274. Building Confidence with Mindful Acceptance (even when anxiety, self-doubt, & the harsh inner-critic show up)
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[00:00:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome back to Joy Lab.
[00:00:10] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And I'm Aimee Prasek. We are in our Element of Confidence right now, and really getting into how we can build up the skill of Confidence. Not necessarily the feeling of confidence all the time, but the skill. So last episode, we introduced this definition of confidence as a trust or willingness to act, stemming from Dr. Russ Harris' book, _The Confidence Gap_ and his definition of confidence. He wrote, "The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later." So how do we build up our confidence? How can we act with that kind of trust in ourselves and the willingness to put in some effort toward things that matter to us, even when we don't feel confident?
As we noted last Episode, we're gonna lean on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy strategies, follow a bit of Dr. Harris' framework, and with that guidance, we can look to the practice of mindful acceptance as a first step toward building more confidence.
Mindfulness is really about our ability to pay attention on purpose without judgment in the present moment . We're noticing rather than judging. It's a skill for us to build. And acceptance is allowing and accepting our inner experiences, the emotions and feelings, the thoughts and sensations that arise. And in our context right now, those things that arise in those moments [when] we wish we were, instead, feeling confident, usually. So the uncomfortable feelings like nervousness, embarrassment, fear. Not bad things, but certainly uncomfortable things. And we wanna be present with them and allow them rather than fight them, so that they don't snag us and keep us cycling.
[00:02:17] Henry Emmons, MD: Mm-hmm. You know, the whole idea of acceptance, I think, is so often misunderstood. So let's talk just a little bit about that.
[00:02:29] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah.
[00:02:30] Henry Emmons, MD: Acceptance is not resignation. It's not saying, "Well, I'm anxious about this, so I guess I won't try." That would be giving up. That's not acceptance. And acceptance is not necessarily agreement. you're not saying, "My anxiety is telling me I can't do this, and that's true." So you're not agreeing with the anxiety. You're not believing the doubt. What acceptance actually means, I think, is something like this: "I notice that I'm feeling anxious right now. I notice that doubt is present. These are uncomfortable sensations in my body. That's where I'm starting from, and I'm gonna take action anyway." It's like you're acknowledging that there's a passenger on the bus β the fear, the self-doubt, the self-consciousness β but you are not letting that passenger drive the bus. And here's why that matters for confidence, I think. So many of us believe we need to feel good β in this instance, calm, certain, assured β before we can act. And as we said last time, that's backward. What we actually need is the willingness to act even when we don't feel good, even when we feel doubtful, or scared. And that's really where confidence comes from. Not from feeling it, but from developing the skill of moving forward despite those feelings of discomfort.
[00:04:15] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes. I am just remembering... I dunno why this β clearly it still bothers me β this experience I had. It was an interview for this fellowship that I was really excited about getting, and the person who was interviewing me was [an] expert in behavior change, and I was... I was, like, on point. I knew all my behavior change theories; I knew it all, I was ready for it; my confidence was soaring 'cause I knew he was gonna ask me about behavior change, and then he was gonna watch me just tell him everything about it.
[00:04:48] Henry Emmons, MD: Masterfully. Hahaha.
[00:04:49] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And then he asked me this stupid question about whether or not I would buy a house in Boston or something. It was completely out of left field. I was renting at the time and very anti, like, housing market, and I β my confidence dropped immediately, and I β the fear came up. And every sensation we just noted here β like all of it. All of it. Like, pterodactyls in my stomach. Not butterflies, pterodactyls. Red [face]. I started talking to make those feelings go away. I mean, you guys, the interview β there was supposed to be like six questions; I spoke the entire time, for 30 minutes, on this weird, like, tirade [or] monologue on housing, and then he said, "Well, looks like we're done," after 30 minutes. I, like, blacked out trying to make those feelings go away. I knew β I just look back at that, I'm like β if I could've accepted [that] this is uncomfortable and I can still be here, it would've been a totally different story.
[00:06:01] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, did they, hahaha, did they offer you the fellowship?
Fellowship
[00:06:04] Aimee Prasek, PhD: No. Hahaha.
[00:06:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Did they offer you some property in Boston? Hahaha.
[00:06:08] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Oh, God, no. They're like, "Leave. You've lost it." Haha. Yeah, it was hilarious now that I look back, but it was definitely a moment where I just wanted to squash all those feelings, and you can't talk them down. [I] learned that. Even after 30 minutes of going on and on, they just got worse. It was β I still feel it now.
[00:06:28] Henry Emmons, MD: Hahaha. Digging a hole.
