Self-Doubt Spirals

What is this mid-life portal, and why do some of the most capable feel the least equipped?

They say beauty is wasted on youth. Could the same be said of confidence?

Something’s happening with the middle-aged crowd, and I wonder if this has always been the way of this life-stage (I’m new here) or if it’s exacerbated by social media and internet-induced self-perception dysmorphia, the cascading dominos of global horrors and/or just the overall capitalist machine relentlessly poking pain, asserting our inadequacies and irrelevance and selling the belief that if you’re having a hard time, it’s your fault.

It seems we’re in times where we need all the grown-ups in the room to give our gifts, offer our wisdom and mobilize within our communities. But what if we’re swirling in self-doubt, don’t know how, are freaked out, or frozen?

I’m surrounded by educated, intelligent, kind, and compassionate friends and colleagues, many of whom are trained, skilled, and wise practitioners in various fields and disciplines. They’ve done a ton of inner work.

They’ve developed bodies of work, have layered and impactful careers and know how to lead a meeting, a room, a movement. They’re complexity capable, justice-oriented, spiritually attuned and committed to wellbeing, connection and collective care.

They’re community organizers, parents, bosses, creatives, entrepreneurs, advocates. They call their representatives (or are representatives), share resources, help out their neighbours, other people’s children and make meals for folks in need. They’re funny, caring and concerned citizens who are continually leaning into growth edges with commitment and humility.

They’re arguably among the most skilled, loving, relational and capable people around when it comes to navigating uncertainty and tumult. The ones you turn to during a crisis, the ones you can have hard conversations with, the ones you’d recommend to others, the ones who can hold paradox and nuance, and will get in the deep with you.

They’re real, embodied, grown-ups.

And their self-doubt is through the roof.

Last week, one such person was sharing about a new stretching opportunity they’ve said yes to and the terror that’s accompanying them. Another friend who was there asked what the terror was about, and she said, “I just feel like I don’t have anything to offer.”

There was a pause.

Then both of us (kind-hearted, empathetic and compassionate friends that we are), simultaneously burst out laughing. It really seemed like the kindest and most obvious thing we could do since our friend has so much to offer, like seriously, a leader in her field, very wise and very skilled. Obviously, we stayed with her, didn’t just dismiss the fear, but we wanted her to feel how we truly see her.

This isn’t unique to her. It was like the sixth conversation with someone between the ages of 40 and 55 I had that week, who expressed the same thing. In my coaching practice, it was often folks in this life stage who seemed the most disoriented when it came to claiming their capacities, even when their experience, reputation and results lapped those of the younger generation coming up with vigour and confidence. And they often said it hadn’t always been like this, that the confidence loss felt new.

I have some thoughts and feelings about it.

I’m curious to hear from the elders here, ones who’ve passed through this part. Folks who are in their upper 60s and beyond. Did you feel like this at this age? Do you feel like this now? What do you attribute it to? If not experiencing it yourself, why not? Do you see it in your peers? I want to know about your experience! And for my fellow 40+, how are you faring, pals?

Here are a few thoughts…

Experience humbles us. The more you can see and understand, the more you realize how much you don’t see and understand. Great when this squashes arrogance. But confidence and self-assurance can be collateral damage. And while we may have had a bunch of success, we’ve also experienced a lot of failure. We know how quickly things can change and be lost, and we’ve likely internalized our failures as shortcomings. Whenever this creeps in for me, and I feel like I have nothing to say or offer, I think of how many buffoons are on the internet confidently spreading nonsense, and I’m like UUUHHHHH, go be a grown-up, Chela, make and say your shit.

Proximity and comparison are mind-f*cks. When people who seem to me like they’ve earned the right to be a lil’ arrogant are in a doubt spiral, there’s usually some kind of comparison going on, and they’re often comparing themselves to their contemporaries. How weird is that? To occupy the same rooms as people who are excelling, and by virtue of being in those rooms too, you wonder, who the hell am I? You’re in the room! We need to act like we’re in the room.

Another comparison that’s wild is comparing ourselves to our younger self (when I had more energy, more discipline, more courage) or to the potential of our future self (who I’m letting down, falling short of, will never pull off).

Then there’s highlight reels, where we compare our insides to others’ outsides, our worst days to others’ best projections. And between every post of someone selling their excellence is someone selling you what an old, irrelevant, falling-apart POS you are.

Certainty and posturing are disorienting. The internet exposes us to a lot of people making all sorts of claims. Some very confidently and very incorrectly. When someone communicates with confidence and certainty, it can be easy to go along, to assume they know what they’re talking about.

