Latest / The Messy Middle Podcast / 38 | The Addiction to Self-Improvement After Emotional Abuse

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38 | The Addiction to Self-Improvement After Emotional Abuse · The Messy Middle Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Messy Middle, the podcast for women navigating the raw, confusing, lonely aftermath of narcissistic abuse and emotional control.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm Erica Leon, trauma-informed abuse recovery coach, mom of five, and creator of the six keys to unfuckwithable.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: If you're picking up the pieces, questioning everything, and trying to remember who the fuck you were before you were so carefully erased, you're in the right place.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the messy middles.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: It's Eric Leon here, your host.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: This episode is about the addiction to self-improvement.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: And I know this is weird coming from me.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: I preface this by saying I know it's weird for me to say this, but I have to.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: So have you ever noticed how much of your life can end up sitting on the other side of this really crazy idea that you just need to work on yourself a little bit first.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll date when you're more confident, or maybe you'll apply for the job when you finally have dealt with your imposter syndrome, or put yourself out there when you're less anxious, or you'll wear that fucking bikini when you've made peace with your body.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: There's always this slightly improved woman standing somewhere in the future.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: That's what I hear all the time, and I feel that pressure in me all the time, also.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: And apparently, this chick, apparently, she's the one who's gonna get the permission to live your life.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: And I do find this fascinating because you know I love learning, I genuinely do.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: I hope I'm learning things until the very second I drop dead.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: I've trained in God knows how many things at this point.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I also read, I take courses, I love finding out why humans do what they do.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Curiosity is probably one of the things I value the most.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, I make courses.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm in the self-development world.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I am a coach, I am an expert on various things.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: My entire body of work is about helping people understand themselves and change the things that aren't working for them.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And so this is absolutely not going to be an episode where I spend half an hour telling you that self-development is load of bollocks and then pointing you toward my own courses in the show notes.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: That would be so awkward.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: But one-on-one with me does actually change lives, but I'm not gonna apologize for that.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: What I have become really interested in though is the reason that we're doing it, because that's slightly different.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between learning about yourself because you're fascinated by yourself and people, and learning about yourself because somewhere underneath all of this is the belief that the current version of you just isn't quite good enough.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: They are really different things, and from the outside, those two women can look exactly the same, right?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: They're both reading the book, they're both listening to the podcast, they're both going to therapy or coaching, they're both learning about their nervous system boundaries or attachment or wherever it happens to be.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: But internally, one of them is exploring and the other one is auditioning.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: And that is the distinction I've been thinking about a lot.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Because one woman's going, oh, that's interesting.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I wonder why I do that.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Or trying to kind of optimize.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder what else is possible for me.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: And the other one is thinking, maybe this is the thing.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe if I sort this out, I'll finally feel confident.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll finally stop choosing the wrong people.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll finally be easier to love or replace with anything pertinent to you.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And that is a completely different experience of personal growth.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're always addicted to self-improvement and self.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I just think we're addicted to the possibility that the next version of us will finally be enough.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: And most of the things that I cover and that I talk about and that I work on with people, they all have a very similar root.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And that is one that's at the basic root of everything.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: The being enough piece, the measuring it against what piece.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: I started thinking about it that way.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Once I did, I couldn't really unsee the gender piece of it either.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So sorry for the rant, but I can't ignore it.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, I have to do my usual disclaimer here because otherwise Chad and Barry and all his fucking mates will be emailing me.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: And I am not saying every man on earth wakes up believing he's God's gift to humanity while every woman crawls out of bed riddled with self-doubt.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about broad cultural conditioning.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, there are exceptions all over the place.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: But generally speaking, boys and girls have historically been given some really different messages about themselves.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: And you can see the residue of that everywhere.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: A man can look at a job description, he can meet about four of the 12 requirements and think, yeah, yeah, I could do that.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, a woman with 17 qualifications, 20 years experience and several awards is thinking, oof, I don't know, I've never actually used that particular software.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: And Barry and Chad, they're already negotiating the parking space outside.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: So there is that audacity there, and I do actually kind of admire it because many men have been encouraged to approach development as like an addition to a person who already has value.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm good at this, so how do I become even better?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Whereas women have very often been taught to approach development as correction.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to change about myself so that I'm more acceptable?
