“There’s nothing wrong with you. You just have an Inner Mean Girl.”
Women tend to tell themselves they’re too emotional….they’re “high strung”….or even that they’re “crazy.”
This negative self talk doesn’t serve us in ANY way. Yet, we believe as women that there’s something wrong with us.
I used to be one of these women. I went to therapy for a year asking my therapist to tell me what was wrong with me. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t feel the way I wanted to feel.
She told me I had anxiety and depression and called it a day.
On paper she was right. But in reality, she was SO wrong.
Years later when I was coaching with my coach, I discovered that I had these “voices” living in my head called Inner Mean Girls.
This information changed my life.
I learned that it was NORMAL and HEALTHY to have these negative “people” living in my head.
There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with me.
Learning this opened up a world of confidence for me. The impact has been huge.
Teaching my clients about their Inner Mean Girls has been life-changing for them as well.
Once you know how to tap into and overcome your Inner Mean Girl voice, a whole new world opens up for you.
A world filled with peace, joy, authenticity, gratitude, confidence, achievement, connection, fulfillment, love, presence….(I could go on and on).
Hands down, finding my Inner Mean Girls is a moment in time I’ll never forget. I’ll always remember where I was and how I felt when I learned about this concept.
In fact, I felt the ground shift beneath me. That’s how earth shattering it was to me.
I hope you’re ready because today’s episode may be a moment in time for you too. It’s that powerful.
Here’s to you realizing there’s nothing wrong with you EVER, you just have an Inner Mean Girl. Listen to this episode via the link at the top of the page and get ready for the ground to shift beneath you too.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
→ Continue the conversation in my free online community
→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training
Full Transcript
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 58,
Your Inner Mean Girls.
[music]
Welcome to the Become An Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting,
fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston.
I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world.
I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better.
We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to
do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient,
and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey there, Ms. Unstoppable. I hope you’re ready for this because today’s episode is
going to shake the ground beneath your feet as it did for me when I learned about this
concept years ago from my coach. Up until this point, when I was in coaching with her, I
thought there was something wrong with me. In fact, I went to a therapist for an entire
year, every single week. That was the goal, figure out what is wrong with me.
She did a great job of that. She put me down as having anxiety and depression and yes,
on paper did I have those things at that time? Yes, but she was so wrong about what
was truly going on with me. What I had was an inner mean girl. Yes. An inner mean girl,
my friend, and you have one too. Not to freak you out, but it’s just part of the human
brain and the human experience. We have this part of our brain called the amygdala
where we store all of our emotions. Inside of that lives these voices called the inner
mean girl.
Once you know that they’re there and you know what they’re saying to you because a
lot of times what they say to us is on repeat day after day after day. Somewhere it’s like
we have 40,000 thoughts a day. 80% of them are negative and something like 80% or
90% are the thoughts that we repeated the day before. Well, not after you discover your
inner mean girl. You’re going to see exactly what she’s telling you, exactly why she’s
holding you back, and then you can start to live in a place that feels amazing.
When I went to therapy and then coaching, it was, “I just want to feel the way I want to
feel. I want to do the things I want to do. I want to be the person I want to be and why
the hell can I not do that? I don’t understand why I’m stuck.” Knowing my inner mean
girl and knowing how to overcome her was what started to change the game for me.
Now, typically, these trainings are ones I just give to paying clients in my Become an
Unstoppable Woman course. Today, I’m going to unlock the doors for you to listen into
this training, just like you would paying clients because I believe this information is so
powerful that everybody needs to know about it. It is game changer.
Hopefully, you’re at a place where you can really tune in and listen to this one. This
may be one you listen to on repeat. It may be an episode for you to realize, “Hey, maybe
it’s time for me to start coaching instead of sitting around just listening to free content
and put my money where my mouth is and change my freaking life.”
Today, regardless, I want you to just have this content so that you can start to make
even more changes in your life to reassure you that this shit works. [laughs] I don’t drop
the S bomb on this podcast that often, but I’m going to do it here because today’s
episode again is so amazing. Today, I’m covering what an inner mean girl is, why we
have an inner mean girl, the seven primary voices of an inner mean girl, what it is your
inner mean girl really wants and how to shift to that instead of being in this place
where she’s just eating you alive and putting you down in essence. Then just teaching
you how to move forward with this voice now.
A lot of times, once we bring awareness to this voice, we can hear her more and more.
