Episode 145 - Best Of: How To Have Your Own Back
Learning to have my own back is the most powerful thing I’ve ever done for myself, which is why I’m bringing back this essential episode as we head into the new year. Many women internalize their mistakes, leading to a spiral of shameful thoughts that can be very draining. But how can we shut that down? If we bully ourselves, then we're not safe with ourselves, and we're not safe anywhere. You deserve that essential safety. In this episode, I'll help you identify the bullying voice in your head and shut it down. Here’s what I cover:
How to recognize the internal bully in your own voice and why certain “questions” are actually accusations
Why being unsafe with yourself creates shame spirals that drain hours of your time and energy
A powerful reframe using your younger self to stop self-bullying before it takes over
Two practical ways to shut down the brain bully: the hard pass and loving engagement
How having your own back makes it possible to take risks, try new things, and live with more freedom
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Transcript
00:58
If I only ever do two podcast episodes, I would say that this is one of the most important ones. The other one is about wanting. And I did that last week. And so this week, I really wanted to dive into the other really essential tool.
01:22
Maybe not even a tool, more of like a practice that has made the biggest difference in my own life. And if I could help women, people socialized as women, do only two things, it would be these two things.
01:36
Number one, connect to their wanting. Listen to the last episode. And number two, to have their own back. Learning to have my own back has been the single most powerful thing I have ever done for myself.
01:54
And it's a process and a practice that I want to break down for you because I think it unlocks so much potential in your life. Now, I think in broad terms, there's always exceptions. Many women that I speak to internalize mistakes and they make it about themselves and their character.
02:22
And when I ask women to tell me about their internal chatter and when I think back to my own internal chatter, it always sounded something like this. You always do this. What is the matter with you? Why can't you get this right?
02:38
You're so lazy, unreliable, et cetera, et cetera. What's wrong with you? And the problem is that, well, there's two problems. First of all, those aren't really questions. Those are accusations and they have no good answer.
02:58
And number two, what they do is they create just a spiral of shame and guilt and self-disgust that ends up taking hours and hours and hours of your time, your mental headspace and your energy. So what I want to talk about today is how you shut that down, because this is what I know to be true.
03:28
Women who beat themselves up have no place that is truly safe. I'll say that again. If you're not safe with you, if you're not safe with your own inter in your own internal world in your body, then you're not safe anywhere.
03:47
And so if you are the one bullying you, then nowhere is safe. And the price of not having that essential safety with yourself is huge. And I'll talk specifically about why that is in a minute. But I have seen it over and over and over again that when a woman can be her own safe space by having her own back, by refusing to bully herself, then she has a lot more options than a woman who has not yet learned how to do that.
04:19
So that's what I want to talk about. I want to offer you two ways to shut off the internal bully. But first, I want you to just think, how do you bully yourself? I gave you an example, some sentences that run around in my head, but I want you to just think, what is your internal chatter like when you don't get something right or when something doesn't turn out the way you want it to turn out?
04:49
Are you berating yourself, doubting yourself, second guessing, criticizing, judging, really coming at yourself? How? Because it's important to identify the bullying voice in your head for what it is, really a bully.
05:09
When you have that in your mind, I want to ask you a question. How would you behave if someone you loved was on the receiving end of those sentences? So for example, let's say I'm at the park with my daughter and she's trying to swing, pumping her legs, not going anywhere.
05:33
And some stranger says to her, what's the matter with you? Why can't you get that right? Like, what would I do? I just got like full body chills, even just imagining her being on the receiving end of that.
05:46
I would step in so fast and pop that shit off. There was no way I would allow someone to speak to my child that way. Or think about this. Imagine yourself as like a five, six, seven, eight-year-old, a child.
06:07
Imagine someone speaking to that little version of you the same way. Would you allow it? One of the things that I do is I keep a picture of myself as a little girl on my desk to remind me. I would never put up with someone speaking to her the way that I have sometimes put up with allowing myself to speak to me.
06:36
That's where it gets a little tricky. Because we speak to ourselves in our own voice, in our head, like when I'm thinking my thoughts in my head, they're in my own voice. And so when I'm asking myself those awful question, what's the matter with you?
06:53
Why can't you get this right? It's, I hear it as me speaking to me. If it was some like, you know, nefarious Darth Vader voice, then I think it would be easier to pick up on. But one of the first things we have to do is to catch it, to catch our own voice in our heads, bullying ourselves.
