You have a good idea in the meeting. You can feel it sitting there.
Then someone else says something close to it, and the moment passes. Later you replay it on the drive home and wonder why you stayed quiet.
Plenty of capable women know this feeling well. It shows up in team meetings, pay reviews, job interviews and the simple act of asking a manager for help. For some people, working on the beliefs behind it with a practitioner such as Awaken Hypnotherapy, a Perth hypnotherapy practice that offers sessions for confidence and self-esteem, becomes part of the answer.
This post looks at why speaking up can feel so hard, and some practical things you can try this week.
Confidence and self-esteem are two different things
The two words get used as if they mean the same thing. They don’t quite.
Self-confidence is your belief that you can do a particular task. You might feel sure of yourself running a spreadsheet and shaky giving a presentation.
Self-esteem is broader. It is how you value yourself as a person. Healthdirect describes low self-esteem as including harsh self-criticism, focusing on flaws and finding it hard to accept compliments.
This matters at work. If your confidence is low in one area, practice and skill-building often help. If the problem sits deeper, in a quiet sense that your view doesn’t count, extra skills alone may not change much.
Where the hesitation often comes from
Most people who hold back at work are not short of ideas. They are managing a fear.
The fear might be of sounding silly. It might be of being judged, or of being seen as pushy. For some, it traces back to early experiences, such as being told to be quiet at school, being teased, or growing up in a home where speaking out caused trouble.
Those early lessons can stick around long after they stop being useful. Your adult mind knows the meeting is safe. Your body still reacts as if it isn’t, with a racing heart, a hot face and a mind that suddenly goes blank.
That gap between what you know and how you feel is where a lot of the frustration lives.
Signs it is affecting your working life
Low confidence at work doesn’t always look obvious. It can hide inside habits that seem sensible on the surface.
- Rehearsing a simple comment so many times that the chance to say it is gone
- Saying “this might be a silly question” before asking something perfectly reasonable
- Turning down chances to present, lead a project or apply for a promotion
- Working long hours to prove your worth instead of asking for support
- Feeling like a fraud, even after years of good feedback
If a few of these sound familiar, you are in good company. Noticing the pattern is a useful first step.
Small changes you can start with
You don’t need a personality overhaul to speak up more often. Small, repeated steps tend to work better than one brave leap.
Start by speaking early in a meeting. The longer you wait, the bigger the moment feels. A short comment or question in the first ten minutes takes the pressure off for the rest of the session.
Prepare one point, not five. Before a meeting, jot down the one thing you most want to say. Keep it to a sentence or two.
Drop the softening phrases. Words like “just”, “sorry” and “I might be wrong but” make your point sound smaller than it is. Try saying the idea plainly and see what happens. Usually, nothing bad does.
Keep a short list of wins. Write down the times you handled something well, or got good feedback. On a bad day, reading it back gives your inner critic some actual evidence to argue with.
Talk to someone you trust. A mentor or a colleague who has seen your work can give you a fairer view of yourself than your own worried mind does.
Looking after the stress around it
Confidence is hard to find when you are running on empty. Poor sleep, constant rushing and skipped meals all make the nervous system more jumpy.
A few slow breaths before you walk into a meeting can help settle your body. So can a short walk at lunch, or a few minutes away from your screen between calls.
These are simple things. They won’t fix a deep belief about your worth. They do give you a calmer starting point, and that makes the other steps easier.
When the old beliefs keep winning
Some women try all of the practical tips and still feel stuck. They know exactly what to do. They just can’t make themselves do it when the moment comes.
That is often a sign the block sits below conscious thinking. Hypnotherapy is one approach some people use to work at that level. Awaken Hypnotherapy’s confidence page describes combining hypnosis with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and mindfulness to help clients let go of limiting beliefs and build new, more helpful ones.
Hypnotherapy isn’t the right fit for everyone, and it doesn’t replace medical or mental health care. If low self-esteem is affecting your mood, sleep or daily life, speak with your GP or a mental health professional first. They can help you work out what support makes sense for you.
What to look for in a practitioner
If you decide to explore hypnotherapy, take your time choosing who you see.
Look for someone who explains clearly how they work and what a session involves. Ask whether they offer a first conversation before you commit. Awaken Hypnotherapy, for example, offers a free 30-minute consultation, with sessions at its Alfred Cove rooms or online by Zoom.
A good practitioner won’t promise overnight change. They will listen, ask questions about your situation and be honest about what they can and can’t help with.
Trust your gut, too. You should feel safe and respected from the first conversation.
Speaking up as a skill you build
Speaking up is not a fixed trait that some people have and others don’t. It grows with practice, and it grows faster when you feel calm and supported.
Start small this week. Say one thing in your next meeting, without apologising for it. Notice how it felt, and notice that the world kept turning.
Write it on your list of wins. Then do it again next week.
If you find the same old fear keeps getting in the way, that is not a personal failing. It may simply mean it is time to get some help working on what sits underneath it.