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Or and measure up to Barry and Chad.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And those messages start really fucking early.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: We're taught to pay attention to how we are landing.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Are we being nice?
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Are we talking too much?
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Are we making someone uncomfortable?
6:13
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that I'm talking too much and I'm never gonna stop.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: But that's a side note.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Are we pretty enough, but not so concerned with being pretty that we're vain?
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Clever, but hopefully not intimidating, ambitious, but still likable.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Gotta have boundaries, right?
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Everybody tells women to have boundaries now, me included.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: But God help you if somebody doesn't like the boundary, you're the bitch.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: And it is exhausting when you think about it.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And eventually nobody even has to monitor us because we become really good at doing it ourselves.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think that bit matters, actually.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Because this is what happens with abuse also.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: The abuser is really careful with this conditioning that they program the software and it just continues to perpetuate inside your system when they have left.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Women arrive at the world of self-development having often spent years already practicing self-correction.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: This is what I find day in and day out.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: And then we discover all this incredible information.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I remember the feeling of it 10,000 years ago when you discover things like therapy or coaching or attachment theory or narcissistic abuse recovery, nervous system, inner child, boundaries, trauma education.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, it's amazing.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And genuinely, some of that information, if not all, can change and does frequently change your fucking life.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: I've participated in it happening thousands of times now, and it never gets old, and I will always be in utter reverence and gratitude for it.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And there is enormous power in finally having language for something you've experienced for years without understanding it.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, I remember that feeling like it was yesterday.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: I've said this before, but I remember where I was exactly.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: I remember.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: But I also started wondering whether the part of us that was already accustomed to monitoring ourselves can occasionally grab hold of all this new information and go, oh, excellent.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: More things to grade myself on.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: And I have noticed this over and over with people.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm speaking about it.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't apply to you, I totally understand.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: And I tip my hat to you.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: But I hear it so often.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: I make an episode on things I just keep hearing all the time.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want another thing to grade us on.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Because now you don't have to be just a good woman.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: I can also worry about whether I'm being a sufficiently healed woman.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's where this gets really interesting, I think.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: And I see this happen particularly with women who've done quite a lot of work on themselves.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: At first, becoming self-aware is incredibly freeing.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: You suddenly understand why certain things affect you so much, and you start recognizing patterns you couldn't see when you were inside them.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's lovely to get that view.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you finally understand why saying no makes you feel physically sick, or why somebody being disappointed in you feels disproportionately terrifying, or why you shut down during a conflict.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: I love having these moments, these aha moments with my clients.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: It genuines me up for days, and they're huge, those moments are huge.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I truly love them, but there is something extraordinary about watching a woman have one of those moments where you can almost see the pieces rearranging in her head, and she goes, Oh, that's what I've been doing.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and this happens with men too.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just talking about women because here I'm talking about women, and I am one, so whatever.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: But once you can see something, you then have choices that you didn't have when it was invisible.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: That's just sense, and that is a massive part of my work, and I love that.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: And there is a point that I think it's worth talking about where you can become so bloody good at observing yourself that you're never simply having an experience anymore.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: You're observing yourself having the experience.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that's really powerful.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'm always telling people to have the third position experience to take themselves out of that first position emotional reaction, especially when we're strategizing for family court or interaction with your ex or whatever.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: But in your own life, sometimes that's not the move.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: So you have a shitty conversation with somebody, and before you've even properly processed what happened, the internal post-match analysis has already begun in your head.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: Was I triggered?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Was that my inner child?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Did I communicate properly?
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Was that intuition or was that fear?
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Did I respond or react?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Was I dysregulated?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Am I projecting?
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Fuck me.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Can a woman just have a fucking bad Tuesday?
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were tired, maybe you were hungry, maybe the other person was being a dick.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you weren't your finest self for 20 frickin' minutes.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you said something you wish you'd phrase differently, and you'll apologize tomorrow.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: But that does not necessarily mean we need to open an archaeological dig or some kind of cold case file.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where self-awareness can become self-surveillance.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't you?
