The Menstruality Podcast - 89. How Cycle Awareness Helps to Heal Imposter Syndrome & Burnout (Claire Baker)

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

At the beginning of the pandemic, Claire Baker released her first book, and went into a hyper-productive mode, galvanised by the new world we were all suddenly pushed into. At the end of 2020 she was depleted, suffering from critic attacks and her ambition completely dissolved. It’s only now in early 2023 that her creative energy is returning. In our conversation today we speak about the many ways that intimacy with our cycles manage our creative flow, our energy levels, our sense of confidence and purpose and our overall health. We explore:How cycle awareness helps us to hold the tension during phases of creative ‘wintering’, and the deep value of fallow times.The reluctant, bittersweet gratitude both Claire and Sophie feel about the learnings they’ve received from chronic illness, and burnout, and how it’s preparing them for the inevitable changes to come as they head towards menopause, and boosting their inner reserves in readiness. How we can work with inner autumn and inner spring to manage our inner critic and make more space to play and mess up. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyClaire Baker: @_clairebaker_ - https://www.instagram.com/_clairebaker_/

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you for being part of the community gathered around this work. Today I am so excited to welcome back

menstrual cycle coach and founder of Cycle Coach School, Claire Baker, for a rich exploration around how cycle awareness can help us through burnout and imposter syndrome. At the beginning of the pandemic, Claire released her first book and she went into a hyper-productive phase and in the middle of this new world that we were all suddenly pushed into, she dived into work. And at the end of 2020, she was depleted, she was suffering from critic attacks, and her ambition had just completely dissolved. And it's only now, in early 2023, that her creative energy is returning. So in our conversation today, we look at her story, and we look at all the different ways that an intimacy with our menstrual

cycles, with our menopause process, with our cyclical nature can help us to manage our creative flow, to understand our natural energy levels and to enhance our sense of confidence and purpose and our overall health. So let's get started with the amazing Claire Baker. Hey Claire, welcome back to the podcast. It's lovely to be here with you today. I'd love to hear where you're at with your cycle, what day you're on, how's it feeling, how's it flowing? I am on, it's gotta be day cycle day 15 or 16. And that places me a good four or five days after ovulation. I have 26 ish day cycles. So usually ovulate around cycle day 11 or 12. Um, and it's feeling, it's feeling yeah. Lovely. I am enjoying what sort of feels like an extended in a summer actually I haven't yet felt that sign of dropping off the edge any at all I'm I'm coasting and I've had a lovely week with um out too much screen time and been working on the house and the garden and just

in my life a bit more and i'm just reminded how pleasant it is to spend and to use our ovulatory powers for things beyond phones and computers and getting things ticked off our list so it's it's good yeah oh that's wonderful I'm so with you I'm curious to know what your signs are like your feelings are when you do start to drop off that edge of inner summer into autumn what happens for you um I can get a bit snappy and impatient things that didn't things that didn't bother me for the last week suddenly I feel really sensitive to like sound or just stuff around in the house I'm like oh what is that doing and you know it could have been there a week before and I didn't notice it. Sleeping more, definitely needing to sleep more hours in the night,

going to bed earlier. And just not having, yeah, just being more focused inwards and just less interested in being sociable i'm not the most social creature anyway but um i really noticed that return to myself there are a few of my key signs that progesterone is doing her thing well i really appreciate that part of your cycle check-in where you talked about using your ovulatory energy for the things of your life your garden and your life and your home because I I'm in exactly the same cycle phase as you which very rarely happens actually this is fun so

I think it's day 18 today but same I still feel in this like late summer like having an afternoon meal on like while the sun's setting kind of vibe but yesterday I really had a lot to do and this this is so rare for me these days but it was from like 8am until 8pm and there are a few pauses in the day but lots of like just big interviews big meetings they were they were taxing and and my episode on the menstruality podcast where Sharni interviewed me went live and so I had a major vulnerability hangover happening all all day anyway and I can really feel it in my system I feel like I pushed it and it's a kind of interesting feeling to have coming into this conversation with you because

