The Identity I Thought Would Make Me Enough - 46

In this episode I explore the identity I built that I thought would make me enough—and what it actually cost me. 

From growing up as the only daughter in a family of boys, to finding my first sense of being seen through speech and debate, to eventually pursuing a career in law, I unpack how deeply our childhood experiences shape the identities we construct as adults. 

I also share how survival patterns like people-pleasing, over-functioning, and self-abandonment can become mistaken for ambition—and how awareness begins to interrupt those cycles. 

This episode is about identity formation, visibility, and the moment we begin to realize that success and alignment are not always the same thing. 

Transcript

Autumn G Noble (00:00)

Welcome back to the podcast, my friends. Today kicks off a new series of episodes relating to our topic for May, which is how to change your life and identity shifts. I know that sounds super cringy and super overcoachy and you know that I hate that, but I couldn't figure out how else to say what we're talking about this month. Over the next couple episodes, I'm gonna be unpacking the tools and the resources that help me really kind of reconstruct

my own identity and come into greater alignment with my true purpose. In the premium side of my podcast and becoming her, I'm going to be sharing the coaching programs, all the videos and modules that go through how to change your life and kind of incorporate all of these tools and more of a systematic program. I've never released anything like that in the premium side before. It's going to be so much more accessible than having to go through one-on-one coaching. If you don't have

for that, but you want to dig into these tools, that's the resource to use. The link is in the show notes. So over the course of this month, I'm going to be unpacking the tools and resources that I was taught and learned and sort of came upon

helped me transform my entire life and my identity and that I now use to support women going through these same types of internal struggles and changes. Today, we're going to start kind of at the very beginning and going back to identity and purpose.

Most of us don't become who we are or what we do by accident. We become who we had to be to survive. And then that's perpetuated moving forward because of those brain patterns that are created in those survival states.

For a lot of the successful people that I coach and I think myself early on included, people who become tremendously ambitious, it's typically a sign of an adaptation from an early age in life. They had to become ambitious because of some experiences or things that they were taught and told as children. And that's kind of something that I relate to personally and we'll explore that a little more today. But at the crux of it is this question of

What if the identity that you have built to survive is the very thing that is keeping you from being authentically yourself and living in true authentic alignment with who you wanna be and what you wanna do with your

For me personally, being the only daughter in a family full of boys and growing up on a farm surrounded by men, I kind of had that middle child dynamic, but also the eldest daughter dynamic that I think a lot of people really relate to. And so I kind of became this consummate helper whose needs were really kind of never important because I was a utility player, kind of helping everybody else around me. And I learned pretty early that my

best contribution was to help everyone and to kind of stay quiet about what I thought I personally needed and relegating those to the needs of the larger team. And that was kind of the family and the farming operation. What's more, don't want to say back then because I'm not that old, but there I did come from a small kind of town and much more conservative community. And I felt

pretty early on that my opinions were not that welcome and that no one really wanted to hear what I had to say. And I kind of always felt like my hurts and needs were a little bit dismissed. And again, in favor of that larger community and organization that I was supporting, what I had to say just, it wasn't really important in the greater scheme of things.

So fast forward, I get into junior high and I'm kind of examining what I want to do with extracurriculars. And initially I was a pretty good athlete and I think I continue to be a pretty good athlete, but two of my brothers were tremendous athletes and they went on to play college sports. And again, growing up in a small town, the coaches were more than excited to see another person in my family gravitating towards sports. And I felt a lot of pressure in comparison.

around it, but I also felt pressure not to outshine my siblings and kind of let them have their thing again, kind of that middle child relegating yourself to the needs and wants and successes of everyone around you. So somehow I gravitated toward speech and debate. And I think looking back that it was in those early moments of speech and debate where I finally felt like people were listening to me.

people were hearing what I had to say. And I felt like I was really being seen. And again, this is not a knock on my parents, but when you come from a larger family and you're the middle child, you do kind of get relegated a little bit. And I felt like speech and debate gave me an avenue to really finally be seen. And then as I got really good at debate, I started recognizing that my parents...

were kind of afraid to have conversations with me. And they would say, you I don't want to debate this with you, Autumn. And I felt this kind of power and intellectual respect that I had never really felt before. I think it's that small need in me to be seen, to be heard, to be respected that ultimately drove me to become a lawyer. It wasn't because I was passionate about law. When I look back,