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Don't you get that feeling sometimes that you're just so hyper-aware and hyper-vigilant of everything you do and say and the reason in the end?
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Are you actually living or are you just like an observation computer?
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And that self-surveillance is the phrase that really landed for me when I was thinking about this episode.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness feels like kind of being with yourself, right?
12:12
SPEAKER_00: It's got a let's do this, we're in this together kind of a vibe.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: But self-surveillance feels like what it is.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: It's just like keeping an eye on yourself and everything you do and everything you think.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's what these abusive relationships feel a bit like too.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Like you're under a microscope.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Because we all know that they can do whatever they want, right?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: But every single thing you do is under a microscope.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And I don't like the parallels there so much.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And there's this expectation that you're going to catch yourself doing something wrong.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: And for women especially, I think that distinction matters because keeping an eye on ourselves is something we've had an awful lot of practice at.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Long before we even knew the words dysregulation or attachment style, we were already doing the post-match analysis thing.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Did I talk too much?
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Did I upset him?
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Does she think I'm rude?
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Should I have said that?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Was I selfish?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: They still like me.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: You know the bullshit.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Then we learn the language of healing and self-policing gets a much better vocabulary.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: I think everybody's got a much better vocabulary around psychological issues, and it's actually pissing me off.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it's been used not for good, mostly.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: But I digress.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the sneaky bit.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: You used to wonder whether you were being nice enough.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Now you wonder whether you communicated from your heeled self.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: You used to worry that somebody was angry because you said no, but now you can spend three hours wondering whether perhaps you could have expressed the boundary in a bit more of a compassionate way.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: It's the same fucking courtroom, isn't it?
13:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just a new psych vocabulary.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And I want to be really clear here because I'm obviously not suggesting we shouldn't reflect on our behavior.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Of course we should.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: If I behave like an asshole, I'd quite like the self-awareness required to notice that I behave like an asshole.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Accountability matters, understanding your patterns matters.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: But honestly, I have never met anyone, a client in my situation with my niche and doing what I do, or many women in general, to be honest with you, that aren't constantly doing self-evaluation and constantly doing self-inventory.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like it's just part of us.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: So I never worry about that being absent, honestly, when I'm talking to you like this.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming that you're listening to this because you went through something similar to me, to my clients, and to millions of people out there.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: I think we've got that part.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: There is definitely value in being able to recognize when an old wound has taken over this well.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: That's incredibly useful, of course.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between reflection that helps you understand yourself and scrutiny that is constantly looking for evidence against you, almost like a software.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: One has curiosity and the other has accusation in it.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can feel it, and you can usually hear the difference in the way you talk to yourself.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive difference between thinking, oh, that's interesting.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: I already went into people pleasing there.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what made that situation feel unsafe.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And the difference for God's sake, why am I still doing this?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I thought I'd dealt with this, and that's the one I hear most.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: That second one.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's brutal.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: And I hear versions of it all the time.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Women who have done enormous amounts of work and then they shame themselves because an old pattern appears again.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: It happens all the time, and a lot of it is body memory, and that's probably something we'll talk about in another episode.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: I get my clients, and I would really advise you to do the same thing.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: If your behavior suddenly shifts and you feel like you've gone backwards, or you're activated for no seeming reason from the outside, look at what was happening last this time last year or six months ago.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Your body keeps these anniversaries, and I bet that's usually what's happening.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: But that's a side note.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Back to the topic at hand.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: It's as though healing means you should eventually become completely impervious to being human.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: And I have, I would say about 80% of my client base in this phase right now.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: You learn about boundaries and then beat yourself up when you realize three days later that you wanted to say no.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: You learn about people pleasing, then you become furious with yourself when you catch yourself doing it.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: You learn nervous system regulation, and somehow being dysregulated becomes another fucking failure that you've done.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: It is honestly what I hear every day.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: You learn about the inner critic.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Spectacularly develop an inner critic about having an inner critic and it's turtles all the way down.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in there, we've lost the entire reason we learned this stuff in the first place.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: The information was supposed to help us understand ourselves more compassionately, louder for the people in the back.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't supposed to become another report card.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Oof.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel the difference?