07:14
And then we have to stop it, either by imagining it happening to someone you love or a littler version of you. I want to give you two different ways to engage with this bully to stop it. Number one, I call it the hard pass, and it is exactly what it sounds like.
07:35
It is a no, a firm, unequivocal no. So the bullying voice starts up and sometimes it feels so good to just say that powerful, no, we are not doing this. I won't do it. No one speaks to me that way, not even me.
07:58
No, this is not happening. And then you have to move your body. Get up and walk around your house. Shake your arms. Stand up. But that movement of your body helps reset. So the bullying voice starts up.
08:15
If the hard pass sounds really good to you, it feels really powerful and really positive. Then you say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I will not engage in bullying. Nobody bullies me, not even me. And then get up and move your body.
08:37
I was doing this for a while. And my husband said to me, like, do you know you talk to yourself a lot? And I said, yeah, I, that's on purpose because I'm really trying to stop this behavior. So the first way is called the hard pass.
08:53
It's that strong, powerful no, no, no, no. The second is called loving engagement. And loving engagement is exactly how it sounds. Maybe it starts with a deep breath. I know. Oh, okay. Yeah. Here's that voice again.
09:16
Let's take some deep breaths. This makes sense that we're doing this. We've done this for a long time, but we are not going to do it today. We're not going to do it. Nope. Come on. And then you get up and move your body.
09:33
So notice that you end up in the same place. There is some way to cut the behavior off, either the hard pass no or the loving engagement, more gentle version. Then you move your body and you cut it off.
09:49
You stop the behavior. The reason that I love these two ways of engaging with the bully is because it gives you the option to be powerful and definitive when you want or loving and definitive. Either way, the answer is no.
10:09
And it just takes some practice to get to know yourself enough to know which one is going to feel better in the moment. I truly believe it is essential to stop the bullying so that you can then, when you're not activated with a lot of shame and guilt, you can look at why it's happening without feeling flooded by all of those emotions that really aren't helpful.
10:38
When you are looking at behavior that you want to change and you're feeling guilty and flooded and full of shame, all of your time and energy and effort gets sucked up in criticizing and self-doubting and blaming and second guessing and doing all of those things rather than just solving the problem.
10:59
So the reason that this is so essential is that when you can cut off the bullying, then you can actually just look at the behavior or the thing that happened and ask yourself some good questions about it.
11:16
Like, is there something here that I should be different or should I should be doing differently? Is there something here that I want to change? Whatever is happening in the moment isn't about me and my character anymore.
11:31
Maybe there is a change that I'd like to make. But I can't make the change if I'm so consumed by the shame and the guilt that I just don't have any energy left to really evaluate, okay, so this didn't go the way I wanted.
11:47
Is there actually a change that I want to make that would be positive for me? One of the biggest benefits of learning to have your own back and cut off that bullying behavior is that now you can handle trying new things and putting yourself out there and taking some risks because all you have to feel is the fear of doing something new.
12:14
And it's never about beating yourself up for not getting it right. Let me give you an example. I meet with a small group of coaches who are starting their new business and we talk a lot about, you know, doing things that scare us and doing things that are new for us.
12:33
And I've been coaching and a business owner long enough that some of those new things don't scare me quite as much. But I decided to do something that would scare me, like terrify me, not just scare me, terrify me.
12:46
And that was to sing for them. I have always wanted to take singing lessons, and I am right now. I've always wanted to be able to sing comfortably in front of other people. Not quite there yet. But I knew that I wanted to sing for them, not only because it would be growth for me, but because I could handle feeling the fear of singing with total confidence that no matter what happened, I would not beat myself up at all,
13:21
even a little bit. And here's what happened. I got so emotional during the song that I cried through half of it. I squeaked out some other lyrics here and there, but I was just so terrified and so afraid that I probably cried through 70% of the song.
13:43
And I lived. And in the end, I was so proud of myself for doing something that terrified me. I didn't even think about beating myself up for not doing a good job technically singing. It didn't even cross my mind.
14:01
I could just do the thing that was terrifying because I had full confidence that I would not criticize or judge myself or my performance at all. I have the safety with myself to just try something new, knowing that I might get it wrong.
14:23
It might not turn out the way I want it to, but I'm going to be able to learn from that. So it puts me in this space where I can really almost eliminate the idea of failing, because failing means that I tried something and it didn't go the way I want.
