#106: What’s Killing your Confidence and How to Shift It

When I was trying to learn how to belt as a singer, I was stuck in a pattern of pushing. Both in my voice and in my life.

I kept showing up for classes and auditions, even though things weren’t going so well.

Each time I did, rather than it getting easier, my nervous system started to shut down.

I was showing up how everyone taught me to, but failing miserably. Faking confidence did nothing to yield the results I wanted and probably made it worse.

In this episode, I share why and how we can build confidence in a better way, through Embodiment. 

I discuss:

• What Confidence actually is
• The most commonly recognized paths to confidence
• Why skill and talent aren’t required to be confident
• The 4 kinds of thoughts and behaviors that are killing your confidence
• Why “Fake It Until You Make It” is ineffective and can actually be harmful
• Powerful shifts you can make in the way you are showing up to build your confidence instead.
• How the E.M.M. Embodiment Method supports you in feeling more confident now

The Confident Creator workshop replay is now available. Walk through the full EMM Embodiment Method with journaling prompts, meditation, movement, and energy work designed to help you embody confidence now — before you've developed the skill or talent. 

Get lifetime access to the replay and workbook for $77 here:
https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/confidentcreator

Resources from The Embodied Way

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On the Podcast Blog: https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/2026/05/29/whats-killing-your-confidence-and-how-to-shift-it/

For show notes and helpful resources, visit https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/podcast.

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Transcript

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Natalie Neckyfarow 0:00

Trying to learn how to belt because I'm five foot two. No one was particularly interested in me seeing classical conventional musical theater roles. Everyone wanted me to play Ado Annie and Penny in Hairspray. And that required a certain type of voice. And I remember that when I went into audition singing-wise, I would have this even bigger block. Your voice is incredibly sensitive. And so when you feel resistance, when you are having to sing, you might crack, you might break, you might sing the wrong note. And this was happening for me on the regular, but I was so determined to succeed as a musical theater performer. I really wanted to play lead roles like so badly. And so I just kept showing up. I was so stubborn. I'm talking today about blasting through my sense of personal safety.

Welcome

Speaker 1:09 Speaker 1:09

This is The Embodied Way Podcast, where creative people come to reconnect with their sole purpose, identify and release their blocks, heal old wounds, and manifest the life they've always dreamed of. Hi, I'm Natalie Necky farow, and I want to welcome you back to The Embodied Way Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about confidence and all of the different ways that what you think and how you behave are actually preventing you from embodying confidence. And I'm also going to share my EMM embodiment method, which outlines a pathway forward using embodiment to experience confidence at a deep cellular level

Confidence isn't a Given

Speaker 2:02 Speaker 2:02

right away.

Speaker 2:03

What many of us don't realize is that confidence isn't really a given for anyone. We look at some people and we just assume that they are confident. And we look at other people and assume that they aren't. But the truth is we actually really don't know what's going on inside. And the same is true for you. One person might look at you and think that you are incredibly confident, even if you don't feel that way at all. And another person might look at you and think, oh my gosh, this person really has no self-esteem. But I want to tell you what someone thinks about you or what you think about yourself isn't really what matters here. It's about what you are experiencing internally. So if internally you don't feel confident, that is what we're aiming to shift. And if internally you feel confident, even if externally you might not present that way, maybe you're just kind of an awkward person, then ultimately you're actually going to be more aligned and actually be able to receive more of what's right for you and what's meant for you. Because ultimately, when we are confident, we are being ourselves. And a lot of us have this false assumption that confidence is about looking a certain way or behaving a certain way and seeming put together and seeming kind of perfect, which actually isn't what confidence is at all.