[00:06:29] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, confidence as a feeling, it did not happen then. I had it, and then I lost it. Anyway, so we're working on how we could do that a little differently, right? Do you have a story to share, Henry? Perhaps?
[00:06:45] Henry Emmons, MD: Yes. I don't think it's quite as dramatic as that, though. That's good. That's really good. But yes, here, I'll share a story.
So this is recent. I had to give a talk to a large group, and I've done this so many times. I've given a lot of talks. You would think I wouldn't get nervous anymore, but I do.
[00:07:06] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah.
[00:07:07] Henry Emmons, MD: I can actually feel, you know, genuinely anxious. The kind that makes you want to avoid whatever is making you feel that way. But because I've done this so many times, I have a sense for how to practice mindful acceptance. So I was able to feel that nervousness, and acknowledge it, " There's anxiety. That's okay. Anxiety does not mean I can't do this." In fact, and I've noticed the truth of this, a little bit of anxiety might even make me a little bit sharper. And then I was able to walk up there and give the talk. And once I start, usually the nervousness goes way down. It might not go away completely, but that doesn't even matter because I wasn't waiting for it to go away completely. I was just moving forward, you know, with it anyway.
And I think what's really interesting is that as I started speaking and saw people engaging, or nodding, or just kind of resonating with some of what I was saying, then something shifts. The nervousness doesn't altogether disappear, but it just very much goes into the background, like background noise, and my attention is able to shift fully to the content, to the connection with the audience, and in that moment I would say I felt genuine confidence. Not because the anxiety was gone, but because I was succeeding, in my mind, despite it. And I think that's really the skill we're talking about. Mindful acceptance doesn't mean that, you know, you don't feel these uncomfortable feelings you're talking about. It means you see clearly what's going on, including the fact that inside yourself you feel uncomfortable. You don't deny it. You don't sugarcoat it. You don't avoid it. Accepting it's there is really the only starting point that works because it allows you to choose your actions no matter what's happening.
[00:09:30] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. You know, you said, Henry, a little bit of that anxiety maybe helps you. There's great research on performance with anxiety, and it's β guys, here's the bell curve again. A little bit of anxiety, a moderate amount, or manageable amount is really good for performance. Too little, not so great. Too much, yeah, not so great. So there β you know, fighting that anxiety is really not necessarily the goal. Certainly if it's, you know, going beyond a line it's something we need to address perhaps, but a little bit of anxiety...
[00:10:07] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Even a moderate amount...
[00:10:08] Henry Emmons, MD: it's kind of a good thing.
[00:10:09] Aimee Prasek, PhD: It can get you going, in a good way; it can increase performance. So this really is a skill, to be able to choose your actions, as you noted as well. Without the practice, without the choice, we can get stuck in what feels like, kind of this medium place I like to think of. That's a nod to one of my favorite shows, _The Good Place_. So β I love that show. This... is me sitting in that chair trying to do my fellowship interview and not wanting to experience any of the uncomfortable feelings that I was having, right? The medium place is where we push all of that away. It's like the most boring waiting room where your favorite beer or ice cream is served warm, and your favorite song is, like, covered by a middle school marching band; it just gets piped through the speakers on continuous loop. Like, the middle space is where we just push it all away, right? It feels kind of safe in the moment, but who wants to live there with, like, warm beer and marching band music all the time? There's a more scientific term for this, though. It's called experiential avoidance. So experiential avoidance is when we use a lot of effort to avoid or to suppress uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations in an attempt to feel more comfortable in the short term, essentially. We all do this. It's very much a protective strategy. It's just that that protective strategy instinct is maybe working too hard at times, and it keeps us from trying something new, or creating a different path, or creating a new opportunity, or having a hard conversation, or sitting with uncertainty, or you know, feeling like you might be in a little bit of a vulnerable position with somebody judging you. That tendency, that instinct to avoid that can certainly take over.
And it's kind of ironic because this avoidance often boosts the scary power of the thing we're avoiding. We don't wanna feel a certain way. We don't wanna feel embarrassed. We don't wanna doubt ourselves. We don't wanna feel insecure. We don't wanna feel afraid, all that stuff. And so we avoid taking action, and voila, we didn't feel any of that uncomfortable stuff 'cause we didn't do it. And our most basic wiring is like, "Sweet, problem solved. Avoid it." And we continue to reinforce this idea that we can't handle the activity or the situation; that this avoidance is a wiser route. So just stay in the waiting room, sit back with your warm beer and the marching band music, then you won't feel those uncomfortable sensations.