14:41
And that's the end of it. And I feel terrible about it. Now, I really like to think of it as I'm either like winning, it's going exactly the way I want, or it's a chance for me to learn. Because if it doesn't go the way I want, I am totally going to feel the frustration, the disappointment, the sadness, all of those normal human emotions.
15:06
But I am not going to add any additional criticism or judgment at all. I'll just feel sad, feel disappointed. And then I can ask myself, like, how can what worked here? What didn't work so well? And what can I do differently?
15:25
And then I can try it again because none of my time is consumed with the shame and guilt spiral of judgment and criticism. The other really beautiful thing that happens when you learn to have your own back is that when things not working out are never about your character, then other people start to get the same generous interpretation.
15:58
Brene Brown and Dr. Becky, who are two of my favorite people to listen to, they both talk about this most generous interpretation. And when I'm giving myself the most generous interpretation, meaning it's never about my character, but it might be about some actions that I want to do differently, then I can give that to other people as well.
16:21
This has made a huge difference in my relationships with my children and my husband. I think I used to think, I know I used to think, that they were doing things to me or that they were doing things on purpose.
16:37
It felt like I was constantly being victimized. This sounds so dramatic now, but I was constantly being victimized by something that they were doing to me. And I would get upset and there was a lot of blame and a lot of sorting through the judgment and the criticism.
16:56
And when I am the recipient of my own most generous interpretation, now I can offer it to them as well. And I truly believe that they're doing their best because I believe I'm doing my best. That doesn't mean things don't work out.
17:16
Actually, what I mean to say is that doesn't mean that things always go perfectly. Things go not perfectly quite a lot because that just seems to be the human experience. But when things don't go the way I plan, we can just feel sad or disappointed or even frustrated, overwhelmed, fearful.
17:36
We can just feel the emotion. And there doesn't have to be a lot of the shame and blame and guilt piled on top of that. It's also increased my capacity to sit with the times that I disappoint other people.
17:55
Now, this can be deeply uncomfortable because we all, we don't like it when we disappoint other people. We are programmed to want to belong in groups, to want acceptance and friendship and connection.
18:08
And when we disappoint someone, those are threatened. But when I have disappointed people, my close relationships, my dear friends, my family, and I don't make it about myself, meaning I don't call myself a terrible mother or a terrible wife or a terrible friend.
18:29
I can just look at the actions, what happened and solve for that and not try to make it about me as the problem, my character. It just feels so much cleaner. I can just look at the circumstances, the facts of what happened, the actions that I did or didn't take, and evaluate it.
18:55
What worked? What didn't work? What would I do differently? And it's not about me. A huge gift of this practice of having my own back is time. When I ask women to tell me how much time they spend in their heads bullying themselves, criticizing, second guessing, doubting, all of those behaviors.
19:23
Most of them say it's about three to five hours a day. I mean, that just, it just blows my mind. Ruminating about past things that you didn't get right, worrying about future situations that you're concerned about, replaying events, wishing I had said that, wishing I had done that, berating myself for not knowing, not doing certain things.
19:47
Yeah, three to five hours a day. And even just on the low end, let's just take three hours a day. That's 21 hours a week times 52 weeks a year. That's 1,092 hours a year on the low end that women's brains are tied up with this kind of bullying, self-critical behavior.
20:13
No wonder we're so tired. Our bodies might be doing something else. You know, we're driving carpool or going to work or doing what we do, but internally, we are just browbeating ourselves for hours and hours.
20:27
And when you learn to stop, you get that time and brain space back. And you get it to do whatever you want with. You want to read a book? Fantastic. You want to start a new company? Fantastic. Either way, that part doesn't matter so much to me.
20:43
What matters is that your time, which is the one thing we cannot get more of, you get your time back. That's a huge benefit of shutting down the brain bully and learning to have your own back. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.
21:04
I want to interrupt for just a second and invite you to join me on Facebook in my free group called Stop People Pleasing. It's where I spend time each week answering questions, sharing my work, announcing upcoming workshops, and coaching the members to stop people pleasing.
21:24
You can join by using the link in the show notes or check the link in my Instagram bio. I'd love to have you. See you there. This is really important to me. It is so important that it's something that I teach in every single one-to-one coaching relationship that I have.
21:46
And I teach it in the Stop People Pleasing group program that I run. And here's why it's so essential. In the group program, we have five challenges. Number one, to tell the truth. People pleasers are liars.
