Speaking and Communicating Podcast

When we have this experience now where we feel like, oh, my ideas are never good enough, and somebody is dissing them or just ignoring them altogether, it reminds us and it associates with that emotion from back then, which may have been full blown unworthiness.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

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She is a captivating and compassionate guide, coach, mentor who facilitates transformative change and force us positive growth.

Today, Denise is here to help us with what a lot of us, especially women struggle with, which is imposter syndrome and how we can subconsciously heal.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Denise.

Hi, it's so great to be here.

Thank you, Roberta, for having me on.

I'm so excited that you've joined us.

Welcome, and it's my pleasure.

Please introduce yourself.

So, yes, I really found this work.

I've always been a teacher and a mentor and a guide, but I had sort of a, you know, one of those periods of life where everything's changing, and you're like, I don't know which way to go.

And it really made me search more deeply into the inner work.

And even though I had done yoga and meditation for many, many years, I knew there was something that there was a piece missing.

You know, when you put that out there in the universe, things come to you.

And I met a coach.

You know, I was just trying to meet girlfriends in my area during sort of the latter part of the pandemic.

And I met a coach who was a certified subconscious healer.

And I was like, oh, my goodness, how does this happen?

And within a few weeks after, you know, just having lunch and doing different things, and she would tell me about, you know, some of the ways that she healed herself even using this.

And within four weeks of doing it myself, I knew I had to bring it to my clients because it's so, so powerful.

And it's the power of the subconscious mind.

And so that's the lens I use when I talk about imposter syndrome.

And I do feel that it's a deeper level that we need these days because of all the changes going on.

So I added that to my certifications, and I love to help clients to see that we can do this much more easily than we realize, that our brains really are plastic, that neuroplasticity that we hear about.

They are so easily changeable.

But when we get stuck in the conscious stories that we constantly tell, when we get stuck in the things that aren't present in our life, that's the story that we create.

We perpetuate.

And so it's a very empowering and very simple process to learn.

And once you have it, you can never go back because you can change your brain.

So that's the lens that I'm coming at this from.

And I work with mostly women, I would say, 40s and up, because as you know, that is a huge time of change.

I mean, every decade, right, we go through massive changes, but there's something that starts to build by that time, whether you're mother, career woman, wife, girlfriend, whatever you are, all of the roles we carry, if we don't have an inner work practice, they start to overwhelm us.

And so that can manifest in anxiety or depression.

Both of those are a clear sign from our inner being, like our inner self saying, you got some things to look at here, because you're coming out of balance.

So that's the work that I love, and I'm passionate about sharing with women.

First, let's talk about the subconscious mind.

Sure.

We have a lot of knowledge regarding the patterns that we live by now were fed during our early years.

When we were putting those things on the tape, we call it a tape that plays out in your subconscious mind, how much of it was, I heard this or I saw it with my parents or my family, or I told myself this despite what was going on in front of me.

When you're a kid, how much of that do you decide goes in there and in a certain way?

Absolutely.

So a lot of it does go back to that time for many of us.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't find another person in your later years, teens even or 20s.

But when you think about how your brain is forming for that first decade, especially up to age 12, there's an heavier imprint that comes from those experiences because what are we as children trying to do?

We're trying to know that we're worthy and that we are lovable.

And if there's any doubt, that creates another story about us that doesn't necessarily jive with who we are inside.

So I do often include in the work that I do with clients a family of origin picture where we look at what were the stories your family told about you?

Most of us remember a few of them very clearly because they're usually the ones that didn't feel right to us, but we felt like we had to protect or defend ourselves and who we really were.

And many times the family might have thought we should be doing something else or desiring to do something else.

And even though it's out of love, it doesn't mean they don't accept us, right?

And again, it's not about blame, but it is about understanding where these things came from, not going into full-blown, you know, talking about it and talking about it, but just identifying perhaps a memory.

And this actually happened with me.

My daughter and I were trying to scan and get rid of like physical pictures, and I saw a picture of myself where I was like, my shoulders were up, my arms were out, and I was like, why, you know, something was going on?

And I actually had a dream that reconnected me to the emotion of seeing that picture and feeling left out.

And it was like an aunt's wedding, and everybody was trying on the bridesmaid dresses, and my older sister was going to have the same dress, and I wasn't being fitted for the dress.

And I was like four, maybe.

But when we have that memory, right?

I mean, but perfect, right?

Because there I was saying, where's my dress?

You know, and so they did include me, but they didn't give me the same dress, right?

So there was like something going on there that made me feel...

And then you tell yourself a story.

Exactly.

