How To Clear The Fear Of Being A Fraud

“I’m going to be found out as a fraud. And then they’ll let others know and then no-one is ever going to want to work with me again.”

 

“No-one is ever going to love me and I am going to die alone.”

 

It sounds kind of crazy when you see this written “out loud”, doesn’t it? I mean, we know it isn’t true.

 

We don’t really think that. Logically, we know it’s not true.

 

Except we do think that.

 

In transformational coaching, 9 out of 10 times, some version of this percolates up from the client’s subconscious belief system.

 

And since 99% of my clients are coaches, healers and energy workers, I know they aren’t exempt from this.

 

It’s a combination of the fear of not being good enough and, subsequently, the fear of rejection and abandonment.

 

It’s what drives self sabotage, keeping yourself small, procrastination, and perfectionism. These are all protection mechanisms against these fears. Unfortunately it also creates the disconnection (from ourselves, others and the Universe) we so fear.

 

So how do you effectively transform this?

 

Because these things aren’t solved by practicing self care or writing a list of self acknowledgements, through journalling exercises. They don’t even put a dent in it. And often NLP change processes, hypnotherapy, EFT doesn’t truly deal with these fears effectively.

 

In the way that I coach (and teach the art and science of coaching), I always identify the combination of limiting patterns and beliefs that drives someone’s state and behavior.

 

And what I noticed is that when it comes to fear of rejection and fear of not being good enough, there is a specific combination that holds them in place:

 

 

The biggest culprit in lack of self esteem, is the fact that most people confuse who they are with what they do. It’s why trying something new or receiving feedback on your skills can feel so excruciating and you would rather avoid it altogether.

 

When you confuse who you are and the value that you have as a divine human being with how you use your powers of thinking, feeling, speaking and behaving, then doing something you haven’t done before will feel like you are putting your sense of self on the line.

 

I worked with a client not to long ago who had just recently started her coaching journey. She was still employed in her former job and had a hard time letting go of it. She felt accomplished, had gotten lots of accolades on her work and knew her job inside out. Coaching was new and it was a constant reminder of what she didn’t know.

 

Her identity (and value) was so wrapped up in her job and her abilities, that she had a hard time leaving it behind — even though she had been fed up with it for a while now.

 

We seek safety and so we stay where we are at. What we fail to realize is that if our value is a given, we are safe no matter our successes or failures.

 

So it’s not just the confusion between mistakes that we make and who we are. It’s also the things that we do really well and the fact that we confuse it with our sense of self that can create a problem.

 

In coaching this often shows up as “If I can’t do x, then I’ll be a failure. And then I am not worthy.”

 

 

Usually you can recognize this when your client uses the words “they will…” (as you take them up their hierarchy of beliefs).

 

“They will think I am a fraud.”

“He is going to think I’m stupid.”

“She’ll think I am weak.”

 

When you combine the confusing human being with human doing with a strong external reference, you are essentially putting the assessment of your value in the hands of someone else.

 

I know a lady who was stuck in writer’s block as a result of this unpleasant combination of thinking patterns.

 

She had shared a few emails with her small (around 50) email list and the majority of the people had opened the emails. 1 person unsubscribed.

 

Instead of caring about the people who had opened the email, she focused on the one who didn’t want to read her emails anymore. She viewed it as a rejection — not just of the content, but of her being-ness.

 

The result was that she was unable to even put 1 sentence together before judging it as useless.

 

(I know she is not alone in this. I’ve experienced this myself and it is the reason why so many coaches aren’t consistent in their marketing.)

 

 

In addition to a strong external reference, it is often the case that there is a reference experience in the past OR a reference person (ie mom or dad, sibling, teacher) that has domination over one’s value.

 

Usually this shows up only once you have climbed the hierarchy of their subconscious beliefs all the way to the top. All of a sudden they’ll hear their dad’s voice screaming in their ear (as was the case for one of my clients) or they feel their mother hovering over them and pointing a finger.

 

I’d like to point out here that it doesn’t have to be the case that the parents were abusive. As kids we experience the world far more intensely than adults do, so when our parents raise their voice and get in our face it can be incredibly intimidating.

 

Nor does it have to be in relation to a parent. I worked with a client who, after we explored why she felt so insecure, discovered that she was holding in mind an experience of when she was 9 or 10 years old and couldn’t jump into a jump rope. All her friends could do it and she couldn’t.

