On today’s episode of Period Story podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Trisha Barker, a life coach who helps people manage and overcome imposter syndrome. Listen to hear our conversation about Trisha’s endometriosis journey, how she fought for a diagnosis, how she manages the endometriosis pain, how she’s incorporated menstrual cycle awareness into her day to day work life and of course, her first period.
Trisha says that when she was shocked when she first got her period. She had a stomachache and thought to herself: “Am I dying?”. Her mum was there to reassure her and explain to her what happened. Trisha says that she felt really embarrassed and ashamed about what was happening to her and it took her until her forties to get past the shame.
Trisha went on a long journey of trying to deal with her heavy and painful periods, for years using the pill to do this. She eventually decided that she didn’t want to be on the pill because she didn’t believe it was good for her health. After she came off the pill, her period pain boomeranged back.
Listen to hear what happened when Trisha tried to get the bottom of what was behind her excruciating period pain and the moment where she refused to leave her GP’s office until he gave her a solution that didn’t involve more pills.
Trisha explains that coming off the pill helped her connect with her menstrual cycle. She says she wanted to be back in tune with her own body. Trisha shares how she was able to spot patterns through her menstrual cycles and adapt her work accordingly.
Trisha shares some advice for people struggling with imposter syndrome and the key questions they need to ask themselves to move past it. She says that we can ask ourselves better questions and start to find evidence to prove that our imposter doesn’t know everything. Trisha says that when you change what you believe about yourself, you change how you show up in the world. Thank you, Trisha!
Get in touch with Trisha:
.
TRISHA’S BIO
Founder of the Imposter Syndrome Solution, Trisha is a Life Coach and NLP Practitioner who is on a mission to help people stop doubting their abilities and believe in themselves, so they can thrive in their career and life.
Trisha’s work brings together her training as a Life Coach and NLP Practitioner, a 20 + year career in Human Resources working for some of the largest FTSE 100 companies in the UK and her own personal pursuit of dissolving imposter syndrome and focusing on her personal wellbeing.
She works with organisations and individuals to help them understand how Imposter Syndrome is impacting their business and careers, whilst helping them to build a toolkit to manage and overcome Imposter Syndrome.
.
.
LISTEN IN APPLE PODCASTS
.
LISTEN IN SPOTIFY
.
LISTEN IN GOOGLE PODCASTS
.
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: On today’s episode, we have Trisha Barker, founder of the Imposter Syndrome Solution. Trisha is a life coach and NLP practitioner who is on a mission to help people stop belittling their abilities and believe in themselves so they can thrive in their career and life. She works with organisations and individuals to help them understand how imposter syndrome is impacting their business and careers, whilst helping them to build a toolkit to manage and overcome imposter syndrome. Welcome to the show.
Trisha: Hi, thanks for having me.
Le’Nise: So let’s get right into it. Can you tell me the story of your very first period?
Trisha: Yeah. A little bit of a blur. I can’t remember the exact age. I think it was about 11 or 12. So very, I see that as a young age to start. And I’d been at a friend’s sleep over. It was a friend’s birthday. We’d all gone to have a sleepover. And I remember having really bad stomach pains. But I didn’t want to leave because it was this party. But in the end, the girl’s mum had to ring my mum to come and collect me. I went home and just thought I had a stomachache. And then I actually went to the toilet at some point and saw blood. And I remember at the time, thinking, “Am I dying?”. Well, I, I if if I was taught about periods beforehand, at that moment in time, I didn’t remember any of it. Like I just didn’t know what was happening to me. And I remember calling my mum and my mum coming in and saying, “it’s OK, you’ve just started your period, here are some sanitary pads.” And that was my literal experience.
Le’Nise: So your mind just went blank in that moment?
Trisha: Thinking back now. I’m not sure whether it went blank or I’d never had. I can’t remember whether we touched on these subjects at school. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with my mom where this was normalised for me. I can’t remember. I just remember at the time being so shocked that I thought I was dying.
Le’Nise: And then what happened after you got over your initial shock?
Trisha: We just didn’t know, in the house, and it’s really weird because I was brought up in a house full of older sisters, just so it wasn’t a subject we spoke about. You know, I was given the sanitary towels, told it would happen each month, and then that was it, really. And then you just carried on. And like I said, I was quite young. So starting to have periods at a really young age at high school was quite a horrible thing. Like it was. I felt so shameful. I don’t know whether other people feel like that, but you’ve got this thing that’s happening to you and you don’t really understand what’s happening. And you’ve got to go around your day to day thing. We know that actually the energy and how you feel at that time, you don’t really want to be going out there into the world, but you’ve got to go out. And back in those days, it were really big, fat, thick sanitary pads. So you’re trying to wear those in your school uniform and you had a skirt on, so you felt a little bit like vulnerable. So, yeah, it’s just I just remember that at that time in my life, I just felt like they were horrible and I felt really embarrassed and shameful about it.
