BW 218
===
Speaker: [00:00:00] If you've been wondering why it seems like it's hard to trust yourself again, it's hard to make decisions, and your confidence has just tanked ever since you lost your person, and what to do to start trusting yourself again, then this episode is for you. This is episode 218 of The Brave Widow Show
In today's episode, I'm gonna share with you why grief specifically dismantles self-trust and give you some actual action steps that you can start taking to rebuilding your trust again
Now, not every widow experiences challenges with confidence and self-trust, but a lot of my clients do. I, I know that I did too. I felt like every decision that I was supposed to make, the stakes were really high. Meaning, if I made the wrong decision, that decision was gonna be permanent. It was gonna have devastating effects if I made the wrong [00:01:00] decision, and that was something that kept me second-guessing a lot of the decisions that I was gonna make.
I remember putting in a security system in my home that cost thousands of dollars and feeling un- unsettled about people being able to hack into that and to view that and to come and harm my kids. I remember trying to save up as much cash as possible in the savings because if something happened to my job, then I would go bankrupt, and then we would be homeless, and then my kids would be ruined forever.
Every aspect of decisions or security felt really unsettled. So if this sounds familiar to you, I just want you to know, first of all, that this is normal. You're not going crazy. You're not broken. You're actually experiencing something very common across a lot of widows out there, and one of the [00:02:00] things that people tend to be more hesitant to discuss, which is just this collapse of self-trust, this loss of confidence now, why does grief impact our confidence so much? What happens when we lose our person is we have lost our thought partner. We've lost the person that we bounce ideas off of, that, that person who would validate you and say, "Yep, I think that's a good decision," or the person who would tell you, like, "Stop overthinking this and just do it.
It's gonna be fine." And even for my clients who are the ones who make decisions, like, I have a lot of clients who are business owners, doctors, therapists, entrepreneurs, CPAs, people who are high-achieving people that make decisions all day long. And yet some of them still struggle with confidence in making decisions [00:03:00] because they don't have that person to bounce ideas off of.
We also have not only lost our thought partner, but we've lost our safety net. Before, if you and your person made a decision and it didn't work out the way that you wanted, you were both shouldering the outcome of that decision. You were both in it together. You would figure it out together. You would pivot.
You would make changes. You would maybe laugh about it, maybe cry about it. But you were in it with someone. And now, all of a sudden, all of that burden is on your shoulders. It's your responsibility. You will be the one to have to figure that out, and that pressure can feel crushing another thing that happens in grief is actually happening in our brain. So our brains, when we experience something traumatic, for many people, our brain stops processing information and [00:04:00] decision-making the same way that it did prior to the loss. So we have this tiny part of our brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for survival.
It is responsible for basically keeping us safe. And what happens is when we experience something really traumatic, a lot of times the amygdala takes over our brain. Where we make decisions, where we organize, where we plan, where we think about the future, where we make a lot of executive function happen is in this prefrontal cortex, this front part of our brain.
And when we are feeling like we're in survival mode, and we're in that fight or flight, our nervous system is on fire, we are just only able to focus on what's in front of us. What's happening is that we're not engaging that prefrontal cortex part of our brain in the decision-making anymore. This is why so many widows report having brain fog or widow's brain [00:05:00] or say that it, it feels hazy or hard to think clearly, hard to make decisions.
We really struggle because literally, the thought patterns and process in our brain that are happening post-loss are changed, and we're no longer engaging that part of our brain that really helps us make decisions, but we're living in a dysregulated nervous system, in a nervous system that feels that it needs to focus more on survival and detecting threats and danger rather than decision-making and organizing and planning.
This is also why it's hard to think about the future, and the future just seems dark and scary and unwanted because we don't really have the capacity to be thinking about that. Now, over time, that can change. Your amygdala can release control. You can start engaging more of that prefrontal cortex back into decision-making and confidence.
But in the beginning, it's [00:06:00] can be really challenging. So I think it's helpful for people to really understand what are all of the variables that are coming into play with grief that are making decision-making so hard, that are making confidence so hard. In fact, when I first started Brave Widow, I didn't know how difficult it would be for someone to decide to be a part of Brave Widow because widows struggle so much with confidence, with decision-making, with feeling like they're worth investing in, and I wasn't sure if people would have the confidence to be able to sign up, to join, to participate, to get the help that they needed.
