“I’ve tried to make this video five times already.”
“I wanted to get it just right.”
“I’m not sure it’s any good.”
“I find this really hard.”
The single biggest thread to come through, spoken meekly and in self deprecating fashion, seems to be:
“I really wanted to help someone but I don’t really know what I’m talking about and I’m not good enough.”
Faced with that belief, I am in awe of the courage that has led to those voices ever making it out there into the glare of outspoken, often unforgiving public opinion. These brave souls, who have risked, and in all probability faced, ridicule and reinforcement of their belief in their own inadequacy, are mighty. I salute them, each and every single one.
What is most chilling about this pattern is just how familiar and unsurprising it seems, so much so that it has taken me a long time even to recognise it. It has been hiding in the plain sight of everyday life. I mean, we all know about anxiety, self doubt and self criticism. It's a "thing", right? Something we all have to face. It's totally normal. Except that it's not.
The personal cost of this self-paralysis to countless individuals is of course devastating. The cost in productivity and wasted potential is at least as high. It is also a profoundly disturbing tale of social disability on an epidemic scale. The implications for society, power and indirect discrimination are immense. It reads like a narrative of control.
I am reminded of nothing more strongly than the old tales of corseted, “hysterical” women who were fully expected to be weak and to faint at the drop of a hat. The belief in female weakness was so pervasive that it was long before anyone noticed that this frailty worked, not from the inside out, but from the outside in. It seems we have taken the bones of this corseted lady and reanimated them in new clothing and with new language for a modern age. We have created a new dynamic and paradigm of disability and once again labelled it as the problem of the individual.
I suspect that offering up advice to be more confident and to “fake it till you make it” will rarely be effective. It is far more likely to reinforce the sense of stupidity and personal failure of the recipient of that advice, who has once again “proved” that they have failed to achieve what they should be capable of achieving.
I am curious about the narratives we tell, about ourselves, about others, about “the way things are”. Stepping outside the stories in order, finally to hear them, feels powerful in itself. Are you also curious? Listen to the patterns in the stories you hear. Listen also to the moments when you feel most fully alive. Not successful and acceptable on others’ terms, but free to be fully and gloriously yourself.
Listen to the stories that enable.