Le’Nise: How long do you think it took you to get over that shame? Get past that shame?
Trisha: Oh, till I was in my forties. Oh, yeah. Because I think you go from school, then you go to college or whatever career path you take, and then you go into the workplace and in the workplace, it’s still a thing that we don’t talk about. I always say this to people. You know, you used to put your Tampax up your sleeve to go to the toilet, you just, in the workplace, it’s another taboo subject. So in school and in the workplace, it’s just as women we’re trying to hide this thing that happens each month. We’re trying to be, peppy, you know, and act like our energy is high when actually we feel really low in energy. And yeah, I just think it’s this whole thing until I was in probably my 40s and started to understand about periods, then that was it. I just I will talk about it to anybody and everybody know that.
Le’Nise: I want to go back to what you said about you growing in a house with your mum up in a house with your mum and your older sister. But it wasn’t really spoken about. Why do you think that is? Why do you think you didn’t have that? That those conversations?
Trisha: It’s an interesting one. I’m not really sure because we are very open about lots of subjects.
I don’t know whether it was the time.
Whether it’s the education now that I think it’s so important that we should be talking about these subjects. I just think it was the time that we just didn’t talk about those sorts of things. I don’t think there’s any particular reason why it was avoided.
No, not sure.
Le’Nise: You didn’t really have the conversations at home and you said that you didn’t really remember being taught about it in school. So how did you learn about what was happening with your body?
Trisha: Really to really understand what was happening again back in my 40s. When I spoke to my mum, she told me that I would have a period every month and I would bleed for a few days. So once it started to happen, we had that conversation. She did tell me that. That’s all I thought it was. I thought there was this period of time that I would bleed each month and that was it. But never do we really understand as a woman what happens in our body each month and what are the different cycles we go through in that moment. You know, every woman who I speak to now, they know about the maybe PMT, before they have a period, they know about that period. And that’s it. So I think even anybody at any age, the education of what happens to us women is really limited.
Le’Nise: So for you personally now, you know, you’re talking about going beyond what happened during period and that week before. Yeah. What was that light bulb moment for you? Or was it more of a gradual kind of learning about what was going on?
Trisha: Yes, I think for a long time, I sort of masked what was happening in my body, so when I was I would say late teens, the pain I used to have with my period and really heavy periods when I was at that age. My mum took me to the doctor and the doctor decided to put me on the contraceptive pill because that would be a really good fix to stop that happening. So for a long period of time, I didn’t have that natural cycle. It was being driven by a contraceptive pill. So for a long period of time, you get out of sync with your body, don’t you, because you’re not really in tune with it anymore. And I wish now we would have said, no, that’s not the reason. That’s not the solution to the problem. Let’s find out what the problem is. So for many years, I used the contraceptive pill. It was only sort of, I would say, in my mid to late 30s, I decided I didn’t want to spend so much time on the contraceptive pill. It’s not, I didn’t think it was good for my health. And that’s when I really started to feel again, what happens each month? And I went to the doctors. I remember it was about, about five years ago, still having these horrendous pains are trying to, you know, I had a job where each month I was just hoping and praying that I wouldn’t be out and about somewhere because the pain was excruciating. Like, I’ve never had a baby and I’ve got a really good pain threshold. But that first day of my cycle is horrendous. The pain is so intense. Nothing stops it. And I went to the doctor and interestingly, again, tried to give me a pill. Well, we’ll give you an anti-spasm. And I was like, no, there’s something. I want to know why my body’s doing this. I don’t want the fix. I want to find what is the root cause. And I had to really push, really push. She was having none of it. And I ended up getting referred. And in the end, I went through this whole process of different tests and I had endometriosis and I probably had it when I was a young girl. So that sort of sparked me into this whole, I need to know more about my body, like, how have I missed this all this time? And hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it? But I think that sparked this whole interest. And I was chatting to someone about after, I had an operation for the endometriosis. So then I didn’t have the pain each month. But then I was chatting to someone about I felt like I was really full of ideas last month, last week. And I felt like I was really on top of things. And this week I just feel a bit sluggish. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, thinking there was something wrong with me. And she said, “Have you ever learnt about your cycle, your monthly cycle? And she recommended a book to me. And that’s when things started to change for me. So that was that was only like three years ago. Like, you know, I’m at a stage of my life where I’m not going to be. I’m moving into the stage where I’m moving towards the menopause. I wish I had known this earlier, but, I look at it now that I know this magic now and I didn’t know it before, but at least I do now.