It’s like we almost give her a microphone, and then it’s just very game-changer. Two,
the biggest thing I think is you realize there’s nothing wrong with you. Not one thing. I
don’t care what you’ve been diagnosed with, there’s nothing wrong with you. You just
have an inner mean girl voice who has some thoughts and beliefs and causes you to
have some behaviors that you can start to change.
The reason why she has those thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors is because of things that
have happened to you in your past. She’s trying to keep you safe. She’s really here to
support you and to protect you, but she’s just doing it in a way that doesn’t serve you
anymore. I’m hoping you gain all of that today. I hope this episode is as much of a
game-changer for you as it was for me and what it is for my clients. It’s almost like
there’s this moment in time before you know about your inner mean girls, and then
after you know about them.
Now, just to give you a little insight is I call this voice your inner mean girls. The
psychology world calls it the voice of your ego. You can see many terms on this. There’s
like shadows self, false self, conditioned self. People make up all kinds of silly names
for it. I just call it inner mean girl because as I was developing my courses years ago, I
just thought, “Oh, these words, they just don’t represent it, what it means to me.”
I just thought of the movie Mean Girls, and I thought of Regina George. I just thought,
“Yes, that’s it.” She’s just this inner mean girl in my head. Now, I’ve seen that other
coaches have gone out and used this term too. That’s great and awesome. They’ve even
registered it and they use it that way. Just know this is a download from my own
consciousness that I had one day and actually, other coaches who have used it, they
have a similar download as I’ve seen their data come out, we all put this term out at
the same time.
Props to them, but just know this is a term that I use for it. You can say whatever the
heck you want to it, but this is just the voice that’s in your head that makes you feel like
there’s something wrong with you when there’s really not. I hope you enjoy this
training. I hope it is eye-opening for you as it was for me. Without further ado, here it is.
Hey there, Ms. Unstoppable. Welcome to week three of the course. This is video one.
Today, we’re talking about the inner mean girl and who she is. Specifically, today, we’re
going to talk about, as I said, what an inner mean girl is and what kind of behaviors she
has versus what your authentic self behaviors are. I’m going to explain what both of
these terms mean here if you’re confused. Then, we’re going to talk about when an
inner mean girl emerges. Get ready. Today’s content is going to rock your world.
Who is an inner mean girl, otherwise, known as the ego in the psychology world?
There’s many different terms for it. I just call it the inner mean girl because that’s how I
view it. This is the storehouse of your conditioned behavior. All the things that have
happened to you in your life, it gets stored in this part of your brain called the
amygdala. This is where all those things get played on repeat. Remember that one time
when this person made fun of you, remember when this happened at home and your
parents said this or did this, right?
Typically, it’s all these negative things that have happened to you. Your brain has this
part of you that says, “Okay, these things have happened to me, and so what I’m going
to do is moving forward, I’m going to keep myself safe and secure so those things never
happen to me again.” The brain likes to see things in black and white terms, right?
If you, for example, go out and you make a speech when you’re in the fifth grade, it
bombs, your brain may develop a belief or a thought from that of there’s something
wrong with me or I’m never going to put myself out again because I get embarrassed.
Whereas some of that serves you in some ways to have an experience and then have
learning lessons from that, it doesn’t serve you in other ways. Some of those takeaways
or learning lessons aren’t necessarily something you want to put in your entire world
and believe about the entire world and about yourself.
You don’t want to continue to think, “If I put myself out there, I’m going to get hurt.”
That was just one instance at one time, but your brain thinks, “Oh, okay, if I start to
believe this, then I’m going to keep myself safe.” This is why a lot of women, they come
to me and say, “Lindsay, I just feel stuck.” Well, they feel stuck because their brain has
developed all these beliefs about things that have happened to them, and their inner
mean girl, in essence, lives in their minds and it repeats these different beliefs or
thoughts on repeat in a way where they can’t really even hear them.
They’re like, “Oh, I want to go do all these big things in my life, but for whatever reason,
I just feel really stuck to go do it or when I think about it, it makes me feel anxious,” or,
“I just feel like I have all this weight on my back and I feel overwhelmed,” and all these
other things. Well, that’s because these things have happened to them and their inner
mean girl is telling them not to expand their comfort zone for that reason. She was
built for protection. She thinks she’s helping you out. She thinks she’s doing a really
great thing. At one point in your life, like you as a child, she was.
