The Journey to Self-Acceptance and Embracing Visibility

Have you ever felt the sting of judgment holding you back from showcasing your true potential? Join me as I unravel my own journey, a path filled with childhood criticisms and teenage rebellion, to shed light on a fear many ambitious women face—the fear of being visible. We’ll unpack how early messages urging us to 'tone it down' can stifle our growth, and how understanding these patterns can empower you to break free from self-imposed limitations. This isn't just about personal anecdotes; it’s about equipping you with insights to embrace your unique light and chase your dreams fearlessly.

The road to self-confidence can be rocky, as I learned while overcoming an eating disorder and navigating a difficult relationship with a personal trainer. I'll share how these experiences shaped my journey towards embracing visibility and self-worth. And you're not alone—many have transformed their lives by reconnecting with their inner child, setting healthy boundaries, and standing tall in their uniqueness. Whether you're speaking up in meetings or capturing your essence through photography, I'll guide you through reframing beliefs and tackling the fear of judgment, especially from those who may not understand your journey.

Past experiences, particularly negative ones, can deeply affect our willingness to be seen. Together, we'll explore the impact of societal pressures and intimate encounters on our authenticity. As we transition into a more authentic societal influence, it's crucial to heal past wounds tied to childhood and family. I invite you to share your stories and step into the spotlight—your voice matters immensely. Celebrate with me and the wonderful community of listeners who make this journey possible. Your support is the heartbeat of this podcast, and I am here to cheer you on every step of the way. Let’s embrace visibility together and turn challenges into triumphs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Confronting Fear of Visibility
• 11:27 Overcoming Fear of Visibility
• 16:37 Embracing Visibility and Authenticity
• 19:57 Celebrating Listener Support

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody, welcome back. Today, we are going to be talking about a topic that many ambitious women, including myself, have struggled with or do struggle with, which is the fear of visibility. Oh my god, this used to be a massive, massive thing for me, and let me, let me just level with you. I know you've got big dreams, bold ideas and there's so much to share with the world, yet there's something that holds you back. Maybe it's the fear of judgment, criticism or simply not feeling enough. In this episode, we are going to unpack where this fear is coming from, how it connects you and your child and, most importantly, what you need to do to break free, because this impacts every area of your fucking life. Right? So defining fear of visibility. What is the fear of visibility? Okay, this is being reluctant to put yourself out there, to be seen, here, to be known. It often shows up as not putting your hand up in a meeting when you have a really good idea. When you're walking down the street, your head is down, your eyes are on the pavement. You are downplaying your achievement to avoid attention. You're holding back from sharing your truth. So some examples for me would be like I would never walk into a university lecture late. I would never do that. I would always walk my head down.

Speaker 1: 1:21

I remember the first time I posted a video on my business account of me and, bearing in mind when I first started my business, it actually wasn't a lot of it, like it was more focused around dance, so it was videos of me dancing. The minute I posted a video of me dancing on the internet, I threw my fucking phone and I just kind of died under my blanket being like have I just done that? Do I just need to delete it? This is after I had uploaded it and deleted it maybe three or four times before then, and I had gone through this like painstaking thing of oh my fucking god, what's going on. And then, when I was on TikTok, a couple of my videos went viral and I just didn't know what to do. My nervous system completely freaked out and this is what, like the fear of visibility does really stops you from shining your unique light. And what was really um, awful for me as well is that I just I couldn't like I couldn't talk about my spiritual self for a really long time, which is a huge part of me. Like I went through the spiritual awakening I started with tarot, became a reiki master teacher. I didn't tell anybody for ages I was a reiki master teacher.

Speaker 1: 2:29

I hid this because I was so afraid what people would think of me. I hid so many parts of me and I would be a chameleon. In groups like to my friends, I'd be one person, to my family I'd be another and in relationships I would always hold back. I'd never assert my boundaries or say anything that upset me, because I'd be so worried about the rejection of it or just feeling like I'm going to be criticized about something. And this holds you back, because you end up playing small, because you want to avoid that criticism, that rejection. You block opportunities, you block growth and authentic connections.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Okay, staying, staying invisible feels safe, but it keeps you stuck and I used to be like, I used to identify with that, like one of the things, one of the stories I used to tell myself, is that I feel invisible, and this came from my childhood. Okay, so when I was younger, I was totally told, as a child, shut up, be quiet. Oh my God, you talk too much. Why are you so loud? Blah, blah, blah. As a child, shut up, be quiet. Oh my god, you talk too much. Why are you so loud? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 3:27

And then, obviously, over time, I just decided to keep my voice down and to stay smaller and even even then I was still the loud person in my group of friends, right? So I would often draw attention. Then I wouldn't want to be like seen or visible. And then, when I went into my teenage years, this is when I started to really act out and really wanted attention because I was just acting out and I just really wanted to embrace my life and who I was. But this came from a place of anger and sadness rather than a place of I'm really proud of who I am. And during my teenage years and early 20s I made some fucking mistakes. Man, anybody sat here being like no, my teenage years with 20s were great. You fucking liars. I made some really bad mistakes.

