Episode one—Who would you be?

This transcript was created using AI and has been lightly edited. Please forgive transcription errors. Thank you.

If you're tired of feeling never enough, of constantly being derailed by your own fears or the reactions of others, then you are in the right place. I'm Deb, a licensed psychologist, and this is Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to women who've spent their lives trying to stay within the lines of what's acceptable, who've never felt good enough and who are ready to break free and bloom. Let's talk about how you can build a solid foundation connected with your strength and your wisdom. Before we start, I need to make sure that you know that the information I share with you is just that. It's just information. It's not meant to be a prescription for what you should do or meant to replace the advice of any of your healthcare providers. It also doesn't mean that we have a professional client-therapist relationship.

Hi, I'm Deb, and this is a new endeavor for me. It is definitely a step out of my comfort zone, something I said that I would never do. Gotta watch those endeavors. They have a way of proving you wrong. Over the years, clients have nudged me to start a podcast, and my response has always been, along the lines of, no, I don't think that will happen, or that's not for me. 

I'm sharing that with you as a way of introducing the idea of staying within the lines of what is acceptable. In this case, I was defining those lines, and I was reinforcing them until they seemed like facts.

Many times, our lines of what is acceptable come from messages we receive from society or through our socialization. For instance, how our body should look or how we should dress. And like my decision about offering a podcast, many of our lines come from our life experiences and decisions we make about what is acceptable and what isn't.

Can you think of some of those lines that you try to stay within in your life? Maybe things you say you would never be caught doing or lines that you work hard to stay within. Weight is a common one for women.

Many women try hard to stay within those lines and are afraid to stray outside of them, leading to a lifelong struggle taking an emotional and physical toll on women's lives. We'll talk much more about this in other episodes. And back to me and this podcast.

So here I am doing something that I said I would never do. What has changed? How did I go from saying I would never do this to doing it? I was thinking about that as I was writing what I wanted to talk about today. How did I end up here in front of this mic? I've done quite a bit of personal work, both in my professional training and in my own therapy. 

And I think has had the biggest impact in my life has been sharing the experience of so many women in their therapy as they realized how strongly their sense of identity was tied to the approval of others and the work that they did changing those beliefs. It's hard not to be impacted.

Sharing the experience as someone moves from working so hard to be good enough to blooming into this radiant version of themselves, willing to put themselves out there and try new things. I'm a different person because of all the work my clients have done. And I feel honored and so very grateful to have shared their journeys with them.

Am I nervous setting out on this journey? You bet. Is there a chance that it will be a dismal failure? Also possible. The difference for me now compared to where I was once in the past is now I know that it's all just information. How people react to my podcast will give me valuable information about what decisions to make going forward. If my listeners enjoy it and want more, I will continue. 

If my listeners are more interested in one topic than another, that's good information. It will help me decide what to talk about. And if I get negative feedback, it will give me something to consider. Do I need to change directions? Are enough people finding my podcast useful? Or do I need to rethink podcasting?

What is important is that none of those comments, positive or negative, have anything to do with my value or worth as a person. They are all about my listeners.

This took me quite a while to get to as it did for my clients. And so I'm imagining that for many of you, this is a hard one to hold on to, that other people's reactions are more about them than they are about you.

What usually makes this so hard to believe is that the reactions of others are often tightly wired or linked with our self-worth.

Sometimes we work hard for approval. Other times it's the disapproval that derails us. And sometimes it's both. I think there are good reasons that our self-worth is so tightly wound with the reactions of others and with approval. And I will definitely come back to this in future episodes.

Our worth, at a very deep level, seems to be often determined, as women, by how others see us.

And that's where those lines come in, those lines that we try to stay in, in order to be approved of and to avoid disapproval. I'm curious, what are some of those lines in your life? What are the lines that you work hard to stay within in order to feel good enough? Or another way of thinking about that is what are some things that you would be horrified for others to know or see or that would bring up a great deal of fear? Is it having a dirty house?

Is it your body if you were to go swimming? Is it speaking up? Maybe voicing your opinion, especially if others might disagree? ⁓

maybe saying no.

And what holds you back?

Now I'm not asking this to give you a reason to beat up on yourself, so please don't go there. We all do this. Sometimes these lines we establish are so much a part of us that we don't even realize that they're there. We just keep striving to stay within them, no matter what the toll it takes on us, no matter how exhausted we are or how much shame we feel about not being able to stay within them

not being as calm as we think we should be or as thin as we think we should be.

For many of us, those lines have been with us for so long that they don't even seem like lines. They just seem like the way it should be. They've become a measure of success, of being good enough or lovable, no matter how much they hold us back or don't fit with our personality or who we were meant to be.

So I don't know how hosting a podcast will go. Will I like it? will my listeners enjoy it and get something from it? I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that I'm spreading my wings and blooming outside the lines of what I have seen as being acceptable for me.

In what ways do you want to bloom and are held back by what you believe is acceptable, either in your mind or in the minds of others?

I'm going to stop here because I know that a woman's life is a busy life. So my plan is to keep these short. My hope is that they're weekly reminders that you deserve to be you. We're so bombarded with messages about how we should be we can forget that or not even believe it. Wahoo first episode recorded. 

I'd to hear your reactions and if you like it, be sure to give it a like and share it with women who you know are constantly striving to be good enough. Until next time, let's get blooming. Bye bye, take care.

This has been Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to supporting you in blooming into all you are meant and wish to be. If you enjoyed it and gained value, please give it a like and consider leaving a review, as both will help other women to find it. And please share it with anyone who would benefit from it.

If you would like to be notified when new episodes become available, be sure and subscribe. Until next time, how will you light a candle of self-acceptance? Because you deserve to be you, even if others disagree.