Many of the beliefs that govern our adult lives were formed long before we had the ability to question them. Ideas about worth, safety, obedience, and belonging often take root in childhood and early environments where approval and survival were closely linked. What begins as adaptation can quietly harden into identity.

In this conversation, I'm joined by Amy Green Smith, a certified life coach and hypnotherapist whose work focuses on self-worth, nervous-system awareness, and belief change. Drawing from both personal experience and years of client work, Amy reframes people-pleasing, overachievement, and self-criticism as learned survival strategies rather than personal shortcomings.

This episode originally aired in fall 2024, and felt worth resurfacing after Amy recently popped up on my Instagram feed sharing a series of powerful reflections that echoed many of the themes we explore on this show.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How dogmatic or rigid upbringings shape our inner critic and sense of worth
• Why people-pleasing is often a nervous-system response, not a personality trait
• The overlooked fawn response, and how it shows up in high-functioning adults
• The difference between self-talk and self-sentiment
• What it means to "deconstruct" beliefs we never consciously consented to
• How intuition and the inner critic can emerge from the same internal system
• The science behind hypnotherapy and subconscious belief change
• How to choose yourself without losing empathy, nuance, or grace

Do you want to feel more worthy? Get a better handle on your inner critic (or...intuition)? Reach out to Amy Green Smith today on ⁠Instagram⁠ or ⁠LinkedIn⁠, or visit her at ⁠amygreensmith.com⁠.

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