I'm so grateful for how I've just very rarely feel this anymore but I'm aware of how much I used to feel it in previous like incarnations of my life I mean not you're not incarnations like I'm not talking about when I was like Cleopatra in a past life in in earlier versions of particular of my work life so it's cool it's cool to feel that I can catch it very quickly now and notice and make shifts. And so, yeah, like thinking about burnout and tending to ourselves, I saw on Instagram yesterday, I think it was, or the day before that you posted a post and you said, I've been, I've basically been off social media for half a year. And in the post, you said that the pandemic had taken a lot of your creative energy out of you I just love to hear about that like was that a bit of a burnout

moment and did you need to restore yeah what was happening for you I began to my often my response to stress or any kind of situation that requires like immediate action. Like my first kind of reactory response to stressful situations is to go into like an overgiving mode and over functioning. And I'm the eldest of five kids and we're all very close in age. So my childhood was one of responsibility and of needing to be able to take care of other people. And I often find myself in that dynamic as well in groups

where I am the older sister or the manager or the leader in some way and so at the very beginning of the pandemic I noticed that I was super over functioning I was working a lot I was like kind of energized by the intensity of what was happening and I was putting out some great creative work and and I felt really fueled by it um and then it just kept going didn't it you know it was like we all thought it might last for a few months and it just it kept going it kept going kept going and you can only really one can only sustain that level of over functioning for so long before it it just does burn you out I also also had the release of my first book that year, 50 Things You Need to Know About Periods, came out in the July just after the pandemic began. So combining a book

launch, my first experience of having a book published in the traditional publishing world and being in that over-functioning mode, it was just like pouring fuel on the fire. And by the end of that summer, I remember just being so depleted and so suffering from huge inner critic attacks and just like depleted. I felt like my ambition had just been dried up. All of my creative ideas were gone. And honestly, Sophie, that was what 2020 we're speaking now in May, 2023. It genuinely feels like the winter that we've just, you know, we're coming out of now into the spring. I'm finally feeling that re-emergence of creative thought again and a desire to even really want to create. Like I just haven't felt like doing much

for the last few years at all. So, yeah, it was incredibly depleting for me and I imagine a lot of people many of us I'm sure are still noticing the aftershock and the effects of of a few years in survival mode and a big changes in our life and you know I was pretty lucky throughout the pandemic it didn't affect my work in any way nobody I know was very sick or lost their lives and I didn't have any financial stress the biggest stress for me was my husband and I were stuck in on opposite sides of the world for 10 months so we didn't see each other for nearly a year and we didn't know that that was going to happen so that also compounded this stress of 2020 it

was that 2021 we spent it without knowing that that was going to happen completely apart so a huge stress that yeah a couple of years later now I'm I feel like right, I can feel that spring energy again. It's coming back, but it's taken some time. I really relate. And it's been a little bit hard for me to tell what was pandemic and what was new motherhood for me because Artie arrived in the November of 2020. But I feel like I felt exactly the same. I've just kept things going and ticking along, and I've loved putting my energy into Red School.

But in terms of generating anything new, any new creative ideas, it's just been a, you know, it's just been like a flat line. And I think in the past, I probably would have pushed through that and hustled and created things that weren't actually effective. I know I've done that in the past, but something in me just knew. I really think this is cycle awareness. I know now in my bones that things can go fallow and they'll come back again, which I'm so grateful for. And I'm curious for you, you mentioned that your creative muscles are like strengthening and your self-expression muscles are strengthening. How much has like cycle awareness played a role in that or what is helping you to feel stronger in in that way I resonate with what you've shared about trusting the fellow phases and I'm grateful for the circles that I've spent a lot of time in over the last 10 years because I've heard other women speak to this wintering that they've experienced and I remember hearing women probably a bit older than me at the time talking about

these phases of a dark winter of creativity and I and in my early 20s and you know in my 30s I early 30s I hadn't experienced that yet I've had I'm a pretty I generate things quite easily and have always been very connected to my creativity and that was new for me, this last experience that I've had for the last few years. I think it's probably the first time I've really experienced that like fallow. And I'm grateful for cycle awareness and for the stories I've heard from other people who have navigated those uncertain waters because I do know that