Speaker 3:58

Now, I want to share with you right now that confidence for me is not always a given. In fact, I know when I am pushing up against a personal boundary for myself, even while talking on this podcast, if I start to feel a little bit of a lump in my throat, or I start to recognize that I've got a lot of phlegm accumulating around my voice box. And I literally just took a break, paused the recording, and did a little quick energy work practice because I was feeling like I was a little stuck. And that's exactly what I want to help you do. I want you to recognize when what you're doing on the outside doesn't match what you're feeling on the inside. And then we get to change what we're feeling on the inside through doing these practices so that when we do things on the outside, everything feels aligned. And that alignment, again, is about being your most authentic self, about saying and doing what you want to say and do, and not really worrying about how it's received by other people. And ultimately, you know, some people aren't gonna like what I do no matter what I do. But if I'm able to be authentically myself, the people who are meant to receive my message will get it because it will resonate with them, because that is what I am here to share.

Confidence obtained by Skill isn't the only way

Speaker 5:44 Speaker 5:44

Okay, so there's a path towards confidence that most of us are pretty familiar with. And that is confidence that is obtained by skill. And so I'm sure you can think about these things. What are the things that you are very confident about? The things that you've done maybe hundreds or thousands of times, the things that people recognize that you're good at. And when you go to do any of these things, you actually don't think twice about it. There is absolutely no restriction in your body. You are able to really freely speak your opinions about these things because you don't care because you know that you're good at it. And then there's talent. And we all know that talent is subjective. And my belief is that your talent shines through very clearly when you're in alignment physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, spiritually. And that your talent isn't gone if that isn't the case, but it can't shine through. And so when your talent is coming through, then you know, these gifts, these things that you're really wonderful at, you also feel confident at. And because of that, I felt less confident. And when I was able to clear up some of the things that were blocking me, that confidence just shone through so much more clearly. And so since confidence is actually a feeling, we don't actually need either skill or talent to be confident. And I'm gonna say that again because it's maybe a little radical. You actually don't need skill or talent to be confident.

Speaker 8:25

Now, I hate to bring up the current political situation, but I do think this is kind of a prime example. Okay, there are people who are currently running our government who have very little skill, and perhaps we could say very little talent as well, but their confidence is supersized, like way, way, way out of proportion, and there is no basis for this confidence whatsoever, and yet here we are. So while I do believe that you should develop your skills and that having your work rewarded for those skills and your actual talents is something that you deserve. I also don't want you to not even be seen because you are hiding, because you're waiting for those things to arrive in order to be more

The Four Things that are Killing your Confidence

Speaker 9:39

confident.

Speaker 9:40

Okay. So let's really talk about what is blocking your confidence. What is blocking that feeling that you are capable and worthy of doing what you want to do in the world? And this is not about faking it until you make it. And there are many different interpretations that we could make about faking it until we make it. But I would generally say that for a lot of us, we feel the resistance in our body, and then we do it anyway. And this doesn't really work because there's a push-pull within us. And so our aura or energy can't fully flow because of this push-pull energy. So we want to get rid of the push-pull within us so the energy can just flow. And so when we think about this idea or this concept of faking it until you make it, it's just not specific enough. So it isn't helpful. And I'm gonna get into this, but sometimes it can actually be harmful.

Speaker 11:05

Okay, here is the first thing that is killing your confidence. This one might seem a little bit obvious, but it is false beliefs that you have about yourself and what you are capable of. Now, most of the time, these false beliefs mean that you are underestimating and undervaluing what you are capable of. And when you do that, you don't show up in the same way. You don't reach out to people that you would like to meet, that you would like to collaborate with, that you would like to work with. You make weird assumptions about why you haven't heard from people and decide that they're not interested in you and create this block of energy. Whereas maybe they're just busy, and if you reached out, you would be building this friendship, this collaboration, uh, a business, who knows? And sometimes your false beliefs actually overestimate or overvalue yourself. And the reason this is harmful is because if you overestimate yourself or overvalue yourself, and then you end up getting an opportunity and you don't deliver, sometimes the ramifications of that failure do more damage to your confidence than just showing up with what you are actually able to do right now. And when we get in alignment with the truth of who we are, what we are actually capable of, what we actually already have the skill and the talent to do, the skills and talents that we are building and developing, we get to attract the kinds of opportunities that will help us grow, but not put us in a situation where we're going to fail so badly, some failure is good, where we're going to fail so badly that it actually does more to harm us than to help us.