You may have grown up in a home environment that wasn’t ideal. We all have
something that we’re walking away with from childhood. For some of us, that childhood
was harmful in a lot of ways and so we needed this inner mean girl protector to get us
through those hard times in our life. We’re out of those experiences now. We don’t
need her to hold us back anymore. You know your inner mean girl mentality when you
are doing the following things.
One, you have limited thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh, I can’t go do X, Y, Z, that would be
too out of this world, or irresponsible, or women don’t do that, or people like me don’t
go do that.” I had this when I became a coach. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy.
Coaches don’t make money. Who sits around talking about their feelings? Who is it
that’s going to want to coach? I needed to stick in the corporate world.”
My brain was just in this really limited thinking for my inner mean girl, because of all
this conditioned behavior I had about being an entrepreneur or leaving the corporate
world and talking about feelings. Again, just not knowing what was possible for me. I
just felt really limited at that time. If you’re having limited thinking, you’re in your inner
mean girl.
Also, if you have negative thinking, any kind of negative thoughts that are coming in
your head like,” Oh, I can’t do this,” or, “Look at her she’s blah, blah, blah,” and having
judgment. “I’m feeling sad or angry or shameful,” all those kind of– what we decide as
erky feelings. That is coming from your inner mean girl.
Also, if you’re doubting yourself in any way, that’s from your inner mean girl. Think
about that. Think how many times a day you must doubt yourself? I still catch myself
doubting myself. That is an inner mean girl and know too your inner mean girl is
typically unconscious. As I said earlier, she’s behind the scenes whispering to you about
things to do in your life and you have no idea. Our goal now is to bring her to the
conscious mind. Anytime we can bring things to the awareness, we’re getting it out of
this inner mean girl state.
Also, she’s inauthentic. She does things and says things that really aren’t true to you. I
caught myself, just years ago, laughing at a joke somebody was telling. I realized I don’t
even think that joke is funny, but I’ve just been conditioned to laugh at jokes, especially
jokes that men tell because I just knew that they like that. I realized that was just
totally inauthentic to me, and that was part of my inner mean girl.
Another quality of an inner mean girl is she loves conditionally. If so-and-so does X, Y,
Z, then I will love them. If so-and-so doesn’t do X, Y, Z. I won’t love them. Some of us
experience this as children. If our parents said, “You need to make all A’s, and you need
to try out for this, and do this, and all of this.” I see this even with my daughter’s father
with her. He’ll just put all these demands on her achievements, and that’s coming from
a conditionally loving place.
Same with, if you’re correcting weaknesses in yourself or in others, that’s coming from
an inner mean girl. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t need to see weaknesses, we don’t
need to improve upon things. Sometimes people when they hear about this inner mean
girl mentality, they’re like, “What a bunch of fluff, what a bunch of BS, if we just walk
around being positive all the time, that’s just silly.” That’s not what we’re doing here.
We’re just going to come to seeing mistakes or errors or negative things, whatever you
want to call them in a way that’s not so negative. We’re going to come to them and
come to them in a problem-solving way versus a demeaning way. I’ll teach you more
about that in a bit. Also, if you just have this unaware and you’re reactive to feelings, so
something happens to you and you just react and then you think, “Oh gosh, man, I
really lost my temper there. I just felt like I was out of control of my emotions.” That’s
your inner mean girl.
The thing is that this inner mean girl, she lives in this erky emotions, as I said, these
negative feelings. Anytime you’re feeling something that just doesn’t feel good to you,
that’s your inner mean girl. She also, on paper, will show up as disorders and illnesses.
I’ve mentioned many times in my story, I’ve been diagnosed with things like depression
and anxiety. Was that true on paper? Absolutely, but it was really just my inner mean
girl. Even bigger disorders and things that are out there, that is really just stemming
from an inner mean girl.
She really just makes you feel unstable and weak and stuck. Anytime you’re feeling
those things, unstable, weak, or stuck, that is coming from your inner mean girl. Let’s
flip it. You have this other part of you called the authentic self. This part of you is the
God-given part of you or the part of you that when you were born, what you were
meant to be in the world. That’s why people love babies and they love toddlers so
much because they just have this glow about them.
When we see certain people that are grownups in our world too, and we’re just
attracted to them, it’s usually because they’re living in this authentic self place. People
tell me all the time that I’m glowy or that I just look so happy. That’s because I’ve
learned how to build upon and tap into my authentic self.
When you’re in your authentic self mentality, you’re imaginative. You have positive
thinking. You’re creative. You’re original. You’re confident. You love unconditionally.
