Episode Two—The importance of supporting women in being themselves.

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.

In this episode, I want to tell you a bit about my background and how I became so interested in helping women to be themselves in the world and trust their own wisdom and their own inner knowing. As I shared in my first episode, I really have all of the women I've had the privilege to work with over the past 30 plus years to thank for fueling this passion.

My professional career started with working as a dietician in a hospital, which I very quickly learned was not the right field for me. This is what is so fascinating to me looking back on those experiences. My roommate from college knew this before I did. She knew that it was the wrong field for me way before I did.

I had never learned to pay attention to what was going on inside of me and what I wanted. I grew up as an introvert in a family of extroverts, and our family also had an entangled intimacy style. Or, if you love me, you'll see things the way I do. Or, I know I'm loved when you're happy with me.

If you want to learn more about this style of relating, put a link for my book Never Enough in the show notes, And I'm sure I will come back to it in a future episode.

What this meant was that I was totally unprepared to be making life choices started college. There were other factors at play like scoring really well on my entrance exams and so being able to bypass my general ed. which would have been a good thing if I knew what I wanted. And then finding out that the teaching program was not taking new students. And my vague sense of what I wanted to do was teach elementary school. I also had a scholarship and was mostly on my own to pay for school. And so transferring at that point really didn't seem an option.

I had to pick something. I had to pick a major and I had no idea what to pick. I happened to be taking a nutrition course, and I loved the physiology in it. And so when I met with my guidance counselor, I shared this with her and she said, ⁓ you should go into nutrition. You should be a dietitian. And so off I went. 

I called my college roommate while on my internship and told her that I hated it. And her response was, I'm not surprised. I knew it wasn't a good fit for you. Isn't it interesting the things we remember? I think I remember it because it sums up where I was at that point in my life, floating along like a leaf with no idea at all that I could make a different choice. My roommate knew exactly what she wanted.

not to be too hard on myself. I know I was doing the best that I could at that point in my life. And I also wonder if I hadn't ended up working as a dietitian, if I would have developed such a passion for encouraging women to be themselves and to know who they are and what they want.

So back to then, so there I was, and this was a long time ago, the field of dietetics has really evolved since then. And my days were filled with sitting with women feeling guilt and shame because they hadn't lost weight or been able to follow the diet prescribed by their physician. I hated it. I knew I couldn't be a part of such a shame-inducing environment. 

At the same time, I thought the answer would be learning how to help people change, that if they could make the changes that were being asked of them, then they wouldn't feel so much guilt and shame. There wouldn't be so much sense of failure. So that took me to Penn State for my master's in nutrition and later to my doctorate in counseling psych. And through all of that training, my skills did really increase, and I got a lot better at helping people reach their goals, the goals they wanted for themselves. 

And then a funny thing happened. I was primarily working with women at this point, and I started to realize that after all that effort that I'd put into learning how to help people reach their goals, achieving goals never really seemed to bring the relief that women were hoping that it would bring.

that that relief never came because there was always some way that women felt they weren't measuring up. There was some way that the goal wasn't good enough or that they weren't good enough or there was some other way that they needed to be better. And that self-worth and confidence were linked, were tied with the approval of others.

And at that point, what I realized was that what really made a difference in people's lives was not when they achieved their goals. It was when they started to feel compassion and acceptance for themselves right where they were. It was when they started trusting themselves and started working on the old wire of, I'm okay if you think I'm okay, or I'm lovable if you approve of me.

At this point, I was also learning about the brain and how our capabilities, our thinking, our perceptions, really everything changes when we're distressed. I will definitely talk more about this in another episode. And these changes when we're distressed rob us of our adult capabilities. The ability to see the gray to realize that one screw up doesn't mean that I'm a failure. Or the ability to realize that, to hold the both/and, to realize that someone can be mad at me and still care for me. 

Without our adult capabilities, we see the world in a way that leads to even more distress. So the reason I bring this up is that as clients were constantly striving for approval. They were often in distress. When my sense of being okay depends on others being happy with me or not disapproving of me, even a look can send me spiraling and ruin my day.

I'm wondering if you know what I mean or if you've been there. Have you been having a good day and then maybe someone you know comes in and doesn't speak to you or looks the other way and all of a sudden your mood drops and you're wondering what did I do?

So when women learn to be kind to themselves, to feel compassion, when something like this happened, it calmed their nervous system. It brought their adult capabilities back online and they were able to more clearly evaluate the situation, more realistically evaluate the situation and to care for themselves.

As women, there are so many forces driving our attention outside of ourselves. I will definitely be talking more about these. Our history as women, our socialization, our caretaking roles, all of these teach us to focus outward on others. And when we learn this, when we learn to focus outward, we don't really learn who we are or what we need. What we learn is what makes others happy.

We learn to calm ourselves by seeking validation from others. Now I want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with seeking support. We all need human connection. and always turning outward reinforces the value of other people's opinions in my life and negates the value of my own inner wisdom. And from a practical sense, sometimes when you need support, no one's around, or despite how much someone cares, their response misses the mark and we feel worse.

So why do I feel so passionate about women learning to connect with their own wisdom? It's because I've seen the power it has. I've seen the freedom. I've seen women blossom right before my eyes. That's where the notion of blooming came from. I've watched women go from constantly trying to measure up, to stay within the lines of who and what they believe they should be to stepping into their own truth of who they were and what they wanted, which was often expansive, trying new things, things they had usually been putting off oftentimes until they were thin enough.

 I've had more than one woman describe this expansiveness as driving down the highway with the window open and their hair blowing in the wind and singing at the top of their lungs, feeling free to be themselves.

Sounds good, doesn't it? I'm not saying that once women start to feel compassion and acceptance and trust their own wisdom that there is no struggle or there are no bad days. Of course there are. And the difference is in the length of time women spend there and how deep they fall into the pain and whether they end up shooting themselves with another arrow of pain by how self-critical they are.

If I had to sum up how I came to feel so passionate about helping women connect with their inner wisdom, it would be because it has been so rewarding to be a part of.

For instance, to watch women go from being wracked with guilt and shame about how anxious they were, or the size of their body, or their life revolved around how anxious they were, or how much they ate, to moving out into the world and having rich, fulfilling lives.

Gosh, what a gift that has been in my life to share that journey with them.

I think I'll stop there. I'm feeling a little teary. I hope that gives you a sense of me and my background and why I feel so passionate about encouraging women to separate their worth from approval and trusting their own ~

As I close, I want to introduce you to the idea of lighting a candle of self-acceptance. It doesn't need to be a big candle. It could be the candle the size of a birthday candle. And in what small way could you light a candle of acceptance for yourself this week?

My hope for each of you is that you will not just be shining your light into the world, that you will be beaming it out into the world. And big lights often start with little lights. And so in what way might you light a candle of self-acceptance this week, no matter how small?

Okay, that's all I have for you for this episode. Until I talk to you next time, take good care and bye bye.

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.