Why Identity Work Is Not Working For You.
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Why Identity Work Is Not Working For You
Farya: There is a version of every woman who arrives in my world that I never, ever forget. Particularly because of who she is on the edge of becoming. And when Nicole walked into my space a few years ago, she was already an accomplished and exceptional psychologist. Brilliant, deeply devoted to her clients and her work, but I could feel something even more powerful sitting with her. So, this was a woman who was building her entire life from an identity that was just too small for her. I could spot that straight away. And I knew instantly that this is where your current self is running the show for you. However, your bigger self is already knocking.
And then in the years that followed, through our work, through her courage, through every internal expansion that she said yes to, I watched Nicole outgrow her past identity and step into the founder, the leader, the CEO who built Journey. And today, you're not just meeting a guest. You're actually meeting a living example of what becomes possible when a woman stops negotiating with her old self and finally becomes the one that her future self requires.
Narrator: Welcome to From Trauma to CEO: The Psychology of Transformational Success with Farya Barlas. This is a space for cycle breakers, leaders, and visionaries who are ready to rewrite old patterns and rise into their fullest potential. Each episode explores the emotional, psychological, and identity-level shifts that turn lived experience into lasting, meaningful success. And now here's your host, Farya Barlas.
Farya: Hello and welcome back to From Trauma to CEO.
In today's episode, I want to speak with you about a topic that each and every one of us, at some point in our lives, would have struggled with, and a topic that is often misunderstood. I'm speaking about visibility. We tend to treat it like a professional skill, like something that you learn, you refine, and eventually can master. But in reality, visibility is far more intimate than that, because to be visible is to be revealed. And for many accomplished, deeply capable individuals, that is precisely where the nervous system begins to negotiate.
And in my experience, the conversation around visibility has very little to do with strategy, or even with mindset, and everything to do with self-trust. With the internal permission to show up without needing to perform, without self-editing, and without abandoning parts of ourselves in order to be accepted. And that is exactly where today's conversation lives. I'm joined by Anna Holtzman, a licensed psychologist and a coach who helps high-functioning creative women and entrepreneurs move through fears of visibility and into a truer expansion of their work and their identity. Now, before this chapter of her career, Anna spent over 15 years in TV and publishing. That's exactly where—the space where visibility is constant, and performance is often rewarded. Along the way, she experienced firsthand how burnout, chronic pain, and repeated self-silencing can emerge when success is shaped more by pressure than by self-trust, or joyfulness for that matter. And her own healing guided her towards nervous system-informed tools that helped her reconnect with her voice and show up more authentically in her work. Now today, she supports people, individuals, in going through imposter syndrome and bringing their most authentic visions to life, and allowing themselves to be seen without needing to perform. She's also the host of the podcast How to Trust Yourself, where she explores the deeper understanding of internal authority and what it truly means to trust yourself and to be more visible.
Anna, I'm so glad to have you here today. Thank you for joining me.
Anna: Farya, I am so, so glad to be here with you today. Thank you so much for having me here.
Farya: It's my absolute pleasure. I am excited about speaking with you about all things visibility-related, but most importantly, I want to start with—I mean, we briefly touched on it, but I want you to go into a little bit of a detail as to what led you to this work you are doing now, helping sensitive creatives and entrepreneurs use nervous system tools to work through all the fears around visibility and how they can become more authentically themselves. I love to hear your journey and what led you to this kind of work.
Anna: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me to speak about that. And before I go into it, I just want to start by saying I loved that you said, and I wrote it down, "To be visible is to be revealed." And I work with this stuff, not because I have no problems with visibility, I work with it because it's something that I continue to struggle with, and therefore have to really pay attention to and develop tools to help myself through, so that's why I love supporting clients with this. And it made me think of coming on to be on this podcast with you today.
I happen to have a lot of like chaotic stuff going on in my personal life at the moment, everything is like rushing here, rushing there. And when it came to sit down to log in to our recording, I had the thought like, "Oof, I'm going to be speaking with Farya on this podcast, and I wish I had my act together today. I wish I felt grounded and settled and all this stuff." And what that's really about, and I love the way you phrased it, is, you know, not wanting to be revealed. Thinking about visibility as, "I've got to put on my mask and be perfect and not show my messiness." And I think a lot of us instinctively think of it that way, or we're conditioned to think of it that way, and that makes it feel really scary. Because we are human and messy, and as you witnessed earlier, I had to go through the beginning of introducing you a couple of times because my mind was a little bit scattered and it took me a minute to gather myself, and that's exactly it, to appear as we are.