And common sense dictates that bridesmaids, first of all, are older than four.

You're not going to fit into the dress.

Sure.

It's just logic and common sense, and that's how it should be.

But a four-year-old in that situation, you told yourself a different story away from the common sense.

I did.

I was like, you're different.

You're not good enough.

You're not tall enough.

Whatever.

Like you said, it's not necessarily logical, and it's not about blaming, but it's just an emotion that you felt intensely.

And then maybe when other things happened in the future, you connected that emotion.

So over time, it strengthened.

And really, I just wanted to always be like my sister.

As soon as I realized she was my big sister, I always wanted to be like her.

And eventually, I became a pain in the you-know-what to her because I was constantly trying to be her, you know?

And so that develops a story in itself.

So it really all starts with what you said that we have a memory bank, and it is an emotionally charged memory bank.

Whether it comes up with a memory, for some people, they just always remember being prone to being sad.

Maybe there was a sad mother or a sad aunt or somebody around that was always carrying that energy, and the child was very sensitive.

And they absorbed that, and so they saw that anytime there was some struggle or misunderstanding, they would go to that emotion because it's imprinted.

And over the decades, of course, it becomes stronger and stronger.

So later in life, and this is where I kind of, you know, I know that the original book, Impostor Syndrome, was a great book.

It dug into why people feel unworthy.

You know, they get promoted and they go, am I going to be able to do this?

You know, and I actually remember experiencing that in my career in my younger years.

I didn't know where that was coming from.

But now I feel it is so tied to family of origin and to the subconscious scripts that we have that we end up really acting in ways that are not authentic, which can lead to things like people-pleasing behaviors, which we may find we do only right.

How many women can say they don't do that?

And sometimes it's specific to like a relationship with a boss or a relationship with a particular friend or even a family member.

Sometimes it's not in all areas of your life, right?

You might be more empowered in some areas than others.

So that's an important thing to look at.

But for some, it's so worn in that they don't even realize they're doing it.

And then as the time goes on and they start to maybe feel unhappy in a career or in a location that they live or in a job, they have to do a lot of inner work to kind of uncover where this is coming from.

You know what?

This job doesn't empower me.

Every time I have an idea, it gets shot down.

This reminds me of when I was a kid.

Because it's similar to the experience you had that was deeply implanted, which means everything that gets very emotional with you is what gets implanted in your subconscious.

So true.

I know because I have a psychology background that there is such a thing, and this is the psychological end of it, there is association, right?

And so association means when we have this experience now where we feel like, oh, my ideas are never good enough, and somebody is dissing them or just ignoring them all together, it reminds us and it associates with that emotion from back then, which may have been full-blown unworthiness, right?

So now I am triggered in that moment, and I can't see where it came from, so I become dissociated and angry.

What's most people's reaction when they get triggered?

It's most of the time anger, and what is anger really?

But it's buried sadness.

It's sadness that we haven't been allowing ourselves to feel about what that experience was.

So it really involves association and dissociation in the brain, which we can impact, as you know, with this subconscious work that we do.

And the beautiful thing about it is it's not just, oh, this woo-woo stuff anymore.

We have brain scans showing.

The science is there.

It's rich.

I mean, to see a picture of the brain, my favorite one is where they show that people who take the time to do inner work, whether you call it meditation, breath work, whatever you do to clear your mind every day, 50-year-olds who do that consistently have the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds.

So it's anti-aging as well.

It's not just good for your communication and for your mental health.

And all the stuff that's expensive.

I know, that stuff is a commandment.

You have to keep doing it, and then you've got the toxic load in your body.

This is free.

You can change it up.

So part of what I do in my work with women, and I do a small group coaching, is we build those practices, because many people will say, oh, well, meditation, that's not for me.

And I tried it, and I'm like, okay, what did you try?

Because there's so many ways you can do it now.

There's not one way.

I think some people might just be like, oh, you got to sit there and do the thing in Ohm.

And it's like, no, that's pretty old school.

You can tailor it to whatever suits you, but still have similar results.

Exactly, and the whole point of it is that it is a practice.

It's not something you do once or twice, and you say, oh, I can't stop my raising thoughts.

You know what?

I've been doing it since I was a teen, and I will tell you, there are days where I can't get but a minute of fighting my thoughts.

And it's okay, it's a human condition.

If we can learn to be friends with those thoughts, just like our emotions, we can learn to befriend that scared or feeling left out child in us.

That's how we begin to soothe it, is accepting it, seeing it for what it was, and knowing that's not who we are, just simply connecting with it.

