When Awareness Becomes Avoidance

You know your attachment style. Your Enneagram number. Your communication tendencies. Your childhood wounds. Your triggers. Your patterns.

So why are you still stuck?

In this episode, we're unpacking a modern trap that many women fall into: confusing self-awareness with actual change.

Somewhere along the way, reflection became a substitute for action. We learned to analyze ourselves, understand ourselves, and explain ourselves in incredible detail. But awareness alone doesn't transform your life. Action does.

We're talking about why insight can feel safer than change, how endless processing can become a form of avoidance, and the subtle ways we convince ourselves we're making progress when we're really standing still.

If you've ever found yourself collecting personality assessments, saving podcast episodes, filling journals, and waiting for one more breakthrough before you make a move, this conversation is for you.

You don't need more proof.

You need more progress.

Thank you for listening to NDA!

If this episode made you think, challenged a perspective, or helped you recognize a pattern in yourself, consider sharing it with someone else who might need the conversation.

You can connect with us on Instagram at @nda_pod, where we continue the discussion between episodes.

Until next time, notice the pattern. Then decide what happens next.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Elizabeth, there's something that I don't know if you knew about me.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Oh, I feel like I know so much about you. Do tell. I am a quote unquote self-awareness junkie. I knew you were self-aware. I feel like there's something else. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Throughout my, I'm gonna say adult life, because this is something that I didn't really uh tap into until later years. And I don't even actually remember the first time I took any kind of behavioral assessment, whether it was Myers Briggs or disc or whatever. Right. But it was early on in my career. I took the assessment and got the results. And from that point, I was hooked.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Really? Did you finally feel seen for the first time or know how to- I did. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Yes. I was like, oh my gosh, this is it. This is me on paper. This resonates. This is exactly what I struggle to talk about in relationship to my behaviors and how I think about things. And that was the start of a long-standing relationship with various assessments, self-assessments. Okay. So for a really long time, and I still can, I could tell you my Myers-Briggs type, my disc type, my predictive index type, my Enneagram, my tell our listeners at least a couple of those because for those who know about that, they'd be curious.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Inquiring what you'd want to know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

For disc, I am a C S. Okay. Enneagram, I'm an eight. Okay. Predictive index, I'm a controller. All right. And uh my love language is acts of service.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Hey, we have the same love language. That's why we get along so well. I never knew that.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Yeah, acts of service.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

All right. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

And it's funny because I didn't realize that I was stopping at self-awareness and not actually doing anything with the information until I started going to therapy. So I signed up for my first appointment with my therapist, who I'm still seeing now, two years later. She had this questionnaire that I filled out. It was very in-depth, asked about all aspects of my life. So I filled out the questionnaire and I sent it back to her. And then I followed that email up with an email that had all of my disk and PI and all of my reports attached to it. And I sent it to her. And she very kindly responded and she was like, Okay, thank you. And then in our first session, she was like, So you really like to learn about yourself? That's pretty clear. I said, Yeah, it is. It is. That's true. And she asked about where that came from. Like, is it part of my job? Is this just something that I enjoy? And I explained what I just explained here was that, you know, since the first time I took it, I felt like it was the first time I could really express. And she, through some very kind and supportive conversation, got me to realize that there was a lot of identity crisis in that, in not being able to articulate who I actually am and what I need as a human and looking to these reports to do that. And then also not actually doing anything with the information that I was learning. So that's what I want to talk about today.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Most NDAs keep people quiet. Ours does the opposite. Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed. Not men, the behaviors that keep women small. This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka. And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA. I'm so excited about today's episode where we have this entire generation of women who are incredibly self-aware. They can show all the reports of their style, their PI pattern, like you said, love language, like you just gave as an example, MBTI. We know our attachment style, we know our triggers, our childhood wounds, Enneagram, whatever it is. And we know why we do what we do, but then somehow we're still doing it. It's almost to me like we don't need another breakthrough. And this is where, in your instance, your therapist is serving what I'm about to say. We need an implementation department. Yeah, exactly. Because just to her point that she shared with you, if knowledge alone and those reports alone changed people, then every freaking woman listening, we'd already be living our best life. And I don't know about you, I'm not living my best life yet.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

This this podcast would not be necessary.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

No, it wouldn't. We can explain all these things in incredible detail, but how do we change it?