 

Her friends didn’t make fun of her, but she saw herself as a failure.

 

We were both surprised by how seemingly insignificant the event was, but that’s what happens at times. And by holding it front and center in “similar” contexts, it creates a problem.

 

All-or-nothing thinking (which is also linked to what I will be talking about in my next post: pessimistic versus optimistic thinking)

 

All-or-nothing thinking makes the feel of this even worse. Because now I’m not just going to be rejected by this 1 person, it’ll be by everyone and forever.

 

And of course we don’t walk around with this consciously being aware of this fear. Often we have created such powerful coping mechanisms and we have burrowed ourselves deep in our comfort zones, that this fear may not even get triggered.

 

That’s why good is the enemy of great. This fear stops of from expanding, growing, taking risks and being all we can be.

 

There is no amount of visualizing our desired outcome that can weigh up against this (what feels like a primal) fear. This fear and the lack of ownership (as I discussed in the previous post) are a big part of the reason that manifesting and law of attraction don’t work.

 

You can’t exactly create something you want if you don’t have mastery over your own thoughts and feeling, and you are stuck in trying to avoid your fears from coming true.

 

Like I said before: journaling, meditating, writing down self acknowledgements and practicing self care aren’t capable of putting a dent in this lack of self esteem. Often, the emotions that are triggered are so strong, that it would take a whole lot of will power for your client to transcend their preferred avoidance strategy (procrastinating, trying to be perfect, over-analyzing, pleasing behavior, etc).

 

That’s why you need to first start with a strong sense of ownership over their powers and they need to be aware that these patterns are showing up in certain situations.

 

 

And then you need to clear all of these distortions through what I call The Liberated Self process. It’s actually an adaptation of a process that I learnt when I was studying to become a coach, called meta-stating self.

 

The idea is to separate who you are from what you do, so clearing the first distortion that I spoke of earlier. What I found, however, is that for most people this process didn’t really stick.

 

It wasn’t until I developed my transformational coach system and started listening to coaching session after coaching session where we identified the core distortions and patterns that were holding clients back from achieving their outcome, that I realized why that was:

 

You can separate human being from human doing (I’ll show you how in a minute), but if you’ve given the power of decision whether you are valuable or not to others…then the moment something happens or someone says something, that self esteem will be destroyed in nano seconds.

 

So just clearing the confusion between human being and human doing isn’t enough. First, you need to help your client build a solid sense of inner authority.

 

Often, when your client experiences authority outside of themselves, they have a visual for that. The other day one of my clients experienced it as faceless figures that were standing behind her, towering over her. It made her feel small and hunched over.

 

 

So we need to clear that by separating the energy of authority from the image itself. Usually the image also has sounds and tone of voice attached to it.

 

I have my clients imagine themselves reaching out into the image and grabbing hold of the energy of authority. Then I slowly have them bring it inside of themselves, addressing any objections as they arise.

 

I’ll ask them where in their body they want to put that inner knowing of what is right or wrong for them and what their values and opinions on things are. Most often, it has a natural place. And then it’ll have a different kind of tone or energy to it. More encouraging. Kindly firm.

 

You can liken it to the sensation of deciding how much salt goes on your food. Unless you truly have an extreme external reference, you’ll have a clear internal feeling of what the preferred amount is for you.

 

We want a really strong state of inner authority, because we are going to bring that with us in the entire process.

 

If there is a really strong referent person or reference experience, you will need to work with this first, usually by putting the reference experience in the past (and building a new hierarchy of understandings about that situation) or by changing the location (size, color, proximity) of the person that the client is holding in mind in the mental space around them.

 

 

The next step is to access a state of acceptance. First thinking of something small and simple that you don’t necessarily like, but can easily shrug your shoulders at and say: “Oh well.”

 

And when that is strong enough, you look through the eyes of that acceptance at all the ways in which you’ve used your powers of thinking, feeling, speaking and behaving that you didn’t like. You have the authority to accept the mistakes you made, the thoughts and feelings that didn’t serve.

 

The thoughts and feelings you habitually have right now that you are struggling with and haven’t been able to shift just yet. Things others did to you or didn’t do. Said or didn’t say.

 

Because it’s just how you’ve used your powers. And you are so much more than your powers. You can just continue to bring acceptance to that.

 

This process can be easy for someone or they can really struggle with it. The beauty here is that you can help them accept the emotions that arise in the here and now as a result of going through this experience.