Le’Nise: Going back to the pain that you were experiencing as a teenager. Yes. And then going on to the pill. Did the pill, you used the word masked. Did it feel like the pill masked the pain that you did you experience any pain or?
Trisha: No pain, took it away completely.
Le’Nise: OK. And then once you came off the pill, what was it like that transition of the pill to then having natural cycles and really and then experiencing the pain again?
Trisha: I think I felt much more emotional because, you know, I think for me on the pill, you don’t get those different fluctuations in the hormones, so you feel the same, all month long. And I remember coming off, I just felt a little bit like all over the place, like, should I just go back on it? Because I feel really bizarre. But I remember just thinking, let’s just ride through it and see what happens. I want to be back in tune with my own body. I don’t want to be taking this forever.
So, yeah. I remember at the time. Just feeling a lot of the feels like what’s going on with me?
I’m a woman and that’s what was going on with me.
Le’Nise: And getting that diagnosis of endometriosis so far into time that you have that you have your period getting that. How? How did you. You said that, you know, you wish you had known earlier, but how did that information impact, did it impact your day to day life or was it a feeling of, OK, now I know what’s going on?
Trisha: I think it’s the same with a lot of things, it’s just nice to sometimes have a label to understand what is going on. I think, you know, you go to see a doctor and you’ve got a 10 minute slot to explain what is going on with you. The majority of the time it’s a male doctor who doesn’t under really understand, they might know it from a medical point of view, but from experience in it, they don’t understand it. For me, it was just nice to, now I know what’s been going on, and I felt really proud actually that I’d fought to find out what was happening, rather than accepting another prescription of another different type of pill to mask the pain. So for me, it was a relief. It was a relief and a relief that actually I could, I had surgery. That was the thing that helped me, unfortunately, it has come back so I’m experiencing it again. But at the time, it was just nice to be heard and listened. The surgeon that worked on the endometriosis, he was like, “this is what I think you’ve got. And I am the only person who can find this. Any of the tests that they send you for will not work.” It took to speak to that specialist, to have that conversation about my body that everybody I spoke to along the way kept saying there’s nothing medically wrong with you.
Le’Nise: And you said that you had, so you had the surgery and then but now it’s come back. Did you change anything after you had the surgery? Did you did you change anything in your life or did it make the way that you approach your life any different?
Trisha: No. It just gave me, maybe not the fear. So sometimes, like I said, I was working in a corporate job at the time and I could be up and down the country. I could be in a really important presentation day. I never knew what was going to happen. And so that fear was I always wanted to try and work from home my first day of my cycle. So I think when the when I didn’t have the endometriosis anymore, I didn’t have the pain. So then I had this freedom of well, it doesn’t matter where it happens. Like, yes, I would prefer to be able to hunker down and, you know, feel into the slowing down energy. But, yeah, the fear disappeared because it was OK to be out in public and not worry about having to handle this pain situation that I wouldn’t have. I remember once driving along in my car when it started and I couldn’t drive like I couldn’t focus on driving and managing the pain and I had to pull over and wait for it to go. So I didn’t have any of that anymore. Like it was. It was such a freedom.
Le’Nise: And and now that you said that the pain, the pain has come back, so. Yeah. Is it as bad as it was before? And how are you managing the pain?
Trisha: I would say now it’s worse, when it does come back so. How do I manage it? Nothing seems to work like I’m very fortunate. I don’t know. I don’t think anything in life is a coincidence, but it always seems to work on a day where I don’t have much, I don’t have any client work or it’s a weekend day when I have no plans or actually I cancel the plans if I have got plans, now, I honour my cycle and know that I just need to rest. But yeah, I need to go back to the doctor’s. But until we can go back to having doctor’s appointments. But yeah, that’s one of the things that I need to push for because they all get into a point where, yeah, it’s really effecting me. And then because the pain is so bad, I’m exhausted for a couple of days afterwards because of the trauma of going through the pain, but also the sometimes that the pain is all through the night. So I miss a night’s sleep.
Le’Nise: So we’ve had on the show we’ve had three or four guests with endometriosis and a theme that has run through all of the conversations about their endometriosis, no matter what stage endometriosis they they have is this idea of being their pain or their experience being minimised or dismissed by health care professionals and feeling like they’ve really had to fight and advocate for themselves. What would you say in that in in that sort of theme, what would you say that your experience has been? You know, you mentioned the word fight earlier and to fight for a diagnosis. Can you talk a bit more about that?