17:33
SPEAKER_00: I have clients who can tell me exactly what's happening psychologically.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: They know their patterns, they know their childhood stuff, they can identify when they're activated, they understand the abuse dynamics, they've read the books, they've done all my courses, they've had the therapy, they've gone down the YouTube rabbit hole, and sometimes they'll explain something to me beautifully and then finish with some version of, so why the fuck am I still doing it?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And we laugh and I always find it interesting because underneath the question is often this assumption that understanding human behavior should mean you can permanently eradicate it.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: But that is not how being human works.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes knowing why you do something means that the next time it happens, you notice it 20 minutes earlier, maybe.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you notice it halfway through.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you still do the bloody thing, but you repair afterwards.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes something you've handled beautifully 10 times knocks you on your ass the 11th because you're exhausted or frightened, or life has thrown something completely different at you.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: But none of that means the work didn't work.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: But the goal was never to become so psychologically sophisticated that nothing could ever touch you again.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: But for me, the point is that you have more choice, more capacity to come back to yourself, more ability to recognize what's happening and decide what you want to do with it.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think we've accidentally created some incredibly unrealistic ideas about what a quote unquote healed person looks like.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, she's calm all the time.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: She's uh never triggered, she communicates impeccably, she has perfect boundaries, she never chooses the wrong person.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Fuck no.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: She recognizes every red flag by Tuesday, she regulates beautifully and presumably levitates slightly above the ground while drinking her herbal tea.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Who the fuck is she?
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I have never met her.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: Never.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: And I don't really want to.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: She sounds boring as hell.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: But I like humans.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I like the messy bits, I like the contradictions.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I love that somebody can be incredibly wise in one area of their life and an absolute fucking idiot in another.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: I find that really endearing.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: I find humans endlessly fascinating, and maybe that's the shift I'm trying to describe here.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: What if you became fascinated by yourself?
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Instead of constantly evaluating yourself?
20:01
SPEAKER_00: What if you became fascinated by you?
20:04
SPEAKER_00: What if you could notice something without immediately turning it into a project?
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, imagine are you feeling weird about that already?
20:12
SPEAKER_00: It's making me a bit jerky and a bit shaky.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: What if you could do that?
20:17
SPEAKER_00: What if you could go, oh look, I do that?
20:21
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: But maybe there's something underneath it that you want to understand.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's something you want to change, or maybe it's just one of your things.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to have things, but I have things.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Everybody has fucking things, but not every quirk or fear or sensitivity or imperfection requires immediate triage.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sentence I really want to leave sitting out here in the ether with you, because I think it's the center of this whole episode and what I'm trying probably badly to say.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness without self-acceptance can become surveillance.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Try saying that three times fast.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: You want me to say it again?
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness without self-acceptance can become surveillance.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And that is a danger.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: But if every new thing you learn about yourself immediately becomes another thing you need to correct, then you haven't necessarily escaped the original conditioning, have you?
21:19
SPEAKER_00: You've just upgraded the software.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's not really what I want your healing to become.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: I want all this information to help you know yourself deeply, but I also want you to like and love the woman you're getting to know.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: But I want there to be warmth in the relationship, humor, tenderness.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I know you're probably rolling your eyes at me about humor because like who feels humorous after they get out of one of these fucking situations, but you'll get there.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: But the ability to occasionally go, Oh my god, I cannot believe I fucking did that.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Laugh at yourself, sort out whatever needs sorting out, and carry on.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe the next stage of your healing isn't.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Another freaking excavation, maybe sometimes it's allowing what you've already discovered to chill and become part of your life to integrate.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: What do you think of that concept?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: So I keep coming back to the question I asked at the beginning.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Why am I growing?
