A friend of mine is working on starting a podcast.  She expressed frustration around not being able to think clearly whenever she tries to read her notes on points to cover in the podcast.  She mentioned that she struggles with dyslexia and this issue is worse than usual.  It’s like her brain gets scrambled when she’s trying to use her notes to stay on track.  Things go better if she doesn’t use notes and just talks her way through the podcast, hoping she hits all of the planned points. 

Over the time that I’ve known her, she’s mentioned a couple of times that she has had, what some would call a “crappy childhood and awful adult experiences” as well.  She’s done lots of teaching while being recorded on video which was turned into a course, so I don’t think she’s “camera shy.”  I do know that the Podcast will be in English, while I believe the videos were in Spanish, a second language in which she has been immersed for decades.  Not only is podcasting new for her, but this podcast represents stepping out in a new direction as part of her retirement and back to her native English language.

While I don’t really know exactly what is going on for her, I’ve got some guesses that I’ll share here.  In some ways I think her experience is related to the yesterday’s topic.  I believe that lack of visual feedback cues is a key that is triggering the fear responses in this case as well as for yesterday’s scenario.

First, her podcast is speaking out, in English (the language of her childhood) about a topic (healing from abuse, especially the kinds of childhood abuse she endured) which is a difficult to begin with.

Second, based on the abuser being a family member (it most often is), as a child it probably was unsafe to “speak up about” what was happening to her.  And if she did speak up about it, she was probably discounted and dismissed.

Third, by moving from Spanish to English, the “barrier” is being removed that may have prevented some people (from her childhood) from knowing what she was talking about so passionately.  So there may be some (subconscious and conscious) fear around being judged or shunned for talking about helping people heal from the very sorts of things she endured in childhood.

When I wrap it all together, I come up with “it’s not safe to clearly speak my truth in an organized way because I may be judged, and dismissed, or otherwise ‘made wrong’ for doing so.”  That’s a pretty stressful place to be contemplating and give the topic and the “reveal” it’s not unexpected that thinking clearly is a challenge!  One’s subconscious mind, which is VERY interested in staying safe, might be trying to keep her safe by attempting to stop her from taking actions which IT sees as dangerous.  And it may be doing so by biologically moving out of clear thinking and moving toward a fight-flight-freeze response where “logic and thinking” is not part of “REACTING to stay safe.”

So using that as the foundational guess at what’s going on, I’ve put together a Tap-Along video to address some of the aspect that I’ve guessed are in play.

While this scenario may not match what you’re dealing with, I would encourage you to Tap-Along as you watch this video so that you can borrow the benefits of this content as it may apply to any small sliver of your life.

Thanks for watching, and PLEASE COMMENT below!   I’m looking forward to reading what you write!