Building Confidence and Self Trust with Trish Blackwell
Super excited to introduce Trish Blackwell, host of the top-ranked Confidence Podcast with over 6 million downloads, on today’s episode of the Bossing Up Overcoming OCD show! Trish shares her journey of high achievement and how overachieving impacted her self-trust and confidence. We chat about the intertwined relationship between self-trust and confidence and discuss practical tools to build these essential skills. From her background as a competitive swimmer to overcoming eating disorders and OCD-like tendencies, Trish emphasizes the importance of being a friend to yourself and developing daily habits like journaling and self-validation.
If you’re dealing with OCD, struggling with self-trust, or simply want to boost your confidence, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Tune in to learn how to manage life’s curveballs and build resilience through self-trust.
00:00 Introduction and Welcoming Guest Trish Blackwell
01:38 Trish Blackwell's Journey to Self-Trust
03:50 The Importance of Self-Trust in Creating Confidence
06:56 Practical Tips for Building Self-Trust
07:31 Practical Steps to Break the Cycle
14:16 Overcoming Overcommitment and Self-Criticism
19:33 Daily Habits for Self-Trust
22:20 Conclusion and Where to Find More
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Erin H. Davis: [00:00:00] I hit record. Okay. All right. So super excited to have a very special guest today. And I am more than like excited, like over the moon, excited to introduce you to Trish Blackwell. She is the host of an iTunes top ranked podcast called the confidence podcast, and it has over 6 million downloads, like, wow.
Over 575 episodes and what over 1200 five star reviews. Yeah, I mean, amazing. So Trish, thank you so much for being here today on the bossing up overcoming OCD show.
Trish Blackwell: Aaron, I'm super, I just think we're going to have a really great conversation. I think you and I, well, we've already talked. We. Kind of used to be neighbors.
We would have been great neighbors, right? Like I feel like we're gonna have a great, great time chatting today. So thank you for having me on the show. And we're talking about something that's gonna hopefully really Give your audience and your listeners some, some encouragement, some tools.
Erin H. Davis: Absolutely.
Trish Blackwell: Well,
Erin H. Davis: and part of, you know, with my audience, I know to end my clients is just noticing their lack of confidence in themselves. And I've been listening to your podcast and I'm a huge fan. And so in reaching out to you, I think has just been a wonderful communication and your work is very beautiful. And so, um, with the theme of our discussion today, it's all about self trust.
So yeah, I think that's going to be huge because I can see how that totally plays into confidence. And I'm curious what led you to focus on self trust?
Trish Blackwell: Well, so on self trust and confidence are so intertwined and the reason I got interested in the first place. So a little bit about me. If no one, if you're new to my work is I am that typical Enneagram three type a personality Like overachiever.
And I, and I love being wired that way, but as we know with our personalities, there's a healthy expression of it and there can be an unhealthy expression of it. It can be a double edged sword. And so, you know, uh, most, most of my life story is about achieving, achieving, achieving, and always pushing for more.
And so though the world may have seen me as very confident on the outside, on the inside, I never felt like I was doing enough. I always felt pressured that everything was going to fall apart. I needed to do more. And it was like, You know, you reach that finish line and then it's the invisible finish line that moves.
And so there was always this pursuit of more, which in what it did is it sparked that internal dialogue that, and a belief that was false, that I'm not doing enough enough. I'm not doing enough. I don't trust fundamentally. I'm communicating to myself. I don't trust myself. I don't trust myself to be doing enough because that means I'm I either mismanage my time or I don't trust my knowledge.
I used to overstudy for tests or overprepare for presentations. And you've think about that. Why is that? Because we don't trust ourselves. And you know, and I, uh, my background is a division one collegiate athlete. I was a swimmer in college and very competitive and it became a problem. My confidence became a problem.
And I used to love to race and he used to have a ton of confidence in a race. But when I started overthinking and I didn't trust myself against somebody, I didn't trust my training. I would sabotage a race and I would get beat. And my coaches would say, Trish, we need you to trust yourself. We need you to trust your body.
We need you to trust your training. And I was like, but how? Which is why I'm really like. I love providing basic tools for confidence to help people know, like, here's the how, because I, at the time I needed the most, no one knew how to teach me the how they're like, just relax. I was like, right. Cool. Uh huh.