Farya: We are human and messy, and as you witnessed earlier, I had to go through the beginning of introducing you a couple of times because my mind was a little bit scattered and it took me a minute to gather myself, and that's exactly it, to appear as we are is somehow has been programmed that it's not okay, that it has to be the performative part of us. And in reality, and I'm sure you experience that on a daily basis, what really lands with clients, with the work that we do, is when you show up as your authentic self with all the messy parts and with everything, right?
Anna: It's what makes us feel connected, right? It's like, often say to clients that when we're dealing with interpersonal stuff, we humans, we're like tuning forks. We pick up and replicate unconsciously, each other's vibrations. And I know that when I'm masking myself and trying to hold it all together and be perfect and not show my messiness, everyone who's in my presence or who's listening to me feels that tension in their own body, too. And when I do the thing that my programming thinks I'm not allowed to do, and everyone will hate me if I just let the mess out, that's when everyone together breathes a sigh of relief and suddenly we're out of disconnection and into connection with each other.
Farya: Absolutely, yeah. I know that you had gone through your own process and of course like everything else, this is a kind of ongoing thing that we experience, especially as we reveal different layers of ourselves. What it means is that a new kind of fear of visibility, a new reluctance appears, right? And as you mentioned, you firsthand had gone through something that was so performative and exposing. So I love to hear a little bit about that process.
Anna: Yeah, I'd love to share that. So, I'll tell a version of the story of how I got to what I'm doing now, but highly embedded with metaphor, but this is a framing of how it really happened. So, my prior career to this was working in television. And yeah, before that, I worked in publishing, but for 10 of my years working in media, I worked in reality television, and I worked as video editor. And this is a very, extremely high-pressure world, you know? It's you need to be creative and think on your feet, but you need to be extremely fast. You need to do your creative work in front of other people, there's always eyes right over your shoulder staring at your work as you're working. It's just a pressure cooker, and it's an environment where you see people being fired at the drop of a hat on a daily basis, so you're always knowing that that could happen to you, too.
And in this environment, it's just natural, I was striving to be perfect, and nobody's perfect, but I managed to be very successful in this career. And that involved a lot of holding it together, like this visibility masking that we're talking about, trying to never make a mistake, never reveal what's going on inside. That can be extremely painful, right? And we can start to deteriorate in our health when we're holding all of that tension. And many people experience this in a wide variety of different ways, some are more easy to recognize than others, but it just so happens that my experience makes an easy metaphor, because on my literally very first day of work in that career, I experienced my first migraine attack. I had never experienced something like that before, it was not part of my health stuff, but on that first day of the job, I experienced such anxiety and I was striving to be perfect straight out of the gate, and so my nervous system just really freaked out and I got an extremely overpowering migraine headache.
So, this was something that then followed me throughout the 10 years that I worked in TV. And in the beginning, it wasn't something that was a big part of my life, it was just something I would experience periodically when stress and tension would build particularly at work. I would experience these attacks once in a while, and they gradually became more frequent. I would say as this tension became a more and more regular routine part of what was going on in my nervous system. After 10 years of working in this field—I always wanted to be a director, that was my goal, and I was striving for that the whole time, but after 10 years, the director career had not taken off, it wasn't happening—and I thought, "I can't spend the rest of my life editing reality TV, this was not my end goal, I need to do something different." And in the meantime, I had entered into therapy for personal reasons, not related to work. And I found it to be a very interesting, fascinating, stimulating process, and I thought television is about telling people stories, understanding human behavior, and therapy, although very different in many ways, has those elements, and maybe this is something that I could do.
So I eventually left TV and first got a life coaching certification and then types finally went back to graduate school to become a therapist. And here's where things get interesting and unexpected: I thought, "When I leave TV, and I enter this field that's all about feelings and expressing ourselves and being in tune with ourselves, maybe the migraines will go away because the tension will decrease." But what happened in fact was the exact opposite of that. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that the migraines really took over my life in a scary way, where I was being like taken fully flat out, sometimes three days a week. I was not able to show up reliably for my classes or for my clinical internship, and it felt like life was closing in on me. And I didn't understand what was happening at the time, but looking back on it now, from the other side of all that, I think what was happening is that I thought I was going into a situation where I'd be expressing my feelings and in tune with ourselves and comfortable being seen exactly as I am. But in fact, graduate school has its own code of conduct, its own rules, its own particular ways of seeing things that were not always in tune with my way of seeing things or my way of expressing myself. And in order to achieve the grades and the degree, I had to or I felt I had to conform myself to the environment and keep my authenticity under wraps at times. And I think that being in an environment where I was like on the verge of feeling I could express myself but then retracted and masked it again, it just created this huge inner tension that, for me, happened to manifest as these migraine headaches.