of course we need space and time away from projects and we need to really let some things go and to trust that the cycle will return again and will re-emerge and blossom into something new so it was helpful definitely and I never thought did I hmm I'm trying to think if I really wondered if it would come back no I think I did I think I didn't actually really wonder at times like gosh is this it have I just produced my best work have I is this like I've just hit the peak of my career and it's all downhill from here I definitely had those moments so I wouldn't say that I was completely of you know total faith there were definitely times where I was sure that that was this was it um but it definitely gave me comfort knowing how cycles work within

my own body and paying attention to the cycles around me and I would say the seasonal paying attention to the seasons of the year has been the most helpful. I really needed the winters to take time off and to really allow myself extended period of time away from work. So of course it's brilliant when bleeding to take a couple of days and rest and retreat and vision, but I actually needed like two months over the winter to fully drop in and access that medicine and to trust that it takes time and to try and be patient. So all of those skills that menstrual cycle awareness enables us to cultivate were very useful. But there were some dark nights of the soul for sure. Yeah, I hear you one of my favorite things that Alexandra says is when you're going through a death and rebirth the death part always feels like death it's not like you're in the middle of the dying part and you're like oh this

is fine because I'm going to be reborn soon it's going to be awesome everything's going to be great you just feel like it just feels like death. It feels like emptiness. It feels like hopelessness. And yeah, that's an interesting paradox, isn't it? Because the wisdom, you know, when you understand that wisdom, you would hope that it might give you some sort of light within that, you know, some hope or handrail to hang on to that you'll come out the other side.

But it's true. It has to feel feel real like it is truly a death and there is a death there are aspects of myself that did die over the last few years and I'm not the same person none of us were you know when we entered into that pandemic and any cycle of death and rebirth in our life. So there was a death. What are you present to that's died and that's risen in its place? There's a naivety that has gone. There's a humbling in its place and a maturity, actually, because, like I said, I hadn't experienced a real wintering of my creativity and I'd heard these stories from other women

and you imagine, yeah, maybe that will happen to me, maybe it won't. And then when it does, it does humble you and you recognise that you are human and very flawed and that's a good thing actually. I've definitely come out the other side glad that I feel like I'm back in the spring again, but grateful for what has re-emerged, which is psychological but also more I feel like I'm paying more attention to my physical health as well well my need for rest and joy and tending to my vitality like my focus is there in an even greater way than it was before going into the pandemic because

I felt the physical ramifications of that stress. I feel like a big part of the stress of the pandemic for me was that it brought up so much polarization and I actually came off social media mostly because of motherhood again I'm not sure which is a sort of chicken and egg thing but there was something about like the collective shadows that were churned up through the pandemic and also these these amazing reckonings you know like the big black lives matter like surge that happened and so many questions that have been needed to be asked and have they have have been being asked, but we're in a louder, bigger, more public, more mainstream way, reaching people who hadn't heard them before. So I can't, I find it hard to separate, you know,

the stress of the lockdowns and all of that from the, having to negotiate losing friends almost, you know, I'm repairing some relationships now, but we had very different opinions and very different, we took very different actions and that, that has matured me too. And I think overall, I feel like I'm more, even more of a negative, a babe on the other side of this. Like I feel like it, it tuned my discernment, that whole experience of the pandemic. And and I'm I think more before I write and speak and I'm glad about that I sort of like I feel my responsibility more I really resonate

with that Sophie there was I have always considered myself a bit of a fence sitter and I am by nature quite diplomatic and can easily see both sides of most situations. And the polarisation that surfaced, it was always there, but it really came to the surface, right, throughout the pandemic and those events you've mentioned um it was incredible to watch my brain just go down some real rabbit holes and really question some beliefs some people that I had looked up to that were talking about things that I never expected them to be talking about or sharing on, asking some really big questions and feeling incredibly allergic to just the level of judgment that I could see from one side

to another side in this continued division of black and white thinking that I don't really gravitate towards. You know, I'm definitely not perfect, but I feel like I am usually able to understand why somebody might think the way that they do, even if I don't agree with them. And that definitely strengthened over the last few years. And I've consciously made the decision to read more from people whose opinions I might disagree with and to to trust how I feel about something even if what I'm hearing in the collective is something that you know isn't in alignment with that and and like you say like thinking more before I share and speak but also noticing how that can