Yeah. Thanks. That doesn't help me. I know. Yeah. Right. And so learning how to think, you know, and give myself tools to support and to trust. And what I learned over the, over my 12 years of, of working in the coaching industry that I am, I've been doing is, gosh, the more you build the skills and the tools, the skill of self trust.
Yeah. The deeper you're building an intimate relationship with yourself, when you can trust yourself, your level of confidence increases, your self efficacy increases, your belief in your ability to do something, your belief in your ability to follow through your bit, like all of it just up levels.
Erin H. Davis: And
Trish Blackwell: furthermore, when you trust yourself, there's so much more internal peace and that's what we want.
Absolutely. You know what I mean? Like that peace and security. So that's why I'm, I'm really into it.
Erin H. Davis: Oh, absolutely. And you know, even listening to your podcast, like you're passionate about everything. Like you bring some passion to your conversations and everything. It, and it makes it really enjoyable to stay engaged as a listener.
So thank you. I appreciate that feedback. Yeah. And so the self trust, I mean, so it [00:05:00] comes from just being, well, uh, doing life, right, like over, uh, The overachieving really drives you to like, there's no end point, you don't know how to stop. So it sounds like the self trust is that key to kind of stopping yourself from overdoing.
Trish Blackwell: Yeah. Yeah. There's an overdoing. Well, you know, it's, it's, and it's hard to say, cause we think more is better and we kind of have to go against our, for those listeners who are in America, this can like Thing that like, this is a tsunami. That's like, yeah, if, if a little bit's good, then a ton must be better.
Like if you, like, if you, Oh, if you just go over and do more, it should equal results. And it doesn't always because overworking overstudying over preparing can actually sabotage self trust because what's happening is that you are then putting pressure on yourself. Then when you put pressure on yourself, you sabotage yourself and you will not perform to the highest level.
So one of the ways we build self trust. is by acknowledging what we have done well, acknowledging where our strengths are, even sometimes taking a risk to say, I believe, I know it's self trust when it comes to studying for something, you're preparing something. It makes it's an easy example. So if you're studying for a big interview or a big, you know, passing the bar or something that's like quote unquote, very important, right?
Because the minute you say it's really important, now you're putting pressure on yourself. And the minute you put that emotional weight of pressure, it's very hard to trust yourself. And so we want to be careful where our emotions are, but we need to acknowledge and validate and say, like, You know what?
I'm really good at information. I'm, I'm really good at what I do. I I've studied this. Well, I trust my training. I trust my education. I trust my, yeah, on the blank, but we have to start giving, we, I think we want other people to tell us. You got this. We have to be the ones who give it to ourselves.
Erin H. Davis: Absolutely. Yeah. And really that trust coming from within could be a game changer for people because oftentimes with OCD, they'll get the reassurance, but it doesn't get, it doesn't fix it. Right. It may give them a short term fix, but not in the longterm. And so they continue to get reassurance and validation over and over.
But then in the work it's about. We got to trust ourselves. We got to have this healthy mindset and know the real you, like the real you study, the real you has good intentions. The knowledge is there, you know? And if
Trish Blackwell: I would speak from personal experience, uh, I grew up with a, I wouldn't say, um, I grew up with some parent, a parent who had some.
So OCD tendencies, which you know, you then mirror what you are taught. And so there are some certain behaviors I've noticed in my life that I will triple or quadruple check something. And you can easily justify it by saying, well, I got to make sure the, the stove is off four times and you, and I've had to, so I've had to be very mindful in my own life of some of that.
And in, in once you, and I'm no expert on OCD by any means, but I have learned when it comes to self trust with. small, um, behaviors like that. Once I know that I've done something and it's particularly some area where I might have a tendency to want to double, triple, quadruple check something. Yeah. Just say loud.
I trust myself. I love it. I've done it. I mean, it's really interesting because it's so simple and like, I'll go, I have turned off the stove. I've checked it twice. I've unplugged my little space heater, trust myself. And then you're able to, so like, it's really interesting. You're even able to use your words out loud to say to yourself, like, okay, I'm done.
I've done it. Like, you know, we can talk into the context of like daily life stuff or like, you know, OCD or over, over preparing for something on, on, on, on bigger things. But fundamentally you're right. It all boils down to it's a, we want to know, am I going to be okay? Is it going to be okay? Yes.
Erin H. Davis: Yeah.