So, you know, there's another piece to this work that I was certified in that is about parts.

And it's based on internal family systems, which says that the best way for us to be happy in life is to not have all these parts of us operating with different emotions.

And, you know, obviously, if we can bring those parts into unison, right?

So it's talking to those parts.

And for example, that younger me to say, hey, thank you so much for caring about me and for being that protector, for being that one that said, oh, no, don't say that because nobody will support it.

I am the adult now, and I love you for being there for me, but you can sit in the back seat now.

You're always going to be a part of me, younger part.

But I am driving the bus, you know.

We like to use metaphor.

The brain understands metaphor.

And it's a beautiful unleashing of the power that's within us to soften those influences in our lives.

That is so key because every time, whether we speak to a therapist or a healer, whoever it is, everything goes back to childhood.

And we have touched on it.

But I always say, let's take a moment to appreciate the parents.

They do the most difficult job in the world.

And I remember, so when my baby brother was born, I was already 23, full grown adult.

So when he was two and I'm 25, and trying to tie his shoe, and you know they take forever, a two-year-old tying his shoes, we're going to be late for wherever we're going.

I say to my mom, let's go.

And my mom says, I've learned, because I had him later in my life, that they have their own time frame.

So we're going to wait.

I said, when we were growing up, you didn't do this.

But the point is, sometimes you really are in a rush.

If there's a time limit, and they need to be punctual to wherever they're going, is the parent supposed to then say for the purposes of, I don't want him to be in therapy in future.

I want him to be a well-adjusted kid.

Let me give him the 15 minutes he needs to tie his shoes.

Right, start him off earlier.

You know, get him started when you're finishing breakfast and say, okay, you're going to work on your shoes.

And, you know, be patient.

Just as an example, because, as I said, it's so tough.

Secondly, you can have two siblings raising the exact same roles, and they interpret their experiences differently, which then brings us back to what I asked earlier, which is, do we also interpret things our way?

It's not even the real situation.

It's not even reality.

Oh, sure.

I mean, you know, based on those experiences, and that's why it's so important to have an inner work practice these days, because we can be just taken off on all kinds of wild goose chases by what we hear and see.

We're so hyper connected to these events in the world, right, within our family, within our inner circle, but then the outer circle.

So how we come to that is so critical, and I feel like that's why there's such a big need right now for people to curate and develop an inner work practice, because no matter what your past, your present, or what you want in your future, if you don't have that, it's gonna be very difficult.

No one was born in a perfect situation at any point in time.

But for some of us, and this is kind of a key, I feel, especially with women of a certain age, and that's why they're kind of my group, is that we were born in a time where there was very different expectations for women, a lot of us.

And culturally, it's very much the case.

So I'm Italian and Greek, and my family was uneducated and on the poorer side.

But it's generational.

So when I said, I want to go to college, and not only that, Roberta, I said, I want to go to college early, it was like, what?

I was bored.

I did love learning.

I did love reading.

And I was different than the rest of my family, and it was really shunned.

And when I started to look back over time, I realized all of the women in my family that came before me were doing very certain roles.

And the number one role was that you were expected to find a man, get married and have children, bottom line.

And if you wanted to do something else, there were these jobs that were like, okay.

And it wasn't spoken per se, although I will say the marriage thing and the children thing and the finding the man thing, that was...

Yeah, that was like, you know, you better do this by a certain age, otherwise we're in trouble.

And so when you have all that external stuff going on, and today we have much more open ideas about it, but it still exists because we're still here.

And so how do we take that to our generation?

Because when it's generational in a family line, it has more power behind it.

For example, I did a lot of talking about in my teen years, oh, I'm never gonna get married, I'm never gonna have children.

Then it came to my twenties, you know, you get to that time where your clock's ticking, and I went and did precisely those things, but they were really still born out of what I felt I should do rather than just a pure desire that came from me.

And I believe that that is like a form of imposter syndrome that we find ourselves then in our 30s and up in situations where we go, wait a minute, I'm not really aligned with this person.

We sometimes don't take time to ask, is this what I really want or what I've been told?

It's gonna lead to happiness.

At the end of the day, we want success, happiness, and all those beautiful things.

Depending what your belief system is, if you are told to be a mother and be married, have kids, stay home, is what will bring you happiness, then everybody's gonna aspire to that.

And then later you ask yourself in your 40s and 50s, you go, did I do that because I wanted it or did I do it because I was told it's gonna lead to the happiness and the success?

That's what they defined it as.

That's when also the inner work comes.

Are you too busy to have that conversation with yourself?

And that's just it.

