This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 199 / Fear & Failure (Part 2) with Amy Green Smith

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Starting point is 00:01:06 because that's where we're sharing all the details. I am Nicole Khalil and you're tuning in to the This Is Woman's Work podcast where we are redefining what it means to be doing woman's work with you as the decider. And we're also throwing in an aggressive amount of content on the topic of confidence because your host has a stalker-like obsession with it. I'm thrilled you're here, but if you're tuning in for the first time or just because this topic was of interest to you, I want to point out that

Starting point is 00:01:45 this is part two of our conversation on fear and failure. So if you didn't listen to part one just yet, I'd encourage you to hit pause and go back to episode 197 from last week and start there. If you've already listened to part one, well, then I'm going to assume that you're here because you've been not so patiently waiting for the completion of this conversation. And I can tell you, it'll be well worth the wait. As a reminder, I'm joined by Amy Green-Smith, life coach, hypnotherapist, speaker, and communication expert. There is so much that I could say about Amy, but I'm going to read something she has on her website that gave me chills and brought tears to my eyes because it's so real and it's so relevant and it's so her. She says, I was fucking done with being motivated from a place of guilt and fear.

Starting point is 00:02:36 I realized that if push came to shove and I had to decide between making my family happy or making me happy, I chose me. And I felt everything about that deeply. And now I'm trying to figure out a great way to transition into part two without it sounding like we're jumping right into the middle of a conversation, but fuck it because that's exactly what we're doing. So here we go with my next question. You mentioned fear response earlier, and I want to dig into that a little bit. I just had somebody on the show a few weeks back that talked about stress, and it was fight, flight, freeze. I believe you have a fourth fear response.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Yes. So let's talk a little bit about that. All right. So let's talk about first, what that. All right. So let's talk about first, what are the four? The first is fight. So let's look at this if we were talking about sort of our primitive makeup as humanity, because we have modern iterations of all of these primitive defense mechanisms. So fight is obviously if we're going to be attacked by a mountain lion, then we would try to fight the cat, right? Flight is if we were

Starting point is 00:03:52 to run away. Freeze would be if you're playing dead, that sort of a thing. And then there's a newer one that, again, the research is still out of, is it as potent as the other three? I think it has a lot of relevance, but it is called FON. And the idea behind a FON response would be in the face of an aggressor, a captor that you would placate or acquiesce in order to stay safe. So I think for many women out there, we know what that's like to be nice to a man or kind so that we don't get murdered. Right? So that would be a fun response in a way to take care of yourself. And she gets taken out a lot quicker versus somebody who played the mental game with someone. And I don't mean to be macabre, but that's such an incredibly explicit example of how FON responses can actually keep you safe. Now, all four of these are showing up in modern times in very different ways because the way

Starting point is 00:05:04 the sympathetic nervous system works versus the parasympathetic, sympathetic is designed to kick up that adrenaline and have us be able to deal with stress in an acute situation. So send in the fight, the flight, the freeze, or the fawn. But then the way we're built is to be able to fall back into parasympathetic, which is sometimes called tend and befriend or rest and digest, you know, to have a fun moniker. But the idea is that we can then settle into some rest where our nervous system is not warding off threat. It's not on high alert. So now in modern culture, we are constantly warding off some type of threat. So we are in such a heightened state of sympathetic nervous system, which I think is what is leading

Starting point is 00:05:55 to massive adrenal fatigue, all sorts of autoimmune issues, things like that. And this is what I'm guessing your guest probably spoke about, is that issues around being locked into a sympathetic nervous system state is exponentially worse for women because what they are caretaking for constantly throughout the day tends to have you warding off threat or being on high alert in so many instances. It's, I got to get the kids to school. I got to make sure, did I handle that email? What did my boss want? Oh my gosh, am I thin enough?

Starting point is 00:06:28 Am I, you know, all the shit that feels like a threat we're constantly focused on. So these modern iterations will show up in slightly different ways. Fight now has morphed into anxiety. So when we're not able to fight off the boss or we're not able to be as forthright with our co-parts or friends or whoever, we might get a massive dose of anxiety that comes in. If the flight has now morphed into depression. So it's sort of a, okay, we need to calm down and depress

Starting point is 00:07:08 all of the senses that are happening here. This is also why if you see folks who are clinically depressed or in the throes of depression, they will want to sleep. It's essentially fleeing. Let me run away. I don't want to deal with this imminent threat. What's really important to notice about all of these too is that it's our body's way of trying to keep us safe. So when we are having a quote anxiety attack, it's your body saying, hey, bitch, we need you to slow down. We need you to pay attention to some of this stuff that's going on. But we don't do that. We go, what's wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? Why can't I keep up? And it's like,

