. She is unwilling to speak until she can guarantee the words coming out will be perfect. The perfectionism is its own suffocating corset. She runs a continuous track of negative thoughts which support the notion that her contribution will be second rate. She feels that perfectionism is required, and this belief descends deeply into her subconscious. Watch out for being perfectionistic. Great is the enemy of good. As Michael Shermer says in his book, How We Believe, belief comes first and reason comes second. Not only does Kat have a fundamental and emotional belief that her contribution will be suboptimal, but her conscious mind is also manufacturing logical evidence as proof that this is true. Again, in order to counter this, we need to challenge these unhelpful beliefs with critical thinking. I hope you're beginning to see how much we need to counter these presumptions that are generated in the emotional part of our brains. Who knows? You might even come up with some positive things to think about yourself. Amazing. Heuristics at work again. Just like Mrs. Hume's assessment of her neighbors in chapter three, Kat's using a heuristic, a mental shortcut that leads her to conclude that since Laura is a well-presented, quietly spoken, slim, attractive lawyer, she must be cold and competitive. Confirmation bias kicks in, which confirms her intuitive assessment. Time and time again, we are more likely to only see what we expect to see. Laura's kindness forces Kat to reassess. This shows us that if we're open to having our minds changed, something in the environment can provoke us into some critical thinking. If Kat's lucky, she may learn from this and be less likely to jump to incorrect conclusions in the future. Your memories are probably wrong. Somewhere in our subconscious we carry the echoes of events from our lives. If these events were negative, we are more likely to remember them. When a situation arises that has similar elements to a previous event, it can trigger the memory. Maybe we won't remember the actual event, but the flavor of the incident may resurface. This can easily influence our current behavior if we're not aware of it. There's a theory that memory is not actually about love and fear and retaining beautiful memories to cherish as we descend into our dotage. It's actually about survival. We remember things so we can guard ourselves from them happening again. Negative, highly charged events leave a post-it note on the whiteboard of our brains. Our internal post-it notes say helpful things like, Remember that party you were at in 2015 where you stood with one drink for two hours in one spot, spoke to no one, then went home? That's probably going to happen tonight. We are more likely to recall negative events than positive. Kat has remembered the agony of not jumping into the rope, but Alexandra's kindness is more deeply buried. Getting smarter. We are under a lot of pressure to perform. There's no shortage of books, podcasts, and seminars helpfully telling us that if we think positively, the world will be ours. But with our amygdala firing off our fear responses, our perfectionism telling us whatever we're attempting is not good enough, and our memories laying on some unhelpful scenarios, no wonder we struggle to live our best life and be our best self. Without understanding the process our brains are going through, these pointless motivational statements just serve to further the feeling that we're failing. The implication is that if we could just get our attitude right, we'd be winning. Our brains are thwarting our attempts to find our voices and take action when we're under pressure. Watch yourself hold your breath and stay very still in a subconscious attempt to render yourself invisible next time you're in a meeting and you don't want to be asked a question. You, like Cat at the Skipping Rope, have gone into freeze mode. One of the most serious ramifications of being under the influence of the fight, flight, freeze response is that women who have been sexually assaulted are accused of lying, as they didn't try to stop the assault or call for help. We now understand that under such a serious threat, it is very common to go into freeze mode and be unable to move or scream. So, back to performance anxiety. In any context, it can be a nightmare. Berating yourself for not thinking positively enough or not being braver is just unhelpful. If you're struggling, that's okay. Your brain is presenting you with some formidable barriers to overcome. Get your thoughts straight. Tame the dragon. You're going to be triggered. No two ways around it. Something or someone is going to ruin your equanimity. Once you're aware you've been triggered, try to take the steps I mentioned earlier. Acknowledge it's happened. Don't judge yourself. Divert your attention. No thanks for the memory. Our memories are unreliable. If you're in the middle of an argument and you find yourself about to say, I absolutely remember clearly saying to you, then maybe don't say it, you could well be wrong. Books and covers. We've all been told at some point not to judge a book by its cover. Turns out it's top advice. Watch for judging someone based on your gut response, especially if it's to do with their appearance. End of chapter five. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Um, all I can say is keep speaking up, smart women. It's all we can do. If we want to challenge the patriarchal status quo, it's up to us. So if you can ever find a moment when you say to yourself, There's no point in me speaking out, but you've actually got something quite salient to say. Give it a shot. So, as always, um stay safe, stay well, keep your critical thinking hats on, talk soon, bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in to Why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar, or in your own home, please, please respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy, and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from Why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.