182. Self-Sabotage Isn’t the Problem - Fear of Judgment Is
182. What Happens When You Own Your Full Identity: From Fear to Frequency
If you've ever felt like you have to water yourself down to be accepted—this one’s for you.
In this episode of The Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, Kayla shares her most personal story to date: the moment she realized she was being judged no matter how hard she tried to avoid it—even while working a “safe,” invisible job far away from the online world.
From a deeply emotional plant medicine journey to a painful betrayal in the workplace, Kayla takes listeners on a timeline-jumping truth-telling ride about fear of judgment, visibility wounds, and creative suppression. She unpacks how this fear can masquerade as:
Overthinking
Perfectionism
Procrastination
Weak boundaries & people-pleasing
Emotional repression
Hyperfixation on external validation
And even creative burnout
But the most important message?
You will be judged—so you might as well be judged for being fully you.
By the end of the episode, Kayla offers 3 powerful tools to help you gently (and sustainably) alchemize your fear of judgment into creative power.
This isn’t just an episode. It’s a love letter to the version of you who’s ready to collapse timelines and speak the unfiltered truth—before you feel fully “ready.”
Journal Prompts & Activations
JOURNAL PROMPTS
1. The Honest Inventory
“Where in my life am I currently overthinking, procrastinating, or people-pleasing to avoid judgment?”
(Go through the 7 red flags and spot which ones show up most often.)
2. The Core Story
“What’s the earliest memory I have of being judged or rejected for being too much, too different, or too me?”
(What did I make that moment mean? Is that story still running today?)
3. The Truth Beneath the Fear
“If fear of judgment wasn’t holding me back, what would I be doing differently right now—in my creative work, relationships, visibility, or self-expression?”
4. Desire as the Antidote
“According to Joseph Murphy, fear is the shadow of a desire. If I fear judgment, what do I deeply desire instead?”
(Authentic connection? Creative freedom? Belonging on my own terms? Be honest.)
5. Reclaiming the Version of Me Who Hid
“What would I say to the past version of me who chose invisibility to stay safe?”
(Offer compassion… then offer a torch.)
EMBODIED CHALLENGES
1. Micro Truth Drop
Choose one small thing you’ve been afraid to share—on social media, in a conversation, or even in your journal.
Share it. Gently.
Not for shock value, but for sovereignty. Then…
→ Log off. Breathe. Dance.
Let your nervous system feel safe in the afterglow of visibility.
2. The Rejection Rewire
Intentionally do something you’ve been avoiding because of potential rejection.
This could be:
Reaching out to someone new
Sharing an edgy story or opinion
Pitching yourself
Wearing something bold
Publishing the weird art or reel
The rule?
→ After you do it, you don’t check for validation for at least 2 hours.
Let the action be its own medicine.
Transcript
182
Welcome back to another episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast. This is gonna be a big episode, and it has come from a few conversations I've had over the last few weeks with amazing guests, so would highly recommend checking out those guest episodes. Today's episode is all about what happens.
When you own your full identity, so it's about moving from fear to frequency, and the fear we are moving through is really the fear of judgment as well as the fear of rejection. There is a lot we're covering today, so we are gonna dive right in. So on today's podcast, you are gonna learn the seven red flags that fear and rejection are holding you back.
You're gonna learn why a huge portion of self-sabotage actually stems from the fear of judgment. I'm also gonna share the secret reason I really stopped podcasting in 2024. And it's relevant because it involves fearing judgment and rejection. And I'm gonna share the life-changing epiphany I had after a workplace betrayal that helped me break free from all of my fear of judgment.
So you're gonna wanna stick around for this and I'm gonna end off with three powerful ways to work with the fear of judgment to alchemize it. This episode is a little raw, a little vulnerable, and a little personal, and it's also a love letter to anyone who has ever felt like they had to hide the truest parts of themselves.
To be accepted. Okay, so let's start with these seven red flags, that fear of judgment and rejection are getting in the way of your best life. Number one, overthinking. If your mind is forever spiraling and you're hypervigilant about everything you say or do, because you cannot make anybody. Offended or mad because then they might judge you, then they might reject you.