Speaker 13:52

Now, the antidote to our false beliefs is awareness. So we have to recognize the false beliefs for what they are. Once we know that we have been working with a belief, we've had this tape playing in our head about something we think about ourselves and what we're capable of. Once we recognize that tape is there, we have to do conscious work to let those beliefs go at an energetic level. And then we have to consciously create or adapt the beliefs that are accurate and supportive instead. And we want to connect with those new beliefs at an energetic level as well. Another way that you are killing your confidence is by motivating yourself from a place of fear, negativity, or shame. This often looks like, well, I'm lazy or I procrastinate a lot. And if I'm not hard on myself, then I'm never ever going to get anything done. And so therefore, I have to remind myself of what's going to happen if I don't do this. What's going to happen if I don't take this risk, if I don't put myself out there, if I don't start my business, if I don't submit for this audition, if I don't take this workshop, and the list goes on and on. And we've been kind of taught this, like tough love is the way to win. But I'm gonna argue that this kind of negativity isn't actually tough love. Tough love is actually still very kind. It doesn't say that you're worthless or that you're lazy or that you're a big procrastinator. It acknowledges fear when it shows up and says, Hey, it's okay that you're afraid. This is new and you're gonna be all right. And it's okay if this feels uncomfortable or strange, or if you don't get it perfectly, which is a big one. So we really want to avoid motivating ourselves from this negativity and shame because when we do that, we actually end up reinforcing some of those beliefs that we have that are not so super kind or nice about ourselves. And so we want to motivate ourselves from a place of joy and pleasure and positivity and inspiration. We want to acknowledge ourselves for showing up. We want to acknowledge ourselves for taking risks. We want to celebrate the little things and the big things, and recognize it's these tiny little small steps and these tiny little wins that over time helps us build confidence, helps us really believe in ourselves and trust ourselves.

Speaker 17:50

Another way that we kill our confidence is by pushing past our blocks and resistance. Now, this is residual from the whole fake it until you make it, or just do it philosophy. And a little bit of pushing is okay, but that's not what I'm talking about here. You know, when you're feeling resistant to start something, but it's small and it's tiny, then yes, giving yourself a little nudge to get started is great. But I know that when I was going through a particularly tough time in my own acting career, I was terrified of so many things in my acting life. I was learning how to belt as a singer. And if you're a singer, you know what that means. Um, particularly if you're in the musical theater world. Belting is a really strange phenomenon. It's like a mix between screaming or shouting and singing. And it feels really uncomfortable because you're moving your voice through actually a very small space that feels wrong. It feels like you're under threat, or it might feel like you're gonna hurt yourself. When actually the constriction that often shows up in your throat when you're trying to learn this thing that's so uncomfortable is more likely to injure you than belting itself. So as I was going through this period of my life, and I was trying to learn how to belt because I'm five foot two, and no one was particularly interested in me seeing classical conventional musical theater roles. Everyone wanted me to play Ado Annie and the fun sidekicks and Penny in Hairspray. And that required a certain type of voice. And I remember that when I went into audition singing-wise, I would have this even bigger block.

Speaker 20:26

Your voice is incredibly sensitive. And so when you feel resistance, when you are having to sing, you might crack, you might break, you might sing the wrong note. And this was happening for me on the regular, but I was so determined to succeed as a musical theater performer. I really wanted to play lead roles like so badly. And so I just kept showing up. I was so stubborn. And some of that stubbornness was good, but I'm talking today about blasting through my sense of personal safety. Okay. And when you try to blast through those blocks, rather than doing things in small incremental steps, you end up sort of re-traumatizing yourself. And this is a little 't' trauma in the um in the therapy world, pretty much everything that you experience in life can cause you some kind of trauma. And the big traumas are things like child abuse and abandonment and sexual assault and being in a war. You get the picture. And little 't' traumas are the small little things that trigger us and make us feel unsafe. And the truth is, it doesn't really matter what the trauma is. If your nervous system feels unsafe and a restriction happens around your ability to express yourself, it is just as real as any other trauma. And it might be easier to resolve, but that doesn't make it any less real.