Because
Trish Blackwell: in those contexts of passing or failing or, um, uh, something awful happening or not that we're trying to control, we need to like fundamentally I am safe and if something bad or something I don't want to happen were to happen, I also trust that I will be okay. Right. That's where we have to give ourselves some peace.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. And you've got, well, you do share your personal story on your podcast and I appreciate your vulnerability and that. So what is it? Episode 444. Yeah.
Trish Blackwell: It's easy to remember. 444.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. So if the listeners want to go check that out, because you have, I mean the story to back it up about how, you know, you've been through some things and then learning to, that things are going to be okay because you trust [00:10:00] yourself.
Trish Blackwell: Yes. Yeah. And yeah, in the very short picture of that, like I've had a lot of rock bottoms in lots of different ways. And that, that episode definitely breaks it down. Um, and I had to learn to trust myself again. I had to learn to trust other people. I actually, and my, my faith is a very important part of my, of my life, but I had to also learn to trust my relationship with God again.
Like I trust was really integral to a lot of my healing and lots of, right. And so, and if you're struggling with trusting yourself, you have to then go, why, what am I afraid of? Cause when we don't trust. If I, if I don't trust a friend, I have a certain friend who says, and I love her. We can love somebody, but not trust them, which is interesting.
It is. You can love them, but not trust them. And so there are certain friends I love, but I don't trust them with my secrets. There's certain friends I love, but I don't trust them to do what they say they're going to do. Yeah. I think they're lovely people and they've got great ambitions and they say they're going to show up or they say they're going to do this and then they overcommit.
So I don't, it's not a personal attack on them. Intending to be untrustworthy, but the friends that you're worried about, like if I'm going to go drive to Starbucks to meet my friend, do I trust she's going to show up? I know which friends won't.
Erin H. Davis: And
Trish Blackwell: so I can love that friend, but also not be pressed to get to that Starbucks on time because I know they're either not coming or they're going to be 20 minutes late themselves.
Exactly. All that to be said, you, you, you have to go. If I want, if I'm going to be the one person I'm in a relationship with my whole life is myself. We want to go, what can I do to build trust with myself? How can I show up for myself more in small ways, which comes down to keeping your promises to yourself or on being, or doing what you say we're going to do.
But when I question if I'm going to trust somebody when, if you're dating, for example, should I trust them? Is he, can, is he, is he, uh, have integrity you, you, you, what am I afraid of? Can't trust him. And so if you can't trust yourself, we have to ask ourselves, what am I actually afraid of? I was working with a client on this and we were working on some, some post eating disorder thoughts that are still bothering her.
And she, we got down to the core thought was, she said, I don't trust my body. I think my body wants to be fat. And so she didn't, she was like, Oh, we're over exercising over all the things. Yes. But the core of belief was the problem. And so we didn't trust the body. Now we can fix some of the, the behavior and the, the compulsion, um, Based on fixing the trust at the core of, Hey, what can we do to build trust with your body?
Right. We show our ourselves that our body has actually been trustworthy to our whole lives.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. And these women that I work with for OCD, a lot of them are so afraid of a losing control or B things changing. So I think self trust. Would be the key part in helping them navigate that change because in the end, they're going to trust that it'll be okay because they're going to make sure it's going to be okay.
Trish Blackwell: Yeah. Cause you can look at yourself and go, I've been a person who is proactive and also values control over what I can control and I'm wise enough. To know I can't control change. Change will happen. Change is inevitable, but I can control my thoughts about myself, which means if I know I'm good at managing all the curve balls that come my way now, that means I can trust that I'm equally capable post change to handle anything that comes my way.
Like I trust that I can pivot. I trust that I can make a modification. I trust that like I trust my ability to be on top of my, like that, that is how we can build the trust. We can't trust. We don't know what's going to happen politically, we don't know what's going to happen economically, we don't know what's going to happen in the people we love.
Right. Like, There's a lot out of our control, but we can trust our ability to handle it.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. So would you say that self trust really builds into resilience?
Trish Blackwell: Absolutely. Yeah. If you trust yourself and you trust your ability to, to be curious, to be, um, flexible, to be, um, innovating on what you need to do or what you don't need to do, what you need to change, then you really can do anything.
You can push any boulder up any mountain. Oh, I don't, it might not be fast, but we can move forward. Yeah. Like we got to release this need to do things at a certain speed
Erin H. Davis: and
Trish Blackwell: instead just be okay with progress, continuous improvement. Right. Love insight is continuous improvement. Anything, anytime we can learn something about ourselves.
