Here’s Everything in My Coaching Program – I’m Sharing All My Secrets
Feeling like you’re going through the motions, but not really living. Looking in the mirror and not really recognizing yourself. Feeling like you’re living life for other people, instead of yourself. Laying awake at night wondering ‘Is this all there really is to life?’
These are all signs that you are living life out of alignment with your authentic self.
Your authentic self is the true, inner you. This is the true, honest, beautiful expression of yourself. Living as your authentic self is living your values, protecting your energy, setting boundaries with others, exploring your past to understand how it echoes in your present.
This is the you that feels content and at peace, the one that is mindful on a daily basis. This is the version of you that has laid all your fears out in front of you, embraced them, and released them - the you able to move fearlessly into the beautiful life you dream about.
In short, this is the version of yourself where you are able to live fearlessly in your identity - without conforming to the expectations of others.
Women who feel that they are not living as their authentic selves often struggle with a lot of the same things (but in unique ways of course). They often struggle with:
Childhood Emotional Neglect
People-pleasing and difficulty with boundaries
Low self-esteem or negative self-talk (i.e. that really mean voice in your head)
Not feeling able to identify emotions as they come up or not being aware of them when they come up
A lack of self-care
A poor understanding of your values
Being unaware of the beautiful and unique strengths you embody in this world
All of these struggles generally come together to leave you feeling as though you don’t even know who you are on the inside. They can also contribute to mental health struggles and a general dissatisfaction with life.
I struggled with all of these things for a long time, and I am definitely still working on them. (After all, self-improvement and growth isn’t a defined end point – it’s a journey.)
For the longest time, I hardly even knew who I was on the inside. It felt like I was a little automaton, just waiting in my storage box to be activated when another human needed me to care for them. I didn’t know how to care for myself, didn’t know how to make my needs heard, and couldn’t identify my emotions anywhere past “good” or “bad”.
I was good at my job, but at a core level it left me unfulfilled. I struggled with mild depression, and some lovely severe depressive episodes sprinkled in throughout (*sarcasm*). I’ve always been passionate about health, fitness, and herbalism - so I always tried to use those things to “fix” me. But they never really did; they just took the edge off.
The true way to feel like a complete and whole human was to start addressing each of the things I described above.
So how do you do that?
How to Become Your Authentic Self
Through some dedicated inner work, it is definitely possible to move through these struggles and uncover the authentic you. But I’m not gonna lie to you - this really does take work. Below I’ll cover some information around each struggle and some ideas on how to work through it.
What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?
Childhood Emotional Neglect is when, as a child, you weren’t given the emotional nourishment that you needed to grow up to feel sound and whole, able to understand your emotions, and properly take care of yourself. Childhood Emotional Neglect is a tricky one, because it’s an invisible form of neglect. You were fed and clothed and educated - but you were starving for an emotional connection with your parents.
If you’re curious, Dr. Jonice Webb wrote an excellent book on the matter called Running on Empty. In the book, she goes over the unique emotional neglect experiences a person might have had with different kinds of parents. This book was really eye-opening and validating for me, and definitely acted as a starting point for me on this journey.
I also think that experiencing childhood emotional neglect is really common - especially for those of us who grew up in the U.S. Let’s be honest - this isn’t exactly a culture that embraces emotional expression or encourages feeling ~feelings~.
Adults who experienced childhood emotional neglect might display some of these tendencies:
Difficulty expressing and processing emotion
People-pleasing
Difficulty trusting others
Low self-esteem
Unhealthy coping mechanisms
Oof. You can probably see now why I started here. Each of these tendencies is something that a person who is searching for their authentic self might be struggling with. In my coaching program, we go deeper into this topic and take a look at your childhood to see if we can recognize any emotional neglect that may have taken place and learn how to move forward. There are several at-home practices you can use to start overcoming those tendencies.
(Therapy with a licensed therapist can also be an excellent addition to the process.)
How to Stop Being a People-Pleaser
People-pleasing as a child was a highly effective mechanism to keep you safe by trying to ensure that your caretakers would continue to feed and shelter you. Maybe as a child you actually had to play the role of the adult and were even responsible for managing the emotions of the actual adults. Maybe this was even expected and encouraged by those adults.
You can see how this tendency could have become so deep-seated in your being - because it began so far back in childhood. This is also what makes it feel so hard to release and move on from.
If you’re a people-pleaser, you probably often feel like you are meeting everyone else's needs at the expense of your own. You probably have a hard time saying “no” to someone – even when every fiber of your being is yelling it. You probably have a hard time setting boundaries or maintaining any boundaries you do set. You probably have a hard time speaking your truth.
Working through the tendency to people-please is an essential stepping stone on the path to uncovering your authentic self. We work on this together in Pathway to the Authentic Self – because being able to protect your energy and speak your truth are essential to this journey.
How to Deal with Low Self-Esteem
A big part of this whirlpool of struggles is negative self-talk and low self-esteem. I probably don’t have to define this as you’re probably intimately aware - but if you have low self-esteem you’re pretty critical of yourself and you downplay or are unaware of your own positive attributes. You probably also have a hard time knowing what to do with praise when it does come your way.
