On Solid Ground

Are you sick of doubting yourself?

Do you face intimidating assignments at work with either avoidance and procrastination, or worrying and overworking?

Do you shy away from speaking up in meetings, asking for raises and promotions, and applying for new jobs?

Do you spend a lot of time wondering whether you measure up and dreading performance evaluations?

Do you worry that if you try to shine, you’ll just out yourself as a fraud?

Then you might have imposter syndrome, also know as impostorism or the impostor phenomenon. It’s not a clinical diagnosis, so you don’t have to worry about whether you meet all the “qualifications” for having it. What matters is that it feels like you can’t ever relax and know that you’ve arrived.

You wish you felt like you were on solid ground.

Like you were definitely smart enough, definitely qualified, definitely doing a good enough job.

Like you can push off of that solid ground to propel you into ambitious projects and bold career moves.

Like you can sit back and stop trying to prove yourself.

And I bet you’ve tried to be proactive.

You tried to absorb the glowing feedback when you really nailed a project.

You tried to logically talk yourself out of self-doubt with evidence of your accomplishments.

You probably thought you had finally learned your lesson when you realized how much better you were doing than that arrogant guy in the office.

But somehow, it never sticks. Even if you know you’re not an imposter, you still feel like one.

What’s really going on

Imposter syndrome feelings don’t go away easily because imposter syndrome isn’t just about thoughts. It affects you at many different levels:

• Cultural: messages from others have primed you to either underestimate yourself, or to hold yourself to an overly high standard.
• Mental: in many workplaces, there is no clear answer to whether you are “good enough.” It’s a nuanced judgment call. But a lack of certainty can feel like insecurity. So you might find yourself leaning on perfectionism or comparison to figure out how you measure up.
• Somatic: an insecure nervous system can overreact to everyday issues, making you feel like a deer in the headlights or suddenly lose your ability to focus. It’s not your fault — it happens automatically, outside your conscious control.
• Emotional: all these mental and somatic issues are trying to protect you from getting your feelings hurt. We have certain basic emotional needs, and when some of them aren’t getting met, our protective systems have to go into overdrive…creating imposter syndrome.

So it’s not your fault that you can’t snap out of it. You just need a more holistic approach that will meet you at every level.

And that’s what On Solid Ground provides.

In this package we work with all levels of your imposter syndrome:

• Cultural: become more understanding of yourself by seeing how cultural messages shaped your self-concept. Then, pick and choose which messages you want to embrace or kick to the curb.
• Mental: relax your overwhelm, self-criticism, and constant comparison to others by recognizing that you’re seeking orientation and a sense of solid ground to stand on. While certainty may not be available, orientation and solidity are.
• Somatic: recognize that you’re not lazy; you’re frozen. You’re not a workaholic; you’re in fight-or-flight. Learn how to ground your nervous system instead of blaming yourself for these automatic responses.
• Emotional: Imposter syndrome involves a lot of fear and shame. Fear can be released, and I can teach you how to do so safely and compassionately. Shame is not so much released as flipped, by learning to take your own perspective instead of only seeing yourself from a critical viewpoint, and by meeting your needs for a healthy self-concept.

But you’re more than just a bunch of layers of imposter syndrome. Underneath all that protection and emotion, you have natural gifts.

When you relax your mind and body and nurture your emotions, the resulting clarity creates a window of opportunity where it’s easier than usual to get in touch with those natural gifts.

In On Solid Ground, we use that window of opportunity whenever it arises to help you embody your authentic confidence — a confidence that you don’t have to fake, or copy from someone else, or practice in the mirror. A confidence in your truest self.

I get the struggle.

As a woman in academia, and then a software developer without a computer science degree, I basically picked up an honorary degree in imposter syndrome.

It held me back from getting things done, learning new things, and even asking for the help I needed. It got so bad that I actually got screened for clinical anxiety and ADHD. They diagnosed me with…nothing.

“Then why is it so hard for me to focus on my job?” I asked the doctor. She shrugged. 

It would’ve been nice if she had told me that even though she couldn’t diagnose me with imposter syndrome, it could cause my nervous system to go haywire and give me anxiety-like and ADHD-like symptoms. But all she gave me was a bill.

I didn’t know how to get the help I needed then. 

But you can get the help you need now.

Because in the meantime, I learned how imposter syndrome affects not only our minds, but also our bodies and our emotions, and I learned how to meet you on each of those levels.

As an activist and Certified Aletheia Coach, I use

• my understanding of sexism, racism, ableism, and other systemic injustices to help you validate yourself in light of how culture has set you up for imposter syndrome
• parts work to help you soften your mental blockers against confidence,
• somatic work to help you soothe your nervous system,
• more parts work to help you safely release fear and flip shame, and
• presence work to help you bring out your natural gifts

to give you the whole package for dismantling imposter syndrome.

The Details

Month 1: Four sessions

We hit the ground running with 4 sessions, exploring all the outer layers of your imposter syndrome (cultural, mental, and somatic). This tells us where to focus for the rest of the package.