I'm glad that's not necessarily the case, and we have so many amazing members, but it is a reality of what we sometimes struggle with
Another element where we feel like we've lost trust with ourselves is when we make a decision or we're leaning in one direction, our [00:07:00] brain is really good at talking ourselves back out of it. Our brain is really good at having us second guess our decision, like are you sure this is the right decision?
Are you really, really sure? Well, what if you make the wrong decision? What if, what if you hire the wrong person? What if you m- pick the wrong house to move into? What if you take the wrong job? Like, all the what ifs and the doubts and the second guessing, your brain is really good at that because the primary focus of your brain post-loss is to keep you safe.
And when you're making a decision or when you're trying to do something that requires confidence, our brain offers resistance and wants to pull us back. It wants to pull us back into what's safe, what's comfortable, what's familiar, what's easy. Not something new and different and scary. That's a lot. The brain will say, "Oh, I don't feel safe doing that over there.
We need to like rein it back in," and come back to what we know is safe and familiar. [00:08:00] And so not only do we have struggles with feeling like we're making a clear decision, we don't have that person validating us, we don't have that safety net if something goes wrong. We feel like the stakes and the, of that decision are really high, and so we can't afford to make the wrong decision.
But then as we start to make the decision, now all of a sudden we're second guessing ourselves, and we're doubting, and we're asking lots of people for their opinions. And that makes it harder. And then maybe we get analysis paralysis, and we can't make any decision, 'cause we got too much information, too many options.
And so people just tend to spin out. It's like when, the wheels, like your tires on your car are just spinning in sand, and you aren't getting any traction. And that can be extremely frustrating we also have experienced what feels maybe like a betrayal of what we expected for the future. You [00:09:00] had plans for the future, you maybe had dreams, you had a picture of what that future was gonna look like, but now all of that feels like it's shattered. And so we can find ourself, like, second-guessing ourselves because our predictions about the future were wrong, or maybe we made a, feel like we made a wrong decision with how to handle what was going on with our person or the outcomes of that.
And we got shoved into making a lot of decisions before we were ready. So we had to make funeral arrangements, we had to make financial decisions, we had to do administrative paperwork. We had to operate through this fog of acute grief and make a lot of decisions, take a lot of action before we even felt ready to do that.
So it just can keep this festering underlying anxiety and fear about the future just swirling underneath the surface. So what are some things [00:10:00] that we can do to rebuild confidence? Confidence in trusting ourselves again, confidence in making decisions, and confidence when we're faced with an unknown situation.
How I teach my students to think about confidence is that we wanna build up confidence like a muscle. We wanna practice being confident in navigating through the unknown, in navigating through fear, in navigating through a situation that we've not been in before. So it's not that we become really good at doing w- a thing, and so we have confidence with that thing, but we also wanna build confidence of any time we're doing something new or for the first time.
And not confidence of like, "Oh, I know how to do this. I know how it's gonna work out. I know it's gonna be fine." The confidence in, "Oh I'll figure it out. I'm gonna take this one step at a time. I'm gonna be resourceful and ask [00:11:00] other people. I'm, I know that, I'm going to figure it out along the way, and I can be confident in that and have peace with that."
So here are some things that I teach my clients to do inside of Brave Widow in rebuilding confidence and reestablishing trust with ourselves. So when it comes to decision-making, one of their biggest challenges is having that thought partner, having that person to bounce ideas off of, to think things through with, to maybe that they knew more than you in certain topics and areas, and so now it feels like you've lost that.
A lot of people will say their person is the one who did the home maintenance. Maybe they paid the bills. Maybe they did all the administrative, titles for cars, and deeds for the house, and all that stuff that you haven't really dealt with that much. And so now it feels like you're really operating in unfamiliar territory.
So one of the things that we teach our clients to do is [00:12:00] to build up a board of advisors around you. Okay? You're establishing a team of people, a board of advisors around you. And essentially what we wanna do is we want to identify and select people in different roles who have experience in different areas, and they share our same values.