Speaker 22:25

So in the world of somatic experiencing, which is a modality that was created by Peter Levine, you talk a lot about titration. And the word titration has many different meanings. So I'm going to explain to you what I mean by titration in this specific case. The idea of titration is that you go to the edge of your discomfort. You go to the place where you are starting to experience some kind of sensation. That might be a physical sensation, that might be an emotion. But rather than having to feel that 10%, or even 50%, or even 25%, you just go to the place where it starts to feel uncomfortable. And then you let yourself experience that feeling. And emotions are actually designed to arrive and dissipate. But in our experience, we don't like emotion. We tend to feel that it is unpleasant. And so we do a couple different things. We either hold on to it and it kind of revs up and gets bigger, or we try to get rid of it. So we suppress it and we disengage from our body and the physical sensation. And then that ends up getting stored in our system, in our energy, in our tissues. And so if you push and you consistently go past the edge of your discomfort rather than to the edge of your discomfort, over time your body actually creates more resistance rather than less. And this is why we don't want to engage with this fake it until you make it energy. We want to acknowledge when taking action triggers this feeling of discomfort in our body. And we want to engage with the discomfort, figure out why it's there, what it's trying to share with us, what it's trying to tell us, let it dissipate, and then we can move forward. And with our growth, if we just meet the edge of our discomfort every single time, then that edge will move. And that is the way that we move through our resistance and build more confidence rather than pushing past the edge again and again, failing in a really traumatic way again and again, like I was doing in these auditions. It was very painful. And then we get to keep showing up. And that's what this is all about.

Speaker 25:53

Okay. The last way that I see people killing their confidence is by waiting until they are ready. So if you're waiting until you're ready, you are reinforcing the idea that you have to be better, perfect, more, in order to take forward action in your life. But you actually can't get better if you're doing nothing. We get ready by doing things. And when you take action, you get to figure things out. You get to see what you don't know. And as a result, you get to seek out the knowledge that you need. And this is a process that you repeat again and again. And I have a little secret for you as well. Just like we can embody the feeling of confidence before we have the skill, you actually can embody the feeling of being ready before you actually are ready. And this is where embodiment tools get really

Join The Confident Creator

Speaker 27:14

fun.

Speaker 27:15

Okay, I want to take a little break from our conversation today to talk with you about my upcoming workshop, The Confident Creator. This is a special two-hour deep dive workshop that I'm going to be teaching next Thursday, June 4th. And during this workshop, I'm going to walk you through all of the steps of the EMM embodiment method. And I'm going to show you how to utilize this to embody confidence now before you have developed the skill and talent so that you get to move forward with the feeling in your body that you are going to succeed, which is going to allow you to take some more risks in your life. It's going to allow you to see more clearly what you want to do. Because when we're not confident, let's face it, we will hold ourselves back. We won't allow ourselves to have some of these bigger dreams and goals. So during this workshop, I'm going to show you how to implement this work. And it's going to be really fun. So we do some journaling prompts, we do some meditation, we're going to do some movement. I think we're going to do some energy work and some visualization. The first piece is going to be some preparation work, which I just dropped inside the welcome area for The Confident Creator today. And it includes some journal prompts to help you look at these four confidence killers and really identify which of these is applying to you so that you can start to detangle where you are limiting your ability to be more confident in your life. And we're going to go far, far deeper with this work inside the workshop. So to find out more and reserve your spot, you can go to theembodiedwaycoach.com / confident creator. And you can find that link in the show notes as

EMM Embodiment Method

Speaker 29:46

well.