During this month, people often become more self-aware and less self-critical. During sessions, they typically experience a sense of their fears and inner conflicts relaxing, but they may not be able to experience that in everyday life yet.

Months 2-6: Two sessions a month

For the remaining months, we meet twice a month for a more sustainable commitment.

During sessions in this period, people typically:

• relax their Mental and Somatic layers, giving us access to the Emotional layer.
• nurture their Emotional layer, giving us access to the layer of Gifts.
• embody and express one or more of their natural gifts, often including authentic confidence. (Other gifts that commonly emerge include self-acceptance, joy, passion, strength, and inner support.)
• make decisions about how to move forward in their lives from a place of authentic confidence.

In everyday life, they usually find:

• their Mental layer becomes less rigid.
• when their Mental layer gives them trouble, they can work with it until it relaxes the way we did together in sessions.
• their Somatic layer gets triggered less easily.
• when their Somatic layer gives them trouble, they’re better at noticing the signs and know regulation techniques to help.
• they are less afraid of their Emotional layer and more capable of nurturing it on their own when needed.
• their authentic confidence is available for them to feel and act from more of the time.

Obviously six months is not enough to become a Buddha who feels at peace 24/7. But it is typically enough to bring your authentic confidence out of hiding and put you on the path towards more and more access to it.

Three months later: Follow-up session

Three months after the package has ended, we meet one last time to make sure that our work has integrated into your life smoothly. It’s important to me that our work really changes your life rather than being a temporary band-aid.

Support and Integration

On Solid Ground isn’t just about the sessions. It’s crucial that you not just have peak experiences during our sessions, but also integrate those transformations into your everyday life. I have several tools to help you do that:

• Between session support: you need to feel supported in order to meet your full potential for transformation. So I’ve got your back for the whole six months. You can email or text me when you have questions.
• Takeaways journal: you need to update your mind on the transformations your body and emotions are going through, or else you’ll stick to old habits even though you don’t need them anymore. So I’ll help you create a habit of tracking and reviewing your insights in a custom Takeaways journal.
• Anti-procrastination tool: when you’re avoiding an important task, you need help now, not at next week’s coaching session, and you need that help to be really simple and not overwhelming. I’ve developed a tool that can help you skip right to the help you need, whenever you need it.

Price

At my standard session price of $150, I Belong Here has a value of $2250 plus the value of the Support and Integration. But I’m offering it for:

• $1800 paid in full, or
• $300/month for 6 months

Is it right for you?

We can find out together in a free, no-pressure consultation:

Or sign up here if the above isn’t working!

FAQ

What if I’m not sure I really have imposter syndrome?

If fear is playing a big role in your decision-making, then On Solid Ground is meant for you.

If you consistently feel confident in yourself and your work, but other people are unwelcoming towards you, I don’t recommend On Solid Ground for you. This is a very real and important problem, and I wish you all the best in finding the advocacy and support (and possibly new job) that you need.

Do I have to talk about my feelings?

Yep. But it’s okay if you’re not good at doing that yet – it’s my job to gently guide you into your feelings. It’s also my job to keep your feelings from overwhelming you; I’ll help you stay grounded even when emotions are coming up.

But I’m not gonna lie – you will probably cry at some point. It will probably feel like a relief. But if you’re not comfortable going there with me, On Solid Ground is not a good fit for you.

How is this different from therapy?

There is no one definition of therapy and no one definition of coaching, but here’s how I draw the line between them:

• I don’t work with people who have certain signs of high risk. You’ll see questions about these signs when you sign up for a consultation, so if you’re not a good fit, you’ll know right away.
• I don’t work with official “disorders.” Imposter syndrome is actually more correctly called imposter phenomenon, because it’s not a disorder.
• I coach people to guide their own transformation. While a therapist might act as your attachment figure, I help you act as your own attachment figure.

Some reasons you might choose coaching over therapy are:

• You want to do more focused, goal-oriented, time-limited work.
• The therapy available to you focuses on the thought level, and you want a more holistic approach.
• You feel more comfortable with someone who doesn’t have the authority of a therapist and gives you more space to be your own agent of change.
• You want to be able to work with someone regardless of location.

But often, people choose coaching and therapy, because:

• Their therapist helps them with whatever is the most intense that week, or focuses on relationship issues.
• By working with me as well, they finally get time to make focused progress on their imposter syndrome.

How can I decide between On Solid Ground and mentorship in my field?

One way you might try to tackle imposter syndrome is to learn more about how to excel in your career. The problem is, imposter syndrome is not a response to being uninformed; it’s a response to being out of touch with your authentic confidence. Learning more about Excel or Python or how to write a resumé won’t fill that void.

So the question I recommend you ask yourself is: do I know what I should do right now?

If there’s something you know you should do, but you’re just too nervous to do it, signs point to imposter syndrome, and On Solid Ground may be a good fit for you.

If you’re calm and just not sure what to do, then mentorship or tactical career coaching may be a good fit for you.