Healing Fear of Judgement

I used to feel crushing shame.

I was ashamed of who I was, how I acted, how I needed validation from everyone around me to know that I was worthy of existing. Every single day, shame and embarrassment governed my life. The fear of attention made the need to people-please the focal point of my daily living.

Even as young as I was, I already intuitively knew and understood that it wasn't a normal way to exist. Something was off. Since other people seemed to be having a much easier time, I kept asking myself, "What's wrong with me? Why am I different?"

As I grew, I learned to hide the pain behind anger and defensiveness. By overreacting to embarrassment and shame, I effectively turned all my pain into everyone else's fault. I successfully built a very solid victim mentality.

Why is everything easier for everyone else?

Why does nobody care about me?

Why is life against me?

Am I the only unlucky one?

It wasn't true. It took years to discover that. Life is not easier for everyone else, we just all have different battles to fight. I had a loving family and so many amazing friends. They all cared. Life wasn't against me, although it’s an addictive narrative to build into your daily thinking. A great escape route when you want to bypass taking ownership. Instead of victimizing me, life was giving me the challenges I needed to grow.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

This, however, was something I didn't realize until I started fighting to get myself out from under these painful patterns.

If you’re stuck in a similar narrative, I’m going to show you how to break free of that.

Stay your course. Better days are coming.

EXTREME OWNERSHIP

It’s extremely tempting to fall into victim mentality, blaming the world around you, other people and your circumstances for your discomfort.

“But it wasn't my fault” is exactly where we’re going to start.

Here is one simple concept…

The more ownership you take of your life, the more power you take back from the hands of the people you gave it to in the first place. Start by taking responsibility for the easy parts of your experience.

What are you proud of?

What are your strengths?

Own your accomplishments, dreams, hobbies and passions. The things that excite you and whatever you do well. This is good practice and the better you get at taking ownership of these, the easier it will be for you to stand a little taller each day.

Now for what’s hard.

Own the things that embarrass you. The parts of your body that you hide. The way you act around certain people. The experiences you're afraid of having. The hard memories you feel like burying.

You need to own those too.

And here's a caveat...

You need to own it all WITHOUT putting yourself down for it.

Owning all of yourself and standing tall in who you are as a person will give you back more personal power than you can dream of. This one habit will build you into someone who is unstoppable in the face of fear.

Other people see someone who is self-governed and know they walk with a different energy. Be that person. Do the hard work you've been hiding from.

Work on you until you realize that the only person whose judgement has mattered this entire time has been your very own.

Then own that too.

SELF COMPASSION

I used to beat myself up for every little thing I did wrong. I mean, EVERYTHING. Not only for what I did or didn't do, but also for what I thought other people probably thought of what I did or didn't do.

I gave myself no grace. I couldn't even move with the level of perfection I held myself to. I stayed stuck in that place, frozen in fear, afraid to take a step forward in any direction. I was paralyzed.

As I started taking more and more ownership, it was a tough battle to keep my head above water in the sea of blame.

Why did I screw up all the time?

Why was I always so hard on myself?

Bad habits are hard to break. But not impossible. Self compassion, above all, is the most important thing you can give yourself. It takes repetition, focus and time. It takes an immense amount of patience and a willingness to dive inside.

Knowing that, please give yourself even more love as you move into the deepest work you will ever do of healing yourself. Most of us are learning our way out of age-old trauma patterns that have, in some cases, held us stuck our entire lives. This takes time, often a lifetime.

This is exactly the lesson you are here to learn... how to let go of what hurts you and free yourself to write new patterns where the old ones used to live.

Make this journey the point of your experience. You haven't been a bad person, you haven't been broken beyond repair, or irreversibly damaged anything you've touched. You are here to learn your way forward.

All you're doing is learning how powerful you actually are as you start to break free of the fear that holds you. This takes self-directed love and kindness, and also waking up to the fact that these patterns and feelings are meant to be grown from.

In that imperfection, we are all innately perfect, just as we are.

IN ALL THINGS, GROWTH

The second step in practicing compassion is understanding that, in all hard things, there is opportunity and growth. In ALL hard things.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Like I said, you are never broken beyond repair.

When you're spiralling downward in a pattern of self-loathing, the thing you fear most is the judgement that other people will lay on top of the shame and guilt you're already experiencing.

This is why self compassion along this road is so vital to your progress. Stop the pattern of self-hatred by looking for the lessons in every single negative experience. Pull yourself into an opportunity for gain instead of hiding from the pain of loss.

Everything we experience in life, all the highs and lows, are either great experiences to be enjoyed, or hard experiences to be learned from. Of course, because life is never black and white but always grey, most of our experiences will include all of the above. In all things there are lessons that we can use in our growth.

That's an easy fact to forget while drowning in a catastrophe, so this is a habit I recommend practicing while things are easy. That way, when life deals you a difficult hand, your mind will automatically jump to the thought of, "where's the lesson in all this?"

This is the retraining of your mind's setpoint.

"Every cloud has a silver lining"

"Always look for the gold"

All those terribly cliche, cute sayings that hurt when they're repeated to us when we're spinning toward rock bottom… Those do hold true. But they're not meant to be happy little positivity statements.

It's a reminder that, at life's rawest and most difficult places, you are the most powerful one. You can overcome anything life throws at you, simply because you were built to. When you operate from this place, nobody else's petty judgements really matter.

GIVE UP

I want you to give up right now.

Give up trying to be like everybody else.

And give up trying to be LIKED by everybody else.

You are meant to be a supernova, but you can only step into that power if you show up as you are. The world doesn’t need you to be like that person you've been comparing yourself to on Instagram. You are meant to be genuinely yourself. All your quirks, all your imperfections, all your mistakes and flaws... they are what make you the incredibly deep, rich and dynamic human being you are now.

In other words, be so busy being you that you crowd out any fear of judgement and need for validation.

Don't try to erase your battle scars. Embrace them instead. Display them proudly so others can learn it’s safe to show their own.

Everything in your past has given you what you need to get stronger. It doesn't matter if you haven't figured out how yet, it will always be there waiting for you to take your power back.

Not being good enough is a narrative the world feeds you so it can steal your power away and make you feel weak.

Let's change the way we see ourselves, the world, and this journey we're on. Let's heal in the face of adversity and help each other grow.

In ourselves we find strength, and together we multiply it.

HEALING

Step into your power. Own everything. Whenever you step into a room, own that space. Light it up. Let others see and feel you. Taking control of yourself allows you to control your environment, but also allows you the power to release control over the things that are truly uncontrollable.

This is confidence.

From start to finish, this process takes time. It may take you your entire life to heal your mind, thoughts, nervous system. To make friends with your emotions and your darkest places. Give yourself enough compassion and patience that you arrive at that destination. Trust me, you're greater than this experience you're having as a human.

Do you see how releasing fear isn't about simply turning off a thought that repeats itself in your head? Or an emotional reaction? You can't just say "I don't care what he/she thinks". It's a healing process. To heal, you need to process.

The good news is that you are the most extraordinary person, there's only one of you, you're meant to be here and you're allowed to take up space.

So go do exactly that with all your heart, soul and energy.

Let your healing be an emotional, messy, forward-moving process.

And go live an extraordinary life. There’s no one on earth who can tell you you’re doing it wrong.

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For a deeper dive into these areas, check out the F7: Seven Days to Forgiveness ebook + course.