Starting point is 00:07:45 no, no, no. That's a message, just like our emotions. It's a message saying something's got to give. You're overloaded. That person isn't right for you. Something that has you in high fucking alert all the time is going on. The freeze response morphs into a litany of different things, actually, which I'm sure your other guests talked about. But one of them is procrastination. And this can be very tied with folks who struggle with perfectionism as well. Procrastination now becomes the freeze. Like I'm not, if I just don't do anything, you know? And some folks will find themselves just so fried

Starting point is 00:08:27 at a nervous system level that they'll just stand in front of the fridge like, what? What was I getting here? It's almost like all systems down. You're kind of frying the circuit board. But again, it's your body arresting you, stopping you because you won't stop. But we go, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? No, no, no. It's a message. We have to focus on that. And then the FON response is something that I talk about a lot in my work because the modern iteration of FON is people-pleasing. People-pleasing is another way for us to stay safe. And we talked about that just with the very morbid example of women being in a really dangerous situation. To people-please and to say like, oh, yeah, no, that's fine, might be your

Starting point is 00:09:14 only way to get out. A lot of us develop people-pleasing tendencies if we grew up in a family that was aggressive or abusive or we had a primary caregiver who wasn't safe. We learned how to walk on eggshells or placate or take care of their emotions. So all of these, I think we have to really recognize that they're showing up because there's some kind of threat that's not working well with our system. So the antidote is to listen to those as messaging as opposed to saying, what's wrong with me? I'm so fucked up. Because it is on the rise. We are seeing epic levels of autoimmune and adrenal fatigue, et cetera, among other issues. And I really think it's a manifestation, the body saying, if you're not going to slow down, we're going to slow you down.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Okay. So that was fascinating. If you're listening, you should probably rewind and listen to that a few times. And I'm sure like me, you can find yourself in one or two of those in your day-to-day life. I know the fun and to people pleasing really, really resonates, but just understanding what's happening and why it's happening, I think is super helpful. Now, I don't think we can talk about fear and failure and even doubt without talking about what I call head trash. I know you call your inner critic. I call it head trash because I want it to sound as dirty and disgusting as it actually is. Like the things that we say to

Starting point is 00:10:48 ourselves about ourselves that are not kind and very rarely based in any sort of truth. Like you've said several times throughout this conversation of we take a feeling or an experience and we internalize it. Not this sucks. I suck. So let's talk a little bit about that voice. Let's start with how do you define it and what do you mean by inner critic? So I use it much more in sort of a clinical term when I'm explaining what is actually happening. When I'm talking about it sort of at a superficial level, I call it your inner shit talker.

Starting point is 00:11:36 It's kind of like a best friend who genuinely wants to take care of you but has horrible communication skills. And instead of telling you that they love you and that they're worried, they say, you're going to fuck this up. Like we all have people in our life who don't opt for the vulnerable language. They opt for the aggressive language. But if we're talking about it through a clinical lens and what is actually happening with the theory of mind, is this division between the conscious faculty of the mind and the subconscious faculty of the mind. So stay with me because this is a little heady. But the conscious faculty of the mind, that is something that depending on who

Starting point is 00:12:19 you talk to, it's between 5% to 12% of the mind's power. That's a very, very small amount of mind power. The rest of it, that 88% to 95% that our entire existence is powered by, is our subconscious mind. Now, they control different elements. The conscious faculty of the mind will house logic, reason, rationale, and also willpower. In the subconscious, that is where our beliefs are housed, our values, our habits, and also our primitive fear responses. Now, in between those two, there is a concept called the critical factor of the mind, which we have then interpreted it as all sorts of different things, the ego, the saboteur, whatever. But that little inner critic is checking for congruence between the conscious and the subconscious.

Starting point is 00:13:29 So in the subconscious, let's say you were younger and you developed, like we've talked about in the past, a positive association. It becomes known how to people please. And it becomes this thing that now the inner critic knows hanging out in this subconscious part of the mind, it's safe to people, please. We know how to do it. It has kept us safe. Let's stay here. Let's do that. So then you grow up, you get older and you realize that it's people pleasing is sabotaging all of your relationships or your ability to grow in your career or whatever. So you decide, I'm going to start telling myself, no, you can speak up for yourself or you need to

Starting point is 00:14:12 take care of yourself more than anybody else. Well, that inner critic is like a little guard dog and it'll start barking its head off and go, fuck no, fuck no, you can't. People-pleasing is safe. So it'll shoot in and start talking all sorts of shit to get you to stay congruent with the people-pleasing because that's already been cataloged, right? It's already been cataloged as safe. So that is why so often when we try to start saying lovely things to ourselves consciously, again, like 10% of the mind power, that inner critic comes in with full force going, no