Speaker 1: 4:10

I uh ended up in multiple relationships that weren't good for me. I would drink to a point of oblivion. I remember once I woke up in a guy's house in and I was in like this spare bedroom. Thankfully it was this guy and he had found me. I had been so drunk, I got separated from my friends, I had passed out and he oh, thank God, he had a complete crush on my friend so, but he saw me and he was like Kirsty, I couldn't like get anything out of you. I didn't know what to say, like I didn't know what to do, so took me home and thankfully, I did trust this person. He was a really, really nice person and, you know, nothing untoward happened, thankfully.

Speaker 1: 4:52

But I did put myself at like great risk doing this experience and doing these experiences okay, and where we have, like, this fear of being visible, it is obviously deeply rooted in our childhood experiences. So, as a child, you might have been criticized for standing up or speaking out. You may be told to tone it down, like I was, or you're too much. Over time, you may have learned that being visible brought judgment or disapproval. So you started hiding. That's something I definitely did. I. I started to hide myself because I didn't. I just wanted to be liked like.

Speaker 1: 5:27

I think we've all experienced that, especially as a teenage girl like I. You know, and I grew up in the 2000s where Kate Moss was being skinny and I wasn't skinny. So you know, I, like you, have to factor in all these different parts of yourself, like I was a bigger girl and I had like I was friends with everybody. I was a bigger girl and I had like I was friends with everybody. I was always I still am. Just talk to anybody me but you know, I would hide myself and I hid in like this, this, this bigger body of like protection. And I'm still dealing with that now. Okay, because obviously when I was younger, there were some other like really bad experiences, which I'm not going to go into on the podcast, but like some really bad experiences.

Speaker 1: 6:06

I meant that, like I would carry physical weight to protect myself. This is why I've always struggled with my weight and now I'm in a place where, like, my health is completely fucked from extreme trauma and from extreme stress levels that I've faced over the years that it's really hard for me to lose weight now. So, even though I'm in a much more regulated place and I'm in a much like good, much good, a much better place, I'm still in this kind of body holding that excess weight and again, like that comes into oh well, how can people listen to me if I look like this, for example but really that's just your internal voice saying that stuff. I know that at the end of the day, I'm a size 16, I've got loads of love to give, I'm squishy, I got a great ass and that's brilliant Like, but it's taken me a long time to get here right. It's gone from who would want to listen to me to being like it doesn't matter what your physical body looks like, it's about the information you have to give to the world.

Speaker 1: 7:05

So, again, coming from that fear of judgment, you know you don't want to be disapproved of and also like as humans, this is something that's so important because we are designed to be in tribes, we are designed for communities and that literally means that we would come together and we would always want to be a part of the group. Okay, we would never want to do anything to get us chucked out of the tribe. And as our tribe becomes very fucking small, as it's just our mother and father, as we live in this very small, like independent lifestyle in the west, which we don't in the in the east, and we see like a really collective community where people are so much happier because they have that human connection compared to the west, by the way, that we wouldn't do anything to get chucked out of the tribe, okay, okay. So we are learning this. This is, you know from our ancestors. This is how we keep ourselves safe. This is how generational trauma is so important, because we are passing down things through generations, like your DNA is modified, passed down through epigenetics because of what your ancestors went through in order to keep you safe in this lifetime, to continue evolution. That's it. It's a scientific base. It's not just a woo-woo base.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Okay, there may be fear of rejection. So have you tried something important, but you were dismissed or ignored. Did you finally, like, pluck up the courage to ask for something? And then you were rejected. I remember oh my god, I remember this. I was in school and I got picked to be the lead in the play. Oh, this is such a perfect example of fear to be visible. And I and I was so anxious and I was so scared and I said no. And after I thought about it, I thought you've made a fucking mistake. You're Kirsty.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I must have been about seven or eight at the time and I was like you made a mistake. And then I went back to my teacher and I was like I would really love to play the main part. And he was like oh, no, we've given it to this other person. And I was just like, oh okay, and obviously, like he was like we've given this to this other child, we can't take it back off her now. Obviously and you know that was fine, my voice didn't matter.

Speaker 1: 9:11

It's scary to put myself out there and when I do I just get rejected and I don't get what I want anyway. So why should I so, why should I bother? But yeah, it's just like these little moments that can be really insignificant or feel insignificant now, but at the time they were really big and really shaping for you. Okay, perfectionism is a shield. If you grew up feeling like love and approval was conditional on being perfect, visibility becomes terrifying because mistakes feel unacceptable, or not doing well in school feels unacceptable. So many different things. Okay.