Trisha: So when I went to, the doctors, they were very much of the mindset of you’ve got that 10 minute slot, I will give you a pill to fix the problem. And I took that prescription the first time, tried them when my monthly cycle came round again the first day of my period. I tried these tablets. They did not work. So I went back again and I remember him trying to give me a different prescription. And that was at the time that I just thought, this isn’t the solution. You’re trying to give me another, I don’t like taking prescription drugs unless there’s a real need for it. So I think that sort of pushed my decision that I don’t want to take these tablets. And I just thought, this is not the solution. I need a different one and I just pushed. You know, I remember sitting there and just said, I’m not leaving. I need you to refer me to somebody else. I don’t want to take tablets. I want to get to the bottom of this. And I remember I was just quite forceful in the meeting. Like in this 10 minutes slot that you have to refer me. I think he was just shocked.
And he did.
But even when I went to see different professionals throughout the whole of that time. They couldn’t understand that I could have pain without heavy periods, like I wasn’t having a heavy bleed, so I saw about three different people before I saw the surgeon who did my surgery for my endometriosis. But each different person who I saw, they were adamant that there was nothing wrong with me, but they just kept trying to tell me there’s nothing there. But I had this just sense of knowing that this is not this is my body. I’m not masking it with any drugs or pain relief. I know I had, I just had this sense of knowing that. This isn’t normal, I know. And I know there’s something wrong and I will get to the bottom of it. So I feel very fortunate that that happened for me. And. When I saw that final surgeon and he said, “yeah, I think you’ve got endometriosis”, it was just like just this massive sense of relief that someone was listening, that I was probably right, that actually there was something, there definitely was something wrong in my body. And there was a male doctor. That was understanding what was happening in my day. It is incredible.
Le’Nise: What do you think it took for you to be able to fight for yourself in those moments? You know, you mentioned the moment where you wouldn’t leave the surgery until they referred to what poor preparation did you do for yourself in that moment?
Trisha: I think you just get to a tipping point where enough’s enough. Like.
Like.
All the different pain relief you can take. You just decide that that’s not the solution. I think that’s when I decided I don’t want to keep trying to try all these different drugs. That’s not you know, I work a lot through the coaching to find the root problems of what why different things happen. So, again, it’s back to the root cause that’s what’s going to fix something. All of the prescription drugs, all it does is. Like I said before is mask it. So I just went I just as I I’m going into this meeting and I’m not leaving until I’ve been referred. I’ve got a ten minute slot and you need me out of here as possible. So I’m just going to try it and see what happens. And thankfully it worked, so just stick to your guns and just fight for what you want.
Le’Nise: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about how you said that, now you honour your cycle. And you mention how through coincidence or not, on the first day of your period, you are able to shift shift gears a little bit and stay at home or stay close to home. Talk a little bit more about what else you do to across all of your your menstrual cycle to integrate that and how you’re feeling energy wise into your work and the rest of your life.
Trisha: So I like I said, someone recommended a book to me, which was Code Red by Lisa Lister. And that explained that actually what we’re taught very early on about, you know, we have this period of time where we bleed. I learnt that actually I have all this different magic that happens throughout the whole of the month and in different phases. You know, I learnt about there was a spring, a spring season, summer, autumn, the winter and in each of those, there’s different things happen in my body and different energies that I’m going to get. You know, I’m going to be masculine energy, feminine energy. It’s like a light bulb went off. I was like, we should get this at school. We should understand where we start our periods, what actually happens the whole of the month. So I started to. You got a download to track. So you just start to track on the first day of your bleed, and then you just started to notice what’s happened in my body each day. How am I feeling? How do I feel workwise? What’s going on in my head? I just started to track it. That’s the first thing I did. So I did it for the first month. And then the second month I would sort of look at, say, just pick a day. Day eleven where I might feel a little bit flat. And I’d look back at the chart of the month before and look at day eleven and realise, oh, actually on day eleven and I feel a little bit flat. So I started to realise that there was different energies that I was feeling in those times. So then I started to put the dates of my cycle alongside the diary that I have. So now it might say it’s the, you know, the twenty third today, but it will also show that I’m on day 11 of my cycle. So now when people are asking me if I can do things like I’m moving into perimenopause now, so my ability to plan as well as I did, so for about the last 18 months, I’ve had the same regular cycle. So when somebody asks me to do something, I think, where am I in my cycle? So I know that in autumn and winter I’m a little bit more in my feminine energy. So things might feel a little bit like I don’t feel as sociable, especially when I’m in my autumn. Being able to talk and communicate is a little bit more difficult. I struggle to find the words sometimes and articulate what I’m wanting to say. So I found that spring and summer was the times that I’m more sociable. Great for doing things like this. Speaking to you and delivering workshops, all of those different things, I realised that there was different energy like in all of those different times. There’s a time for planning. There’s a time for getting shit done. There’s a time for accepting invitations to socialise and do all of those fun things. And I started to just experiment with it. Like you can’t always do it. You know somebody, if somebody is running an event, you could say, well, I can’t do it because I’m going to be winter. But. I started to say, yes, I would do certain things, and if somebody asked me for a social thing, I’d think, well, I’m in summer now, so I’m dying to say yes to this because I’m in that energy where I want to be around people and be sociable. But when they want to meet with me, I know that it’s gonna be winter and I’m not going to want to feel so sociable. So it helped me to start to say yes and no to things I thought were right for the energy. And that worked wonderfully for about 18 months. Now I’m moving into a phase where my cycle isn’t as regular so I can have a 25 day cycle, I can I have a 29 day cycle. So the the ability to plan has gone a little bit. But I still use that. I still try and guess as much as I can. And the beauty is I will then go and tweak anything afterwards if then my period comes early. I then look at my diary for the week after and think, is there anything I can move around to make sure that I am using the my energy in this week in the right way? So yeah, it’s just for me. Like I said, I found this out at such a late time in my period journey that I. I wish I had known before about it. Like I said, hindsight’s a wonderful thing. It’s been the most amazing transformation for me. Instead of guessing what’s wrong with me, why can’t I do what I could do last week? Why is my inner critic really loud at the moment? Now I just go, Oh, I get it. It’s my hormones. It’s OK. It will pass. This isn’t me. This is my hormones. And ever since that’s happened, it’s just like this huge sense of relief.