22:03
When we don't feel like we can be honest about why we really don't want to do something, we lie. We make up excuses. So one of the first challenges is to tell the truth. Another challenge is to ask for something.
22:18
People pleasers, man, we have a hard time asking for what we want and need because we've been taught that we shouldn't inconvenience anyone or that if we want something, we need to have really, really, really, really, really good reasons for wanting it.
22:29
And we should be able to justify it. Just wanting it is not enough. And so that's why one of the challenges is to ask for something that we want. Another challenge is to say no to something. Another challenge is to disappoint someone.
22:45
That's a good one. Another challenge is to learn how to really care for yourself. So those five challenges all happen in my 16-week group program, Stop People Pleasing. And in order for them to happen, you have to have your own back.
23:04
Imagine you tell someone the truth, like, I'm just not really interested in that. Thank you. Ooh, that might bring on a wash of shame and guilt. And I'm a bad friend. I'm a bad mom. But we learn to shut that off so we can just feel the fear of disappointing someone without the shame and guilt.
23:26
Saying no is the same thing. Disappointing someone. Often these are very similar challenges. I remember when I first understood that this was essential. From time to time, I used plant medicine as a way to help me really get insight into myself and my thinking.
23:50
And I was having an afternoon on that type of a journey and I was laying on the couch. And I don't know, it was probably, I don't know, three or four months prior to that. I used to work for a coaching certification company where I would meet weekly with coaches, with CLAP, students who wanted to become coaches to teach them the art and the technique of coaching.
24:20
And I had missed a class. It was, I mean, I was so, I was so deeply embarrassed and ashamed. I felt so guilty. And I browbeat myself for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. I would lay down at night.
24:37
Gosh, what is the matter with you? Why didn't you get the, you should have done that. You should have known. You should have checked. That went on for weeks. Three or four months later, I was having this plant medicine experience.
24:48
I was laying on the couch, just really wanting to be introspective and spend some time with myself and my own thoughts. And I sensed in my body some fear. And so I just asked, hey, what's that fear about?
25:04
What's going on? What's the matter? And my body answered, it's you. We're afraid of you. You are so, it's making me emotional to remember. You are so mean to us when we don't get it right. You are just, you are relentless in the way that you terrorize and browbeat and punish us.
25:37
That's why we're afraid. And in that moment, that was the hard pass for me. I just decided I will never, ever, ever, ever do that again. I will never take what is my best effort. Even the day that I didn't show up for that class, I was doing my best.
25:59
I didn't make the decision that morning, you know, I'm just going to half ass this thing. Not even saying that that's wrong, but I didn't do that that morning. It was my best. And I took a mistake and turned it into a weapon over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
26:19
And in that moment, when I felt the fear that I had created in my own body, I knew that I had to stop because if I wasn't safe with me, I knew that I wasn't safe anywhere. So if this is a behavior that you are ready to stop, first of all, yes, your life is going to change.
26:48
And I offer you those two tools, the hard pass and loving engagement, and the idea that this is a practice. It is something that I did not get good at overnight, even though I felt such a strong impulse and learned such a deeply valuable lesson that day.
27:08
It was a practice of catching it and cutting it off and catching it and cutting it off and catching it and lovingly saying, I know, I know, we're getting better. We're doing better. This is something we've done for a long time.
27:22
It's going to take a while to fully resolve, but I did it over and over again. And now here's what I know to be true. I can do things that terrify me, like sing in front of other people. And all I have to feel is the negative emotion that is normal for the human experience, fear, right?
27:48
Fear of being judged, fear of, yeah, I had all of that, but I don't, I know that I will never judge myself. It has cleaned up all of the judgment and victimization that I felt in other relationships with people who were close to me, where I'm able to just disappoint people and feel that disappointment with them and not add any other self-judgment on top of it.
28:18
Women who are their own safe place have an incredible opportunity, a powerful place from which to change their own lives. They can experiment with different behaviors that are closely connected to their wanting because they know that they will have their own back.
28:42
So let me know how this works for you. When you try the hard pass, how does it go? When you try loving engagement. And if this is something where you want to have a consultation with me, I would love to talk to you about not only how this work is going for you, but how I could be helpful.
29:02
You can sign up for a consult using the button on my, and any of my social media bios. There's a link tree there that has the schedule a consult button or just through my website. But my goal in releasing this podcast episode is that you have the tools to practice it on your own to make this powerful change in your life.
29:25
And I promise you this, if you will stick with it, things will look radically different. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