You look at everybody in the world, even people who you may not agree with in really
really big ways, and you still love them. You’re strengths-focused. You’re seeing
mistakes, but you’re focused on strengths and how to make it better, and how to bring
out the best in people instead of bringing them down.
You have this highest infinite thinking. You see possibility constantly, and you’re
constantly living in a state of inspiration and imagination as I keep saying. When I say
constantly too, know that this inner mean girl part of you is always going to be there. If
you have ways in which you doubt yourself sometimes, or you’re feeling these
“negative feelings”, that doesn’t mean anything’s gone wrong. It just means you’re not
in your authentic self and that’s okay.
Some people will come to me and after they learn this stuff and think, “Oh my gosh, I
need to be in my authentic self all the time.” Well, being in our inner mean girl is part
of the human experience. It’s just like when we have hot, we wouldn’t know hot
without cold or dark without light or black without white. We wouldn’t know the
authentic self without the inner mean girl.
Both of these, we want them to start working together because right now what’s
happening in your brain is your inner mean girl is likely driving where you’re going in
your life. You’re doing all of these behaviors that aren’t really authentic to you. You’re
seeking outside validation. You’re triggered by all of these different things. You’re
managing those triggers by again, doing things that aren’t authentic to you. You’re
turning to distractions to make yourself feel better and so on and so forth.
What we want to do is we want to get the authentic self in the driver’s seat of your
head and leading you because that’s where you’re going to start to feel amazing. You’re
going to start to feel fulfillment. You’re going to start to get what you want out of life.
We want these two to be best friends because right now, inner mean girl has totally
pushed your authentic self out of the car likely. It depends on what other work you’ve
done. As we go through this awesome [chuckles] unstoppable course, we want it to be
where your authentic self is getting closer and closer to that driver’s seat.
The last thing I want to say about the authentic self mentality is that you’re aware and
you’re responsive to feelings. You know why you’re feeling the way you feel when
something comes at you that’s maybe a little triggering. You don’t have to be so
reactive. You can sit there, you can take it in for what it is, and then you can respond in
a very loving, kind, but firm way. Those are the differences between the two.
Why does the inner mean girl come about? As I said, she’s trying to keep you safe and
secure. She thinks she’s built for protection to help you out, but when you’re a kid, your
emotional brain is growing quickly. If you look at kids, that is why they’re so emotional.
It’s because that amygdala part of their brain is growing rapidly, but the logical part of
their brain isn’t. It’s not until we’re in our mid-20s is it all even out.
This is why, typically, you even see early-20 somethings or teenagers, still making silly
mistakes a lot and being highly emotional. Well, that’s just the primary part of their
brain. They’re taking in all of this stuff around them. They’re learning about the world
while their emotional brain is in the driver’s seat. It just makes sense at some point in
our lives for the logical part of us to take the driver’s seat, AKA, that authentic self.
It’s really unfortunate that we’re not teaching this work to everybody in the world
because everybody needs to be doing this. This is just part of the human experience.
It’s just part of having a human brain is to go in and do this work that you’re doing right
now. What happens too is, as I said, your inner mean girl experiences these things in
the world and then develops these thoughts or beliefs about them.
As you know, in this course, we call those bullet holes, right? From there, because you
have these beliefs about the world, you develop habits off of them. If you have this
belief that if you go out and shine, you’re going to get hurt. You’re going to have habits
now where you’re not going to go out and shine. You’re going to stay behind. You’re
not going to want to be seen as much because you have that belief.
This is why you are, who you are today is based on what has happened to you and the
habits from what has happened to you. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore. It’s time
for us now to go and change. First, analyze what you’re thinking and then go in and
change that so that you can create different actions and results for your life.
Now let’s dig a little bit deeper and let’s talk about the different inner mean girl types
because they’re seven different types of inner mean girls. You likely have all seven of
these, but some of them come out at different points in your life, and some of them are
just stronger than others. We’re also going to talk about two, what you attract when
you’re in this inner mean girl mindset. You’re going to get a resource on how to find
your primary inner mean girl voices.
Type number one of the inner mean girls is called the pleaser. This one is pretty well
known. We’re talking about it more and more in our society to be a people pleaser,
especially for women. The qualities of this persona is that you’re sweet and docile, you
tend to over-promise but you under-deliver, and you blend in with those around you.
Many times you’re a chameleon in your world.