Le’Nise: It sounds like you’ve learnt to really be tender with yourself.
Trisha: Massively, massively. I recognise that we we work in a, in a society that has been designed for men, you know, the working day is designed for a man, the 9-5 is based on the man’s body clock, like we are trying to fit into a man’s world. And we we want to be treated equally. But we have to recognise that we we have a difference like what happens in our bodies is different. And there’s magic in that. Like, if we can work to our cycle, we can be much more productive. We can perform better if we work with that energy. But we can not be in this masculine energy all the time to hustle, the pushing, always being switched on, always being a hundred mile an hour. We can do it, but there’s a consequence to it. Now I know that there’s a flow between the masculine energy and the feminine energy. I just try and honour it more and just always when I feel it in a funk or I’m feeling like I just, don’t have ideas today or I can’t find my words, I ask myself, where am I in my cycle? I just ask myself all the time. Yeah. OK, that makes sense. Most of the time is down to my hormones. It’s just where I am in my cycle.
Le’Nise: It’s amazing how when you start to tune into what’s happening to your body, you learn so much more about yourself and you move away from this idea of dealing with your body and dealing with what’s happening to your body to have a better understanding and maybe not embracing it, but being more understanding of yourself. I just wanted to just talk, for listeners who don’t know some of the terms that Trisha has used. So she’s talked about the summer, winter, autumn and spring. So those are the different phases of the menstrual cycle. And so winter is when you have your period. Spring is when you come out of your period with a follicular phase. Summer is ovulation and then autumn is the luteal phase. So this is the kind of terminology that some people use to to describe the different phases of the menstrual cycle. And it’s a nice analogy for what’s happening across the seasons.
Trisha: That really helped me Le’Nise, because I could think about, well, what happens in winter. Well, animals hibernate, like nothing grows. It’s a really quiet time for reflection in the shorter days. So for anybody listening, it’s really good to start to track that and think about what happens in nature, because that’s what happens in those light, how cool are women’s bodies like we go through four seasons of nature in one month. I just think it’s the coolest thing ever.
Le’Nise: I really wish that we had been taught this in schools or that there was much more emphasis on this in the schools because we spend so much time fighting it. You mention feminine energy and masculine energy and we spend so much time in this, especially when you have your own business, hustling and this kind of feeling like you have to work 24/7, never let up when really, you’re, this is not the way that our bodies were designed. We are designed to have rest. We are designed to be able to take our feet off the pedal a little bit and kind of tend to ourselves. And I do love the fact that all of these conversations are starting to become, yeah, maybe not mainstream, but these conversations are starting to happen more openly.
Trisha: Definitely. And it’s interesting. I love to talk about this subject. You know, I had a career in HR for 22 years in corporate companies that would not want to talk about this subject. And I love, I find this companies now that are interested in talking about these subjects that we haven’t spoken about before. And I hope that this is a shift starting to happen that we need to have these conversations. We need to help women in the workplace. Harness this magic as their monthly cycle. Like, let’s get out of this hustle and male masculine energy all the time, because I do think that drives our health. Like if we asked if our bodies designed to rest at a certain time, but we’re not honouring that, then it’s going to show up it it’s going to manifest in some shape or the other. And I do think it will come out in your health in some way.
Le’Nise: Absolutely. I want to talk about your work as a coach specialising in imposter syndrome and how perhaps some of the learnings you’ve gained about yourself over the last three years have tied into or fed into the work that you do with clients.