Overthinking is red flag number one. Number two is perfectionism. Now this is a massive one and I'm gonna share something. A therapist told me way back in 20 13, and it still slaps to this day, she told me that I was pursuing perfection. Because I wanted to be beyond judgment because if someone is perfect, what can you judge them about?
So anyone who struggles with perfectionism bears a good chance that there is a fear of judgment and a fear of rejection lurking below the surface. Number three is procrastination, especially if it involves things like creative projects or things where. There is that potential to be rejected or judged.
So maybe you're procrastinating on putting out some content. If you wanna be more creative in the world, maybe you are procrastinating on reaching out to someone you'd really like to have coffee with because you're worried they'll reject you. So if you're procrastinating about things that involve potential judgment or rejection from other people, that's another big red flag.
And these next two are related. So the first is weak boundaries, and the reason this one is related to the fear of judgment is because if you never wanna get judged and you never wanna get rejected, one of the best ways to do that is to have incredibly weak boundaries. So you never stand up for yourself.
You always say yes, because if you never stand up for yourself, if you're just the easygoing, laid back one, and if you never set a boundary and say no, why would someone judge you? You're gonna be making them happy. So if you struggle with weak boundaries with other people, it's a good chance that it's because you have this fear of rejection and judgment.
All right. The next one very similar is people pleasing. If you are going out of your way to please everyone around you at the expense of your own happiness, at the expense of your own peace, at the expense of your own dreams, there's a good chance that this people pleasing is coming from you, not wanting to get judged or rejected by other people, so you're doing anything and everything you can to make them happy.
The next one, again, kind of similar to people pleasing, A lot of these are related. The next one is repressed emotion. Now, why is this related to fear of judgment? Let's say someone does something that makes you angry, but you don't wanna get judged at them for being angry or say that you're feeling a lot of anxiety or a lot of sadness.
But those emotions don't feel safe and comfortable to share because what if someone thinks you're a train wreck or a hot mess? You're repressing your emotions because you are trying to avoid judgment from others. And here's the thing about repressed emotion. This is where self-sabotage comes in. In so much of self-sabotage, when we turn to the food, when we turn to the drinking or the scrolling.
Or whatever it is, that's our self-sabotaging behavior of choice. So many times, if you trace that back, it traces back to some emotion you didn't let yourself feel. So someone did something that made you angry, for example, and instead of feeling that anger, you repressed the emotion. And it's hard to repress an emotion without some kind of a tool.
Or a medium. And for so many people, that medium comes in the form of that self-sabotaging behavior. So when you break free from your fear of judgment, you also break free from so much self-sabotage. Alright, that was number six. And the final one is a hyper reliance on external validation. If you fear judgment, you're gonna wanna get a lot of your validation from the outside world.
And this has certainly been true for me in my own life. So I'm gonna share the real reason why I stopped podcasting in 2024, and it highlights just how badly my fear of judgment has affected me over the years. Now, let's be real. There were multiple reasons why I stopped podcasting. I was creatively burned out and I wasn't feeling fully aligned with the show's focus anymore.
So what I did was I kind of tried to make the show more me. I rebranded it, I put a mermaid on the podcast cover art, and I changed the description and tweaked some things. I was trying to make it more authentic to who I was becoming. And here's what happened. After I did that, the downloads dropped in half and I was already burned out from doing the show.
This isn't my finest moment, but I'll admit that was the last straw because I was so fixated on the external validation, I was so hyper-focused on the external metrics because I felt like that was how I knew how people were judging me. Were these podcast episodes good? The downloads must have gone up if they were bad, that's why the download episodes would've dropped.
That was sort of the story I was telling in my head. So when this happened, I decided I'm gonna post the last few episodes and then end with a announcement about the podcast hiatus. And that was it. That was last May, may of 2024, and it was right during this time in this place of deep burnout of giving up on the podcast my business.
