#33 Self Doubt vs. Self Judgement

We draw a clear line between self-doubt that questions ability and self-judgment that attacks worth, then offer tools to break both cycles. We share a simple framework—pause, identify, replace—to help you build courage, practice compassion, and take steady action.

• difference between doubt (ability) and judgment (identity)
• how they show up as procrastination, perfectionism, and shame
• why courage reduces doubt and compassion disarms judgment
• collecting small wins and borrowing belief for confidence
• reframing with curiosity and “I wonder” language
• prosecuting harsh thoughts and shifting to growth
• the pause–identify–replace framework for daily use
• practical reflections and sample reframes for real life

If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon K Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.

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Transcript

Welcome and Core Theme

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Hello and welcome to my podcast. My name is Sharon Murphy, and I'm a certified life and mindset coach, and I help women who seek to be happy and holy. Each week I'll bring you tools and insights to help you on your journey to the heights. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about something that quietly holds so many of us back, and that is self-judgment and self-doubt. We're going to talk about what the differences are and how you can break free from them. They sound similar, right, when we say self-dudge self-doubt and self-judgment, but they're not the same thing. They're actually quite different. And understanding the difference can help you break free from cycles of negativity and move you forward with more confidence, which is really what most of us want. A lot of us are, you know, wishing we had more confidence and we're not necessarily understanding what that is. But self-judgment and self-doubt are two things that they hinder our ability to move forward with confidence. So let me ask you: have you ever hesitated to take action because you weren't sure you could do it? That's self-doubt. Or maybe you've beaten yourself up after making a mistake, telling yourself that you'll never get it right. Well, that is self-judgment. So let's break it down a little bit. Let's look at this. Self-doubt is when you question your ability to succeed. And it sounds something like, I don't know if I can do this, or what if I fail? Those are pretty basic thoughts. They usually go a little deeper than that, but just to give you the idea. Self-judgment goes deeper. This is when you criticize who you are, not just what you can do. And it sounds like I'm not good enough, or I always mess things up, or I'll never figure this out, or I'm so stupid. It can be any number of things like that. So do you see the difference? Doubt is about our capability, judgment is about our identity. One questions your skills, the other attacks your worth. And that's very, very crucial. Now, I was working with someone the other day, and she was struggling to take some action in an area of her life. And she had conveyed to me that she had put together plans and she had ideas and she was really good about coming up with possibilities and thoughts and ideas. But she kept coming back to the phrases like, I'm just not good at, or I wish I was more confident, etc. I just need more confidence. And she would finish those thoughts, I'm not good at, or I wish I was more confident in, you know, whatever area. She'd finish those two phrases with varying things, just different things that we were discussing. But she would, those phrases, I'm just not good at, and I wish I was more confident, they showed up multiple times during our time together. And I recognized that she was not only dealing with self-doubt about her ability, but she was also, she also had judgment about herself and what she perceived to be as weaknesses. Both of them were leading to an unwanted outcome. They were holding her back. And because she mentioned it several times throughout her short time together, it's clear that these are the kind of thoughts that she has on loop in her own mind all the time. Now, for some of you, it may not be quite that obvious. Maybe you appear much more confident and self-assured to those around you, but I'm willing to bet there's areas in your life that you've struggled with either self-doubt or self-judgment, and likely both. So let's take a look at how these show up in our lives. Self-doubt will present itself as procrastinating, over-preparing, second-guessing decisions. So imagine that you're invited to lead a presentation. Self-doubt says, I don't know if I have enough knowledge. What if I mess up? You might procrastinate or over-prepare because you're questioning your ability. Self-judgment shows up as negative self-talk or perfectionism or shame after making mistakes. So imagine that you give the presentation that you were just talking that we just talked about, and you stumble over on an answer, or you struggle to get something out that you wanted to say or convey. Self-judgment then shows up as I sounded stupid. I'm such a failure. I'm so dumb. I shouldn't be speaking in front of people. Instead of critiquing the skill, you attack yourself. This can result in feeling paralyzed, and