So we know when we have a question about insurance, we have our person we ask about that. When we have a- an issue or a challenge with home maintenance, we have our, our person who's on our board of advisors for that. When we need to make a financial decision, we've already selected a financial planner, and we're working with that person, and we know that they view financial planning the same way that we do It's helpful to have as many of these set up in advance as possible, before you need them.
And so sometimes we don't have that option. We need people, like maybe, uh, you didn't have an attorney or an estate planner that you worked with, and all of a sudden you're like pushed into making those decisions and [00:13:00] you had to go find someone. That's totally fine. But ideally, we also want to select people intentionally and in advance.
And how I look at, at picking a certain person on my board of advisors is really vetting out to make sure that this person and I have the same views of that particular area. So, for example, financial planning. I am not personally someone who carries debt. I don't want debt in my life, and I recognize that in the financial planning world, in the real estate investing world, in the what we call the FIRE community world, that makes me a little bit of an oddball because there are a lot of people who believe you should keep a mortgage on your house or that you should keep good debt versus bad debt. And that's totally fine. People can have that mentality. That can be their pathway. But I want a financial [00:14:00] planner who aligns with my line of thinking, who understands that my values are to be debt-free, to not have a lot of debt on my rentals or on my personal home or on credit cards or any of those things. And whether or not my financial planner also feels that way about their own things, I wanna make sure they're on board with what my plan, my path, my vision, and my goals are, so that when we have a conversation, I'm not arguing with them about whether or not I should pay off a mortgage on a house.
They already know and are aligned with how my, my vision and my values for how I wanna handle finances. So even though there are lots of great financial advisors or planners out there, you wanna talk to a few of them to figure out who would be the right one to be on your board of advisors. And also, by talking with a few different ones and interviewing them, remember, they're working for you, you're not working for them, you're interviewing [00:15:00] them.
You can also learn, like, who did you learn the most from? Even though you're interviewing them and you're asking them questions, which one of them was the first to teach you something, or to give you an idea you hadn't thought of, or to explain something in a way that all of a sudden it clicked for you?
You want someone who really has that heart of a teacher, who isn't looking down their nose at you and telling you what you need to do, but is very patient and takes the time to explain different options and explain why, you know, this one option might be the best for you, but ultimately allows you to make your own decisions.
So having that board of advisors gives you that person to bounce ideas off of, who can walk with you through your own values to make sure that you're making decisions that line up with what's important to you and what your values are, and who's ultimately gonna support you and be there as a resource for you so that you don't suddenly have to become an expert [00:16:00] in all of these different areas. Building a board of advisors is one of the first things that we can do when it comes to building confidence with making decisions. Another thing that we can do with decision-making is to create and build some safeguards. So when I go to make a decision, I can create what's called a decision protocol.
I can decide in advance what's important to me about the outcome of this decision. What are the things that have to be in place for me to decide between the options? What are the things that are maybe a nice to have? And what would be my contingency or backup plan if things don't work out the way that I thought they would?
Safeguards with confidence in doing new things could be, for example, traveling. Let's say you wanna be able to travel by yourself, but you're really nervous about your safety, you're nervous about what that might look like, you're [00:17:00] worried about getting a flat tire, about your car breaking down about being around a bunch of people you don't know, and figuring out the airport, and doing those things.
We can create some safeguards by doing things like traveling with a group for the first time or with a friend, by having someone who's gonna check up on you throughout the duration of the trip. For example, when we did our Brave Widow retreat back earlier this year in June, we tracked everybody's flights.
And so we monitored when people's flights were having a layover, when they were arriving, if there were any delays. Like, we had people who monitored the flights and made sure that people got from the airport to our retreat location, and we also reconciled to make sure everyone got from the retreat back to the airport so that everyone could feel safe and know that there wasn't gonna be any widow left behind.
So there are lots of things that you can do when it comes to doing things you've not done for the first [00:18:00] time or when you're trying to build confidence in a certain area to have safeguards so that you don't feel like you're making a decision and you're just gonna drive right off the cliff. We have some guardrails.