Is that often once the 40s kick in, so many of us, I know I was this.

I don't know if you've heard of the book Rushing Woman Syndrome.

It's a fantastic book.

It is a best seller, and the author's name escapes me at the moment.

But it is about how by the time we're in our 40s, we're parents, we are mothers, we're wives, where all of these things, our careers start to pick up steam, and all of a sudden, there is not a moment in the day for inner work.

And that's the time precisely that we need it the most.

And that is often the time when we start to have these imposter-like syndrome feelings where we go, gosh, I'm really starting to dread going to work.

I've heard women say this.

On Saturday, I began dreading the following week when you can't even enjoy your time off.

I always believe that everybody must get to choose.

Because if you choose and if you do the inner work and you have the conversation with yourself and you go, I do want to stay home, take care of my kids, or I do want to have kids and have a career, or I want to be single and childless like Roberta, or whatever it is, as long as it's something that you consciously chose, that for me is a definition of success, happiness, whatever it is.

However, my question to you, Denise, is, and if you can help me with this, I'm sure your clients, some of them come with this problem.

What if I plan a certain life and it doesn't work out that way?

Okay, I've got the perfect example here.

So I had planned a life and I invested everything into it.

I have master's degrees.

I was in the career for about 16, 17 years when, again, it started to ramp up and I started to get promoted and go higher and higher, and the stress went higher and higher as it often does.

And I began to realize that I was having that message again of we don't like that idea.

And there were great ideas to solve massive problems, but there was something going on with my ideas being too different.

And I worked in a very bureaucratic structure.

And so I had gone and interviewed on a lot of different interviews, giving ideas in the process of the interview that were used, and then they were hiring people that were less experienced or less knowledgeable.

And I felt an energy.

Of course, my first triggered reaction was, what did I do wrong in the interview?

Oh, maybe I went over, you know, all of these things.

But it wasn't that.

What it was is that I had uncovered a part of myself, that this synergy of problem solving and helping people change and create change in a structure that really didn't want to change.

And so I was trying to fit myself into this and then thinking, how could I walk away from this?

But what my emotions told me was going to work sad, leaving work sad.

And I'm more on the anxious side.

I'm more on the worrying about the things coming.

And so this was really different for me.

And so I really had to look at what was going on on a deeper level.

And thankfully, I realized that it wasn't about me, that it was a sign that this was no longer in alignment with me.

And let's face it, life changes every single minute.

I mean, it was many, many years ago that people would stay in careers for 30, 40 years, right?

20 years, 30 years, whatever, and they would retire from it.

But today we have to be okay that sometimes we change so much and the environment changes and or both and that it's okay if it no longer works for you.

So I was so ready to literally just quit, and I opened my heart, I shared with my best friends, and one of them said to me, Denise, why don't you find out about early retirement?

So I created the space of saying, I'm moving forward.

I can't do this anymore.

I'm not going to interview like this and get rejected, and I need to open my heart to something else.

And sure enough, I had an option to take all of that experience, to take an early retirement and create a business where now I can create methods.

I can use all the tools I've learned over the years in change.

I mean, really, I was a change agent for large groups, and it's a passion of mine.

And I thought, you know, after working with kids, working with adults, all different levels, I really enjoyed the work with adults because I was helping them uncover, you know, in some cases, should I even be doing what I'm doing when you are supervising people and you're observing them and you start to notice that they're really not, their heart's not in it.

Like, I had an intuition for that because it was happening to me, right, in my life.

So being able to say, I am making space for maybe walking away and being okay with it because I don't like the feeling of blaming myself for this not working anymore.

I'm a different person now than 20 years ago, and so I walked away, and I have now created this business that suits me, that helps me to bring other women along this journey.

And so it's making that space and not judging.

And I think the biggest saboteur that we have, you know, speaking of saboteurs, is the inner critic and the judge right away.

The judge was telling me, oh, you failed.

You must have turned them off in the interview or oh, this or that, right?

Yes, the first thing I thought was, what's wrong with me?

Let's say parents get divorced and the child goes, oh, what did I do for my mom and dad not to love each other?

That very thing that starts in childhood when we think we're the ones who did something wrong, that's why grownups are getting divorced, is that we carry that like, I didn't get the job.

What did I do wrong?

I'm not saying let's not do self-reflection.

That's a different topic.

But always attribute everything to, I'm not enough, I did something wrong, I don't measure up, I'm a failure.

And it looks like it starts when things go wrong when we were kids.

So we just repeat that cycle.

Yes.