easily transform into self-censoring as well so there's also a part of me that's also working to continue to share my opinions and voice my thoughts even if it might not it might rub off some feathers for example and I am also you know a recovering people pleaser and so that's hard too so there's also a part of me that's like I am definitely conscious more conscious now than I was before about how you know my lived experience or my thoughts and beliefs might not always align with somebody else's but I also know that I have the tendency to self-censor and that's something that I'm working on too so that's ongoing. Fascinating I just absolutely relate because I've watched

myself get paralyzed around speaking and it's actually I want to talk to you about coming off social media because there was literally like a withdrawal process for me where I realized how dependent I'd become on the likes and the affirmation I was receiving from you know the breakfast that I made that day it was like it was a good breakfast because lots of people told me it was or you know this insight that I'd had that then I got into a good dialogue with some friends around on social media then it was a worthwhile thing to think or a worthwhile day and coming off social media I suddenly realized how much I needed to affirm myself like yes this breakfast is good because it's healthy for you don't need

to tell anyone about it this walk is beautiful whether anyone else sees it or not and I realized it was such a deprogramming and I'm grateful I did it but it took a long time and it really surprised me because I didn't think I was that bought into it and I really was yes it is real I have just returned to Instagram after nearly half a year away and I actually shared a post yesterday that was sort of an update on what's been happening in my world for the last five or six months and I checked it this morning and was so overjoyed to see that people had liked it and they were really lovely comments on there and I could feel this like it's like I could feel the dopamine you know just like rushing through my body I was like oh my god this is amazing I can't believe I've been denying myself this and it was such a funny way to start the day

after not having had that for a really long time of them being like oh my god no wonder this is so addictive because this feels awesome it feels great all right like it feels so good but it takes it takes so much as well and being able to balance the the compromise between being on there and the benefits that we have from social media is is tricky it's really tricky for me the only way I can do it is by taking extended breaks away from it to just recalibrate I find it hard to be on there and to maintain you know balance for long stretches of time if I'm honest yeah yeah and you've been working with some health stuff too you shared in that update at the Hashimoto's how's that going is there been a connection here with the burnout is it yeah how's that progressing yeah so I've been navigating that for about five years now

and that's been a huge teacher for me because that was probably the first time that I realized I'm not invincible and it was pre-pandemic, but it was definitely, you know, another winter of just like, oh, God, okay. So the pace that I'm operating at, the amount of caffeine that I'm drinking to be productive and to feel like I am achieving all the things I want to achieve and the stress levels in my life, I really needed to re-examine all of that and make some big changes. And, yeah, it's been up and down. The reason I first went to see my GP and received the diagnosis

was because of a total change in my cycle. So I noticed that my periods were much heavier than they'd been before. and I was completely exhausted and I'd been practicing menstrual cycle awareness for nearly four or five years at that time and I'd been practicing the art of resting at menstruation and taking time out but this had become um it wasn't a choice it was like I literally couldn't get out of bed. I was so tired. I remember one day forcing my body to make it to the shower because I was just like I am exhausted. And it took a friend actually saying to me, like, I know that you practice resting and taking time out when you're bleeding,

but that feels like maybe that's not normal. Maybe actually you need to get that checked out. And I did. And then, yeah, I received this diagnosis. And so for those who aren't familiar, Hashimoto's is an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid. So my thyroid is underactive and it's connected to my immune system. And I've worked with various practitioners over the last five years

on and off, and I started taking um thyroxine which is a synthetic um thyroid hormone a couple of years ago now which has definitely helped but at the moment I'm working with a practitioner to get really to the root cause of what is actually triggering my autoimmune condition and yeah I think we're getting there you know but it takes time and um and it's definitely taught me to be patient and I'm not necessarily trying to get to like I'm trying to get to the bottom of what's happening I don't necessarily expect that it's going to be something that just you know is cured and I'm you know vanishes from my life because and I don't necessarily even know if that's what I want because it really has

meant that I've learned yes yes I relate again um and this is Julietta right from hormones in harmony yeah hormones in harmony that's it I'll put a link in the show notes Julietta's brilliant isn't she yeah so she runs the podcast with Nat who is a shared connection of ours isn't she she's part of your team for the cycle coach school exactly yeah yes yes yeah yeah they're both wonderful women and both big supports in my life and yeah I really loved working with both of them different ways so Nat's a mentor at cycle coach school of a facilitator training that I run to train other professionals to integrate menstrual cycle awareness into their practice and Julietta yeah is my current hormone gal helping me uncover what's going on and it's interesting we've um I've had period pain on and off for