We have some warning signs. We have some people that are watching out for you and that are gonna be invested in making sure that you're okay and you figure things out Another thing, area that we work on in building confidence is creating that peace when we don't know the outcome, when we can't control the outcome.
We don't know what this process is gonna look like. I think about it a lot as walking through a dark forest and you don't know how long the trail is, you don't know what's around the corner. It's dark and a little scary. You hear some weird noises over here, and you're just believing that you're walking through this forest, you're gonna come out the other side, and it's gonna be great.
But you don't know for [00:19:00] sure, and you don't know how, and you don't know how long, and you're not sure what obstacles might be in your way. We wanna learn how to manage our mind and to sink into this feeling of peace so that we're not spiraling out, we're not freaking out, we're not super stressed and overloaded because we know the higher our stress levels rise, the more we get dysregulated, the harder it is to think clearly, the harder it is to engage with that executive functioning part of our brain, and the more overwhelmed and overstimulated and out of whack that ultimately we can become.
So we want to manage our mind and create a sense of peace with, "I will figure it out. I'm just gonna take it step by step. I can be resourceful. I have people I can ask if I get stuck or I get lost or I need help. I have these safeguards in place. I can figure this out. I can do this." And it sounds really simple until you get in a situation [00:20:00] that feels really scary and overwhelming and daunting, and you get in this negative thought spiral that you can't break free from, and your brain just tells you, "I can't do this.
It's too much. It's overwhelming. What if this happens? What if that happens? And then this is gonna happen," and on and on and on and on, and it doesn't stop until you learn how to pull yourself out of the chaos And this is a skill that we work on inside of Brave Widow. The thing about confidence is that confidence comes after the action.
So if I am learning to play the piano, let's say, I'm not gonna have much confidence on my first lesson. I'm probably gonna have a lot of doubt. I'm gonna be nervous. I'm gonna feel, like an idiot because I don't know anything about the piano, and I'm gonna be, you know, wondering if people are gonna look down on me, if I'm gonna be terrible, if they're gonna laugh at me, like all the things.
I'm gonna have all that junk bouncing around in my mind, right? If I have a managed mind, if I've learned how to [00:21:00] do that, then instead of all those negative thoughts spinning around, creating dread, creating anxiety, creating fear in my body, the thoughts instead I'm thinking are, " This is gonna be fun. I get to learn something new.
I get to be bad at something new for the first time in a long time. I'm getting back to something I used to enjoy." Like, whatever it is, it's a much more peaceful and calm experience. And the first time I go to the lesson, it might be really scary, and there's a lot happening, and I'm trying to figure it out.
The second time, it's a little bit easier. The third time, it's a little bit easier. By the time I go the 10th time or the 50th time, my confidence is through the roof. I'm not nervous about going. I'm not anxious. But confidence often comes after we take the action This is one reason why I call it Brave Widow, not Fearless Widow.
Because we learn how to emotionally regulate, how to actively manage our minds so our mind doesn't run [00:22:00] away with us, but we are in control of our thoughts and our actions, and how to feel the doubt, the fear, the insecurity, the anxiety, all the negative, yucky emotions, how to bring it to a place of peace, and how to do things anyway.
How to do things that are hard, how to do things that are weird or awkward or uncomfortable or scary, and we do them anyway Not because we can control the outcome. As a person, I love to be in control. I hate to be out of control So it's not confidence that I know how this is gonna work out, I know it's gonna be okay, I know what this end result looks like, I know there's not gonna be any problems.
It's, it's knowing I will figure it out along the way. If something goes wrong, I'll pivot. It'll be okay. One example I love to use is traveling, because when you travel if you travel very often, especially if you're taking flights, flights get delayed all the time, unfortunately. I don't know what the exact [00:23:00] percentage is, but there are many times where my flights will be delayed for maintenance, or a crew timed out, or, the first plane left late so then you miss your layover and something else happens.
You can just know there's gonna be a decent percent of the time that there will be issues with travel. Okay? So my confidence in traveling doesn't come from the fact of, oh, I take all these flights, there's never any problem. It always works out just fine. I always make my connection. I never have had any issues getting my flights on time or figuring out where I need to go.
