Here’s a little story about self-doubt from the very, very recent Nadene archives.
I’m talking late January 2022.
Yes, as recent as January 2022 I went through a massive wave of self-doubt.
Self-doubt tends to come looking for me during periods of professional growth and courage that require me to push against some of my more stubborn to heal schemas.
It all had to do with a webinar called Interpersonal Neurobiology for Trauma Made Simple.
The wave of self-doubt was so bad that one solution I came up with was to refund all the pre-webinar purchases and be done with it.
The webinar has now been and gone, and was a success. The recording is now available for sale.
This webinar that I nearly quit on, attracted reviews like this one “Thank you Nadene, this is a comprehensive webinar that I have gained a great deal from. I will enjoy reading and going through it again. Very useful, and it has spurred my thinking about my clients immediately.”
I’ve taken some time to reflect why my self-doubt got to the point I wanted to refund everyone.
A number of things contributed.
I tried to be someone who I am not. I am not Dan Siegel and I am not Bessel van der Kolk.
I started to drown in the intense and dense content that is interpersonal neurobiology.
I lost sight of the initial goals I set for the webinar.
I became convinced I wasn’t smart enough to pull off the webinar and that’s why I was drowning.
I forgot that I am the Made Simple trainer, not the Made Complicated trainer.
The turning point happened after I discussed my self-doubt in both therapy and supervision. Both therapist and supervisor suggested putting on the brakes before doing anything over the top like refunding people.
With rest, I had a lightening bulb moment which gave me the idea for the structure of the webinar which then allowed me to tame the information into something that would be useful to my participants.
I remembered that I don’t have to be the most brilliant psychologist to train other people. In fact, because I had to learn ways to make sense of the content, rather than instantly getting it, it helps me to train others effectively.
I remembered that my professional talent is my ability to summarise and communicate complex information into key take aways that other people find easy to learn from. I doubled down on that as I fine-tuned the webinar.
If you are reading this and are in a period of self-doubt, I hope it helps.
Check-in with yourself, what is triggering your self-doubt? What do you need to get perspective? How can you allow yourself to have courage and grow and keep the self-doubt at a manageable level?
PS I’m running a free training called Kickstart Your Therapist Confidence Bootcamp in the last week of March! Watch out for sign up details coming soon
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