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Exactly. I think awareness is great, awareness is super valuable, it's necessary, but ultimately the awareness doesn't create change by itself. You have to couple it with something. And I think somewhere along the way, myself included, many of us started confusing understanding ourselves with actually doing the work of becoming different.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

I know for me, when I'm looking at podcasts or influencers to follow, or just smart people that I can learn from, one of the biggest things that causes me to cringe is someone who stops at awareness. Yes. Where literally, oh, if you're this, then this is what describes how you think or how you whatever. I I don't know, whatever it is. Yeah, it's valuable, but that's not the problem. And I think too many of us, we want that to be the final destination. But in fact, that's right where we buckle up the seatbelt because that's where the growth starts. Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

I wasn't becoming trapped by self-awareness out of laziness, which I know, as I have expressed on previous episodes, is one of my fears, yeah, is being perceived as lazy. I was getting trapped because the awareness felt safer than actually doing anything with the information. Developing an understanding of myself felt productive, but actually taking action on it felt risky. Right. So there were consequences associated with taking action. Like, oh, what if I change and people start treating me differently, not in a positive way. Oh, what if I change and my relationships suffer? Or oh, what if I change and my contributions at work are viewed differently? And I didn't even necessarily realize it, but that's a huge part of what was holding me back because I was so afraid of what consequences the action would bring if I actually started doing anything about it. That coupled with not really knowing where to start.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, I do think a lot of people, and including a lot of influencers, honestly, and people doing kind of in this space, it's not coming from a bad place. No, it's coming from a place of what next? What do you do next? Imagine going to a doctor, one of our really good friends is a doctor, and I'm just imagining going to him, and he tells me I have a broken arm. And then for the next five years, I'm just walking around introducing myself at cocktail parties, like, hey, I'm Elizabeth and I have a broken arm, you know? Like, right, he doesn't give me a cast or I don't have treatment, there's no PT. It's just awareness. Yeah, exactly. And as funny as that is, that's exactly what a lot of us do emotionally. And I think why we stay there, it could be because it's risky, it could be because we genuinely don't know what to do next. It could be because holy shit, just even coming to the place of being aware of some of these things is further than I've ever been before. So it just feels productive. But I think a lot of times just understanding something can give the illusion that we're doing something. But you have to actually make some intellectual movement in order for anything to truly come of it.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Right, exactly. I think as a society, we are, and women especially, I see this in my Instagram feed all the time. We're constantly encouraged to learn more, reflect more, journal more, analyze more, heal more. But very little attention is given to the next step in that process, which is deciding, acting, experimenting, and oh, guess what? Risking failure. Yes. As we talked about on a previous episode, that's a huge factor for a lot of people, right? Because again, as a society, and especially for women, failure is a huge no-no. When we look at the impact of this, is that there's there's the impact on yourself, which is you give yourself the illusion of movement that you're learning, you're reflecting, you're listening, you're journaling, you're thinking, but nothing in your life is actually changing. So you're feeling busy, but you're still not transforming and you're still not seeing different results. Yes. It does erode your self-trust because every time you ignore what you already know, you teach yourself not to trust yourself. And so eventually the question becomes if I already know this, why am I still not doing anything about it? Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

You know you need to leave that job, you know you need to set that boundary to have that conversation, or in our case, start that business. Yeah, you know it, but instead you might lie to yourself and say, Oh, I'm still processing, but you're not, you're hiding.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

You're hiding, you are full on avoiding, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yes. And by the way, if you're getting a little sassy in your mind, like a little defensive, because I just said that and it hit a little deep. I've done it too. Okay. I've done it too. Same.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

You're ultimately delaying your life. It's a relationship that's not addressed, it's a business that isn't started, it's a boundary that isn't set, it's a conversation you don't have. So your life is remaining on hold in some capacity while you continue to process and just kind of sit in this pool of self-awareness without actually doing anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

And there's a question before we started recording. I was just talking to someone who this individual and I are the same age, and he is just contemplating some things career-wise. And rather than asking, what should I do next? We looked at it differently. And this I think would help our listeners related to this topic. What is it you already know that you've been pretending you don't know? Because that's the question. You already know all the things that you've learned from increasing your self-awareness, but what are you pretending you don't know related to what to do next?

SPEAKER_02 10:35

So, what do we do about this? We have the awareness in abundance, some of us. It's saved in a folder in our Google Drive. The goal here is getting you to start to make different choices. So start asking yourself a different question. Instead of asking yourself, what else do I need to understand or what additional information do I need? Ask yourself, what do I already know? I was super guilty of this. I was constantly looking for more data points. I'm sure this shocks you. Looking for more data and not actually acting on the data that I had. At no point did I actually stop and take inventory of what I already knew. So it was just collecting this library of reports and results, and it would just sit there. Instead of asking what additional information do I need, what else do I need to understand? What do I already know?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Exactly. You and I are working together now for the for the remainder of our careers, but we worked elsewhere together, right? Yep. And we would see it all the time. We would see where we worked together, a tendency for leaders to overly reflect, but then never decide. And I think it's important whether you lead a team or you lead a family or you lead a committee on a board that you sit on, or maybe just a group of friends and you're helping out to plan the next girls' trip. They're not waiting for another six months of analysis. No, they're waiting for a fucking decision. Movement is what I find creates the most clarity. It is not the other way around. And so many people get that flip-flopped.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Absolutely. Another question you can ask yourself instead of asking, which again is where I was getting stuck, is what if this doesn't work? Or what if I try and fail? Instead, asking, what would I learn if I tried?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yes. There's so much goodness that comes out of that.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Just explore the possibility of, you know what? If I try something different, if I try to behave differently based on the awareness and the data that I have, what would I learn? How might her my horizons be expanded? Yes. That reflection is super useful, especially for somebody who, as I've again talked about on a previous episode, had a tendency to not want to move forward on anything unless it's perfect. Spoiler alert, it's never going to be perfect. It is not. So, worst case scenario, what would I learn if I tried and if I failed, if I didn't achieve what I thought I was going to achieve, or if I did it from my perspective as quote unquote wrong.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