Building doors full time. I went into a plant medicine journey hoping for clarity, and instead I got a mirror that held up all the fear I hadn't metabolized yet. So it was this fear of judgment and this cracked me open. It ended up with me. Ugly crying to my poor husband for hours about how no one liked the real me, and when I tried to show up as the real me, it's too much.
It's too out there, too wild. So this silly little thing with the podcast downloads, which I chose to take personally when it could have not been personal at all, this triggered one of my deepest, biggest core wounds. But it needed to get activated so I could heal on a deeper level, and so I could take this wisdom forward and share it with you in hopes that it will help you break free from this it, it's also holding you back.
So a month later, June of 2024, I got a powerful opportunity to do this healing work. So June of 2024, this was after I had walked away from podcasting, the business, even from writing books, which has always been my thing. And deep down I thought, Hey, if I just stopped doing this stuff online where I'm visible, I'll get to hide and stay safe.
Nobody can judge me then. And I was so wrong. And also I wanted to wait until I no longer worked at my current job to share this just in case. And I'm going to be very careful to not give away identifying details. And this is not to slander or drag anyone because this isn't about that person. And honestly, this person helped me so much and I have nothing but love and gratitude for them.
I personally think they are a really good person, and I also know that there is some potential for misunderstanding about how this all came about, and I'm gonna choose to believe the best about this person and the situation and be grateful for the medicine I received. Okay, so here is what happened to the best of my understanding, and again, I do not have all the details.
I was talking to one of my coworkers at work and they were sharing how this particular individual that we both worked with tended to talk about me behind my back. They would make fun of me. They'd make fun of my voice, my laugh, and they'd also say things that were degrading sexual in nature, which, come on, I worked at a grungy old door building factory.
I'm not naive enough to think that that didn't happen a lot behind closed doors, especially when there's like four women that work in a factory full of like 50 dudes. So it is what it is. However, the reason this one got to me so much was because I thought this particular individual and I were quite close.
I trusted them and I even trusted them with some very personal stories that, you know, if I didn't want everyone at work knowing I probably shouldn't have told one person. So that was on me anyways, so I'm not gonna lie, this situation created. A lot of anger, a lot of hurt feelings, but it also made me realize something that I have taken with me from here on out, and it has actually changed everything.
I wanted to give you this lesson in a podcast episode because I know that it has the power to change everything for you as well. This was after I walked away from showing up online from podcasting, from having a business from writing. Because I thought that would help me avoid judgment, but this situation, finding out that I was being talked about behind my back by someone I trusted, made me realize something.
I am going to be judged no matter what I do, and you are gonna be judged no matter what you do. You're gonna be judged no matter how hard you try to avoid it. You can go to work at the most vanilla job in the world building doors. You can say nothing, do nothing. Get so good at your job. You never make a mistake.
And if someone is coping with their own insecurities and unhappiness and their way to cope is to judge and make fun of others. They're gonna find something to judge you for. And if people are gonna do the judging anyways, you might as well go out there and live your biggest, most unapologetic life, because then you're at least getting judged for what you want to be doing, not for what you're settling with doing, because you're trying to avoid that judgment.
This is some of the deepest, most empowering work you can do. And yes, it is scary. It has been scary to start to be more open about some of my less conventional ideas. It has been confronting to let go of that vanilla job and bring offers and creative ideas to the world that are so not vanilla. I'm also gonna share one of the conversations that inspired this episode happened with this amazing author Emily Alter.
So her episode is coming out on Friday. Stay tuned for that one. And one of the things I love most about her is how open she is about her queerness and her kin. She does not hide. She embraces 'em both as identities and as political statements. They're not just titles. They're her embodied activism. That conversation cracked something open for me, and I know it's gonna do the same for you.
And let's be real. Those are two marginalized groups. Not everyone understands them. They experience a lot of judgment, especially from certain circles. I think this resonated with me so much because, let's be honest, I am also part of both groups, and I often don't talk about that because there's this fear of scandalizing certain people or scaring them away or being on the receiving end of that judgment or that rejection.