Trisha: Yeah, so I’m obsessed with talking to women about their cycles. So if if I have a client that has been, you know, they’ve made real progress, but then all of a sudden they’ve got a day where they’re feeling like really doubtful. The first thing I asked them before anything, what day what day of your cycle are you on? I do it with my friends as well. But I’m always asking people, where are you in your cycle? So I’ve I’ve been able to to carry on whilst it’s about, you know, my specialist subject is imposter syndrome. That’s why you’re doubting your abilities. Actually, there’s times in your cycle and where your hormones affect that. So there’s there’s two times in your monthly cycle where it will be louder than it normally is. And if you can start to understand that actually this is just because of your hormones. So I’m constantly asking my clients. I encourage them to track their cycle. And I actually don’t believe everything that you think, like this moment in time, don’t be making decisions because this isn’t the perfect time to be making decisions, because you’re being more led by your hormones right now. Maybe we can park that and come back to it. So I think it’s just for me, it’s given me a way to be more in tune with my body. And I encourage my clients just to do exactly the same. To start to understand what is happening with you personally. And yeah. A lot of the times it’s where they say. I just don’t feel it this week. And it’s not it’s the week of their cycle. You know, they’re having their bleed. And I’m like, so how are you going to build some rest in. Your body doesn’t want to be going a hundred mile an hour right now? So, yeah, I definitely talk about it with all of my clients, but also the people that I just speak to on a day to day basis.
Le’Nise: So you said that there are two points in the menstrual cycle where that inner critic, that self-doubt that it would be louder. Is it right before the period? And in the first couple of days of the bleeding?
Trisha: So it’s when you go into your spring. So if you think about spring, everything starting to come alive. And that’s when it starts to become like you’re wanting to move into getting things done and making plans and bringing things to life. That’s when it pops up. So I always say to people, if it pops up in spring, say, go away, you can come back in autumn. Now’s not the time. I haven’t got time for you right now. So come back in autumn and then we’ll have a chat in autumn. So, you know, kind of push it, to, I’ll have an appointment with you to come back in two weeks. We’ll have a chat then. Autumn is when it is at its loudest. You know, you get into your comparison. Should I be running my business? Should I go and get a job? Should I quit? Is my work as good as everybody else’s? That really good idea that I’ve been doing. Maybe it’s not so good. You’ve just got to watch. You’ve really got to be mindful and look at it. What’s going on with my thoughts this week? Because that’s all they all, we don’t have to believe everything. But that’s normally what happens. I know that if I start to doubt anything and I think, OK, well, that’s what’s happening now. But because my hormones are driving this, let’s look at this so I schedule some time for the week after when it’s out of autumn into winter and I think, or spring. Let’s have a look at this decision then. Is it still the case of most of the time it’s not.
Le’Nise: It’s interesting, what you said about that inner critic popping up in after you finish your period as you go into spring. Yeah, because you you start to your oestrogen starts to rise again, your testosterone starts to rise. And perhaps, I never really had looked at it this way before, but perhaps, you know, that that growing of kind of feeling, lots of ideas, starting to feel more creative. Back being back in your body, that can be a bit too much. Yeah. Your brain for some people, the brain wants to put the brakes on that a little bit like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s calm down here.
Trisha: Yeah. Because our brain is basically, it needs to keep us safe. So if we’re thinking of pulling ourselves out in the world more or being more visible at all of the things which is wonderful in this spring energy, our brain goes, well, this is a bit risky. This doesn’t feel safe. And it wants to put you back in to that comfort zone. And even if you’re miserable in it, stay where you’re safe. So it is it’s it’s it’s very interesting and it’s good that you put it like that. But it’s linked to certain hormones increasing, which is growing. So we want to grow naturally with that. And our brain goes, no. Let’s keep you safe. Let’s get the inner critic putting you down and hopefully you’ll listen to it and keep yourself safe. But you’ve just got to, like I said, just not believe everything you think or tell your brain. Like I said to my brain, sometimes it’s OK. I am safe. If I do these things, I will still be safe. Thank you for letting me know, but I’m OK. I’ve got it. So I chat to my brain and let it know because it, it, it deals like sometimes you can get frustrated with my inner chatter. So horrible. But it is designed to keep you safe. It’s trying and it’s got the best intentions. It’s just not helping you. So you just got to try and do it sometimes like you chat to a friend.
Le’Nise: Talk a bit about imposter syndrome and why you decided to specialise in this area.
