Find Your Outside Voice Part 1 - You Make Sense
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How to Find Your Outside Voice is a miniseries leading up to my free workshop, Say What You Need to Say. This series is driven by my deep belief that when women learn how to speak up in ways that feel safe and doable, it can change everything. In this episode, we start with a powerful truth: if you’re struggling to speak up, you make sense.
Register for Say What You Need to Say, a free one-hour workshop for women who are ready to finally ask for what they want and need in their relationships.
You have three options to join me LIVE: Thursday, April 9th at 5:00pm PT | Monday, April 13th at 12pm PT | Friday, April 17th at 9am PT
You’ll get three steps you can use this week to find your yes or no—and say it out loud.
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Transcript
00:59
All right. Welcome to How to Find Your Outside Voice. It is a short mini-series I'm doing as the lead up to a free workshop I'm hosting called Say What You Need to Say.
01:14
If you have been here for a while, this is not something new. You've heard this before. If you are one of the newer listeners, welcome. So glad you're here. This series is really driven by my undying commitment to this belief that I have that when women have the skill of being able to speak up in ways that are comfortable and doable, where they can see the conversation all the way through, that they can actually change their life.
01:47
They can change the lives of their loved ones. They can remodel and improve relationships. They can stop worrying about other relationships that are taking up too much time in their lives. They can save time, energy, effort, brain space, and resources.
02:03
And so my commitment level to teaching women this skill has never been higher. It has never been needed more. And I want to talk to you about why it is so important. If you find yourself not able to have conversations that you need to have that are weighing on you, that feel heavy, you're in the right place and we're going to do something about it.
02:27
Before I get into some of the content for these episodes and something about the workshop, I want to start with something different. And I really want you to hear this. You make sense. Everything that you are doing, every time you've gone quiet when you wanted to speak up, every time you have spoken up and then caved or accommodated or retreated, it all makes sense.
02:54
One of the defining characteristics of the women that I talk to is a deep sense of something is wrong with me or why am I bad at this? I should be better at this. I am 40, whatever years old, 50, whatever years old, 60, you know, 30, whatever years old.
03:10
Why am I still struggling with this? It makes complete sense because that's what you learned and you learned it for a reason. And here's what I actually mean. I want you to think back because at some point early probably, you got messages about asking for what you wanted or telling the truth about your experience.
03:35
Maybe it was direct. Maybe you asked for something and you were told no in a way that really stung or was embarrassing. Maybe you told the truth about something that was happening for you and you watched someone dismiss you.
03:50
Maybe it was the climate of the family you grew up in or the religious or social or cultural or political or professional group, you know, that you grew up in or are a part of now, where certain things are simply not said aloud.
04:06
I know that when I think about that, like what could I not say growing up? There's a list, right? There are rules. And my nervous system and your nervous systems, which are very, very, very, very smart, noticed.
04:21
It cataloged. It took notes. Asking for this kind of thing or saying this truth out loud in this kind of relationship with these kinds of stakes, can't do it. It's risky. And it built a system to protect you from that risk.
04:40
Let me give you a personal example. In the religious organization in which I grew up, the LDS Mormon Church, one Sunday a month, we had what was called testimony meeting, where members of the congregation could get up and express their feelings about maybe Jesus or the gospel.
04:59
And it was meant to be a very faith-affirming experience. You were encouraged to share stories that were faith-promoting. And so when I got up, I think I was probably 14-ish years old. This was in the congregation that I had grown up in since I was a very, I didn't know, ever know a different congregation.
05:22
These were the people I'd grown up with. I had a sense that there was something that I wasn't sure of in Mormonism. I couldn't have named exactly what it was. But when I got up, I don't remember having a point, but what I remember most vividly is that I was standing at a microphone in front of my congregation.
05:44
I could see everyone. I could see my family sitting in the pew. And I said something like, I don't know that everything that you all tell me is true is really true. I don't know how to know that. And I have questions and I have doubts and I worry that what I didn't say underneath was, I worry that I don't belong here because I don't believe the same way you do.