Speaker 1: 9:48

So the cost of staying invisible you miss opportunities in your life. You miss opportunities to say yes, to go to that concert, to say yes to do that fucking fun thing that you've always wanted to do, but you've never done it because you're like, oh my god, I can't do that. You miss opportunities in your work, in your career, in your, in your business, like you know, imagine if I just kind of carried on with this fear of like, not like, no visibility. I wouldn't. I wouldn't have helped 250 women take control of their life and transform their lives and become way more confident and authentic in themselves. You know, you end up being inconsistent with yourself as well, because you get to hide, so you're not accountable to anything. You're not accountable to anyone, okay. So you end up maybe gaining weight or looking in a way that doesn't make you feel good. Your confidence is low and every time that you hide, you reinforce this belief that you're not enough to be seen.

Speaker 1: 10:47

This is where you start to really attract difficult relationships into your life, where friends who may take advantage of you, you may have men who that you're not enough to be seen. This is where you start to really attract difficult relationships into your life, where friends who may take advantage of you, you may have men who take advantage of you. Obviously, I only talk about heterosexual relationships because that's the only experience I have and I'm not going to talk about other things that I don't know about. So, yeah, if you're attracting like men, you're attracting fuckboys, you're attracting those men who just come in. It's this repeated cycle of they come in, they take what, what they want, and they leave. That's not like, that's not okay and it comes from this fear of not being visible and also this leaves you open to being in a vulnerable place where relationships for you know, relationships are not that healthy.

Speaker 1: 11:27

So when I was really, really struggling I covering recovering from my eating disorder I um had this experience where I had met this person and you know what he was. He was all right, he was an okay person, but we brought out the worst in each other because I was so insecure. I lacked so much confidence, I laughed so, lacked so much self-esteem. I relied on him for this external validation all the time and that put such a big pressure on our relationship. It made us argue all the time and obviously I was like 21 at the time, so I was quite young and I was under. You know, I was just recovering from an eating disorder and he was a personal trainer. Like, honestly, can't make this shit up, can you? And it just was. Yeah, it was just one of the worst relationships I ever had because it was the most unhealthy relationship I ever had. So, yeah, obviously there's stuff with my clients as well where, like when we start to work together, I've seen people finally earn money in their business.

Speaker 1: 12:22

Do public speaking events set boundaries, with people say fucking no or just even go through life but not experiencing anxiety at the level that they would. So, if there's like an important meeting, or like they always get called into the boss's office like they're not gonna panic or shit themselves, they're just gonna be like okay, I just wonder what they went when. Before it'd be an anxiety spiral of oh my god, what have I done? And this came back to their childhood. Okay, and this is how you start to break free from this fear of visibility. When you start to really connect to your inner child, you get to ask her why are you afraid, why is it scary? And you get to be the parent that you never had. You get to reframe visibility as a service.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Okay, you deserve to be out there. You were born with a unique set of gifts. You may not fully be aware of them, but you were born with a unique set of gifts and it's your job, it's your sole journey, it's your sole purpose to be here to share them. And I really want you to start small as well. Okay, don't just I don't know like get off this podcast, go on Instagram Live and tell people your life story. No, it doesn't mean you have to be on a TED talk tomorrow. It just means you have to start with manageable steps. So, for example, you might just put your hand up in the meeting. That might even feel too big. You might just have an idea and go speak to your boss after the meeting. You may want to share a personal story in a group of friends. You may want to practice speaking your voice by using voice notes on a messenger.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Like you may want to start taking selfies of yourself, taking pictures of yourself and just seeing, like, what that looks like and what that feels like. You know, when I'm getting women to really connect into their intimacy, I'm always like get in your underwear and take a little sexy photo shoot, because this is a really good way to build your confidence. I actually have a client who, like I'm so fucking proud of, who has completely increased her confidence so much that she went from like not being feeling like she's not able to be seen to doing a photo shoot, where she did a nude photo shoot on a beach. Like this is the massive transformation that, like you, can go through when we work together under my reborn package. But this is entirely possible for you and you know what, like this didn't take a long time at all. It took three months. It took no, actually took less than that. It took her 10 weeks.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So, like people always think as well, like this work, oh my god, I'm gonna have to start this work now, it's gonna take forever, it's gonna take years, and you know what time is gonna pass anyway. But if you do this work with the right person, then the work becomes easy, enjoyable and, you know, at times hard, but you're supported in a way that makes it a lot less harder. And you need to challenge your beliefs around judgment. Okay, people's opinions are a reflection of them, not you. Okay, no one is judging you as harshly as you think and nobody's judging you as hard as you judge yourself. And if they are, they're probably dickheads anyway.