We've had, we've grown, we've, we've made progress, right?
Erin H. Davis: Right, right. So in making those promises to [00:15:00] yourself as a high achiever, like sometimes they can get, you get overcommitted, right? So how do you coach ladies in particular? How do you coach them to not? Over extend themselves because, you know, it happens, right?
You put 20 things on your to do list. Like that's not realistic. So,
Trish Blackwell: right. So we have to be loving enough to ourselves
Erin H. Davis: to allow
Trish Blackwell: ourselves to be human because, and this is where I really, you know, how I mentioned earlier, self trust is the byproduct of having built friendship with yourself.
Erin H. Davis: Yeah. Which is
Trish Blackwell: we think about which friends do we trust, which ones we don't.
And so often little things, it's not like they're intentionally not showing up for us or they're intentionally irresponsible or yeah, yeah. But like, you're like, okay, but the ones I trust, they just take the relationship and the friendship more seriously. to communicate well, so to communicate with yourself well, which means journaling.
Understanding yourself. So in the same way, you would be friends to somebody, if you saw a friend over scheduling, you'd be like, babe, why? Why are you doing this to yourself? , right? Why are you stressed out? You are stressed because you are trying to do three people's lives in two days. Like, what are you doing?
Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . And we would be loving and able enough to tell a friend, like, you need to slow your role. Like we can slow down a little bit. You don't need to do all the things for all the people. Yeah. And we have to get to, what are you trying to prove? Why are you over committing? I mean, like that, what are you trying to prove is like a big, especially for high achieving women.
Yes. But if we're speaking to a friend, we'd be like, babe, what are you trying to prove? You're amazing as is like, you don't have to go so far over. So we want to take that same conversation we would have to a friend that trusts us and that we trust. And we have to mirror that conversation back to ourselves and be that friend to ourselves.
Cause when I have done that, when I'm over committed or I've stretched thin or I've pretended that I'm super woman and like, Oh, it's fine. I'm I'll, I can do it. Um, one, there's some pride there and I have to be honest enough myself and I have to really be curious about. Gosh, Trish, what are you trying to prove?
Or who are you, whose, whose love are you trying to earn by not being a burden by not needing to delegate or ask for help or, you know, or it's so interesting for me, it had to be, I do a lot. So one to prove things. For the little golf clap that nobody gives me like, look, I don't know, like you have to ask yourself, what, what am I doing this all for?
Cause I had years of my life where I was just stretched to the max and then I had to go for what, what I learned to be a friend to myself. I had compassion. I was like, why? Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Cause nobody actually, yeah, these people I want the gal golf platform are not even golf clapping for me.
They're just a machine. And meanwhile, I'm driving myself crazy like a machine pretending to be happy. So it's a good breaking point for me.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. That's a lovely perspective of, you know, be a good friend to yourself.
Trish Blackwell: Yeah. We just love that. You know, we say that I'm sure people have heard it. It's so much easier said than done.
I can speak from my experience. I had a. Uh, you know, decade long eating disorder, super, super self critical voice, body dysmorphia. And some of my eating disorder and disordered eating patterns were, I didn't trust myself in the kitchen because I would go through seasons where I would either emotionally eat and binge eat or that I would starve myself.
So I honestly didn't know how to trust myself around food. And that created a deeper message of, well, you can't be trusted. And so I really had to rebuild and then because I had that thought, you can't be trusted. And then I would sometimes be really proud of myself for, for, for, for, for being quote unquote good, which is like a whole nother issue in itself.
Then I would also then be self critical and self judging of myself when I was didn't hit the mark. So the self critical voice taught me to always be this. Um, just negative to myself and like a bully. And so it's really interesting. You have to learn if you're, if anyone is resonating of being self critical or hard on yourself, then we need to really go the base work of like, I mean, I'm saying kindergarten, first grade level, this is how you be a friend.
Cause I had, I mean, I had to deconstruct everything, you know, in my twenties and thirties to go, I don't know how to be a friend to myself. And so if anybody's feeling that way, please don't feel like you're behind, please don't feel like you're stupid or that you're disconnected. I think so. I think millions of women don't know how to be a friend to themselves because we're so, so focused on.