You’re walking into a room and you’re wanting to study everybody and maybe you’d be
in the back corner until you’ve figured out the room around you. Even if you do put
yourself out there, you’re looking to others to see what it is that they need or what they
want, and you’re giving it to them. Many times, this is just so innate within you and
you’ve been doing this for so long, you don’t even see that you’re doing this.
Again, it’s just really important that you start to understand as you move forward in
your life, and you’re making decisions, or you’re just showing up in different spaces
asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing right now truly what I want to be doing? Is this truly
authentic to me, or am I just pleasing the people around me?”
I’ll give you an example in my own life. Recently, my son had a birthday and we got one
of these balloon arch things. When I met the woman who was going to do the balloon
arch, she just was over-promising all these things to us. I was just like, “Here’s the
balloon arch, do what you can.” I was ready for her to just tell me what she could do
and couldn’t do, but she was like, “Oh, I can do all these things,” and just going all out
in this.
I could already feel from her, she really wanted me to like her and really wanted to
please me. Whereas I just really wanted her to give it to me straight like, “What can you
do and what can you not do?” She promised me this big thing, then she promised that
she would give it to me by a certain date, then that date arrives. I was like, “Okay,
where’s the balloon arch. You said you were coming between these hours.” Then all of
a sudden, she just shifted on me, “Well, I have all this going on and dah, dah, dah.”
This is what happens a lot with pleasers is they promise, promise, promise, they really
want to please you, then when they find themselves backed into a corner, they’ll start
to get mad and they’ll start to blow up. It’s very common for pleasers to just be sweet
and docile, then all of a sudden, they have these big blow-ups.
She started to blow up on me a little bit and I’m like, “Listen, you’re the one that told
me between 1:00 and 3:00 PM. I’ve arranged my schedule for this. Where are you?”
Then she comes, and then she’s super sweet and docile again. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ve just
been so stressed,” back into the pleaser mentality.
When she left, the balloon arch was great and it was fine, but the whole experience
wasn’t that great. This is what happens a lot with pleasers, they think that they’re going
to please the people around them, but really, a lot of people just feel a little
disappointed in what they’ve delivered because they’ve over-promised things and you
can tell that they have this nervous energy about them. It’s hard to get to know
pleasers too sometimes, and you can just feel that they’re really wanting your approval.
If you find yourself in these kinds of qualities, you have a high inner mean girl pleaser.
The second type of inner mean girl is called the critic. Again, a very popular one for
women. It’s popular because this is how many women relate to one another, by
criticizing themselves and criticizing others. This is why women gossip. It makes them
feel good to go and have these hits of endorphins from gossiping because, two, when
you have a high inner critic, it’s beating you up all day. Many times it’s really nice for
your critic to beat up somebody else for just a few minutes like, “Ah, it’s off of me.”
A critic tends to be full of regrets. It tends to think, “Ah, could have, should have, would
have.” “If I just would have gone to school, I should have dated this person instead of
this person,” or, “I could have done this if I would have had X, Y, Z.” Again, full of regrets
of all the things in the past that has gone wrong. They tend to take responsibility for
faults a lot of times because remember, they’re beating themselves up all the time, so
they see their shortcomings constantly.
When something goes wrong, they’ll be the first to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Sorry.” That’s a
big one for them. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.” Argh, inner critic right there, because
they can never win with an inner critic. When I’m dealing with my own inner critic or a
client’s, I make it very well known to them. I say, “Do you see that with your critic you
can never win?” If you call and get help, then there’s something wrong with you. If you
don’t go get help– “Why aren’t you getting help, go get help. You need to go do this.”
Again, you can never win with this voice. It beats you up constantly, and then it’s
beating up other people which doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good to talk about
other people and put other people down, but yet, sometimes that’s all you have
because you’re so tired of that voice beating you up.
When I first learned about these inner mean girl personas, my top two were the pleaser
and the critic. If you are relating to these, just know I have been there my friends, it is
not enjoyable. I called my inner mean girl at one time, the witch because she was just
so mean to me. I thought my inner mean girl passed down to me from my mom. My
mom was very critical of me and very critical of others and that’s very common here is
that typically, we take on the thoughts and beliefs of our parents or the people who
have raised us. If they have a certain inner mean girl or boy personas, they will pass
that down to us.
That was type two, the critic. This is type three now, the perfectionist. The perfectionist
loves to control habits to achieve the best. They’re very competitive, they can almost be
a little OCD, in essence of, “Okay, I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do this, I’m
going to do this.” They want everything to go just right, and because they want
everything to go just right and they want to be the best, that’s why they’re competitive.