about 10 years and it's been really interesting noticing um how helpful it is to have support you know it's something that I often you know is when you're a coach or a healer or facilitator so often we're holding space for other people and working with Julieta has been great because I've been reminded how powerful and essential it is to have that support held for me too. And I really noticed how this period pain is something that I feel like I've mostly managed over the last 10 years. And I know what, what usually triggers it. And I know how to care for it when it happens. But God, it's been nice having someone else to just support me in not just the physical self-care of holding that period pain, but yeah, like the emotional and psychological burden of having that pain come back and go away over a

decade that was something I went into this relationship with Juliet and not expecting and it's been really healing to have that support held for me after doing it by myself for a long time my experience of chronic health stuff is is loneliness to the large part because especially when people can't see that there's something going on inside us and that's really impacting energy mood emotions yeah and same that I think like the my first experience of burnout was ironically when I'd been running a yoga school, which I think is very hilarious that I, I mean, I was just absolutely pushing it. And the school that I was working for, I now know and see was completely unethical, like to the point of being abusive. So it's one of these yoga schools that's

been that's come up and lots of stories have come out about people who were really hurt there including me and I was literally getting up at seven in the morning working teaching running the school until 11 o'clock at night and I was in my 20s and I just thought like this is my calling this is it I'm gonna go for it and I wasn't practicing cycle awareness at that point and I just went went went went went and then at a certain point my body crashed it just stopped working and I for a week I was like laid in bed and I couldn't move my body I don't know maybe I was in Thailand I don't know if it was maybe dengue fever maybe something happened but that was the beginning of like years and years and years of this unwelcome but actually very powerful teacher of chronic illness

showing me how to slow down how to well I think it pushed me towards cycle awareness. You know, it was, it was that ongoing struggle that made me realize that the way I was working is, yeah, the way I was working and living wasn't right. And now, yeah, same, like things come up, symptoms start to rise up and then I'm just so much more attuned and I can hear them and then I go right what adjustments do I need to make yeah so I'm sort of reluctantly grateful yeah it's important to include the reluctance because it is tough and I wouldn't want to bypass the the darkness of like you say chronic illness and the loneliness associated with it and the burden that we carry um but like lie all things in life you know it's bittersweet and yeah I can't imagine not having had the learnings that I've experienced through working with my thyroid for the last

five years. And I, you know, as I prepare and plan to have a biz of my own, it's of utmost importance that that aspect of my physical health is, is in a really great place as well. So it's also about preparing for the future too and looking towards perimenopause and menopause and recognizing that the work i've been doing with my thyroid is also helping me in the present day but also it's preparing for the big changes in my body still to come of which there's going to be you know whether i have kids or not some really big changes in the next 15 years and going into that eyes wide open and doing everything I can to keep

my inner reserves nice and full that's like that's so important to me. if you're one of the many people in our community at red school who is self-employed you're more than likely to recognize the kind of creative burnout experiences that claire and i have been chatting about in your life as a business owner it's one of the three core growth pathways that we explore in our upcoming Your Cyclical Business course which I guide. How to move from overwhelm from wearing all the hats in your business as a teacher, as a coach, as a creative to sustainable creative flow that allows you to have the impact that you long for and be resourced by it along the way so the course is starting on June the 9th and the early bird price and a couple of cool bonuses are available until Saturday the 3rd of June and the wonderful Nat Martin who we chatted about earlier

will be a mentor on the course alongside Ruby May the founder of Know Your Flow and one of our senior leadership mentors at Red School Abby Denya Buick so if you would appreciate having a supportive learning environment and community to weave cycle awareness into your business then please do join us you can find out more at yourcyclicalbusiness.com. So you mentioned in the post-pandemic slowing down that part of it was your inner critic got very loud and this is the other topic I wanted to speak to you about is the inner critic and particularly when it shows up as imposter syndrome. This comes up so much in our community especially with the MRP grads, you know, they're actively wanting to step into or deepen into new kinds of leadership through menstruality.