06:12
And it was the attempt of a young girl to show some vulnerability to the people who were tasked with being her community and to be received. And I remember my mom's face just kind of falling. I remember her looking down at her hands and not meeting my gaze again.
06:34
And I remember the sinking feeling in my body of like, oh, I'm not supposed to be saying this. This is, this is not okay. And afterward, a man from the congregation came up to me and put his arm around me and said, well, you always keep things really entertaining.
06:55
And so in those two instances, I learned that if I can't talk about things that are not supposed to be talked about or my mother, right, somebody who I need for love and support is going to withdraw from me.
07:13
And I'm going to be teased. It's going to be something not taken seriously. And so I know that you can think of something like that that happened to you. And our nervous systems, of course, respond. Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something?
07:36
You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it. Almost like the words got stuck. Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years.
07:49
I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now. If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say, and it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want.
08:16
Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months, rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat.
08:29
You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week.
08:47
So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there.
09:01
One of the ways that we learn to behave after this that I hear a lot of clients talking about looks a little bit like this. You put a little bit of yourself out there, right? Just a little bit, just enough to test to see what other people's reactions are going to be, and then you wait.
09:19
And then at the first sign of resistance, the first hint of tension, the first moment when that other person's face does something that you weren't expecting, you retreat, you close down automatically.
09:31
Before you even make the conscious decision to do it, you just cave. Because what your system has said is danger, danger, danger, danger. And so your nervous system makes the decision for you. And then later, when the threat level has passed and you don't feel activated, then you kick yourself.
09:54
Why did I retreat? Why did I collapse? Why did I cave? Why did I accommodate? And that vicious judgment cycle that so many of us are stuck in kicks back in. And here's what I really, really, really want you to understand.
10:10
That automatic shutdown is not weakness. It is not a character flaw. It doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you or that there's anything going on other than you have a protection system that was built a long time ago when the relationships that you depended on for safety were the same ones that you could not risk.
10:36
The problem is just that the protection system doesn't update itself on its own. It doesn't know that you're an adult now. It doesn't know that you have different resources and options and opportunity now.
10:49
It doesn't know that you don't depend on those same people in the same way. And it doesn't know that some of the relationships that you actually want to be deeper and more connected can't be if you're still protecting yourself.
11:06
That system just runs all the time. And that protective system running means that you, a driven, capable, intelligent woman who can handle just about anything, can't handle telling the truth and asking for what she needs in some situations.
11:26
Can't handle asking for more connection here or more limits there. More of what you actually need from the people who matter most to you. And I spent years in this, right? That wasn't my first opportunity to get feedback on telling the truth.
11:44
I became the woman who on the outside looked pretty together. And on the inside, I was really resentful and lonely. I was performing. I was over-delivering. I was convinced that if I stopped being useful, people would lose interest in me.
12:00
And if I asked for too much, I would lose the relationships that I had. And that belief shaped everything. It shaped my marriage. It shaped my friendships until it didn't, until I was able to see it.
12:14
But I'm going to tell you a little bit about that in a later episode. For now, I want you to just sit with this. The reason that you can't ask or tell the truth about what you want or need or your experience has nothing to do with being broken and everything to do with being protected, overprotected.
12:35
And that's a really important difference. You were just never taught that asking for what you wanted was safe. So of course you can't ask. That just makes complete sense. And so when that comes up in your mind, why can't I?
12:50
I should be able to. I want you to tell yourself, oh, this actually makes sense. I was never taught how to ask for what I wanted in a way that feels safe and doable. And so that's where we're going to start.
13:04
And that's why this workshop is called Say What You Need to Say. It's free, it's an hour, and it's for women who are really ready to finally learn this skill of asking, starting somewhere small, starting this week.
13:17
The link is in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there. I'll see you in the next episode.