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Because please don't hear any of this as me saying, right, ladies, we've done enough healing, put the books down.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: That is not what I mean at all.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: I hope you keep growing for the rest of your life.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: I hope you change your mind about things that you were absolutely certain about at 40 or 30 or 20.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: I hope you discover something at 60 that completely changes how you see yourself.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: I hope you learn weird things for no reason other than they interest you.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Like the equivalent of in childhood, you following a line of ants just to see where they go.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: I just hope you do that.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: I hope you keep becoming.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: What I hope we can stop doing is interpreting the fact that we're unfinished as evidence that we're defective.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Of course you're unfinished.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: You're freaking alive.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: And there's something really different about approaching growth from there, I think.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Instead of always asking, what do I need to fix next?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the question is better to ask, what am I curious about now?
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Even saying that feels different.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Say it to yourself.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: I can't police you because obviously I'm not there, but pretend that I am.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Say it to yourself.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to fix next about me?
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And then change it.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Have a breath and say, what am I curious about now?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: You see how different that is?
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Ask what interests me?
23:38
SPEAKER_00: What would I like to understand?
23:40
SPEAKER_00: What would I like to try?
23:42
SPEAKER_00: What would make my life bigger or richer or deeper or more interesting?
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I take the course because the subject fascinates me rather than I think it will make me somehow better.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I work on a pattern because it's genuinely getting in the way of the life I want, because I'm too scared to push the button on a bunch of things.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Or I learn to regulate my nervous system because I want more capacity for the things that really matter to me.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: I want to put myself in hard runes without feeling like I'm having a heart attack.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: And that's really different from endlessly renovating yourself because you think everybody will finally approve of this finished product.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's probably why I've always struggled a little with that phrase, the highest version of yourself.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: If I don't know if it's because it's overdone and there's so many charlatans and like the spiritual development online slash face, and I deal with that a lot in my work, so it puts my teeth on edge already, but I just don't like that phrase.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: I've never really liked it.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: I know what people mean by it.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm not offended by it, I get it, but nobody needs to throw away their inspirational mug, don't worry.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: But I don't particularly want you to become the highest version of yourself.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm much more interested in the truest version.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the fuck the highest version is anyway, but I'm interested in the truest version.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And the truest version isn't necessarily the calmest or the most zen or productive or spiritual or whatever.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Or the woman who gets up at five in the morning and journals and meditates and drinks something that tastes like grass even before the rest of us have checked our frickin' phones and grabbed our reading glasses.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: She's just you, you get what I'm saying, without quite so many fucking conditions.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: And she's gonna be the contradictory because people are contradictory.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: She might be incredibly confident in her work and still get nervous on her first date.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: She can have excellent boundaries and occasionally shit out.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: She can be deeply self-aware and still get completely blindsided.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: She can know better and occasionally not do better, and none of that really disquiet at all from liking herself.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: That's the part I want.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Because the older I get, the less interested I am in becoming a quote unquote better woman.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Better according to whom?
26:13
SPEAKER_00: There's always somebody out there, especially in patriarchy, willing to give us a fucking performance review.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Family, partners, society, Instagram, patriarchy again.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Some bloke with a fucking microphone.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: Some podcast bro.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I'm good, thanks.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm much more interested in becoming a freer woman.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And when I say free, is that even a word?
26:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean grand, permanently empowered state where you march around declaring no one can tell you anything.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm really just talking about the tiny little freedoms.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: They are so important.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: To me, I love them so much, and I get that they're important to a lot of women who have gone through this.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Changing your mind, for example, without constructing a whole ass legal defense first for the man baby in your life.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Or letting someone be disappointed in you and discovering shock, you survived it.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Making a mistake without immediately making it mean something terrible about your character and the fact that you're gonna now die alone and have no friends.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Discovering something about yourself without instantly asking how you're gonna fix it.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Oof.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: You know that's your homework, right?
27:29
SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Wanting something because you want it.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Not wanting something anymore, even though everybody thought you did.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: That's freedom to me.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Having enough room inside yourself to be a person rather than a permanent improvement program.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Like one of those renovation shows.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't know, that's the real identity shift underneath this whole conversation.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: There'll always be another version of you available.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: That is inevitable.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: There'll be a future you who's learned things you don't know yet, had experiences you haven't had, and she'll change in ways that you can't really predict.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And some things that you think are way out of your reach right now will end up being second nature on repetition to that new woman, and she will find it easy.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wonderful?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing?