And that's why when you do this work, it's so powerful because as long as you keep an inner work practice, when you address those subconscious saboteurs, I mean, a lot of people can relate to saboteurs.

Sometimes I teach archetypes to help understand it.

Everyone, like you said, needs a different way of learning it.

But it all goes back to that unworthiness feeling that we felt for whatever reason.

Maybe our family was great and it wasn't coming from them.

Maybe it was a teacher.

Maybe it was not being accepted on the soccer team or whatever it was, but there was a feeling of unworthiness that has such an imprint that without that inner work, I know many people who did years of psychotherapy and nothing against it, it is a good tool.

But often what happens in that is they're giving more energy to what went wrong.

They're giving a lot of energy to redefining it and finding more books about it.

And so it's giving energy to what was negative about it.

And so I believe that the reason that that saboteur, that inner critic, that inner judge, is one of the most powerful saboteurs, it means something different for everyone.

Is it abandonment?

Is it unworthiness?

Is it fear of success?

Fear of being judged?

There's so many fears that they're tied to, and that's where this core work of just bringing that down is so life-changing, because as long as you keep an inner work practice, you will go forward.

And I see this within a couple of weeks of working with women is that they just begin to slow themselves because why?

They're calming that vagus nerve.

They're calming the lengthiest nerve that controls all of our systems and our body, and they're learning to calm it every day.

So when they face a situation that would have normally sent them into a panic, into anger, they are then able to say, you know, and I've even experienced this myself where I start to see the former me in my, you know, in my mind of how I would have reacted.

And now I go, oh, look at you, right?

You have that choice to go down that path.

If any of our listeners are wondering, what can I start today?

So please give us just a brief way of having an inner practice if I haven't had one before.

Yeah, so with an inner practice, I find that we don't realize the power of our breath.

So I would say even without all of these tools that we have, you know, a million different apps with different styles of meditation, guided, whatever, that I recommend listening to whatever music just makes you smile and feel soothed, preferably without words, because you want your mind to not be trying to figure things out.

You want to just let your mind go with the melody.

So pick whatever it is.

For some people, it's cello.

For some people, it's, you know, like a binaural beat.

Right, so, you know, and we have those people in our lives, and we always go back to that music.

Pick a song, pick at least 10 minutes, maybe put it on a loop, or 15 minutes is ideal, but start with something, and then just notice your breath.

Because one of the reasons a lot of people feel anxious, because they're breathing in this upper part of their chest most of their day, so they're not fully getting all the oxygen their body needs.

So by just noticing, first of all, where your breath is, and then trying to deepen it, you will feel more calm and start to understand, oh, this is another way I could go with this, right?

And then after you start to feel, because it only takes a couple of days for most people or a week to feel a little bit calmer throughout the day, and I recommend morning or evening, because we are closest to our dreamlike subconscious mind at that time.

So don't get up and do a whole bunch of things and then try to sit and meditate.

Try to get out before you really need to, and just sit with yourself.

If you want to put the headphones on, that's great, because in the beginning, outside sounds can get your mind going somewhere else.

And then don't beat yourself up if your mind, that entire 10 minutes, is rolling through all these things.

Just accept it.

Just understand that that's how full your mind is, and that it's okay to have days like that.

So start simple, and start with something that brings you joy.

For some people, they can walk and meditate and listen to something in a beautiful nature, and that's a perfectly, that's great, if you can do that and take a break in your day.

But definitely the morning and the evening are ideal.

You know, we're still in that dreamlike state, and we can access the subconscious.

And when you clear your mind like that, you calm your whole nervous system, but you also make space for inspired insights, for your intuition to actually begin to listen.

Because many of us were so busy in our minds that our intuition gets blocked.

And then when we go to make a decision, we have trouble determining what's the inspired choice here?

What is all of these archetypes?

What are all these saboteurs trying to tell me to do?

But when we do this, then even decision making in the conscious world becomes easier because we learn to hear that inner voice.

If you start there, you'll see profound changes and growth.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Denise Miceli, founder of Rock Your Blocks.

Please tell us where to find you online.

Yeah, so just go to rockyourblocks.com and you'll find information about my individual and small group coaching programs.

There's all my other links there because I do the same as you.

I create videos, audios.

I write articles about this, and so people can choose what they like to dig a little deeper into it.

So thank you so much, Roberta.

This was a great conversation.

My absolute pleasure.

I really enjoy your energy, your spirit.

We can go on and on forever.

Thank you, Denise, for being here.

Denise Miceli, founder of Rock Your Blocks.

rockyourblocks.com is the website, and she has been helping us with subconscious healing, especially for imposter syndrome.

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