I was never one of those people that really loved following debates and the evolution of particular matters or bills. Like that stuff never really got me going. But what I did enjoy was standing up and kind of putting another person in their place with my own sort of verbal abilities. There was something to that that was very enticing. And it took me a really long time to recognize that it was that small kind of need as a little girl.

to be seen, to be heard, to be respected, I think ultimately drove me to that profession. And I think that's why it felt so hollow to me. Because as I got older, I realized I don't actually really like to argue with anybody. I'm such a pacifist. I don't want to fight. I don't want to go to court. I don't want to litigate. So then I started following back on my research and writing skills, which was something I always really enjoyed. And so because I had that passion,

for researching and writing, I thought, okay, maybe this is the right place for me. But over time, I realized that that wasn't even enough to kind of sustain that career for me. And I think a lot of us do this as children. We're sort of taught certain things about how the way the world works and where our value comes from and our place in it. And sometimes it creates unseen and unmet needs in us as kids that we pursue and kind of self-soothe. And maybe that leads us down one particular path.

On the other hand, it can create these sort of unspoken patterns of thinking about how the world works. And I think one of those unspoken patterns that I took with me was don't make waves, don't be a brat, don't make problems where none currently exist. And I have a real cringe anytime there's a suggestion that I'm being a brat. And I know that comes from my childhood. And that's something that I'm...

I can't even recall, but I know people said to me, like, you're being a brat, don't be a brat. And there's this real conditioning around what it means to be a brat, asking for what you want when there's already so much else going on and pushing for what you need and pushing to be heard. I was sort of taught is a bad thing. That's you being a brat. ⁓ Take that patterning and conditioning into a toxic workplace.

and into an abusive relationship. It's no wonder that I put up with a lot of those things for much longer than I should have because I had this conditioning from a very early age about not being a brat, about not making waves, about not creating problems where none exist. And so when you're in these scenarios where you're like, I'm not okay and my needs are not being met and this is not okay, but like, I don't wanna cause any problems for my family and I don't really wanna like blow up my whole life and I don't wanna disappoint anybody. All of that sounds very much like.

I don't wanna be a brat. And so as I kind of went down this path and started recognizing all of these things that were contributing to this identity of being a lawyer that I held so strongly to, I started to realize how false that identity was and better understand what drove me there with some compassion. With those insights, I felt much clearer that I needed to make a pivot. But as many of you know and have experienced on your own paths,

Well, even when you know what you're supposed to do and what you need to do, it feels like an impossibility. So early on for me, as I was coming to all these realizations, I engaged a coach and an energy kind of spiritual coach as well. That is when I started kind of unraveling all of these connections around my thought patterns and how I was conditioned and how those patterns were driving me to show up in my life.

I started to study and dive deeper into this work and specifically how our brains work and how those early patterns create the life that we have, whether it's right for us or not. Our brain physically changes based upon repeated patterns and behaviors, and that's the concept of neuroplasticity. And so I always say to people, when you've had a particular thought over and over again, like, don't want to be a brat, I don't want to make waves,

Anytime ⁓ you feel an urge to maybe speak up or push back, your brain's like, I know this one. It's don't be a brat. And so immediately it starts playing in our brains and we kind of gravitate towards that pattern of acting and showing up. Similarly, if you have a lot of negative thought patterns about your ability, you know, don't mess this up, like you're not meant to be here. You're not good enough to do this. Those thought patterns, if you've thought them enough over the course of your life,

they're running in the background like that crappy elevator music. So anytime there's an opportunity in your life that looks or feels the same as an instance from your past when you've had those thoughts, your brain's gonna be like, I know this one too. You're not meant to be here. This is never gonna work. You're not good enough. And it just offers us all of those thoughts because historically that was where our brain went. And that's just really good information to know that once we've given enough energy to those thoughts, they just keep on running.

and we have to start paying attention to those and questioning where they come from and whether we want to continue those patterns moving forward. Because those repeated mental habits just strengthen the neural pathway. So they say, you know, neurons that fire together wire together. And that's that idea that the more you think those patterns, don't be a brat. I'm not meant to do this. I'm not cut out for this. I'm not good enough. The more you think those,

the more they're gonna fire with regularity anytime a similar type of emotion or situation comes up. Your brain's gonna offer you those crappy answers.

Along with that understanding, I started engaging in some coaching work and kind of going down my own coaching journey.