They can get lost in the details sometimes with these never-ending projects. They
always have a project. They always have something they want to improve. Something
they want to get better at, and so they get lost in the details of that too because they
want everything to be so amazing. If you are constantly in one project after another, if
you find yourself just in the weeds of details, if you find yourself controlling your habits
to a place where maybe you even joke that you have OCD, then you likely have a high
perfectionist.
I see this one in my husband a lot. He’s very routine and regimented with everything
that he does. He is very competitive as well. We joke that he has OCD, and that’s really
just him with his perfectionist and wanting to be so perfect and so good. If you’re big
into the enneagram, this is one that Type ones tend to have is the perfectionist and
also their critic. My husband’s a one, and so I just see this in him all the time.
I’ve seen this in myself too, especially when I started my business years ago, is that
every single thing had to be perfect all the time and everything that I did. Of course,
because I was new at it and just the rate of which business moves and changes,
especially as an entrepreneur, I couldn’t be perfect.
I was constantly wanting to be perfect and feeling like I didn’t add up. That was my
inner critic coming out. I would get lost in the details of things instead of moving
forward in my business and helping more people. In essence, too, making money. That’s
a lot of times with the perfectionist, they’re lost in these details when they just don’t
need those details. [laughs] They just need to be good enough and then move on.
Type four inner mean girl is actually a newer one in my world and it’s called the
vacillator. I learned about six of these inner mean girls in my own coach training school
with the Gardner Institute. This type, the vacillator is one that I learned when I went
through coaching and my marriage. I was suggested to read the book, How we love, and
it’s all about attachment styles.
They talked about, in essence, what they would consider inner mean girl types. They
had some very similar, if not the same ones that I have here but they had one called the
vacillator. It was actually the one that I tested highest for, and it blew me away. I
thought, “How did I not learn about this before? How did my coaching school not learn
about the vacillator?” It’s based off of attachment, and a lot of these inner mean girl
personas are. Attachment is just the way in which we’re raised and how we attach to
our parents.
Well, the vacillator comes about when you have a parent who is maybe very loving and
kind at some points and very involved, and then all of a sudden, they’re not. It’s like, inout, up-down, I don’t know who I’m going to get today, Jekyll or Hyde? That starts to
develop in you is you start to have this black and white thinking with things, that things
will be either good or they’re bad.
You also just really, really hate connection and loss because you experienced it so
much as a child where a parent was in, they were available, maybe they were present,
and then all of a sudden, they weren’t. You were just constantly feeling this loss of this
parent, versus some parents are just always MIA, that’s a different kind of attachment.
When you have a parent that’s in and out, and in and out, it develops this mindset of
you feeling like you’re on this roller coaster ride. You’ll have high highs, and then you’ll
have low lows.
When I meet with vacillator’s now as clients, it’s typically these really passionate
people. They just have a passion for life and they’re like, “Lindsay, I want to go all-in,
and I want to create all this amazing stuff, and here are the things I’m passionate
about.” Then they have things that they’re very passionate about that they don’t like.
Again, black and white thinking.
There’ll be so great in some moments and have these huge highs in their lives, and
then all of a sudden, something will happen and it’s like everything has gone wrong.
They don’t want to continue with doing whatever they started. They want to back out
of things. Again, it’s like something’s either all good or all bad. I’m all in, or they’re all
out. Sometimes it’s just one little thing will trigger it. Someone will say something
that’s off, or maybe one day they’ll miss a habit that they’re working on and it’s like,
“Screw it. I’m done, I can’t do this.” It’s like, “Whoa, wait a second, let’s reframe.”
Again, as I said, I just learned about my own inner vacillator. It was a game-changer for
me, and it was so eye-opening for me to learn about this. As I’m working with clients on
this vacillator, it has opened their eyes in so many ways. I’ll spot it in them all the time,
something will happen, and I’ll say, “Oop, that’s your vacillator, that’s your critic.”
A lot of it today is what I’m teaching you is this content, but then starting to see it in
your everyday world, that’s where the change really happens because you’ve had these
inner mean girl voices since you were a kid. It’s like a warm blanket to you to have this
inner mean girl, it feels comfortable, it feels safe. She thinks she’s keeping you secure
until you start to analyze your behaviors in different ways and saying, “Whoa, okay, now
I see where I’m holding myself back. Now I see this as inner mean girl.” That’s the
vacillator.