Starting point is 00:14:54 way, absolutely not. Well, one of the things that actually penetrates the critical factor of the mind, almost like giving that little guard dog a little treat, is through repetition. So that is why when people talk about habit forming, they will say 21 days minimal and 45 days or whatever, because with repetition, eventually what happens is that little guard dog goes, oh, I guess Nicole really means business with this I'm enough stuff. Or I guess Nicole really means it with I'm allowed to speak up for myself. Okay. And then it'll be like, fine, you can drop it down into the subconscious mind.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Well, I really love a little bit of a faster method, which can be accessed with hypnosis. So without going into a bunch of that, hypnosis essentially allows that inner critic, that little guard dog to take a little greenie and go to sleep. And so it's much easier to feed mantras, messages, or new beliefs into the conscious and it drops into the subconscious so much faster because you're not dealing with that kickback. So typically in the work that I do around inner critic, around dealing with that part of you, we tackle it both consciously and subconsciously. But essentially what that is, is a little guard dog and it is also your intuition. And so we oftentimes think of those things as two very, very different elements, but

Starting point is 00:16:33 it's the same thing saying, hey, I don't think you should walk down that path. That looks really dangerous. That's your intuition and it's also your inner critic, right? So we just have to recognize it's just acknowledging, is this something we know or something we don't know? Is this safe or is this unsafe? Again, fascinating. And as you were talking, we had talked briefly about affirmations before. And I think what resonated with me is why affirmations and mantras have been hard for me in the past is because I feel like I'm lying, right? I look in the mirror and say, you are worthy.

Starting point is 00:17:14 I'm not saying not to do affirmations or mantras. If they work for you, you should freaking do them. But for me, it's always felt inauthentic. Yes. And I think also why your and statements from earlier resonated with me so much more because they feel more truthful. It's the, I'm scared and I'm brave. So again, fascinating, really great explanation, but that's what popped up for me while you were talking. What are some, I just am such a fan of your choice of words and you have such great power statements. If it's not an affirmation and you gave us some and statements, what are some things that we can say instead or that we can call forth. Because what I find is often when fear or failure or all the icky feelings pop up, that's where I feel least equipped to make the best choices because I'm all in my feelings.

Starting point is 00:18:16 And so having something prepared ahead of time or having some tactic or steps that I can go through or recovery plan or something that has been created ahead of time that I can use and leverage during those periods of time where I don't want to do anything productive. I want to curl in the fetal position under my desk with a glass, and by glass, I mean bottle of wine, and shut it all out. Okay. So long-winded way of saying what are some tools that we can have at the ready or prepare ahead of time for when that inner critic or that little guard dog starts yapping? I'm so glad you asked this specifically about when your emotions have really kicked up. Because I think sometimes, well, first of all, let's talk about why affirmations don't tend to work. One is because we're layering them on top of a really potent emotion. It's the wrong tool at the wrong time. And I'll talk more about that.

Starting point is 00:19:24 But the other is because we're saying something that the conscious mind at the wrong time. And I'll talk more about that. But the other is because we're saying something that the conscious mind and the inner critic are going to kick back so hard that we won't stick with the repetition. So the task or the tool becomes so ridiculous to us that we throw in the towel way before we can actually make it a habit. So let's talk about that first element of if you're in a heightened emotional state, the first question to ask yourself is, is the emotion that I'm feeling super potent? If it is, meaning you are so sad, you feel like you could cry. You're so overwhelmed. You feel like the anxiety is off the charts. You are so angry.

Starting point is 00:20:05 You feel like you could kick rocks. If that's the sort of emotional state you're in, we're not calling for the tool of self-talk or positive affirmations. That's not warranted because that's almost like putting a Band-Aid over a big wound. So it sounds like, this is what it sounds like. You're super stressed out. You're super frustrated. You're about to cry or something. And you're like, it's fine. This too shall pass. It's going to be okay. Just think positive. And what that is, is toxic positivity is really what's happening. So the antidote is an emotional release,

Starting point is 00:20:41 catering to what's happening for you emotionally first, and that can look a ton of different ways, and then layering on positive self-talk or an alternative tool or journaling or looking for the reason or the meaning. But we have to address that emotional intensity first. It's really similar to what we've talked about with the fear being like, mom, mommy, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. We have to address the emotion first, then layer the tool. So emotional releases can take a ton of different forms. I like to call it controlled emoting where if you're really upset and sad, go watch a video of troops being reunited with their families after years or something like that where you just bawl your eyes out and in a safe place where you don't have to be on or have a meeting or be there for your kids