So, yeah, I mean this is fascinating, because and also very much aligned with everything that we talk about, right? That fear of visibility, that being train to bring all parts of ourselves into the equation, it's something internal, so it would follow us wherever we go, right? So, you know, yes, some circumstances, some positions or jobs or situations would highlight that a lot more, but essentially that programming, whatever that may be, is internal, and I'm so glad that you pointed that out, because that is the thing that a lot of the times gets misunderstood, that, okay, keeping boundaries where you're not supposed to be visible in every situation, right? You're supposed to know exactly where it is safe—like, really safe, not just in our own head—to be visible, and where it really is not.
Now you're hearing that, and you're able to identify with it on some level, I want to tell you that that's not ambition. That's a system that learned early on that movement equals safety, alertness equals belonging. I'm just giving these as examples, right? Staying ahead equals survival. So when life slows down, when the pressure lifts, when nobody is demanding anything from you, your body doesn't register that as peace. It registers it as loss of orientation. So, instead of dreaming, the system waits. Instead of imagining, it starts to scan. Instead of moving forward, it just hovers. And this is not because something is not working or anything is broken, but this is mainly because for the first time, movement is not being pulled out of you by necessity. And this is the line most people have never heard: This is not emptiness, this is unused capacity. Oh, I love that. Unused capacity.
So here is another moment that lands for a lot of people: Someone is forced with a decision that on paper is simple—say yes or no, take the opportunity or don't, say yes to this job or no, launch this product or don't, commit or pause. There's no obvious downside either way, and yet the decision feels just extremely heavy. You may think about it as you get on with your day, in your shower, in walks, you may think about it as you go through the day, as you're cooking, in the shower, on walks, late at night, and people tell themselves, "Just decide." But nothing moves. And it has nothing to do with the choice being bad or good, it has everything to do with the fact that nothing is forcing their hand. It's an option, it's a choice. And if you think about it, earlier in life, decisions were always made under pressure. And as I mentioned, that is definitely true for me, and I know it's true for many, many people—maybe it's financial urgency, maybe it's emotional necessity, or maybe it's attending to somebody else's needs. Now that the pressure is gone, and without it, the person realizes that something is unsettling, it feels unsettling. They don't actually know how to choose from desire alone. So this is where we are not choosing from pressure, we're not choosing from urgency, we want to be choosing from desire. And this is again another unfamiliar thing, right? Because you've never practiced moving without a push. And this is why some people confuse that and they think, "Well, it's—" they confuse maturity with stagnation. And what's really happening is that the old decision-making system has retired, and the new one hasn't been trained yet. So this is where sometimes cultural messaging can quietly harm people. So every January, we hear things like, "Well, if nothing changes, nothing changes. You have to want it badly enough," or "discipline is everything." Now, I don't have anything against these messages, but I want to gently also disagree with all of these messages because for many of you, pressure already did its job. It got you here, right? It helped you build a life, a career, reputation, sense of, maybe, stability. But pressure was never meant to be permanent. What people may not realize is that the pressure eventually stops working. And when it stops working, you might feel like, "Oh my god, I might be failing at something." That's not true. It's just that your system grows tired of being driven by tension. So when you hear motivational messaging or something—especially around this time of the year, people are getting all hyped up and all ready to come up with all their New Year resolution, goals, and everything—and again, I want to stress that I'm all for setting yourself goals and thinking about, reflecting on a year that's gone, and thinking about the year that's ahead. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, in fact, I encourage that. But I'm talking about the different kind of messaging—the one that pushes you to make drastic changes, like turn your life around. So these are the kind of pressure that I'm talking about, that they will not be sustainable, they will eventually stop working. And when you hear these kind of messages, this kind of motivational messages, New Year goal-setting messages, something in you may not respond anymore. And I want you to know that it's not about laziness or even discernment, it's just that you're no longer willing to exchange your nervous system for progress. And this, my friend, is evolution. Again, many people don't recognize this, I had a client a couple of weeks ago that left me a message frantically saying, "Farya, you know, like nothing is urgent, don't worry, I just want to tell you that I'm kind of feeling oddly—" she explained it as lazy and not motivated, but when we looked at it together, what came up was, "Actually, you're doing everything right, you're just not willing to compromise your nervous system for progress." That doesn't mean progress is not being made because rest assured, we are all about progress and growth. And every work that I do is around growth because I do believe that we are on this Earth, we are living this gift that's a life, because we are supposed to be growing every single day. But the growth doesn't have to cost us our nervous system.