 

For example, your client might feel ashamed. OK, so then you bring acceptance to the shame and remind them that it is just an emotion and not who they are.

 

 

Once they’ve got a pretty strong feeling of acceptance, then you move onto appreciation. Again, you think of something small you can easily appreciate, so you can map it over to the self.

 

You look through the eyes of appreciation at the fact that you were given these amazing powers of though, emotion, word and action. As you look into the future and all the infinite possibilities that open up to you as a result of those powers, what can you appreciate about that?

 

The difference between acceptance and appreciation is that the first one builds self confidence and the second one builds self efficacy. The former having to do with what you are capable of doing and achieving right now, and the latter having to do with all the amazingly wild and crazy thins you’ll be able to create and achieve and experience in the future, knowing that you are able to learn and figure out how to use your powers to do so.

 

One important thing to point out here is that the state has to continue to stay strong, at a level 8 or higher. Otherwise it won’t have any impact. If the energy drops away, you go back to the small referent that you were using to access the state.

 

 

And lastly, you access a state of awe. That deep sense of amazement that you can have when you are staring into your newborn. The vastness of the ocean. The magnificence of the Universe and all the galaxies out there.

 

Pick something to stand in awe of and connect with that feeling fully and completely. Let your entire body fill with the sensation of “wow!” And then look through the eyes of this feeling at the fact that you are a human being, part of this amazing Universe.

 

The fact that your heart started beating just 5 weeks after conception, when it was only the size of a poppy seed. And that it started beating just for you…out of nowhere. All of a sudden that heartbeat was there.

 

I mean, isn’t that amazing??

 

You are divine perfection. You were born that way and that never changed. You just momentarily forgot about it. All were are doing is reconnecting you with that feeling so that you can take it with you everywhere you go and you (and you alone) get to decide to stay connected with this at all times. Unconditional love for who you are as a human being.

 

You can then take that with you into appreciation and notice how much more you can now appreciate about the powers you were given. And how much more you can accept, now that you know that your worth is a given.

 

Once you have gone through this entire process, you take this with you into a situation where you previously felt in fear of rejection or not being good enough. But now you have this with you. Notice how you feel differently. What does that open up for you?

 

Are you going to keep this?

 

 

I usually end the process with installing a distortion filter around the client.

 

Most people don’t know about cognitive distortions (habitual ways of thinking that really only serve to create negative emotions). As a result, they don’t have a way of recognizing it when they are distorting reality or when someone is throwing their own distorted thinking around like candy at the Thanksgiving Day parade.

 

I share with my clients the distortions that they are operating from (all-or-nothing thinking, blaming, personalizing) and how to recognize it. Then they are able to interrupt the thinking and choose a different thought. They are also able to leave someone else’s distorted thinking at their doorstep, so there’s no way it is going to affect them.

 

I have this process as a guided visualization for my clients so they can go through this daily, because as I mentioned before…this needs to be embodied fully. It needs to become part of their neurology. And that happens through repetition, provided they are fully connected with the feeling of it.

 

This process creates the safety your client (or you?) needs to lean into the discomfort of not knowing and the unknown without feeling the need to latch on to control, because their sense of self is no longer dependent on others.

 

It’s not longer at risk.

 

It calms down the nervous system and helps your client think clearly, because it gets them out of flight-fight-freeze mode.

 

This safety is needed to be able to access a flow of being, along with an attitude of optimism and trust in others. That’s the foundation your clients need to transcend into becoming the creator of their destiny.

 

My clients have successfully used this process (as part of a program, of course) for helping clients lose weight (because it’s never about the diet), build better relationships and set healthier boundaries, build the confidence to show up authentically in a job interview and land the job, create wealth and improve health and sleep.

 

With how I teach my clients to work, they no longer have to keep their fingers crossed to see if a process will fit, because they learn how to diagnose where the leverage point is and to then tailor the solution to it. The result is a very focused life-changing process that is easily repeatable no matter the topic or the client, for which you need less sessions and still make a bigger impact than ever before.

 

If you yourself are struggling to let go of control yourself and as a result not manifesting the life that you want for yourself OR if you want to be able to consistently take your clients through a deeply transformational, life-changing experience, pm me and we will chat to see if my upcoming 10 week program is for you.

 

If so, I’ll let you know exactly how you can secure your spot for the group that starts at the end of October.

 

With love and light,

 

Femke