But we’re all catching on to how much this is used to push forward harmful rhetoric. Something I’ve noticed in thoughtful and informed people, particularly those who are tracking the context in which things arise, is that they have become almost allergic to certainty and posturing such that they’re constantly perspective-taking as a way to orient and ensure they’re not falling into reductive thinking, which can lead to self-forgetting or to a flattening of perspective, as though their lived experience, wisdom and expertise don’t have weight.

Compensatory patterns are unravelling. If you’ve been avoiding looking at your caca, the bills come due in your 40s. You can’t drink or spend or eat or fuck or deflect or avoid or whatever else you’ve used to move away from the pain or the mirror without consequence anymore.

But that doesn’t mean that the development gluttons in the crowd get a free pass. I’ve been engaged with personal growth and transformational change since the first time baggy wide-legged jeans were in style. Long before personal development became a cringy and questionable cash cow for internet grifters. I’m one of those insufferable a-holes who can legitimately claim “I’ve done my work”. And while we know it never ends (we’ve been toting that onion peeling metaphor since the early 90s), I didn’t expect to find the very things I thought were healthy and evolved strategies were in part compensatory patterns that become obstructions to living life and being of service in ways that matter.

UGH. The well of the self is bottomless. You never arrive, which you learned in meditation class when you were fifteen, and you’re learning it all over again!? The indignity.

Capacity and capabilities are upending. I was in a team meeting recently and said, “I really wish we worked together several years ago; I used to be on top of stuff like this.” It’s disorienting not to be able to get it up for things that used to come naturally or would be naturally prioritized, to feel like I just don’t have my shit together in certain ways. To be fair, I don’t have chronic migraines anymore, so I must be winning.

I’ve been on a bit of a tear these last few years, shedding ways of working, ways of moving through the world, things I used to feel like I needed to rise to, take on or handle that are just NOPES for me now. I’m more honouring of my style, my creative impulses, how my energy moves, and what I need.

The result is that certain things are growing, expanding, and taking off while others are withering away or falling to the bottom of the list. So many share this experience. It’s both liberating to move through the world in ways that feel more congruent and aligned, but killing off old and hard-won ways of being can feel like losing limbs, and that disorientation can shake confidence.

Biology/hormones and all that. I’m so tired of talking about peri-menopause and hormones because what the actual, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that so much seems to be changing in our bodies. I don’t want to be waving the flag of decline. I think a lot of these changes prime us to show up more powerfully (hello, lessening caretaking impulses and the feeling that I need to make sure everyone around me is happy and comfortable). But I have heard a lot of people share that self-doubt, anxiety and even paranoia have been symptoms of hormonal fluctuations.

If you want a simple solution to overcome your self-doubt and lead the way you’re called to, I have a course for that. Naw, just kidding, you’re fucked. JKJK, I’m on fire today! No, for real though, what’s the solution? Honestly, I think it’s community. I think it’s dragging our eyeballs away from our devices and growing and nurturing relationships with people who see, know and honour who we are. Those who will laugh at us when we say we have nothing to offer and help point our compass back to what matters.

The toxic side of the personal growth industry is the part where we try to endlessly improve ourselves out of some strange quest for perfection or belonging, as though that growth is meant to serve the individual instead of it being about growing our capacity to be wise, joyful, reciprocally contributing members of our communities.

I feel like a lot of my work right now is acknowledging that I’m a grown-up in the room and that that comes with certain responsibilities if I’m willing to claim them. My mental and emotional health is my responsibility, and it’s hard to tend to in isolation. If I feel the limits of my capacity (because I’m going into freeze, or dissociative patterns, or because the onslaught is dysregulating), I can take breaks, seek help and collaborate with others so that I’m able to mobilize and lead within my communities and circles of influence.

I think one of the most helpful things for me is acknowledging my partiality. I’m great at some things. I suck at others. My sucking does not negate my greatness. I neither need to inflate myself nor diminish myself. We aren’t and won’t be all the things, and I think that’s one of the gifts of mid-life is really doubling down on your you-ness and trusting that we’re all part of an interconnected web.

What I notice when engaging with others who are questioning themselves is that I want to lovingly shake them. I feel the impulse to yell, “We don’t have time for you to doubt what you have; we need you to just bring it!” Honestly, I’m not sure that urgency is helpful. But the sentiment is meant to be encouraging.

I guess what this long exploration is trying to do is to help orient those who are holding back out of self-doubt and fear. There are good reasons for that. Also, we need grown-ups to be grown-ups, and at a certain life stage, I think we need to band together and say “Welp, we’ve got what we’ve got and we don’t have what we don’t have, let’s do what we can.”

Love,

Chela