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Because it happens and I watch it happen, it's a privilege, a complete privilege of my job.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: But she doesn't need to become another woman that you compare yourself to.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: She's supposed to grow from you.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: She isn't here to replace you.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And I do really love that idea, because I think we can become so fascinated with our potential that we forget to have a relationship with our present selves.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Like you now.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Aren't we always just looking over today's woman's shoulders at who she could become?
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe occasionally we need to look at the woman who's actually here and think, oh hi, what do you want?
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Not what do you need to fix, not who should you become, but what do you really want?
29:06
SPEAKER_00: That's a very different conversation.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And it means you don't have to reject yourself in order to change.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: You can like yourself and still want to grow, more like the men folk do.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: It's like an addition for them, right?
29:18
SPEAKER_00: You can be proud of how far you've come and still have things you want to work on.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: You can know you're enough and still be unfinished.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Those things aren't contradictory.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think that's probably one of the healthiest places growth can come from.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Not I need to become someone else, but I wonder who else I get to be.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And as I always say, friends, that feels much more like freedom to me.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: There's a theme there.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And before you go, I have a tiny experiment for you this week.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: It's tiny, teeny.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I want you to notice one of those moments when you catch yourself marking your own homework.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You're being the school project.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: You are a school project and you're marking yourself.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you leave a conversation and immediately start replaying whether you handled it correctly, or an old pattern pops up, and your first thought is, fuck's sake, I thought I dealt with this already.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Or you have an emotional reaction, then you immediately start trying to diagnose yourself.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Just catch the moment.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: And instead of going straight into correction, try saying, That's interesting.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: That's literally all.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Notice how different that feels from what is wrong with me.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: And then if you want to go a little bit further, ask, what do I need to understand here?
30:40
SPEAKER_00: You might discover something useful.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: You might realize you're frightened or exhausted or that an old wound has been poked.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: You might also realize there's some kind of boundary you want to set, or that you owe somebody an apology.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: What else?
30:58
SPEAKER_00: You might realize you're a human being, that you're a human being who had a weird fucking day.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: It's all useful information.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: But we're practicing understanding ourselves without immediately prosecuting ourselves.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And there's one other question I think it's worth taking away from this episode, and that is if I genuinely believed I was already enough, what would I still want to learn?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting, isn't it?
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Just think about it and let it land.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: If I genuinely believed I was already enough, what would I still want to learn?
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Because whatever survives that question is probably yours.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's the growth I want for you.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Growth because you're fascinated by being alive, not self-improvement as the admission fee to your own worth.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: You see that distinction?
31:50
SPEAKER_00: That's the one.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: That's the one I want for you.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, take a breath.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: You've earned it.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: And so have I.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: If you've listened to this and you've thought, well, bugger me, I may have become incredibly good at understanding myself and slightly less good at actually being on my own side.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: That's something we can absolutely look at together.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: It's a huge part of what I love about one-on-one work.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you don't need another piece of information.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: You need another human being sitting beside you who can look at the pattern with you without turning you into the problem.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: You get curious about it, you peel the onion, you work out what's yours, what's old conditioning, what genuinely needs changing, and what perhaps you've spent years being told is wrong when it bloody well isn't.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: And I have my longer-term one-on-one coaching.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: I also have laser sessions if there's something specific that you want to untangle that's smaller.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: I'll put all the details in the show notes.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: But whether you ever work with me or not, I want you to remember this.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to be fascinated by yourself without being dissatisfied with yourself.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Hear me, please.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to stop learning.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to stop changing.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: And gold knows you don't need to declare yourself officially healed and retire to a mountaintop.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: But I mean that would be cool.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: Just pay attention to the place the growth is coming from.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Because I wonder what's possible for me feels so different from maybe the next version of me will finally be enough.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And I would love you to use that metric whenever you embark on anything self development related.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And I would really, really like you to know that you don't have to wait for her.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Because you already are her.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm really gonna shut up yapping now.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Loads of love, and I will see you in the next one.