it will keep you from wanting to move forward or to make a decision like that in the future. The key difference is that one slows you down because you're unsure, the other stops you completely because it makes you feel unworthy. And when we feel unworthy, we don't show up for ourselves in our lives. Let's talk a little bit about the impact that self-doubt and self-judgment has on our own personal growth and our confidence. Well, it's true, self-doubt can it can sometimes be useful because it reminds us to prepare and to practice. I see this sometimes in my own kids' lives. If we are overconfident in our ability to accomplish something, especially when it comes to whether it's sports or school or test or things like that, if we're overconfident, we sometimes fail to prepare, right? And we're not practicing what we should be practicing. So having a little bit of doubt in our ability, it can be useful. But if it's unchecked, it keeps us from trying new things. And it become, it becomes habitual. And it's something that keeps us stuck. Often we feel like we should feel a certain way, right? We feel like we should feel more confident before we do something. If we have self-doubt, if we doubt ourselves, immediately we go to, I shouldn't be doing this. But that's really not what it is. It's not what should happen. It's something that we're gonna have self-doubt around things that we've never tried before. We're not gonna have confidence if we've never done something. So to understand that self-doubt is likely going to be there, right? It's gonna be present, and that what we need to tap into in those moments is courage. That's what we need. Courage is the antidote for self-doubt. Feeling some fear, some hesitancy, some doubt, some trepidation, but doing it anyway, not allowing any amount of doubt to just steal us, steal our ability to try new things. Now, self-judgment, though, that can be much more damaging because self-judgment leads to shame, perfectionism, and also a fear of showing up. It convinces us that we are the mistake. It's like the it's like the wicked stepmother that's just ready to give us a lashing when we didn't show up or perform as we could have or wanted to. It's a kind of self-judgment that's never useful. These are the thoughts that we really need to become aware of and to work to remove in our lives if we want to live fruitful, peaceful, joy-filled lives. Because self-judgment never, ever is beneficial. So when we live in judgment, we shrink ourselves. When we live in doubt, we hesitate. And it's true that neither one helps us grow. Both aren't helpful. But because self-judgment attacks us at the core, therefore, it's so much more important to eradicate this kind of self-talk, this self-thinking in your life. And it's much more difficult to do, I'm gonna be honest. But it's not impossible. And the transformation that it brings when you get rid of this kind of judgment in your life is really profound. So let's take a look at some tools and strategies of how to break free from self-doubt and self-judgment. For self-doubt, building evidence of success, collecting small wins, is super important. And now I'm gonna bring up again keeping a journal of things that you've accomplished so that when when doubts start to creep in, you have proof. And in my own journal, I have a spot where I write down a few wins from my previous day. It's a formatted journal that I have through Metanoia Catholic. And one of the first questions is uh celebrating your wins from yesterday. And at first, when I started it, I was like, I had I actually had a hard time. Certain days were easy, but certain days I had a hard time coming up with wins. But the reality is, is even the small ones are super important. Taking note of them helps me to see that no matter what the day look like, there's wins that are worth celebrating. And this helps to fuel my confidence moving forward. It's also helpful to be to be fair. It's also helpful for self-judgment because it redirects my attention away from slips and it moves me towards my wins. But I do like it for doubt, self-doubt as well. So reframing doubt as curiosity is another one. Instead of I can't do this, try, I wonder how I can figure this out. Becoming curious, that phrase of I wonder is so helpful. It just relieves a burden that we place on ourselves sometimes. That that self-doubt that can feel very heavy. It's like, I wonder how I can figure this out. Or a thought could be, you know, even if I don't get this right immediately, eventually I will get there. I will learn. Using phrases like I wonder can be really helpful when we're dealing with self-doubt. Another thing you can do is borrowing belief from others, whether that's mentors, friends, or from your past experiences. Sometimes we need to lean on external encouragement until we build up our own confidence. And I'll be honest, I love this one and I've used this many times. My coach will say to me, borrow my confidence if you need to. And at first I really didn't understand it, but it's so true. Others sometimes have more confidence in us. Sometimes other people have more confidence in you than you have in yourself. Let someone speak into you where you're experiencing doubt. Allow them to build you up and use that to fuel you to take the action that you need.