Overcoming low self-esteem requires becoming acutely aware of that mean voice in your head that’s busy dragging you down – and working on reframing the narrative. This might sound a little cheesy, but in my coaching program we’ll work together to help you become your own best friend. We do this by actively reframing negative self-talk and engaging in self-discovery to help you reveal the true, amazing you.
How to Tune In to Your Emotions
If you’re here reading this, I’m guessing you probably spend a lot of time stuffing down your emotions. (It’s called “emotional numbing”) Like I said earlier, our culture doesn't exactly encourage us to live as the emotional beings we truly are. And that’s a fact: we are emotional beings first, logical beings second.
Did you know that first your subconscious mind reacts to situations with emotions, and second your thinking brain rationalizes those emotions? Emotions and feelings evolved before conscious thought – they’re designed to keep you safe and to help you connect with others.
Your emotions and your intuition go hand-in-hand, giving you those gut feelings that help you navigate life. Or – they should be helping you navigate life, but you’re probably struggling with emotional numbing.(Which is why you’re here…)
You can tune in to your emotions by working to notice them and identify them when they come up. Then, you can keep track of them over time and start to pay attention to the feelings you notice in your body that come along with those emotions. For example, you may notice a clenching feeling in your throat when you say something untrue (whether you’re consciously aware of the untrueness of it or not.)
Next – and this is something we work on in my coaching program – you can literally practice experiencing positive emotions. See, your brain has a negativity bias because it’s so concerned with survival, so it’s always on the lookout for bad news.
This can lead you to spiral downwards and unnecessarily spend a lot of time in negative emotions. (If you struggle with depression, this is likely a very big factor for you on a daily basis.) Buuut, if we flip the script and actually practice positive emotions, you can essentially rewire your brain (using neuroplasticity) to be more able to experience more positive emotions into the future.
What I’m describing is the whole point of a gratitude journaling practice. You’re retraining your brain to notice the good at least as much as you notice the bad. (Imagine tipping a scale back to even here.) However, in my coaching program, I provide you with guided audio meditations that allow you to practice experiencing one positive emotion each week.
What is Self-Care, Really?
Oh boy – self care. If you’ve spent any time on Instagram or Pinterest lately, you’ve probably been inundated with all kinds of messaging about self-care. And a lot of that seems to consist of taking bubble baths or perfecting your gua sha routine.
Well, as much as I love a good bath and aspire to actually figure out gua sha…
Those things aren’t necessarily what “self-care” really is.
Think of it like this: self-care is care directed at yourself. Before you go rolling your eyes here, bear with me. Think about this for a second: how do you take care of your partner or your kids or your pets? You probably make sure that they go to the doctor, and have healthy food to eat, and help take things off their plate when they’re stressed. You give them love and try to help them grow into their best selves. You lift them up and support them in their passions, and you’re there to comfort them when they’re having a hard time.
Well – do you do those things for yourself? Do you take yourself to the doctor and feed yourself healthy meals? Do you remove things from your to-do list when you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed? Do you love yourself and lift yourself up, or is that voice in your head always beating you down? Do you have supportive internal thoughts when you’re having a hard time? Or are those thoughts revolving around how ‘you’re just not trying hard enough’ // ‘you should be tougher’ // ‘other people have it way harder than you so you’re not allowed to feel upset’?
If you’re on this page, I’m guessing you’re really good at taking care of others – but have something inside holding you back from giving yourself that same care.
The truth is this: you can’t pour from an empty cup.
If you haven’t been taking care of yourself, you’re probably running bone dry trying to take care of everyone else. Self-care is all about taking a step back, looking inward, and giving yourself what you need to feel healthy, happy, and whole. And then you can start to show up for others in a meaningful way.
Basically – all the bubble baths in the world won’t necessarily help you overcome self-neglect in other areas or negative self-talk.
In my coaching program, we do self-care a little bit differently from the way the influencers of Instagram do it. We begin by looking to optimize your sleep, movement, and nutrition. Then we work on building out your support network and identifying their roles for you (this is everyone from your partner or best friend to your doctor to adding a therapist to your arsenal). Seriously, when was the last time you went to the doctor?
How and Why You Should Live Your Values
Speaking of cheesy - let’s talk about values. Values are the guiding ideas you live your life by. They are what matters to YOU – and not necessarily to anyone else. And I’m not gonna lie - unless you’ve already deliberately defined them at some point, you probably downloaded a lot of the values you’re currently living by in childhood from someone else.
This download could have come from a parent, a teacher, or maybe a soccer coach. (Until you hit your early teens, your brain is like a really effective sponge - super absorbent to everything, good or bad / helpful or unhelpful.)
But here’s the catch – if you’re living your life by someone else’s values, you will be unhappy and dissatisfied with your life at a core level until you get it sorted out.