Again, we all do this, but that [belief] may not be true, or what you want. Our body, our brain, is amazing, but it's kind of blunt, at least if we haven't trained this stuff. It's blunt in how it distinguishes the fear of survival versus the fear of public speaking, for example, or having that hard conversation, or the fear of starting a whole new career in your 40s. Like, the same alarm bells go off. So we have to train. We have to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. We're training a willingness really. Not enthusiasm for discomfort, but practicing being open to experiencing what may feel uncomfortable; practicing that mindful acceptance because we understand it's part of the process of building those skills, and confidence.
[00:13:59] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah. Yeah, I think what you're describing, this experiential avoidance, is one of the most common patterns that I see in my work. Yeah. And it, you know, it makes total sense. Your nervous system is trying to protect you. It's saying, "This situation triggered pain before. Let's not go there again." But there's a problem in that, obviously. Avoidance works in the short term β you don't apply for the job, so you don't feel the fear of rejection. You don't have the conversation, so you don't feel the awkwardness. You don't try new things, so you don't... you just don't risk failure. And your brain takes that to mean, "Great strategy. Let's keep doing it." But this avoidance just accumulates. The thing you're avoiding gets bigger and scarier, and your world gets smaller. Anxiety actually increases, it doesn't decrease, when you do this. And now you've also sacrificed something that you might actually have wanted, you know, like the job, or the relationship, or just simply growth.
So let's talk a little bit about fear of failure and fear of rejection, 'cause I think these are things that drive a lot of this avoidance. Fear of rejection is brutal. It comes from a very real place. We humans are social creatures, and rejection can feel like an absolute threat to our survival. And so a lot of us, a lot of us, avoid situations where we might be rejected. I just saw a study β this is almost hard to believe β that [suggests] social anxiety has gone up 71% in just recent years. I don't know if that's post-pandemic or what, but this is such a common β it is by far the most common form of kinda, common mental health problems.
Fear of failure is kinda similar. Failure feels like a threat to our identity and so we avoid situations where we might fail. But there's a neurological reality here. The brain can't distinguish between actual survival threats and social threats. They activate the same alarm system. So your amygdala is screaming just as loudly about a job interview as it would about your life being threatened, you know, in some instances.
The good news is you can train your nervous system. You, and only you, have the ability to do that. Every time you move forward even when fear is there, even if you just move forward a little bit, you are proving to your brain that you can handle it. You are building a new neural pathway. And you're building confidence. Again, it's not the absence of fear, it's the willingness to act in the presence of fear.
[00:17:24] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes. Yeah, I β you said the amygdala is screaming. I wanna... I wanna, like, identify that voice a little bit more too, that might be going on amidst experiential avoidance. We could call it the harsh inner critic; negative self-talk. It's kind of, I don't know, the amygdala doing its thing in some ways, having a conversation.
[00:17:49] Henry Emmons, MD: Hahaha. I think of it more as screaming, but...
[00:17:52] Aimee Prasek, PhD: yeah. Thank you. It's not a polite conversation. I'm sure we can all relate to this, when this β like, a situation comes up, something that we wanna do, we don't feel confident, then the voice really starts going. It's just β ugh, God, no, I can't... I can't shake this fellowship interview that I was sitting in. I remember when I was β and the only thing that really stands out as well is, besides how uncomfortable I was, was as I was giving my weird conversation, my weird monologue on the housing market, I was also having a monologue in my head discussing how he was perceiving my answers. And it was like, "Oh my God, he thinks it's bad. Oh no, it's getting worse. Oh, he's looking at you like, 'What are you saying?' Oh, no, he's immediately put, like, a check next to your name, like never again invite." Like, so it's like two, you know β the route of conversation out my mouth, which was trying to suppress my anxiety, and then the conversation happening in my head, which was critiquing my answers. It was terrible, right? So, and I'm sure, you know β and then you're like, "What did I say?" [and] I don't even know, 'cause I was up here thinking about what he was thinking of me, right? You just can't do it. It's exhausting. And so I'm sure you've had those thoughts arise and that monologue happening, you know, "you're not smart enough, you'll embarrass yourself, you're not as good as so-and-so," all of these voices.
First, I think what's important to note, it might be excessively harsh, but maybe there's some accuracy to it. Like, maybe you don't have the skills yet for something. There might be truth there, and that can be really good information if you're about to, like, let's say, create a new medical device, or change a tire, or run a marathon. If you don't know about those things or haven't trained, then that information matters. That self-awareness, self-assessment, is helpful. The problem comes when we let that information keep us from trying, as we've said, from maybe signing up for that walking 5K, or taking a class to learn more about something, or reading a book or whatever. Or [when] that monologue just gets so critical that you can't get the good information out of it because it is so harsh. So the information can give us some wisdom on what are some smaller steps to take. We'll talk about that in some later Episodes. And, you know, it's that maybe uncomfortable, not so pretty, fall on your butt kinda learning that you need to do, which can definitely stir up that feeling of failure. "Oh, I have to start from the beginning. People are gonna think I'm a... you know, I haven't done this at all. I haven't learned it at all." Learning can be rough. It can look rough.