One of the things that I've enjoyed most, Amanda, about us working together for this podcast, as well as the other venture that we do outside of here is that both of us are willing to figuratively grab each other's hand and jump into the pool because and just give things a try. And I am so proud of us and how much we have accomplished. Yes, in a short period of time. And it's because we're realizing that clarity and the answers that we need to inform us so that we can make really powerful progress, it only is available after we make moves. Yeah, exactly. It's just been it's truly, truly been magical. And I just it's I love it.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

If you would have told me even two years ago that we were going to get a business up and running off the ground and leave our full-time jobs in six months, I would have told you you were nuts. Right, right. Because in perfectionist Amanda's mind, that is not nearly enough time to get it exactly right. There are plenty of days where I feel like I am still building the plane and flying it at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yes. And guess what? I'm okay with it, and it's fucking fun, guys.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

It is so much fun. It really is. At first, I was nervous about it. I was like, okay, this is this is a lot to try to do at the same time, all at once. But there have been so many times where I have, again, like I talked about on a previous episode, launched something at 85% and been so happy with the results. And previous me would have waited for it to be 100%, 110%, realistically. Let's be honest. Yes, definitely. It is, it's very freeing to be okay with moving forward on things and making decisions and knowing that I'm gonna make a million mistakes and I've made a bunch already and I'm gonna make more, and being okay with that because I'm growing so much, I'm learning so much. The power that that gives me has been so incredible. And it's really it's hard to put into words actually, the transformation that I have felt when I finally decided to do something with all of the data that I've been collecting about myself, about business, all of the things and actually executing on it. It's so freeing.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Oh, absolutely, because the goal it's not to gather more data, it's to become more self-trusting. It hits different, and that's what you just articulated.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Because the purpose of gathering all this information, the purpose of building awareness isn't endless analysis, it's action. So if you never get to the action phase, you're living in this constant state of not fulfilling what the purpose of the awareness is. That's a frustrating place to be.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Because you're not gonna move. There's no movement that can happen from there. There is no movement because everything around you and everyone around you, it's gonna continue growing, evolving, and you stand still. Exactly. It's not a fun place to be. This is something I tell my coaching clients a lot. When you learn something new about yourself, don't leave it there. Now I know why I think that way or why I am attracted to this type of career or keep finding myself in these types of relationships, whatever it is. Take it one step further and say to yourself, okay, now that I know that, what am I going to do differently? That's where the growth happens.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Yeah. I think this is a good time to transition to shrink this, our recurring segment. And I believe you have a shrinking behavior you'd like to share.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Two, I'm dying, I'm chomping at the bit. Let's hear it. It's well of all things, it happened 48 hours ago. Okay, this is fresh. It's fresh, and it happened over tea. So yeah, I know. Not figuratively spilling the tea, but literally actual tea, hot tea, just for to set the stage. I had dinner with an absolutely incredible group of women. There were about six of us. These are women who are smart, successful, funny, and just the kind of women, at least for me, who make me leave any time spent with them feeling bigger and not smaller. So I love that. Yeah, I love it too. And something really cool is happening, I'll just say. And what started is a connection around entrepreneurship, because all of us are women who are entrepreneurs, is turning into something much deeper. And we discovered over dinner that we have shared values, shared experiences, shared ways of seeing the world, and there's some real magic brewing, anyways. So here we are for this tea incident, and dinner is wrapping up. The server, lovely young woman, asks if any of us want to drink coffee, tea, what whatever. And I say, Yes, I would like tea. So then she asks, cream, milk, honey, sugar. And without even thinking, I say, No way, tea is meant to be tasted in all its pure glory. Just give it to me straight. Now, one of the women sitting right next to me simply says, Oh, that's it. It was one syllable, that's all. And immediately my brain went to all this happened in two seconds. Oh, way to go, Elizabeth. You've done it now. You are the world's biggest tea snob. Everyone thinks you're too much. Why are you like this? I think you should explain yourself, apologize, clarify, and just make everyone else comfortable. Now I'm really excited here to share this example because something really interesting happened. Number one, I recognized it immediately. And I literally thought, oh, snap, this is shrinking behavior. And nobody said I was too much, nobody seemed offended, nobody cared. And the entire drama existed in my own head. And for all I know, the woman sitting next to me, she may have said, Oh, because she saw something on the dessert menu that she wanted to try. I have no idea. And normally, you know me, Amanda. I would have jumped in, I would have explained myself and overexplained and apologized. But this time I forced myself to sit there and I sipped my hot tea in all its pure glory, and I said absolutely nothing. So yeah, I was really proud. So I walked out of dinner Saturday night feeling really proud. The fact that I had hot tea without anything added, that's not the win. Okay. It was amusing to abandon myself over someone else's O that I wanted to internalize. So I walked out of there feeling so high. And for the record, we had no edibles, which are legal in New York, but this was completely sober overthinking.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Yeah, classic overthinking.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

