Why insight alone isn’t enough
The last few weeks we have been exploring the challenges most women face when it comes to knowing, then trusting, what they want. We are really good at noticing what we don’t want, but when it comes to naming what we want, we freeze.
But how can we create the world we want if we can’t even name it?
And how can we name what it is if we don’t know what gets in the way?
Recently, I was in a panel discussion about creativity. There was a recognition in the conversation that women create differently than men – that our desire for depth is only capped by our fear of what’s possible, which we conveniently avoid by calling it something more palpable, like perfectionism. Because perfectionism, we have been taught to believe, is safer than possibility.
The problem with perfectionism is that it is unattainable.
So why do women constantly convince themselves that it has to be perfect or not at all?
Perfectionism is a trauma response. It's how we've been culturally programmed to protect ourselves from vulnerability and showing up as the truth of who we really are.
So we learn to hide and pretend to keep ourselves "safe." We tell ourselves the familiar story, rooted in fear and held in place by shame: if we show the truth that we carry, we will be punished.
That punishment shows up as being labeled "too much," mocked or dismissed, excluded from belonging, having our truth minimized or pathologized. We get told we're selfish, dramatic, unrealistic.
And when the external world responds this way, we begin to punish ourselves before they have a chance to punish us - which is the most dangerous response of all because it creates internal disconnect to the point that we don’t give ourselves permission to know what we know.
So we self-silence, second-guess our own knowing, dull our desire before anyone else can. We stay nice, agreeable and "fine." We call it perfectionism instead of fear, patience instead of paralysis.
This creates an impossible bind: risk external punishment for being authentic, or guarantee internal destruction through pretending.
“When we separate ourselves from our creation, we lose all capacity to affect its unfolding. We created this – and to pretend otherwise only leaves us at the mercy of this unclaimed/orphaned manifestation. In that, we lose ourselves into the victims we believe ourselves to be and are swallowed up by our own powerlessness.”
When we abandon the truth of who we are, we will always find ourselves at the mercy of the pretence we've created.
Safety, after all, is an inside job.
It can be a challenge to face our internal world for what it is because fear is ever-present. But if we don’t face it, we will be stuck in a freeze response that keeps us captive to our reality even though the years go by…
Discovering internal safety is the key to our emergence. This isn’t abstract or theoretical. This is possible when you and I stop treating ourselves like we are something broken in need of fixing. This is what happens when we create the Space for safety in our body – our body begins to reveal, and we trust what it is saying.
“For years, it felt like: don’t do anything. Just keep everything exactly as it is. If I stay still enough, maybe the chaos will stop. Just freeze. Just freeze. And maybe you’ll survive the storm. That’s what years of my life felt like.
I avoided all of it because I didn’t feel safe enough in myself to engage. I felt like I didn’t exist.
The shift came when I started trusting the small cues — yes, pick this or don’t pick this. Asking myself, what do I really want in this moment?
Now I’m able to show up for myself and show up differently in conversations. The frantic, broken feeling isn’t there anymore. Everything feels easy. It’s just easy.”
This is what Lisa said during our client reflection following our work together.
You see, possibility can only be engaged when we trust the messages of our body. When we don’t know how to create internal safety, we default to pretending. This keeps us in the familiarity of performance, management, or playing nice. Over time, that performance deprives us of our aliveness, our clarity, and intimate connection with the truth of who we are.
This is why insight alone can never lead to safety. Even if you know what you want, it won’t take shape if you don’t feel safe enough to intentionally create it.
For some of us, there comes a point where pretending stops being sustainable. And self-destruction is no longer an option.
That’s the threshold this work is designed for.
If you’re curious about learning how to listen for your truth without negotiating with it, you can book a short conversation to feel into whether working together is right for you.
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