And one of the concepts that really rocked my world is this idea that we have these thoughts, these repeated patterns in our minds. Every single one of those thoughts is generating some type of an emotion. And I noticed this in myself when sometimes I can feel myself, I'm like, why am I so angry? I feel really angry right now. And I have to like walk it back. Like, what was I just thinking about? I was thinking about how frustrated I am with this person. That's why I'm feeling so angry right now in my body.

But all of those thoughts have that type of an effect. Every thought that we have is gonna generate some kind of an emotion inside of us. But what's really interesting is to recognize that our emotions, how we're feeling, how we want to feel, drives everything that we do or that we don't do. If I'm feeling really frustrated,

I'm probably not going to do anything nice or say anything nice. If I'm feeling really defeated, I'm probably not going to dive into a really complicated project that's sitting on my desk. If I'm feeling insecure and not good enough, I'm probably not going to present myself very well in a presentation or proposal because I'm dragging that negative energy with me. And from there, I'm not going to probably advocate for myself because I'm feeling insecure. I'm feeling like I don't deserve it.

and those emotions will never drive you to do anything in the opposite direction, like advocate for yourself or stand up for yourself. I started to recognize then that all of these crappy thought patterns that I had created early in my life were creating a lot of very kind of small, powerless and insecure emotions in me. And from those spaces, I wasn't standing up for myself, I wasn't pushing back, and I wasn't asking for what I wanted.

And that was a real disconnect from who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up. And so I started to notice that everything I had created in my life up until that point, I could tie it back to certain thoughts and the emotions and actions that came from those thoughts. One that I find really interesting looking back is that when I was in college and I knew that I wanted to go to law school and we talked about all the whys and misconceptions,

I wanted to go to law school, so I'm studying for the LSAT. Never once did I believe I wouldn't get into law school.

And it's almost like that young kind of naive belief in your ability. But when we're young and we have a goal, we have this ability to access belief in a way

I think we get away from later in life. But during that time in my life, I just believed I'd get into law school. I believe I'd take the LSAT. I would do just fine. And I get into a law school. And I think that belief made it very easy for me to sit down, to focus, and to study, and to move forward on that path and ultimately get into law school and kind of follow that dream forward. And I know that sounds very simplistic, but I could have easily been thinking.

I don't know about this, what if it doesn't work out? I don't know if I'm cut out for this. No one in my family has ever gone to law school and in fact my parents didn't even go to college. Am I really cut out for this? Can I really make it? If I had had all of those thoughts that are very normal thoughts, it probably would have inhibited my ability to focus because when you're believing I can't do this and you bring that insecurity to your studying, it's almost like you failed ahead of time and you're not gonna be as focused and you're not gonna push as hard because you're kind of feeling like

This is a worthless endeavor. It's not gonna work out anyway. I'm not cut out for this. And it will impact how you show up in that journey. Now again, that was me back in my 20s where I think it was easy to live in those beliefs and let them propel our emotions and actions moving forward. But as you get older in life, I think life has a way of beating that audacious belief out of you.

and showing you all of the things that could go wrong. And I think with that sort of, you know, expanded logic, it becomes a lot harder to believe things like, I can change my career. If I don't want to be a lawyer, I can figure something else out. Instead, my brain was like, I don't know about this. This seems like a really bad idea. Like, why are you rocking the boat? Like, you're pretty solid. You have a pretty great foundation and a pretty great life. Like, what's the problem here? So as we get older, it becomes harder and harder to live in those beliefs. And I think that's why

this work became really important to me as I got older because I started to realize it was a lot more difficult for me to live in beliefs of possibility and let those beliefs resonate, create emotion and action forward. With that being said, this work became even more important to me, plugging into that mindfulness practice and paying attention to what was happening in my brain and what results that was creating for me in my life.

learning how to dismantle some of those patterns when I identified some that weren't tremendously helpful. And if anything were holding me back, I had to understand them so that I could pull them up from the roots and come up with new beliefs to replace them and kind of wire my brain in a different direction. And that was really the work that I started learning first through one of my early coaches, Brooke Castillo. She kind of

crafted this thought model is what she calls it and it's rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy and a lot of spiritual leaders and mindfulness leaders talk about something that's the same kind of a thing but Brooke really kind of coined it and made it her own and it's this idea that your thoughts create your emotions and actions and everything that flows from them. So to break it down even more simply, your thoughts create a chain of reactions that ultimately create everything that you have.

or don't have in your life. And that's a pretty powerful recognition because what that tells us then is that if we can start creating better thoughts that we believe that actually generate emotion and action, we could theoretically create whatever we want in this life. But it's a matter of

rewiring those neural pathways in a more positive direction and taking action from them. And look, we could argue this all day long, the goods, the bads, but I'm telling you, there's something here that is worth unpacking a little bit more.