And one of the first things that comes up is, who do you think you are? Feelings of being a fraud. I'm not qualified for this. You know, no one's given me the stamp of approval for this you know no one's giving me the stamp of approval for this like can I actually do this and I actually just love talking to people about this because it's sort of one of those things that we don't talk about enough and basically everyone's experiencing it I remember reading an article hearing like Meryl Streep, Oprah, Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lopez they were all confessing to this massive imposter syndrome that they have and it's real isn't it and yeah I'd love to hear how it's shown up in your life and I remember reading an article about Oprah actually you've just triggered my memory she was sharing how every single guest that has appeared on her show at the very end they sat

there on the on the sofa on her you know Oprah's famous couch and the cameras stop and it and no matter who it is no matter how famous they are each guest will lean over and say was that okay like did I do all right like every single person is just like oh god did I totally mess that up are you still you asked me to be here right like is it still am I okay should I just go yeah you don't have to use it if you don't want to I won't be offended if you decide not to use show this episode right right oh you know it's really like I have I have such a um oh like I honestly I have that feeling of bless bless humanity bless us we're so funny and the same and um yeah of course we all experience this. And I, yeah, I definitely, definitely have a very loud inner critic

and I would say the imposter. It sort of alternates between, and it feels kind of edgy to say this, but almost like a superiority and then like a specialness and then who do you think you are and finding that middle ground has taken me a lifetime and I still slip into one or the other but but very much you know accompanying those feelings of who do you think you are is like oh my god you're special there's something about you that is superior to others and both of those are unhelpful. And there's, you know, as Alexandra would say,

5% of truth in what the inner critic has to say and also in that specialness or that superiority as well. You know, there's, of course, 5% in that as well, that we are all unique and special human beings, but where it doesn't make us superior to others and it also doesn't mean that we shouldn't be, have a place at the table as well. There's something in, like, again, that humbling

and just coming back to I'm not perfect, I don't have all the answers. And I'm just going to do my work because there's a bigger why. That's something that really I find incredibly importance of the work that I'm sharing is usually my go-to whenever I'm feeling that like who on earth do I think I am I haven't done this before this is terrifying like I'm a fraud all of that whenever I do anything new it comes up or if I decide to charge more money it comes up or if I yeah like show up in a bigger way than I have before it will it will come up to the point where it becomes a bit predictable and it helps to just be like oh yeah of course

you're here but for me it really is like re-centering on the importance of the work that I really am just a vessel for to come through and being of service to other people and just getting out of the way all of these things can sound a bit conceptual and wanky and like they're just out of a self-help book but but genuinely like that is that's what I do is like menstrual cycle awareness and sharing this work on this planet is more important than whatever stories you're running right now I have I just I'm so grateful for Alexandra's work on the inner critic and it's home in the autumn because for me it really runs rampant in my spring and also in the spring of any creative project so recognizing that I need to allow myself

more space to play and make mistakes and mess up which again going back to my like blueprint of my family of origin I didn't I wasn't really able to do as the eldest of lots and lots of kids. So I didn't have a lot of time to play and make mistakes. I needed to be the responsible one. And so it's a practice for me just allowing myself to not be perfect, like I said, not to have these expectations of superiority and better than, to actually just do as, you know, do some good work, but not try to, yeah, like necessarily even change the world. You know, aspirations I maybe had when I was younger, like to just show up and do really great work.

And if that impacts a few people, brilliant. And if I enjoy doing it even bloody better right but I think I've just let go of the need to be the best which was my goal for decades especially the eldest I bet yeah thank you for naming the superiority inferiority dynamic because I think that's it's a lot easier for us for us to own the inferiority and the vulnerability and the more victim side oh yeah and I've been looking a lot more at my like persecutor in me a great friend who's a voice dialogue practitioner and she's like awesome to hang out with she's so much fun and she also asked these questions that are like whoa okay and I was talking about my relationship with aid to her and she said I can't remember the exact question she asked but it pointed to this persecutor part in me that was linked to an

a young child part of me that just wants to be special that just wants to be special and it was really helpful to feel that a lot of that superiority is coming from an unmet need from younger life so I can have a bit more compassion for myself but yeah it's important for us to name that piece isn't it I was just going to mention the resource of the drama triangle there because you've mentioned the persecutor and the victim and for anyone who's unfamiliar with it I would and is resonating with what we're talking about I would recommend checking out that model because it speaks to the drama that's created when we slip into victim mode or persecutor and also rescuer and as a coach it's been really important for me on my journey