Doing and achieving and doing things for others that we've lost connection with ourself. And so to rebuild a friendship with yourself, you start at that kindergarten, first grade level. Like, let's be nice. Let's do things together. Let's learn to have fun together. Say nice words to your friend. Like, I mean, I have a seven year old and a nine year old, so it's very easy for these elementary school ages, but like, these are the conversations as a parent you have about teaching your kids how to be a friend.
Erin H. Davis: Right. Right. So it really comes down to that inner voice and [00:20:00] learning how to talk to yourself in a friendly way. A hundred percent. A friendly, kind way. Ooh. I
Trish Blackwell: love that. Kindness. Right. That's, I mean, it's so crazy. And I think so many people listening, so many women resonate that they're kind to other people.
Erin H. Davis: Yes.
Trish Blackwell: Oh, they want to be
Erin H. Davis: too.
Trish Blackwell: Yeah. Yeah. So we need the desire to want to be kind to others as to be that kindness to ourselves to be as. Deeply ingrained and as high of a value as being kind to others,
Erin H. Davis: right? Okay. So Trish, what are some daily habits? I've already got some ideas from your podcast, but for our listeners today, what are those daily habits or Tips that you do to help you stay connected with your own sense of self trust.
Trish Blackwell: Yes Totally. So daily habit, the core number one is journaling, right? Taking a few minutes to journal. Um, and really the way I like to talk about journaling is very, um, time box. It's less than five minutes and it's starting with gratitude. So a habit of gratitude as well, but to really journal, like, Hey, is there a thought in my brain that doesn't belong?
Is there a negative thought? Like think about journaling, like brushing your teeth, that you're just brushing your brain. There's always going to be some good. There's always going to be some negativity because I think for, uh, there's a lot of pushback against journaling of like, well, I shouldn't have to journal to be this happiest version of myself.
But we, we don't say that about our teeth. We don't like, I can't believe I have to brush my teeth this morning. My breath should still be good. No, we're like, it's just the human body. And if you think about how many inputs and how many, how much, how many thousands of messages about not being enough and we should do more that we're getting per day.
It's no wonder that we have some self critical or negative thinking.
Erin H. Davis: Then we need
Trish Blackwell: to clean out on a daily basis. Right? So to start learning how to reframe your thoughts and have small conversations to yourself. And then another habit that I think is really critical to self talk is to, is to self validate is to at the end of the day, find three things that you say, as if you were saying to a friend, so Aaron, if I was like, girl, you know what, today I saw you crushing it at this.
And like, I really saw how well prepared you were for that and for this podcast. And you were like, it was just great. Quite like just complimenting yourself. Like you track, like track a win and then give yourself that little, it's more better than a golf clap. It's an attagirl. Like get into the habit of little micro attagirls.
Really starts giving you permission to be like, to build, cheer yourself on. When you can learn to cheer yourself on, you're learning to engage in conversation. So funny. Cause what I teach people is like, I teach people how to have conversations with themselves and you go like people, like, I don't want to be the person who talks to myself.
I'm like, but everybody talks to themselves. Like that's the number one conversation. The longest conversation you're going to have in your whole life is yourself with yourself. So let's learn how to have good ones. Right. Yeah. I mean, right. And if you think about like socially speaking, a great conversationalist has a skillset of good conversation of asking the right questions of listening in a certain way of being curious of engaging others.
So you actually can improve your quality of conversation with yourself by learning skills and better conversation, better self talk better. So I think sometimes people are like, well, it's just how I think we can always change how we think. That's what's the one superpower that we have.
Erin H. Davis: Yes. And it's within your control.
Trish Blackwell: It is within your control.
Erin H. Davis: Yeah. Well, again, very much appreciate this conversation today. And Trish, where can the listeners connect with you or learn more about your work?
Trish Blackwell: Absolutely. So while if you're a podcast listener, which you are, come check out the confidence podcast Anywhere you, you, you find podcasts on Instagram, I'm Trish underscore Blackwell.
Um, and then of course, Trish Blackwell. com. Um, and if you're interested is my core website. If you're interested in really diving deeper on your competence, I have an entire, um, online, um, school called the college of competence called college of competence. com. You can find out more there, but lots of great free resources, um, to build the skill of self talk and the skill of confidence.
Erin H. Davis: Wonderful. And I'll be sure to put all of those links in the show notes
Trish Blackwell: too. Thank you.
Erin H. Davis: Yeah. Thank you.
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