So I caught the shrink.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

I love that. That's so good. My shrinking behavior is something tied to actually uh episode that we released a couple of weeks ago. As I think we've talked about, you and I have a photo shoot coming up. We are super excited for it. It's something that we didn't think was going to be in the budget for at least a year, maybe longer, for our business and for the podcast. And Little Miss Lucky over here won a drawing for a photo shoot. Yeah, so pumped. Thank you, Universe, for shining on us in that moment. I was on Sunday preparing all of my outfits for the photo shoot. I was trying on a bunch of different things and just laying it all out and trying to figure out what I wanted to wear. And as I was going through and pulling things out, I realized how many sizes of me I have in my closet. Well, closets, plural. There's literally more than will fit in a single closet. I'm not gonna say how many closets because it's embarrassing. But I think that just serves the point. So I have lots of different sizes of me clothing-wise in my house. And this is it's actually interesting because when my dad moved out of my childhood home, I was helping him pack things up and weed out and get rid of things. And I noticed that my mom had done the same thing. So this is something I apparently come by genetically. At least that's what I'm gonna tell myself. But it really got me thinking that I have had this reminder of hey, you used to be smaller in front of me constantly for actual decades. Because I've done this throughout my life for as long as I can remember. At first, I told myself I did it because it was motivating, but I think it was more along the lines of a guilt trip.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Oh, shaming.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Yes. Oh, hey, you're gonna keep these for when you lose the weight, for when you can fit back into them. And oh, another year's gone by and you're not fitting back into those. That's a problem. That's not creating a positive environment for me. That's not appreciating and enjoying my body for where it is, the fact that I'm approaching 40. There is more body change in my future, and the fact that I'm expecting to fit back into these clothes that I wore when I was in my early 20s. Why am I putting that pressure on myself? Right. Do you know what I did? What did you what did you do? I got rid of them. I put them in a bag. I took them up to Goodwill and I donated them. I was looking for a very dramatic fire for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

I literally was.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Okay. I care about the environment too much for that. That's it. My neighbors would not appreciate. I got rid of it all and I said, This is not, I'm not taking up space in my house or in my mind any longer for all of these different versions of me that may or may not return at some point.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

I fucking love that. That's very freeing.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

It's very freeing. Not to mention the closet space that I've cleared up. My gosh, I can actually see what I have now. It's amazing. Nice. Yeah. So more than one benefit there. And so many women do this to themselves as well. My mom clearly was one of them. And it does. It makes me sad that we held this over our own heads for so long.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And look at you breaking cycles, girl. Yeah. Yeah. It stops here.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Your mom is proud too. She absolutely is.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yep. As always, we would love for you to share your shrinking behaviors with us. Send us a message on Instagram. We are at Nda underscore pod. We would love to hear about them. If you'd like us to anonymize it, let us know. We are happy to do that. But I think just to circle back on today's topic, you do not need more proof. You need more practice. You don't need more information. You need to give yourself the space to practice behaving differently, showing up differently, trying something new. One small step. What's we we've said it on many episodes. What if tomorrow you just did 1% better than today?

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Baby steps. We're not sitting here saying you have to make all these massive transformations because you've got all this data. Just do one thing differently. That's all. The goal isn't to become an expert on yourself, the goal is to build a life that reflects what you've learned.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

My words that I'd love to leave today's listeners with is just ask yourself one question. What do I already know? And then go from there. Just take one action and let it be messy, let it be imperfect, but let it be immediate. Because, like we said before, and Amanda, you're living proof of this, I'm living proof of this. Awareness, yes, it starts to work, but action is what changes your life. So let's start taking those tiny, messy, imperfect, immediate, small little steps. And let's start talking about it with one another instead of hiding it away because we want everyone to think we're perfect. And by doing that, when one of us rises, we all rise.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

So true. And celebrate. When you've taken that step, celebrate it. Even if you failed when you took the step, because we don't celebrate our wins enough. And taking one step is a hell of a win.