to notice when I do slip into rescuer as well and wanting to fix things for other people and that gives me that sense of superiority when I place myself above somebody else and I create a power imbalance where I'm right and they're wrong and they need me creates codependency and enabling and like therefore I feel valued because I'm able to rescue you from this situation and then of course that's an unhealthy dynamic and we can easily slip and then into persecutor which then I believe can create those feelings of that imposter syndrome as well and ultimately we want to elevate ourselves out of that dysfunctional way of relating and you know become coaches like the you know a coach

who not necessarily as a profession but somebody who's able to encourage others and support them to find their own answers and self-trust within ourselves and within other people and I find it a really useful model to to explain how these dysfunction in relating can happen really easily and we see it play out in tv film show it creates a great story the rescuer the victim the persecutor it's like the classic trilogy of drama but when we comes to our relationships and our work and how we show up in business and particularly if we're in the role of coach healer teacher or in some way we're supporting other people to be able to recognize that it's really normal to have that persecutor or that rescuer come in or even the victim come in, but to be able to elevate ourselves out of that

into a more healthy way of relating with other people and to know why we slip into that, like you said, to recognise that often it is an old blueprint, something that is coming from an untended part of our child selves and to give that part of ourselves love and compassion and care so that you know we're able to hold space for other people in a healthy and grounded way rather than creating an environment where these dynamics just continue to play out that's so beautiful and I love the role that menstruation can play here like I think back

to earlier times in my life when I really experienced imposter syndrome and there was one memory that I was reflecting on this morning that really has it where I was working for tree sisters and burning myself out by the way so there's a poet philosopher called David Wyatt and he says if you ever want to experience burnout go and work for a non-profit sure yeah which is what I was doing back to the burnout but I was so I was at a conference with tree sisters with all of these people that I respected so deeply who were doing actual world-changing environmental things and in the face of them I just watched myself become a little girl and I had no connection to you know as you mentioned to the why you know the reason that I was doing this that would give me you know that would support me to take a stand

for myself and for my own small imperfect necessary contribution in it and then I think how like these years of cycle awareness have worked me and now I show up in rooms I mean mostly online to be fair I don't leave my house very often mostly I show up with people who you know I have this kind of could have had a similar power unhealthy power dynamic within the past and because of all these years of touching in or as Shani says like docking into the the mother hug of menstruation I think it's like a combination of plugging into the why again and again the deep why and also um kind of stepping out of the personal and anchoring myself in the collective in some way I don't know I'm sort of fumbling for words here because it's

it's hard to describe what happens when we bleed isn't it it's so mystical and wordless yeah I feel you that plugging in to that deep well of love that as we've said can we can go into that with intention as well to care for those parts of ourselves that have you know that feel unlovable or that didn't receive the care that we really might have benefited from or wanted as kids and as adults. And so carving out that time for yourself intentionally, being able to really give that to yourself, even when the rest of the world is putting so many hurdles

in our way to prevent that from happening, there's so many reasons to not to not plug in and so to continue to choose that is so it strengthens our self-trust strengthens self-esteem of like a deep well of deep well of love that really does flood into the psyche but like you say it's difficult to to fully name anyone who's listening though I'm sure can understand what we're fumbling around trying to say yeah we just get a taste and then we enter back into the world and there's like a bit of a forgetting and then we come come back in again go oh yeah home home I forgot speaking about the obstacles there was an article that I heard about through a Brene Brown podcast which feels really important to mention which was written by a woman called Roshika Tulsian

and it was called stop telling women that they have imposter syndrome and it really made me rethink imposter syndrome because what she was essentially naming or I think there's two authors what they were naming is maybe it's not that women and particularly they're speaking about women of color in the article um are imposters maybe the system is set up against them so what we really need to do is create systems which have different leadership styles in them and they embrace difference and embrace diversity it's like oh yes there's something really important there and i feel like this way this is where cycle awareness can intersect with social justice and social change because the kind of leadership that we're cultivating like the kind of leadership that your cycle coach students are cultivating and that the

