You know that moment where someone asks you for your opinion in your area of expertise and you freeze,

even if only mentally, only for a moment. Or maybe you start talking immediately, but in the

middle of it, you're thinking that you aren't even sure if what you're saying makes sense,

or afterwards you start worrying that you gave the wrong answer or you don't know what you're

talking about. I call this expertise perfectionism,

and it's a thought pattern that a lot of women have that interferes in our ability to show up as

bold, creative, strategic, and powerful leaders. In this episode, I'm going to break down what

expertise perfectionism is, how to spot it and how to change it.

Welcome to unfuck your brain. I'm your host, Kara Lowentile, master-certified coach,

and founder of the School of New Feminist Thub. I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety,

turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you're truly excited to live.

Let's go.

If you are a listener of this podcast, and even if you're not, you've probably heard a lot of talk about imposter syndrome, about that pervasive sense so many women have that they

haven't earned their professional success through talent or skill.

Instead, they attribute it to luck, to hard work, to tricking people into thinking that they

know what they're doing. And you've also heard me talk about how women are socialized to look

for approval from authority figures and to outsource their own authority and decisions to

other people.

Today's topic is kind of the nexus where those two thought patterns meet, but it's so

important that it deserves its own episode. One of the ways that women tend to diminish and

downplay their accomplishments is to undermine and second guess their own expertise.

And this is an outgrowth of perfectionism,

...