Type five is the doubter or the victim, you can use this term interchangeably. I like to
say that a doubter, it’s a higher level. That is not maybe the right words here, but a
victim is a really really heavy doubter. It’s like the doubter times two. If you have an
inner doubter, you just doubt yourself a lot, sometimes you feel sorry for yourself.
The big thing here though is you tend to look very very busy and you’re doing so many
things, but you’re not really having a lot to show for it. You tend to sabotage
opportunity often because you just think, “I really doubt my abilities.” You go in with
that mentality, and then others doubt you.
In essence, because you doubt your abilities, and you think you can’t do it, you selfsabotage. Then when it gets really bad and you’ve been doing this for a while, or you’ve
been in an environment where people have likely put you down for a long time, you’re
in a victim mentality.
This is typically when people are going to counseling. Of course, this is generalizing,
we can all go to counseling. If somebody comes to me and they are really really high in
the victim mentality, that’s a big sign they need to go to counseling. If somebody is
coming to me and just saying, “Lindsay, I have these inner doubts, and I’m really busy,
but it just seems like what the hell am I doing all day?”
There are times when I feel like I’m in a funk, I just feel shame, I feel humiliation,” and
things of that sort. I’m like, “Okay, you just have a high inner doubter.” Just realize
anytime you’re doubting yourself, you’re doubting your abilities, you’re self-sabotaging,
and you’re really busy, that’s your inner doubter/victim.
Now, inner mean girl type six is the controller. This one tends to be bigger in men, but I
have, of course, seen it in women. Especially, in women who have been in childhoods
where they had to be tough, and maybe they were abused even physically. This part of
them just came out to control situations. They tend to have really big anger outbursts,
especially if they feel out of control with something.
If something goes wrong, they tend to view it as other people’s faults because, again,
they want to feel like they’re in control. They feel like they can control themselves, and
so if they blame other people, it’s like, “It’s all their fault. I’m the one who’s totally in
control here.” They really expect loyal soldiers around them because they’ve likely been
let down so often as kids, and hurt in maybe some big ways, they expect that around
them. Anytime they get hurt, it’s triggering those old wounds.
You know you have the controller if you have a lot of anger, you feel really uneasy with
a lack of control. Right now as I’m recording this, the coronavirus is going on. I hear
people all the time, it’s like, “Corona. Corona. There’s just so much uncertainty. It’s so
much lack of control.” I’m like, “I don’t think there’s a lack of control at all,” because I
don’t have a high controller. I don’t feel like I need to control the world at all, but for a
controller, it feels very scary to them. Just know if you feel like you need a lot of control
in your life, you likely have a high controller.
Now, the last inner mean girl type we’re going to talk about is the avoider. We all have
the avoider because our brain doesn’t like to feel our feelings It doesn’t like to
approach uncomfortable, hard, or difficult, however, you want to word it, situations or
feelings, since we want to avoid. The avoider tends to lurk in the back of our brains
because, again, it doesn’t want to be seen, it’s an avoider. They tend to avoid difficult
situations and try to avoid our feelings. A lot of times these other inner mean girl
personas are a front to cover up our avoider.
We may have a controller that comes out in front. We’re really controlling and we
might have these anger outbursts in our worlds, but deep down, what really is
happening there is just an avoider who doesn’t want to feel emotions. It high-fives
other inner mean girls and says, “You go deal with these problems. I’m going to lurk in
the back so that I don’t have this person feel their feelings and their emotions.”
When an avoider is really, really strong though, it comes from a childhood where there
was a lot of value and independence and then achievements, in what you did. There
wasn’t a lot of space being held for emotions and any kind of emotional support. I used
to have a very different view of the avoider.
Again, my coach training school gave me the avoider information, but it wasn’t quite
right, to be honest with you. When I dug deeper into how we love stuff that I
mentioned earlier, that’s when I got a really good grasp on avoider. I see this a lot with
my clients too, because they’re coming to me as go-getter women. Achieve, achieve,
achieve. They grew up in these environments likely where it was, “You achieve to earn
your worth, and we expect these certain things for you. We want you to be an
independent, strong person.”
Which is great. There’s great aspects of that, but they weren’t taught how to feel their
feelings. They weren’t given the space to just be, instead of just be this achiever. A lot
of times, they tend to undervalue relationships and feelings because they didn’t have a
lot of close relationships growing up. They weren’t that close with their family, and so
they don’t really know what’s the point of having close relationships or, “I don’t even
know what that looks like.”