Trisha: So imposter syndrome, I experienced it for a huge chunk of my life. Now when I look back probably from about the age of 10, I can link experiences of how I experienced it right throughout my corporate career. I had a really successful corporate career. And now I look back and think I missed it all because I was constantly waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and go, no you don’t belong here. You shouldn’t be here. You’re not as good as we thought you might have been. Your work isn’t up to scratch. We’re going to have to replace you. Like the whole of that time, I had that niggling in the back of my brain. So when I went to trade as a coach and I kept saying, you need a niche, you need you need to have something that you specialise in. I was looking around thinking I don’t know what it should be. And only through working with a coach, she would say, well, talk to me about what you experienced in the workplace. And I was like, yeah, well, I had all of this going on. And she said, that sounds like imposter syndrome. And I Googled it and I was like, yeah, that’s how I used to feel, wow. And thankfully I’d done lots of personal development and work on myself. So actually, I helped to move myself out of it. Like, I still experience it now, like I’m a recovering imposter. It still comes back every time. Like you said, every time I try and grow and elevate, it’s waited. Whoa, let’s keep you safe. And again, I’d I’d spent 22 years working in the corporate world where we didn’t talk about these things. There was no one I could like. I worked in HR. So there was no one I could go and speak to. But I knew people weren’t coming to me and saying, I’m really struggling with my own self-worth or my stable, my confidence. We were always training people in time management and customer service skills. We weren’t talking about the real stuff that sits underneath us as a human being that helps us thrive more in the workplace. And I was just thinking I experienced this. And I still experience it. You know, the intensity is mild now compared to what it used to be. So I will always be able to resonate with my clients. I’ll understand the journey they’re on. I’ll understand the workplace and how hard it is sometimes to battle with imposter syndrome, while you’ve got all the external factors going on, so I can resonate with that. I will always be working on it myself. And like I said, I’d just like to sort of push the boundaries of the workplace. Like, if we can start to talk about this, then maybe we can start to tackle it from inside the companies as well. A lot of people come to me one on one, but they’re paying for that themselves. But what if companies started to invest in, starting to tackle these things, it’s happening in the workplace. They can avoid it. But if you start to tackle this and let employees know that actually lots of us experience it and we can talk about it and we can look at tools and techniques that we can put in place and reviewing their systems and their processes, because a lot of companies, the way they operate. Actually, it’s a breeding ground. So if you can look at all your policies and your procedures and your ways of working in. You can also change things to help people thrive and overcome their imposter syndrome. Yes. It’s just to me, it’s this big mission of not just helping individuals, but how can we change this whole subject? How can we stop this taboo thing that we all so fearful of letting everyone know that we doubt our abilities? What if we just had these really open conversations? And it’s so wonderful if I do a workshop, you know, the relief that people feel that they’re in a room full of 40 people and then they realise that actually most people in there have those same sort of thoughts going around in their head. It’s such they realise they’re not alone anymore. So for me, it’s just this whole passion of a mission of just just changing the way that people think in their heads, but also that being able to transfer into businesses as well.
Le’Nise: I interviewed someone earlier in the year who said that imposter, her imposter syndrome. It actually motivated her and it helped her not to get comfortable with where she was in her business and her career. What would you say to that? What would you say to people who say that well actually, imposter syndrome isn’t necessarily a bad thing?
Trisha: That’s OK as long as it’s from a healthy point of view. So what I find sometimes is people say it helps me to push myself. It helps me to overprepare for things, make sure that everything is right. But you can fall into the trap then of perfectionism and overworking and having, you know, flaky boundaries. Like you’ve got to look at what is driving me. If it’s a good, healthy driver. But what I find sometimes is that you overwork. And what is the reason you’re overworking? You’re over working to prove that you’re good enough. So as long as you get to, is it a healthy thing, that imposter syndrome is giving me that absolutely. Hold onto it. I’m not saying get rid of it. I’m saying minimise it. But if you find it’s holding you back in any way and or it’s making you feel in a negative way or your negative chatter in your head or your behaviours are unhealthy, then tackle it. But if you’ve got a healthy relationship with it, I’m not saying let go of it. But it’s still definitely back to the, is it healthy for me to be constantly over checking and overpreparing things? You’ve got to ask yourself these sort of questions. I can’t answer for an individual. For me, I don’t think that personally healthy, because if I do that, then I’m not doing other things or it’s encroaching into my time where I should be resting, having fun or spending time with loved ones. I think you’ve just got to do a bit of an analysis on. What’s good about it?
Le’Nise: Yeah. What you’re saying is so interesting, because I definitely say that I have some imposter syndrome, like less so now because I really, really feel like the work that I’m doing. There’s a place for it and it’s important. But definitely when I was working in advertising, I was running a massive account. I was travelling all over the world. But I still had this feeling of this gnawing feeling of, well, you know why, I shouldn’t be here? Why, oh, why am I? Why am I this person? But now I know that, you know, when I go up and I do, I give workshops or do presentations, I know that I’m supposed to be there. They’ve been, I’ve been asked there for a reason. And I know this is the work for me. What would you say to someone who. You’ve given so many amazing tips to people who are feeling imposter syndrome and it’s holding them back. What would you say or your number one tool or piece of advice is for someone who feels crippled by their imposter syndrome.
