What a powerful reflex self-doubt is! One of the more common struggles for clients is the way their self-doubt throws a wet blanket on their hopes and dreams:
Client Sally receives a lot of great feedback after a class at a community center. She is asked to teach a series. Then, self-doubt starts peppering her with “yes, but” or “if they only knew…”
Client Robert has a good conversation with a friend, yet he comes into his spiritual direction session focusing on why these conversations are so few and far between - and he suspects it’s because of his own “repelling” personality.
Self-doubt is sponsored by the survival part of our brain, that ancient limbic part that reminds us there could be a tiger behind the bush. It is well-intended and over-zealous, like that excited grade school classmate whose hand shot up before the teacher finishes her question.
Self-doubt forgets that tigers are few and far between, and that we will know what to do when a real one shows up.
Here are a couple of ways to work with clients who are struggling with self-doubt:
Like the over-zealous child, self-doubt needs to be respected and it needs reminders. It doesn’t work to simply help them banish the thought. To do so only makes the doubt feel even more ominous and threatening.
It helps to remind clients that self-doubt is looking out for them AND that there are other voices that are even more true. I will ask clients: “What does your confident self tell you in this situation?”
Another powerful move is to pull back the curtain and explore what’s beneath this self-doubt reflex.
I invite Sally to explore what’s really activating the fear to teach again. I ask her what she makes of the positive feedback at her community center. And, I help Sally orient to the truth that she loves to teach and people value what she has to say.
I wonder with Robert why he focuses on what missing more than what is present and positive. We explore how he can initiate meaningful conversations with friends, and I remind him that his friends probably crave these conversations, as well.
What is exiting is that, as a human species, we are transitioning from a consciousness oriented around self-doubt and fear to one grounded in self-love, personal vitality and possibility.
As we help clients quiet their inner self-doubter, we help them make space for their confident, brilliant, generous selves. What a trade off! And this shift not only serves them but those around them, for as Marianne Williamson says,
“. . . as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”