No. My confidence doesn't come from that. My confidence comes from if something does go wrong, I can figure it out I'll be able to get a different flight. I may have to stay in a hotel room in that city and fly out the next day. I may have to arrive later than what I had planned. But that knowledge that things can go wrong during traveling doesn't stop me from traveling because I have the [00:24:00] confidence and the peace that I will figure it out.
So these are the ways that we learn how to build up confidence with decision-making, and ultimately how to trust yourself again
So if this is the type of thing that you would like to learn more of, structured tools, a process to follow, a community of other widows who are also learning these things, they're also practicing, they're also working on building up their confidence, then I would love to invite you to join us in Brave Widow Academy.
Brave Widow Academy is a six-month program where I walk you through a roadmap from going from a place of grief to being able to create a life that you actually love again. It doesn't mean in six months that your life is perfect. It doesn't mean that you love everything about your life in six months.
But what it means is that you've learned real tools. You have them in your hand, literally. You've learned them. You've been practicing them. You're implementing. [00:25:00] You're actually doing them so that in that six months' time, you have the skills, the tools, the knowledge, everything you need to be able to continue to build up a life that feels full and vibrant and worth living again Our next group starts in January.
We're gonna meet on Wednesdays from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM Central Time, and we are doing an early enrollment. So for people who decide to join us in November, join us early I'm gonna be offering some fun bonuses. And for everyone who's already joined, we've had about five or so who've already enrolled for January, you also are gonna be receiving these bonuses.
So there's nothing else that you need to do to sign up for that. You're just... It's gonna be extra bonus you weren't expecting, which is amazing. So for anyone who schedules a consult in November and ultimately ends up signing up for the Academy in November, you're gonna get a few things. One is you're going to have the [00:26:00] opportunity to go through Brave Through the Holidays with us from November through the end of January.
So Brave Through the Holidays is a special program where we focus on ways that we can make the holidays lighter, gentler, easier than feeling like we just have to hunker down and get through them, or that we have to always do things the way that we've done them. So we meet currently on Wednesdays for that program, so you're gonna get access to go through that live.
You're also going to get a life rebuilding strategy call with me one-on-one. So in November, you and I will sit down, and we're gonna map out what the next 60 days looks like specifically for you, with what's the biggest challenge for you right now, what you need more of in life, and what one thing to focus on.
It's one of my favorite questions to help people answer for themselves I don't know what should I be focused on? I feel stuck. I'm not really sure what is [00:27:00] it. I am gonna help you with that during that one call. And you're also gonna get weekly support in the Academy private group every single week between now and the time that Academy launches on January 20th.
So those are some of the bonuses we're offering for people who enroll in November or at least schedule their consult call in November to do early enrollment for the Academy. So if you're already planning to join the Academy in January, it's like a no-brainer. I would do that just to be able to get these bonuses early.
But if you're also on the fence, I would be happy to talk with you and tell you specifically how the Academy would be able to support you, what are all the things that we work on and learn in the Academy, and allow you to make a decision from a place of peace. My goal isn't to pressure you to sign up. It's not the right fit for everyone, but for the right people, it's a [00:28:00] complete no-brainer to join. So if you would like to have a chat about the academy to see if it's a right fit for you, you can go to bravewidow.com/academy, and you can book a one-on-one call with me, and I'll gather information through some standard questions that I ask.
I'll help walk you through whether or not it's the right fit for you currently, and whether or not it makes sense to join as part of early enrollment to learn more or to schedule a call with me one-on-one, just go to bravewidow.com/academy. I'll see you there
Speaker 13: Hey, thanks for spending this time with me today. If you're listening and thinking, "I don't wanna do this widow thing by myself," I'd love to invite you into the free Brave Widow community. It's a private, faith-based space where you can connect with other widows who really get it, join gentle live calls, and get resources to help you take the next small step forward.
To join [00:29:00] us, just go to bravewidow.com/free or click the link in the show notes. You don't have to walk this road alone. I'll see you inside