Starting point is 00:21:31 and just let it ride through you. You can also, if you're angry, scribbling or there's tons of stuff you can do with your body like clenching your entire body and then releasing, clenching and then releasing, breaking or tearing apart anything, old magazines or beating something up in your backyard with a baseball bat. Pumpkins during Halloween are great. But doing something to move through the emotion first, key element. Otherwise, we're going to be putting a Band-Aid on a wound. And then as far as how do we use self-talk that doesn't feel like a big fucking lie? One thing that I use a lot is something I call progressive language, where we're saying, I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way. And it's much more palatable for the mind. So instead of saying, I am enough, saying something like, I'm exploring what self-worth

Starting point is 00:22:29 looks like, or I'm entertaining the idea that I am enough. I'm redefining my relationship to self-worth or enoughness. So it's something that we annex on the beginning of a sentence to say, I'm on my way. So that's one option to kind of coat your mantras or affirmations so that the kickback from the inner critic is not as, it's kind of like the dog goes, all right, I'll allow it. I'll allow it, right? You can also use addendums or disclaimers. So I use a lot of mirror work where we come up with new belief systems and then they will recite them in the mirror.

Starting point is 00:23:13 And sometimes it's really, really difficult. So you can use disclaimers like, even though this feels really uncomfortable, I believe that I am enough. Even though this hasn't really taken hold quite yet, I believe I can establish powerful boundaries. Or something like, even though this feels so silly and I can't imagine this taking hold, I am worthy of my desires or whatever, fill in the blank. Or I'm re-engineering my relationship with my body or how I view finances, whatever. You can use it for absolutely anything. So I think those two elements using progressive language statements or disclaimering them can be

Starting point is 00:23:58 really helpful in kind of sidestepping that little guard dog, inner critic. What I love so much about everything you just shared is at the beginning of last week's episode, you talked about the challenge of going from A to Z. And it feels like a really big jump. And as you were talking, I was recognizing that I do that a little too often in my own work, both personally and in what I put out there. And I love how much this will get us from A to Z, but it gives us not benchmarks, but like, yeah, transitions, it gives us progress. Yeah, bridges. And practice makes progress, right?

Starting point is 00:24:50 Perfection is not an available option. And I think sometimes we think when we go A to Z, it's where I'm at to Z and Z is perfection. And what you're offering here are those bridges and those transitions that create progress. And I can absolutely logically see how that takes something from the conscious and brings it down into subconscious in a way where the inner critic doesn't fight so hard to reject it. And the subconscious is more open to receive and believe what we're telling it. Right. I feel like you just completely made not affirmations, but what was not working about

Starting point is 00:25:38 affirmations, you made it work. So thank you for that personally. Amy, as always, it is an incredible honor and privilege to have you on the show. And I, for one, I mean, I think I can speak for my listeners, but at this point I can just tell you I personally have taken so much away from this conversation and will be revisiting it very often. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, you're most welcome. And I say this all the time, but please know the way in which I speak about this is like 15 years in of saying this constantly over and over again. So if you're listening and going, how the fuck am I ever going to get there? Welcome. That's your inner critic. Start talking to it. And also know that all of this stuff is malleable. All of it is changeable. I used to not feel this way at all. I was not able to speak up for myself. I didn't think that I was enough. And all of it is figureoutable and changeable and you are not exempt from the science. It's all scientifically based.

Starting point is 00:26:47 It's how the mind works. It's how neuroscience works. So you're not exempt from the science. It's just a matter of continuing down the path and you've got this. Amazing. And we are going to dive in next week to even more of the tactics and the actual words that we can use to support us very specifically on the topic of setting boundaries. So I'm very, very excited about that. If you haven't already downloaded one of Amy's free resources, go to amygreensmith.com and click

Starting point is 00:27:19 on her free sources immediately. And did you know that Amy offers her worthy coaching program as a one-on-one option as well? Reach out to her on her website and let her know you heard her on This Is Woman's Work to learn more. And let me close us out with a loving reminder that every single one of us experiences fear and failure. You, me, Amy, all of us. And if A is the initial reaction or feeling of fear and Z is standing in your power and your pride and your confidence, well, friend, there are likely a lot of steps and moments in between. We get to practice. We get to experience our feelings. And then we get to do the work of getting our conscious and unconscious to align toward what we truly want. It is not only okay, it is necessary for you to experience fear and failure.

Starting point is 00:28:16 But they are something you experience, not something you are. Your feelings inform you, but they don't own you. And no matter what, I don't care what is happening or what you're going through, you are worthy and you are valuable. Knowing that, accepting that, believing that, well, that is woman's work.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 199 / Fear & Failure (Part 2) with Amy Green Smith

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