I relate to this so much because I definitely grew up in a family like this. I didn’t
explore all of this work with my own avoider inner mean girl until very recently,
because again, she was lurking in the back and I didn’t have a good enough knowledge
on her until I did more work. I started to see, yes, I think me being independent all the
time and I can do it on my own is a great thing, which again, it’s great in some ways,
but I didn’t have a lot of close relationships. There were just a deeper layer of feelings
that I needed to feel about things.
The last thing I want to say here about the avoider is really reiterate the independence
thing. If you really think, “I got this on my own. I’m independent. I don’t need anybody,”
that’s a big sign that deep down you have an inner avoider. The avoider, the primary
emotion is sadness. We don’t want to feel sad. It’s uncomfortable and for a lot of us, we
label that as weak to feel sad. Just know though, that sadness is really what it is, that
we need to feel and express in ourselves to be able to grow and move on.
What do you attract when you’re in your inner mean girl voice? A lot of different things.
If you’re in the pleaser mindset, you likely ignore yourself, so others take advantage of
you. If you’re in the critic mindset, people will criticize you because think about it. If
you’re criticizing yourself for criticizing others, people are going to dish that back out to
you. Perfectionist, you’re seen as imperfect because you just focus in on so many
imperfections.
I’ve been in this mindset. Someone will come to me and say, “Great presentation.” I’m
like, “Oh my gosh. Yes, thank you so much but did you see slide five? I had a typo on it.”
They’re like, “Oh, yes, you’re right.” They start seeing the imperfections in you because
you believe you’re imperfect. A vacillator, people will be disappointed by you because
they’re like, “Who is this person? Is she happy? Is she sad? Is she in? Is she out? I don’t
know. I’m just so confused and it’s disappointing because I thought I was signing up for
one thing, but now she’s like a whole other person.”
I used to get this from guys all the time when I was dating. They were like, “Oh my
gosh, you’re so amazing. You’re so perfect.” I would think, “Oh, just wait until you see
the other side of me.” That was my vacillator that would come out and start pushing
them away because I was so used to having connection, then somebody leaving, having
connection, and someone leaving. Yes, then they started feeling really disappointed in
me because they’re like, “Who is this?”
The doubter or victim, people will doubt you because you doubt yourself. The
controller, you give off force versus power, so people many times will be like, “Man, I
don’t want to be around that.” Some people will be attracted to that. I’m not going to
lie. If we think about right now with Donald Trump, take politics aside, like him or hate
him, I don’t care. I’m just saying, to some, people like that.
To others, like to me, he is definitely in a controller mindset. He gives off a lot of force,
and then there’s some times when he kind of backs away from that and he’s more
powerful. It’s so interesting in a lot of ways, yes? Just realize that you can balance that
out. We’ll talk more on how to balance that out here in a bit and in another video, but
it’s very interesting. The last thing is if you’re in the avoider mindset, people will avoid
you. They just won’t want to be around you. It’s like, “I don’t want to be around that
person. They’re just so low energy.”
In your workbook, you have an Inner Mean Girl Assessment. If you haven’t yet taken it,
go take it. It will help you determine what your primary voices are. That’s it for this
training video. I’ll see you on the next one. Bye, Ms. Unstoppable.
All right, my friend, I hope you loved getting that information. I know it was so mindblowing for me, but realize that content is only half of the equation. It’s content plus
coaching that equals massive, massive change.
You heard me mention that there’s an Inner Mean Girl Assessment. I do just leave that
in my course, but I do have a printable for you in the show notes if you want just a
quick, easy, one-pager on the different inner mean girl types, the different voices, so
that you can just quickly spot them more and more in your life. Knowing this content is
so life-changing, and I really hope you’ll take it and start to spot it more in your life.
Now, if you are ready to start coaching with me, just know there’s a new process at
hand here. What you do is you just go to Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y, epreston.com/apply.
You’ll see all the information about my nine-month coaching process. Read through
that. See if it really resonates for you, and then if it does, click on the apply button.
You’ll answer a couple of questions, and then I’ll review your application. If it’s
approved, then I will give you a spot on my calendar to talk more about coaching and
learn all about what you want to create together. That’s everything. As always, the links
are always in the show notes, especially for the application. I’ll talk to you on the next
episode. Bye.
[music]
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In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
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to get started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you
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