As I mentioned at the beginning, as I started getting into coaching, I really kind of dove into this concept head first during the early years. And I created a lot of coaching programming modules and resources around this idea from cognitive behavioral therapy that our thoughts create kind of our life. And so I'm releasing those modules over the course of this month in the premium side of my podcast, Becoming Her. Information on that is in the show notes.

If that's not for you, that's perfectly fine. What I want you to really take away today is this idea that the identities that we create and the careers that we pursue are often based upon outdated thought patterning or ideas that we created at a very young age. So if you're feeling some kind of dissonance between

where you are and where you want to be. I would encourage you to kind of start tracking back. How did I get here? What drove me here? And can I identify some of the beliefs that founded this path for me or maybe created this path for me? in my story, I think it was kind of an attraction to visibility, authority, credibility, and respect that I was so wanting.

from a young age that being a lawyer gave me. And it didn't heal those wounds. If anything, it really showed me that pursuing a title to heal those wounds is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. I needed to heal those wounds in a much more meaningful way through shadow work and sort of reworking those neural pathways of beliefs. And then from there I could decide, do I still want the title, yes or no? And for me, the answer was not really.

In short, I kind of recognize that pursuing law, wasn't just about ambition and wanting that career. It was kind of a proxy for emotional repair or a strategy to heal that part of myself. And that never works. Pursuing something outside of yourself to fix those patterns and those hurts is never the solution. And I think that's why a lot of us achieve those goals and we feel empty because having achieved it isn't going to fix.

the hurt or the pattern or the need that propelled you down that path to begin with.

With that information, our goal is not to shame your old identity or shame the identity that you gravitated towards like I did. We can recognize that that was just our adaptive mechanisms to survive or to protect ourselves. But that's not the final version of who we are. And most likely, that's probably not the person that you want to be. The question is not what's wrong with me. The question is,

What did I have to become to feel safe, seen, or loved? And once you can see that clearly, you finally have the option to become something different, something more aligned and more intentional.

because we don't become who we are by accident. We become who we needed to be in order to survive or belong or be seen. But at some point in our lives, that survival, that need.

to be seen, it stops being enough. And that awareness is where identity begins to For me, having a tool to kind of break it down methodically was tremendously helpful because that's just how my brain works. I liked having a tool like the thought model to be able to kind of work through, like what drove me here and what was the need and what was the thought pattern and like, holy cow, you how can I shift that?

in order to kind of loosen the grip that I had on that identity relating to prestige and respect. And so this month on the Becoming Her site, I'm releasing all of those modules that break down that framework in much greater detail. But I wanted to provide an overview of it here because I think that even just listening to this and taking away that concept of the patterns that we develop as children and young people,

really does kind of become an embedded pattern in our life. And those patterns ultimately create everything that we do or don't do. And if you're looking around and you're seeing like, this is not what I wanted, there's probably some patterning up there that we need to dismantle and reconstruct. And that's where this thought modeling and this awareness around your thinking can be so tremendously valuable and powerful because you can intentionally choose.

to believe better things and therefore create more of what you actually want. Thank you so much for joining me again today, my friends.

As we move forward from here, I'm gonna be talking about the holistic tools that I next came to understand were kind of the fulfilling or like the completed circle of my identity realignment and how some of those tools like Reiki and sound healing and all the woo stuff was really the missing piece to drive home some of the healing and mindfulness work that I was doing. At the end of this month, we're gonna be pivoting to talk a little bit more about

purpose because as we rework our identity and start unpacking some of those unconscious patterns, it sort of begs the question, like if I can strip away all of these old identities, who do I want to be? And what's more, is there something I'm supposed to be doing here that maybe I didn't see before because I was led down a path that's not really right for me? And how do I figure out what that

purpose or calling is. We're gonna talk about that closer to the end of the month. Have a wonderful week, my friends. If you have any questions about this topic, feel free to send me an email, autumn at theuncomfortabledream.com and check out the show notes for additional resources on how to take this work even deeper. I'll see you next week.