So as of now, I am married to a man, so I'm in a straight passing marriage and I am also part of the queer community. I love people for who they are, not what their gender is. And my longest term relationship, other than my husband was with a woman, almost married her, and I'm gonna be real with you. It was so much harder.
Dating a woman because of the judgment, because of the rejection. I remember going to a restaurant with her and being treated very coldly, almost rudely by the waitress, and watch her turn around to this straight couple behind us and lavish them with friendliness and kindness. They even got their meals first, even though we were there 10, 15 minutes earlier.
So, yeah, I understand what it looks like to get treated differently because of part of my identity. And there were times at the personal training studio I worked at where people through the grapevine, it was not something I shared very openly, but they found out through the grapevine I was dating a woman.
And then they stopped training with me and then they eventually left the studio altogether. And that one. Really hurt because it didn't just hurt me. It hurt my employer's business, and I loved my employer and wanted to help her business not hurt it.
Even when I first started dating my husband. I found out that some of the people in his personal life had some interesting things to say about me behind my back. Granted, one of them, I'm pretty sure was in love with my husband and wanted to marry him herself. So I have a feeling her talking about me behind my back was largely sour grapes, and again, that's more about her than about me.
All right, so it would be easier. To just ignore those parts of my identity and not talk about them. I would get less judgment for sure, but I'm at the point now where if people only want the masked, watered down, Kayla, then they're probably not my people. And if people want the watered down masked version of you, then they're not your people.
Because there is nothing wrong with you. Whatever your identity, your opinions, your beliefs, no matter how wild or different they seem, you have a right to express them. If you are scared of the judgment and rejection, I get it. It doesn't feel good
but I also know it doesn't feel good to live as half of yourself either, or have to live your life walking on eggshells depending on which group of people you're around. And remember, people are gonna judge you no matter what you do. And if that's the case, why not be yourself? Why not go after what you really want?
And practice being more visible, not as the mask view. But as the, you, you. Another thing Emily shared in this upcoming episode was that when she started sharing her political beliefs and being more polarizing, not to offend or shock people, but because her beliefs and activism demanded it, she found her people, her connections deepened.
What if this is available to you when you face your fears of judgment? I truly believe it is. And if this episode resonated with you deeply, I'm going to give you my final pieces of advice as you work through this fear. The first one is own it. To transform it. You can't change what's lurking in the unconscious.
So go back to those seven red flags we talked about at the beginning. And ask yourself, how many of those red flags show up in my life? And could it be that they are all stemming from fear of judgment? Once you acknowledge that you have this fear, you can start to transform it. And one of the ways to do this is with something called the law of substitution.
So in the Power of the Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy, he writes. The law of substitution is the answer to fear. Whatever you fear has its solution in the form of desire. So if you fear judgment, you probably desire deep, authentic connection with your people. You want resonance with people who get you, and nobody ever has a chance to fully get you if you're hiding.
And then my third tip is as my good friend Caleb says, he talks about dosing. So if you have a fear of judgment and rejection, do not go out there and like share everything all at once in the most public form you can possibly find. You don't need to do a TED talk sharing like the top 10 most cringe things about yourself.
That's probably way too much for your nervous system right from the get go. So what you wanna do is start practicing, doing bits and pieces of exposing yourself to the fear of judgment, and then doing the nervous system work to recalibrate after. So that can look like journaling, yoga, dancing, breath work, and maybe after you post something or share something, just getting off the internet and spending some time in nature.
So those are my tips, and honestly, this episode is kind of meta because I'm overcoming my own fear of judgment about a few things as I create this episode and share it with you and kind of feels like it's working. I was so nervous to create this episode, but we're right at the end and it feels really good to get this out and share it with you because I have a feeling it's gonna land with.
More than a couple people because this one is big. So if you're listening to this and you've been shrinking, hiding, masking, I see you and I hope this episode gives you permission to start shedding the layers because your frequency unfiltered. Is what's going to collapse timelines. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you in a future episode.
