The 5 Ways Women Talk Themselves Out of Speaking Their Minds 🤐

“Storytelling.” It’s so buzzwordy right now.

Every day I see Forbes and Business Insider headlines like “Build this Storytelling Hack into Your Funnel” or “Don’t Make These 8 Small Business Storytelling Mistakes” and I mentally throw up a little bit.

Over the past five years I’ve helped hundreds of people tell their stories through live community events, hosting multiple podcasts, and 1:1 creative consulting work with athletes and biz owners. Stories that unpack the taboo and drive people to take action towards a happier, healthier world.

So here’s what you need to know about what storytelling actually is:

Storytelling is simply communicating how an experience changed you. It’s you saying, “Here’s what happened to me.” And another person saying, “So it isn’t just me?!”

That’s it!

And yet. Women constantly talk themselves out of using their truest voice.

I see it with athletes who aren’t “elite enough” to have an opinion (in their mind). I hear it while listening to podcast guests soften their language when you just KNOW they have something spicier to say. I notice it when outdoor and sports brands don’t speak up about the elephant in the room that all women actually want to talk about.

5 self-censorship blocks repeatedly show up in my communities. The scary news is you might be blocking your own voice and stories without realizing it. The good news is we can learn to break through them (I’ll teach you!).

Let’s introduce these 5 self-censorship blocks as characters.

Notice which ones sound most familiar to you.

🌀 The Spiraler

You have seventeen unfinished drafts. A trip report from that river day in March, a gear review you started in December, an essay about what it means to train through grief that you’ve been “almost done with” for… eight months?

The problem isn’t that you have nothing to say. It’s that you think you have too much, and you can’t find the happy ending, so you don’t start. Or you start and overanalyze how to make it “perfect.” Or you finish and spiral about whether the “moral of the story” is good enough.

The Spiraler is waiting for the tidy throughline before she’ll let herself speak. (Turns out the throughline usually only appears after you publish the mess. But we’ll get to that.)

📝 The Permission Seeker

There’s a popular (though not science-backed) training philosophy making the rounds through the fitness algo, and now, your own running community. It’s one you’ve tried that didn’t work for your body. It’s one you’ve watched injure THREE women you know!

You’ve said nothing publicly. I mean, the coach behind it has 40k followers. You have 700. You’re waiting for someone else, someone with credentials to say what you already know and have experienced.

You wait for a sign, a new certification, or a worthy co-signer. You’d share your opinion… if one other person said it first. So you’re always second or third, nodding at someone else’s take, never realizing YOU are the person someone else is waiting on. YOU!!!!

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🙏 The Pleaser

You wrote a gear review for the cute pink ski pants! It felt good at first: specific, honest, a littleeee spicy about the women’s sizing issue that the brand could improve on.

Before you send to publish, you read it back and think: Wait, what if the brand sees this and thinks I’m being mean?What if women with different bodies feel excluded by your experience? What if you come across as ungrateful? What if someone’s offended???

So you soften the piece, add “in my experience” six times, change “the hip belt digs in” to “some people may find the hip belt placement takes some adjustment,” etc. If you’re being honest with yourself… by the time you send the final draft, it kinda says nothing. The brand reposts it. You feel nothing. It feels safe, but boring.

🥸 The Imposter

You’ve been whitewater kayaking for three years. You can read water. You’ve swum more than you’d care to admit but always get back in the boat. You have things to say about fear and about rivers and about what it means to be a woman learning a skill in spaces where men assume you need more help than you do.

But you’re not a Class V paddler. You’re not an instructor. So you stay quiet and let the people with the bigger resumes do the talking, even when what they’re saying isn’t how you experienced it or want others to believe.

You set the credential bar one notch above wherever you currently stand. You’ll share once your roll is bombproof, once you’re more experienced, more certain, more sure a story is actually yours to tell.

😇 The Good Girl

You post a skiing photo. You’re mid-run, snow flying, glitter earrings catching the light (fuck yeah). You think it’s a great shot. A man you don’t follow and who doesn’t follow you takes time out of his day to comment: “clearly more concerned with looking cute than actually skiing well.”

You delete the comment and never mention it, because you don’t want to seem like you’re starting drama, and don’t want other man-trolls to find your page, and don’t want to be the woman who makes “everything about sexism.” Meanwhile Man-troll has already moved on to the next photo of the next woman.

Good girls have been trained to believe that engaging makes you look sensitive. Staying quiet makes you look unbothered and professional and ladylike and GOOD. But fuck, you’re angry inside.

Unblock your censors so the world can hear YOUR truest, most game-changing story.

Every story you’ve swallowed, softened, or saved for “later” is someone else’s “so it isn’t just me?!” moment that never comes to life.

I’ve watched women sit on stories for years, waiting to feel more certain, waiting for a certification, waiting for someone else to go first. But the stories that finally come out are always worth it. They’re always exactly what SOMEONE somewhere deeply needed to hear.

Oh, I hear you – the world is not short on “content.” But it IS short on people willing to say the most honest take, in their own voice, without waiting for permission. THAT’S what the best storytelling is. That’s what you’re capable of. And that’s exactly what your loudest block is trying to prevent.

So notice what blocks are coming up most for you. Name the characters who are keeping you from raising your voice, from speaking up for a better world.