Speaker 29:47

Okay, so let's talk more about the EMM embodiment method. EMM stands for Evolve, Move, and Manifest.

Speaker 30:02

So the first step is Evolve. And this step is all about building awareness around our current beliefs, patterns, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are keeping us in a cycle of feeling unconfident and unworthy of the life that we desire. This can be the hardest step because it requires us to look at all of the things that we haven't wanted to see or have been avoiding, either consciously or unconsciously. Becoming aware of what's keeping us from making a change isn't the same as reliving or experiencing your trauma. And again, we talked about those little 't' and big 'T' traumas. Not only is this completely unnecessary, we actually don't even have to fully know or understand what triggered us in order for us to start to implement change. When we start to do this work, we will likely experience some physical sensations or emotions, but we don't have to go super deep. We go to the edge of our discomfort. And we actually shift these through movement and energy. So there's very little to no need to attach to the memories or old stories that created these feelings.

Speaker 31:30

The next part is Move. And in this part of the method, we specifically use physical movement and somatic healing to address and release old beliefs, patterns, and energy. This creates space energetically for your nervous system to return to its parasympathetic or resting state. And this is where your natural gifts and resonance really live. When you're in this state, you can form new neural pathways and beliefs quite easily. When we fully experience and we allow what's there to be expressed, that is when it gets released. That's when it fully moves out of our body, out of our energy field. That's where we create more space for all of this change to occur.

Speaker 32:29

And then the final step is Manifest. So this is when we start to connect with and embody new ways of being that support the life we want to create. For The Confident Creator, this is where we're going to start to create confidence in our bodies before we've acquired the skill or the talent, before we've done this activity before, before we've logged our 10,000 hours, and having our critical thinking minds quieted by going through the Evolve process, and then our body is quieted through the Move process, we're going to begin connecting with something greater than ourselves. And in doing so, that feeling of confidence in our bodies will start to exist now. And this is a process that you're going to be able to apply anytime. So each time you up-level in your life, you are going to be able to use this same process. Now, it's not necessarily going to feel easy. During the move process, we really work on releasing those uncomfortable, stuck feelings, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. But on the other side, there is this space and this lightness and this ease. And we're no longer carrying that weight of feeling not good enough and not worthy around with us.

Speaker 34:23

And so at this point in your life, you might be starting your business, or you might be moving your business from primarily one-on-one clients into group programs. You might be starting to audition as an actor. Or you might be moving from playing co-star roles into guest star roles or guest star roles into series regular roles. There is more responsibility, and there is also more visibility with both of those things. And so the ability to feel confident now for the thing that hasn't fully manifested yet is part of what's going to help you step fully into that dream, that next level in your life, and really create it and really experience

Continue the Conversation

Speaker 35:28

it.

Natalie Neckyfarow 35:29

I'm really excited to have shared this information with you today. I would love to know, as always, what's resonating with you. Did you recognize yourself in one of these four confidence killers? Which one? Was it all of them? So you can come on to my Substack or my podcast blog to share your thoughts. And I love having a dialogue with you there. The links for both of those things are inside the show notes. And I hope you'll join us inside The Confident Creator. It's totally free when you join us between now and uh June 4th. There will be a replay available. So if you can attend live, please don't let that stop you. The replay will be available for an entire week. And if you'd like to do this, but you know you're really busy, uh, if you sign up for the upgrade, which is lifetime access and access to a special workbook and some additional integration work at the end of the workshop. If you upgrade by June 4th, you can get that upgrade for just $27. After that, it goes up to $77. If you have any questions, you can always say hello to me on Instagram. I'm @the embodied way coach, or on Substack, theembodiedway.substack.com. And I look forward to seeing you really soon. Thank you so much for listening to The Embodied Way Podcast. I'm just getting started, and early listeners like you really make a difference in helping other creatives find my show. Subscribe now to be the first to know when I share new episodes each Friday. And while you're at it, please leave a review. Until next Friday, have a restful week.