Speaker 1: 15:17

So maybe you wanna write down your biggest fears about being visible. What if people think I'm not good enough? What if I say something stupid? What if I embarrass myself? What if I attract unwanted attention? What if I attract unwanted male attention? Because this can be another thing as well. Because we put ourselves out there maybe on social media, or we might wear that particularly bright coloured dress we start to attract attention and maybe it might be unwanted male attention which can be linked back to your childhood, to your adolescence, to your early, to any experience in your life where you've received unwanted attention from men. This can be really really hard to deal with.

Speaker 1: 15:54

So, for example, where I live, I used to walk to the gym and I used to go a lot for like a lot of walks in the summer and I actually stopped because I used to get catcalled all the time. I'm like what in the fucking early 2000s is this? But yeah, I was getting catcalled all the time and I like they would like physically slow down, stop, almost to the point of stopping and like shout something at me and it's really intimidating. I'm just out for a walk, like I've got my headphones on, I'm in my gym gear, like and I don't wear sexy stuff to the gym, I look like a bin bag. So you know I wasn't dressed in any sort of sexualized manner, but I was having this unwanted attention, right, and that actually used to really feel me like oh, but I don't want to be seen because I don't want this unnecessary attention, and that's something to consider as well.

Speaker 1: 16:37

And also, if you've had like deeper, more intimate experiences which has impacted you. This can also play a massive part because we are always conditioned to avoid the same thing that happened that brought us hurt, pain, upset, okay. So I want you to really hold yourself in that, because I think that's really really important as well how how we're treated by men, or how our intimate experiences, or even just like you know, it doesn't have to be an intimate experience, it can just be um, being flashed, being harassed on the internet, in person, whatever this can massively impact us on wanting to be seen. And don't forget, women for generations have had to deal with this oppression by men as well, which is again playing out in our DNA. I want you to practice vulnerability. I want you to just share something personal about you with a friend that you know a little bit personal like, which you're really comfortable to share, to share with.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Like get into yourself where you're able to create like this, like visibility. You might want to put a new accessory on. You might want to wear a new color. You might want to buy something new, like I bought these new leopard print boots the other day and I was like, fuck, yeah, why? Because I love being visible now, because I get to be here and I get to um stand up and just go for it, you know. So, with all that being said, the rewards of being visible is that you get to speak up, you get to be heard, you get to be seen, you get to be validated, you get to be your authentic self, you create deeper, more meaningful connections by showing who you truly are, and that's all we want.

Speaker 1: 18:16

And, as we go forward, I can promise you there is a huge fucking shift right now, going from this capital not capital capital Capricorn type society into the Aquarius one, because Pluto has moved from Capricorn into Aquarius and people who are fake are going to be exposed. You're going to be forced to heal one way or another in the next 10 to 15 years. So what I really recommend that you do is you get ahead of the game now. You get ahead of the game now and you start to work on your childhood, and you start to work on not just your inner child, but the people who held your world for you so it whether if that was your mum or your dad, your mother, your mother or father figure okay, you need to do that work to complete the trifecta of actually really healing your inner child, because I often see a lot of mentors going to heal this bit, heal this bit, heal that bit. No, it's a one-stop shop here, babes, because you need to do the inner child.

Speaker 1: 19:06

You need to do which will cover like peers and relationships and things like that, and then you've got your mother relationship and your father relationship and when you identify patterns and you release this trauma or this like these feelings towards your parents, when you fucking release them, it's like empty in a cup. So when you are in, you know, having conversations with your mum or your dad, you're not getting triggered anymore, you're not being pissed off with them anymore. You're not walking away from the house thinking, fuck, that was awful anymore, you're just indifferent about it. You're not being pissed off with them anymore. You're not walking away from the house thinking, fuck, that was awful anymore, you're just indifferent about it. You're not even indifferent, you just don't feel anything about it. You're just like, okay, I fully accept who you are and I can only like control my reaction to you, but it's just like lifting this fucking huge weight off you.

Speaker 1: 19:46

When you start to really do this work and then you get to be visible, then you get to take up space, then you get to have all these opportunities and to do the things that your heart really fucking wants to do.

Speaker 1: 19:57

So I hope I've inspired you to become more visible today. If I have, do let me know, because I always love to hear, uh, what people think of the podcast, because your voice matters, your story matters and people who are listening to this podcast really fucking matter to me. You're not just little numbers I see pop up who are listening. You are real people all over the fucking world, by the way, which I'm so, so grateful for, and I would just love for you to share your thoughts with me. Tag me on social media with your biggest takeaway and just know I'm here to cheer you on every step of the fucking way, because I want you to win. This is why I this podcast, so I could give this huge wealth of knowledge and perspective on things at length, because social media doesn't allow this for me to wrap it on for 20 minutes so that you can get the most value for free. So let me know what you think. I always love to hear from you and, yeah, with all that being said, I will catch you next time.