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Right?

A Simple Pause-Identify-Replace Framework

Practical Reflection and Reframes

Recap and Weekly Action Steps

Closing, Contact, and Subscribe

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When you don't have the confidence in yourself, use somebody else's confidence, whoever that might be. So let's talk about tools and strategies for self-judgment now. The first one I want to mention here is practicing self-compassion, which is talking to yourself the way you talk to someone that you love, with kindness and understanding. If we got a printout of the thoughts of self-judgment at the end of each day, if your brain just produced this, if there was just all of a sudden at the end of the day, it started to print out, like we used to have on the old computers. A lot of times there would be things that would print that would just come out of the printer, or like a receipt that gets printed at the end. I think we'd be shocked if we just got a printout or a listing of all the thoughts that we had that were would be considered self-judging. We'd be, we'd be floored. Seriously, the horrible way that we speak to ourselves. It's yeah, so yes, it's important to practice self-compassion and to move towards kindness and understanding. But first, we need to become aware of the thoughts. And so that's why I say, you know, I don't think we realize how much of our thinking is self-critical. When I work with people, the things that they say to me, and then I I repeat back to them or I mirror back to them, I can see the look on their face. They're shocked that they're even saying these things in their conversations because they're just their thoughts that they're having. And they're riddled with self-judgment and self-criticism. Self-doubt as well. But like I said, self-judgment has so much, it's so much more detrimental to us. But this is why I think it's so important that we can take the time to journal when we're feeling off. And by off I mean crabby or grumpy or unmotivated or angry. Just start writing and you're gonna see so many thoughts on paper, many of which include self-judgment. So that's that awareness is the first step. And then you can move to a place of self-compassion and try and reframe that. So the next one is challenging the inner critic and asking yourself when you notice those thoughts, whose voice is this really? Or where did I learn to speak this way to myself? Now, something that I was taught and I like to use with my clients is to prosecute the thought. And that's basically, you know, asking yourself, is this really true? Some other questions you can ask is, does everyone believe this? Or what does God say about this? Another one I really like is, is this 100% true? Is this true 100% of the time? Or is this 100% true? Another one is, could something else be true? When we really start to interrogate our thoughts and prosecute them, we start to realize that there's so much falseness in it. Even if we have evidence of some sort of past failure, we take that one thing and we make it very universal and condemning. We can always find evidence for the opposite if we really become objective and curious with our thoughts. And the next one is shifting from shame to growth. So shifting our thoughts to, I failed. So therefore I'm a failure. Trying something on as, yeah, I failed. And like I said, I don't like the word failed, but you could even, let's just use it for today's purposes. I failed, but I can learn from this. Better yet, is I didn't get the outcome I liked, but that's okay because I'm learning. And I I will adjust next time. Another thought could be, I don't need to be perfect, and I will get it eventually. So those are more gross-minded thoughts that don't condemn you. A simple framework to use to just put this a little bit more, to package this up a little bit nicer, is just when you notice a negative thought, or better yet, when you notice a negative emotion, because our emotions are much easier to identify. When you notice a negative emotion or an uncomfortable emotion, like I mentioned before, feeling off, you know, grumpy, crabby, irritable, unmotivated, whatever it is, identify what you're thinking. Bonus points if you can journal and get them on paper. But if you can't, just take the time and think about what's going on in your mind. What are the thoughts you're having and capture those? And then ask yourself: is this self-doubt or is it self-judgment? And then go ahead and replace it with a healthier thought that we just talked about, challenging those thoughts, shifting them to I wonder, or, you know, I don't need to be perfect, and I'll get this eventually, or I'm learning. Those are things that we can practice. So again, the framework that we can use is pause, identify if it's doubt or judgment, and then replace it with something better. So let's make this a little practical. I want you to think of a situation recently where you held yourself back. Think of a time when you were asked to do something, when you thought about taking some sort of step in a direction, and then you immediately pulled back. Or maybe you thought about it and pulled back. It could be something that you were invited to attend, invited to participate in, invited to do or to lead, or maybe it's something, a step that you've been wanting to take, and you you started to move forward towards it, but then you pulled back. I want you to get really, really specific and think about that situation and analyze it and think: was it self-doubt that was holding me back, or was it self-judgment? Was I questioning my ability, or was I condemning myself and my worth? If you can, grab a journal, write down one doubt and one judgment that you've had about yourself this week, and then go ahead and reframe each one. For example, a doubt could be, I don't know if I can lead this project, or I don't know if I can do this. Reframe it to, I've handled challenges before, I'll figure it out. I can find the answers I need. For the judgment, a judgment example could be, you know, somebody, I'm terrible at relationships. In fact, I just heard this one. I'm just terrible at relationships. Reframing it to, I've made mistakes, but I'm learning how to communicate better, right? That just it opens it up and it eliminates the judgment instead of I'm terrible at this. And I do hear that a lot from people, and it's very sometimes it can conceive it can seem very innocent, but saying I'm terrible at this, it's a judgment against ourselves. So just be very careful about that. You can even say that's not my strongest suit. I'm, you know, it's not my strongest strong point. That's okay. That's not a judgment, that's probably just an honest evaluation. But I'm terrible at this, it doesn't really lead to anything fruitful. So to recap self-doubt questions your ability, self-judgment attacks your worth. Both hold you back, but there's tools to help you shift them. And remember that judgment is much more, much more detrimental to you because it's attacking your worth. So your action steps for this week, notice when those thoughts show up. Ask yourself, is this a doubt or is this judgment? And then practice the pause, identify, and replace framework that I talked about. Now I'd love to hear how this lands for you. Please feel free to reach out and share your insights or stories. And as always, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a fantastic day. And until next time, onward and upward, my friends, to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon K Coaching.com. That's Sharon the Letterk Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.