Trisha: I think one of the first things I always found, journaling worked really well for me. That’s where I started my journey. And interestingly, I just started writing about what I was grateful for each day. It wasn’t actually even about myself. But because I started to look for things that were positive in the day, started to help my brain rewire and look for positives, and then I just started to journal about, instead of asking the questions, what’s wrong with me? Which is it? You know, we don’t know, but that’s a terrible question because our brain is designed to be, to look for the negative. So if you say what’s wrong with me, your brain is like a loyal servant, it goes, oh, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. I’ll give you hundreds of things to tell you. You’ve just got to start asking better questions. So I started to think, you know, I’m a coach, so that that’s what my job is to ask questions. So I thought, what better questions can I ask myself? So I started to. Write down these questions and start to write down the answer, and I find when you get out of your head, like when you just allow your thoughts to go round around in your head, it’s like you give them momentum. It’s like you give them power. And they the negative ones just they sort of like linked together. It’s like a big necklace you’re wearing. But I find when you put pen to paper. It’s like you’re letting that little, I call it like your inner mentor, you’ve got this inner voice inside of you that really knows what you’re good at. Who really believes in you. When you start, I found when I started to write things down, I was quite surprised about, oh, I, I can I write. I have got these skills and yes, I have got these strengths and I started to chip away at the belief that I had for me really all all imposter syndrome is it is a belief that you don’t belong. A belief that you’re not good enough, a belief that you’re not smart enough, a belief that you’re not cool enough to be in this space. A belief that you don’t know enough. It’s all driven by what you believe and your thoughts, your feelings and how you behave is driven by that belief. So you’ve you’ve got to tackle your beliefs. You’ve got to start to question what I believe in. Is this still useful for me right now? Like you’ve said, you’ve got to sit down and go, what are all these beliefs that I’ve got about myself? And I do that with my clients. You know, we we go on a treasure hunt, finding all these beliefs that are driving their thoughts, their feelings and their behaviours. And then you’ve got to start to break those down. And if you start to change what you believe about yourself, like you said, if you start to change how you show up in the world. So even if the first thing you do is just start to ask yourself better questions and write down the answers and start to find evidence to prove that your imposter actually, doesn’t know everything, might think it does, but it doesn’t know everything. And I bet you will have every single person I have never met anybody who doesn’t have skills, knowledge and experience that actually proves that the imposter isn’t right. But I think sometimes we’ve got to also recognise that actually we’re in an environment that can, like I said, can make us feel like an imposter. I was the first person in my family to go to college and work in the corporate world. So I was the first professional in my family, so I didn’t have a role model. So this is how careers go. I was the first one in my family. I worked in a real male dominated, white, male dominated environment. So lots of spaces you you go into was the first person and you don’t always feel like you belong. So it’s our own internal thing. We have to teach ourselves that no matter what the external is telling us, that we have to tell ourselves that we do belong in these spaces.
Le’Nise: We do belong in these spaces. I think that’s really powerful as a kind of affirmation. I belong. We belong. I love that. If listeners take one thing away from all of the wonderful things that you’ve said on the show today, what would you want that to be?
Trisha: I would say learn about your cycles like it’s been one of the most precious things that I have discovered in my 40s. So if you’re in your 20s or your 30s, even if you’re in your 40s, it’s good to know because you are surrounded by women in your life. You can help the next generation. We can stop this from happening to women of my age. But let’s stop it. Let’s make sure that we’re teaching the next generations about the magic of being a woman, about power and the energy that we flow in that cycle. If we know that that can change the way that we are. Let’s stop trying to be masculine energy all the time. Let’s. I hate the word hustle. Let’s just not let’s not talk about trying to be a man. Let’s focus on being women, because we are special. We have got something special to offer the world. Let’s use those hormones and all of that energy to drive that.
Le’Nise: Brilliant. Where can listeners find out more about you? If they want to tackle their imposter syndrome, where can they find you to do that?
Trisha: Yes, sir. On my Web site, it’s www.trishabarker.com. They can look there. I spend time on Instagram where I’m doing IGTV, et cetera, where I share more stuff around imposter syndrome. Lots more tips and tricks and techniques. That is @theimpostersolution over on Instagram.
Le’Nise: Brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Trisha: Thank you for doing this work for someone to be getting people like me talking about this. Your your you’re making things happen, you’re changing what it will be like for the next generations.
Le’Nise: Oh thank you so much.