The second thing is that this voice might be completely wrong, [and] you do indeed have the skills. And so we have to tease apart our accurate self-assessment from the voice of a harsh inner critic, because our harsh inner critic is very good at pretending to be the voice of accurate self-assessment. And the inner critic is usually a voice we picked up a long time ago, something we've absorbed, like an adult who spoke that way. They may have been super critical to you or to themselves. Maybe you witnessed; you watched them just talk to themselves that way, in that harsh, critical way. But it is often a voice we've recorded in the past and are continuing to press play on now.
So we'll dig into working with these thoughts more, but mindful acceptance reminds us that we can notice these voices and accept that they are here rather than fighting them or avoiding them. And in the noticing, and in the accepting, we create some space, and we retain some energy, and some focus, some attention, rather than getting so wrapped up in that negative self-talk.
[00:22:04] Henry Emmons, MD: So I think the key to working with that inner critic is pretty straightforward actually. It is simply realizing that it's not you. Now, so, it's straightforward, but it's not β I realize it's not that easy to do.
[00:22:26] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah.
[00:22:26] Henry Emmons, MD: Because it feels like you; it sounds like you...
[00:22:31] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Right.
[00:22:32] Henry Emmons, MD: But it is not your authentic voice. It is a voice, as you said, that you have internalized, typically from, you know, someone in your past, or from a culture that, you know, that's critical all the time, or sometimes your own attempt to motivate yourself through fear and shame, which probably you found doesn't work. But it is not your true voice, because your authentic voice is a whole lot gentler. It's also clearer, and it is not trying to hurt you or push you into action through goading in some way. So whenever you hear something like, "You're not good enough," or "You're going to embarrass yourself," or "Everyone else is better than you," that's the inner critic. And the skill, and really the primary skill you need, is simply to recognize it as such. Simply recognizing it takes its power away.
So here's how you can start to do that. Does it attack you? The inner critic attacks. Your true voice doesn't, ever. Is it trying to scare you? The inner critic uses fear and shame as motivation, and your true voice doesn't because it doesn't need to. Is it absolute or extreme? Because the inner critic often deals in black and white, "you are a complete failure. You'll never be able to do this." Whereas your true voice is way more nuanced, "this is hard. I'm learning. I'm not there yet."
Once you recognize it as the inner critic and see that it's not the truth, and it's not even your voice, it's just a pattern that got wired in, then something shifts and you can say, "Ah, there's that voice again." Just like you might notice your neighbor's dog barking. You just acknowledge it without letting it run your life. Now, sometimes the inner critic might have a grain of truth. You don't have the skills yet, perhaps, or maybe you will be a little bit awkward in that new social situation, because most people are. And maybe you're not as experienced as the person you're comparing yourself [to]. There can be a little element of truth, but the inner critic takes that grain of truth and inflates it into a bigger story about you and your worth. And that's where we need to learn to set that voice aside. So if the voice is saying, "You don't have marathon training experience, so you shouldn't try," well, that's partly true. You probably shouldn't run a full marathon without training for it, but the solution isn't to avoid marathons forever. The solution is to train. And if the voice is saying something like, "You'll be awkward in that social situation," that might be partly true as well, but that's not gonna kill you. You will learn from it. So is it worth it to connect with people who matter to you? Absolutely. So, we listen to the voice, we extract any useful information, and then we let the rest go. That's mindful acceptance. Just noticing the voice, seeing that it's there, accepting that it's there, but not accepting what it says. You don't have to fight it. You don't have to believe it. All you have to do is see it, acknowledge it, and let it be there while you move forward anyway.
[00:26:31] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Hmm. Those questions that we can ask to kind of determine the inner critic versus our true voice β I'm gonna put those in the show notes. Those are really helpful. So, head over there to have a list of those. And if you're in the Joy Lab Program, head over there for an Experiment. You'll find those same questions available to you and then an Experiment to work on this more. Such an essential skill, mindful acceptance, not just for confidence; like for life, for all the things.
Now, next Episode, we'll build on this mindful acceptance and start working more with these thoughts that rise up. When we realize they are there, that they're just thoughts, that's huge, but then what? That's what we'll talk about.
Until then, I wanna share three bits of wisdom that kind of build on each other beautifully in the same way that our Confidence work is doing, I hope. Here it is.
First from Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn: "Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing." And from Dr. Carl Jung: "The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely." To which Dr. Carl Rogers might say, "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
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