You’re capable. People around you rely on you, trust you, come to you for advice. And yet, somewhere in the background, there’s a little voice that says you’re not quite getting it right. That you could do better. That other people seem to hold themselves together in ways you can’t quite manage.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you.

That feeling of not being good enough is one of the most common things women talk to me about, and it tends to show up at the most inconvenient moments. Just when things are going well, it whispers. Just when you’re about to put yourself forward for something, it pulls you back.

Here’s what’s important to understand: that voice isn’t telling you the truth. It’s doing something it learned to do, a long time ago, to keep you safe. The mind is very good at pattern-matching — a bit like a game of snap. If something in your past taught you that being visible was risky, or that being ‘too much’ wasn’t acceptable, your mind filed that away and has been playing by those rules ever since. Even if the rules no longer serve you.

The trouble is, low confidence tends to be self-reinforcing. You hold back, so you don’t get the chance to prove yourself wrong. You stay quiet in the meeting, and the voice says “see — you had nothing to say.” It’s a cycle, and it can feel very hard to step off it on your own.

What I’d gently offer is this: the story you’re telling yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of isn’t fixed. It was built from experience and other people’s opinions, many of them from a time when you had very little choice about what you absorbed. That means it can be worked with and it can change.

This isn’t about positive thinking or telling yourself you’re brilliant until you believe it. It’s about something more gentle and more honest than that: understanding where the beliefs came from, and gradually finding that they don’t have to run the show anymore.

If any of this has resonated with you, I’d love to have a conversation. A discovery call is just a chat with no commitment, and no pressure, to see whether working together might be a good fit for us.

Laurie Harvey

Cognitive Hypnotherapist

HPD, DipCHyp, MNLP, MNCH