The Quiet Voice That Says You’re Not Good Enough
It doesn’t usually shout. It waits until you’re in the middle of something like a presentation where it starts to whisper, “they’re going to realise you don’t know what you’re doing”. It appears when you’ve just been given a compliment and quietly suggests that they are just being polite. It surfaces the night before something important and reminds you of every time something hasn’t gone to plan.
But you have built a career. You have handled difficult things. People rely on you and you have not let them down.
Why Does Self-Doubt Feel So Persistent?
Self-doubt isn’t a character flaw. It’s a survival mechanism that has overstayed its welcome.
The brain is wired to detect threat and protect you from it. For most of human history, that meant physical danger from things trying to eat you. In modern professional life, the brain applies that same frame to social and psychological threat, being judged, getting things wrong, being found out.
The result is a pattern of thinking that scans constantly for evidence that you’re not enough. Because the brain is very good at finding what it’s looking for, it tends to find it even when the evidence for the opposite is overwhelming.
This is something called negativity bias. We remember the one critical comment in a sea of positive feedback. We replay the moment we stumbled over our words in an otherwise strong presentation. We discount our successes and catalogue our perceived failures with meticulous care.
For high-achievers, this can be particularly persistent. Intelligent people recognise what they don’t know, and feel the gap between where they are, and where they feel they should be. The voice gets louder the more you achieve, not quieter, because you realise that nothing is simple and the stakes feel higher.
This is also at the heart of imposter syndrome.
What Can Actually Help?
The instinct is to try to hide and make excuses for not doing the scary thing. You can also try to argue back and logic your way out of self-doubt by thinking about all of your achievements or tell yourself to be more confident. This might help in the short-term, but it rarely touches the pattern at its root.
Some approaches that can seem a little more gentle, but generally provide lasting change:
Notice the thought without becoming attached to it. Just because we have had the thought, it doesn’t mean it’s real. Try to observe thoughts, not engage with them. Instead of trying to argue, treat the thought with curiosity. Look at why your mind is trying to keep you safe. You don’t have to believe every thought that your mind produces. Thoughts are not facts.
Look for the standard you are holding yourself to. Self-doubt often runs alongside an unspoken rule e.g. I should always get this right. These rules are usually far harsher than anything you would apply to anyone else. Noticing them is the first step to loosening their hold.
Separate performance from identity. Getting things wrong is not a verdict on who you are. In fact your business, your job, is not who you are.
How Hypnotherapy Can Help With Self-Doubt
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) works particularly well with self-doubt because it addresses two levels simultaneously.
CBH uses evidence-based cognitive and behavioural techniques to help you identify and challenge thinking patterns that fuel self-doubt.
At a deeper level, CBH creates a calm, receptive state in which new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving can be rehearsed and can begin to take root more readily. Rather than simply knowing at an intellectual level that the self-doubt is distorted, you can begin to feel it at an emotional level. The pattern then starts to lose its grip.
Many are surprised by how quickly a shift can happen and how lasting it tends to be.