So for the next few weeks, I'm inviting you not to ask yourself, "What should I do this year?" because you will be thinking about that, things will come up, and you go through life and you go through your business and work and your family life and everything, and things will pop up, so you will know what you should do. So that's not the question I want you to ask yourself. I want you to ask this instead, and notice the answer in your body, not in your head. And the question is: What inside of me tightens when I think about making this year count? So when you think about, "I need to make this year count," what part of your body, what part of your inside feels tighter or feels tense?. And then, what also softens when you imagine moving without pressure? So I want you to ask these two questions of yourself. That's it. There's no fixing, no forcing, because the tightening shows you where the pressure is still running the show. And the softening shows you where movement might come from next. And it's not about choosing immediately, it's all about let a different internal signal come online. And that signal is always quieter, but it's far, far more reliable. So I would invite you to focus a little bit more at your internal messaging by asking yourself these questions and watching and seeing how your body responds to that.
So, if you're listening to this and thinking, "I don't want another year of forcing or pressure," or "another year of setting goals and not necessarily meeting them, but at the same time, I don't want to give up either," then you're exactly where you need to be. You're exactly where you're supposed to be. Nothing important has closed, you haven't missed your moment. The year is still wide open, not just for the old way, but for the new way, for the way that is going to be more comfortable for you, is going to be more aligned with who you are and what your mission is in life. Now, if this episode resonated, I'd love for you to do two things. First, share it with someone who looks like they have it together but feel oddly un-pressured this year, if you know anyone. I know a lot of people—actually, a lot of people think that feeling un-pressured is a discomfort and a pressure in itself. So That gets also confused. And then the second thing I want you to do is stay close, because this year, my work is all about helping people move forward without pressure, but without also shrinking their lives, either. So This is all about expansion and growth without compromising yourself, your nervous system, and your health. And that's where real expansion begins. Pressure made you effective, but it was never meant to be permanent. And you can thrive, you can expand, you can grow, without the old programming, without the trauma response of pressure. Working under pressure and working with urgency is a trauma response. And it served you for the longest time, my dear, but it doesn't have to be that way anymore. It's not serving you anymore, and there is another way where you can thrive by reflecting on and by giving yourself permission to think about how good can my life get. If there was no limitation, no pressure, and no fear, how good would everything get—your life, your business? With that note, I'm going to close this episode by wishing you a new year that's going to be full of expansion, and full of you honoring yourself and honoring your needs, as well as honoring your desires. And I will be rooting for you.
Narrator: Thank you for listening to From Trauma to CEO: The Psychology of Transformational Success with Farya Barlas. Check out the show notes for more information on how to continue this work or explore more of Farya's teachings. If this episode resonated, please follow, review, and share it with someone who needs this message. And we'll see you in the next episode.
Episode Summary
Many ambitious people believe they need more discipline, better habits, or stronger motivation to keep growing. In this episode, Farya Barlas challenges that belief by explaining why constant pressure and urgency may have fueled success in the past but are no longer the foundation for sustainable growth. She explores how true expansion begins when we stop relying on survival patterns and start making decisions from desire, self-trust, and alignment.
What You'll Learn
Learn why operating under constant pressure is often a learned survival response rather than a sign of ambition or commitment.
Discover how relying on urgency to make decisions can prevent you from accessing creativity, fulfillment, and long-term growth.
Understand why feeling less driven does not necessarily mean you are becoming lazy, but may signal that your nervous system is ready for a healthier way of succeeding.
Explore how to recognize the difference between making choices from pressure and making choices from genuine desire.
Learn two reflective questions that can help you identify where old patterns are still influencing your goals and where authentic growth is waiting to emerge.
Resources
Free Diagnostic: faryabarlas.com/diagnostic
Method™: faryabarlas.com/services
Book call: faryabarlas.com/book