Here’s an example: Let’s say that you were given the value of financial success and stability while growing up. So now as an adult, you have a high-stress job that requires most of your waking hours so that you can make a lot of money to pay for your lifestyle. But at a core level, you actually value freedom and life experiences more than financial success and stability. You probably have this secret dream of traveling the world or starting your own business, but you stuff it down because you haven’t recognized those core values and haven't realized that you will never be deeply happy in life until you do.
Your core values are a very real and very important part of who you truly are. It’s important to uncover them and recognize how much they really matter so that you can start living the beautiful life you secretly dream about. We work on this in my coaching program, and I’m there every step of the way to remind you of them and encourage you to not make compromises on your true, inner self.
Why Your Strengths Matter and What to Do with Them
Take a minute here to reflect: do you know what you are good at, at a deep, innate level? What aspects of your character make you uniquely good at something? When you move through the world, what are you energized by?
Now – how much time do you actually spend living in the space of your strength?
For a lot of us, it’s not very much. And the rest of us are unsure about what our strengths even are, or if we have any at all… You do, I promise.
Your strengths are more than being really good at baking or building statistical models on a computer. They are the innate human skills that you carry with you in all things, and that make you who you truly are.
To make it more clear, here’s a quick example of the strengths I’ve discovered in myself:
I’m a “philomath” which means I love to learn – but it’s more than that: there’s something inside of me that believes my purpose in life is to follow new paths and acquire as much knowledge as possible about many things
I’m a “coach”; I love to work with people on discovering their unique strengths and support their growth (that’s lucky!)
I’m a “brainstormer” which means I love to come up with new ideas, break down perceived boundaries, and I see connection between all things
But here’s the rub: humans who do not get to use their strengths on a regular basis often feel greater dissatisfaction and unfulfillment with life, and are generally less happy.
Our society has us all focused on our weaknesses and trying to fix them – which means we spend the majority of the day thinking about how we’re not good at x, y, z and we need to “fix” ourselves. Which leaves us feeling pretty bummed out, engaging in negative self-talk, and downward spiraling on our brain’s negativity bias.
In reality, if you focus on your strengths instead and cultivate opportunities to use them – your life suddenly becomes filled with energy and excitement. You feel good about yourself, and because of that you feel happier. Plus there’s a major bonus: you can use your strengths to patch over your weaknesses. There’s a lot of research in psychology on this method, and it’s generally shown to increase people’s wellbeing and sense of wholeness. I believe this is essential for every human to live a fulfilling life, which is why it’s a big focus throughout my coaching program.
Cultivating a strengths-based focus requires first discovering what your strengths actually are, then reflecting on what that means for you in your life and how you can maximize your opportunities to engage with them.
In my coaching program, you’ll also do some reflection on what I call the “dark side” of your strength – this is where the expression of your strength can be twisted or taken to a place that causes you imbalance and unhappiness. An easy example here is people who have empathy as a strength. Empaths are great at understanding how other people feel and then using that knowledge to help them. But if you’re like me and you also struggle with people-pleasing – this strength can quickly lead you to a place of giving your energy away, as I discussed above.
If you’ve gone through the exercises in my free self-discovery workbook, you’re probably already recognizing what I’m talking about!
So there you have it!
This is everything you can work on to start living the fulfilling, aligned, passionate life you’ve been dreaming of. Each of these things allows you to reconnect with your true, inner self and live a life of joy and contentment.
I developed my coaching program around these concepts because these are the same things that I struggled with for so many years. It took a very long time for me to figure these things out – probably hundreds of hours spent laying awake at night, unable to sleep and Googling things on my phone.
For years I struggled with feeling unfulfilled and like life was passing me by, even though things looked good on the surface. I felt like I was trapped behind glass, unable to really feel life and enjoy it. I was just going through the motions, and often felt like I was slowly, metaphorically suffocating to death.
My work meant so much to me, but it wasn’t truly fulfilling my needs at a core level. Because of that, I was left feeling exhausted everyday. This led me to become extremely stressed, and eventually I fully burned out. My head was in a fog and sometimes this little voice in the back of my head would wonder why it felt like my heart was dying.
Only through working on the struggles that I described above, and uncovering my true, inner self did I start to feel better. This experience led me to realize that I couldn’t stay at my 9-to-5 job because it wasn’t fulfilling my soul – which led me to starting this coaching program so that I could work with women like you who struggle with the same things as me and help them reconnect with themselves and go on to live the beautiful, aligned lives they dream about.
If you’ve made it this far through this secret blog post, I’m guessing a lot of this is resonating with you. But as you can see – this is a lot to work through alone. (It seriously takes a long time. My biggest regret is that I had to waste so many years feeling like I was trapped behind glass.)
Working one-on-one with a coach is honestly the fastest way to get to where you want to be. As your coach, I’m there in your corner to support you and (gently) hold you accountable each step of the way. My coaching program, Pathway to the Authentic Self, also comes with tons of resources to help you learn and grow quickly. Schedule a free call today and we can chat more to see if the program is the right fit for you.
If you want to learn more about my coaching program, click here.