menstruality leadership program folks are cultivating is hopefully one that is naturally innately inclusive and embraces difference and diversity and can that I don't want to paint it as like some solve all for these huge problems that we're facing in our world but I want to honor that the work that we're doing is contributing to a meaningful momentum when it comes to this kind of social change it makes sense to me of course we would feel like an imposter when we don't see examples in leadership that represent who how we see ourselves or the potential of how our work might manifest in the world if we don't have examples of feminine leadership and a more cyclical approach to business and creativity in most of the industries that we look to then that makes a lot of sense to me that

we would feel like an imposter maybe it's a maybe it's a really good thing that we don't see ourselves you know in a lot of the structures and systems that we currently have in place in modern life right so how could we lean into that actually and celebrate the fact that this this work is is it's pretty wild you know like when we step outside of our little menstrual bubbles and share share what we're up to together with other people who are unfamiliar with it it's like oh wow that's um that's that's pretty that's pretty out there i get that all the time i or just oh yeah like and i think it's important to remember that, is that this is, yeah, paradigm shifting work.

This is out-of-the-box stuff. And so it'd be interesting, I'm going to sit with that myself, to be more curious about some of that imposter syndrome. Perhaps some of it really is connected to the fact that there just aren't that many examples of what powerful leadership looks like when it's birthed from um from cyclical awareness yeah it's interesting what's next for you like what's next for you at the moment i was very intrigued in your post when

you said oh like new creative ideas are bubbling what's what's happening I think one of the first signs that my creativity came back online was just this like urgent desire to write again and that was the missing limb for me like when I speak about creativity gone AWOL that was what it was, was just no desire to write. And for the, and like I said, that had never happened to me, you know, in my life because I've always written and it's like, it makes me feel like nauseous even just thinking about it because, oh my God, you know, that was not only a big part of my identity but also just something that I've really loved doing um it makes me feel like myself so I really miss that and I've noticed that that has returned thank all the powers that be because that would break my heart if it if I

if I lost that um yeah I hear you that's it's real heartbreak there too that's yeah I actually don't know what my life would look like I don't it's so intrinsic to who I am that losing that was so sad oh god it's like yeah it makes me feel real tenderness in my heart um and and the book was connected with that you know I think anyone who's written a book and published a book may relate to that idea of just like I do not want to write anything ever again um so thankfully that's returned and so I've been really sitting with huh what does this look like now because I don't feel like I want to I have a couple of book ideas that I'm going to keep working on but I don't want to

rush that process um and I yeah I miss the days of of blogging and of sharing you know a few times a week on my website I think those days maybe have gone. So I'm really curious about platforms like Substack and their ability to be able to create not just a place for writing, but also community. I think they're the two aspects of social media that I love the most. It's the writing. I'm not a reels gal. I just, it's not for me. I like watching other people's videos and things like that. It's just not for me I like watching other people's videos and things like that it's just not for me but I love the writing aspect of social media and I love reading other people's writing and I love the community and so maybe it's Substack there's definitely something here

that I'm yeah working with and creating and offering where we can come together as a community um and yeah and share creatively that way through the written word that is really where my heart lies in in creativity um so that's that's still quite new and fresh and that's probably the most I've revealed about it to anybody thank you I feel I feel honored and excited because I've missed your voice so it's yeah it's great to hear and so in the meantime while that's developing where could people should people connect with you on Instagram or your email list to keep in touch? Yeah, so work-wise, I'm still, I'm doing all the things still. So coaching, I'm reopening my books this year, which is going to be really great

and running Cycle Coach School. And you can find me at clairebaker.com, C-L-A-I-R-E-B-A-K-E-R.com or on Instagram underscore C-L-A-I-R-e-b-a-k-e-r underscore um and of course my newsletter is always a great place to keep in touch with what's going on as well thank you I always love talking to you I say always like we've done it loads of time because it feels like we have but I yeah I love it Claire thank you so much for everything you've shared today it's been wonderful to be with you oh thanks Sophie real pleasure I'm so glad to be back thank you

thank you for tuning in today thank you for listening to the podcast if you haven't yet please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and if you can leave us a review on apple podcasts we are so very grateful if you're interested in the your cyclical business course which i teach and which is starting on june the 9th i'd love to have you with us you can find out more about it at yourcyclicalbusiness.com okay that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.