Why Visibility Feels Unsafe and How to Move Through It

What if the reason showing up online feels so hard has less to do with strategy and more to do with safety?

In this episode of The Favourite Self Podcast, Carly unpacks what is really happening beneath the surface when entrepreneurs struggle to post consistently, share their story, or fully show up online. She reflects on the overwhelm that comes from conflicting social media advice and explains why the real block is often not a lack of strategy, but a nervous system response to visibility, vulnerability, and being seen.

Carly breaks down the different protective responses that can show up in your content, from over-explaining and overworking to freezing, hiding, or watering down your message. She also shares why done-for-you marketing can only go so far if you are not fully embodying your message, your authority, and the version of yourself your brand is asking you to become. This episode is a powerful reminder that the goal is not to force yourself to be visible, but to create enough safety in your body that visibility no longer feels like a threat.

If this episode resonates, be sure to follow and subscribe to The Favourite Self Podcast, and share it with someone who needs this reminder.

Key Takeaways:

• Content resistance is often a nervous system response, not a strategy problem

• The fear of showing up online is usually rooted in what visibility represents, not the post itself

• Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses can all shape the way you create and share content

• Your brand can only reflect what you are willing to embody and believe about yourself

• The most magnetic content comes from safety, self trust, and embodiment, not performance

• Done-for-you marketing works best when it supports your voice, not replaces it

• Real visibility starts when you stop treating your resistance like failure and start seeing it as information

Carly's Links
Website: carlyottaway.com / webofwords.ca
Instagram: @‌itscarlyottaway / @‌webofwords_
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlyottaway
Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@favouriteselfpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The fear isn't always that people won't see you. The fear is actually often that they will. Welcome to the Favorite Self podcast. I like to think of it not as your future self or your best self, but your favorite self. My favorite self that just makes me feel the truest version of me. What lights your favorite self on fire? I'm Carly Hadaway, founder, author, storyteller, and a woman who learned that building a successful life means nothing if it doesn't feel like yours. This podcast is for women who are building businesses, raising families, leading movements, and asking themselves, is this it or is there more available to me? This is your invitation to come back to yourself. Let's dig in. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Favorite Self Podcast. Today I want to talk about something that I feel like holds a lot of entrepreneurs back from being seen online, especially on social media specifically, and showing up and sharing their story and their message and really building these deep, meaningful connections with their community. And I think part of the problem to start is that there is so much mixed feedback and advice when it comes to how to show up online, right? One day or one week we're hearing, oh, post five times a week. And the next post tells us post three times a day. We're hearing batch your content, build out a content calendar. And then we're hearing, no, be in your feminine energy and show up in the moment in real time and go live and share stories. Stories matter more than posts, but reels are what get you seen. But carousels are actually what get you seen. And then we're hearing tell better stories. It's all about the storytelling. And then suddenly it's, but you need value-based content to really build trust and authority. And it's confusing as fuck. Let's be honest. And it can be so overwhelming for a business owner. And so this is why I really always, whenever we're working with clients, stress that it's not about fitting yourself into a box, into the perfect formula for success. And I understand the temptation of that because it can feel like a full-time job sometimes, keeping up with social media and all the changes, the latest updates, the latest trends. And you are here running a business and probably not online all the time, like those of us who work in marketing and in this space are. And I've been in this space for 11 years. I have seen so many changes, so many shifts across the last decade. I mean, when I started my business, Instagram was like all about the flatlays and like the really filtered photos and like the one-line captions. There were no stories. You were not really using the app to sell. Like Twitter was still a thing. Facebook was still actually a bigger business platform. So it has changed so much. And now we're seeing these shifts within the platforms themselves constantly. And it can be easy to get lost in the noise because all the gurus are preaching the latest hack or trend. What it's so important for you to remember is that it is so much more valuable for you if you actually get really clear on your own energy, first of all. Do the inner work to understand the identity blocks holding you back, which we're going to get into, of course, in this episode. And really feel like you can show up in a way that actually feels aligned and intentional for you. Instead of trying to fit yourself into someone else's strategy, come up with a strategy that actually feels the most supportive for you and gets you the best results. And give it time. Give it time to actually work. You know, we expect these instant results, but there's something else going on beneath the surface when it comes to that. And that's what we're going to dive into in today's episode. Because I really want to talk about what is actually happening when you are avoiding showing up, when you are holding yourself back from hitting publish, when you are playing small, when you're being inconsistent, when you are watering down your opinions and diluting your message. And it's not that something's wrong with you or your strategy. It's actually nervous system work. Of course it is. Of course it's the nervous system, right? And once you see it, I promise you you can't unsee it because your content blocks might not be what you think they are. What if they are actually protective responses? What if they are rooted in your body trying to keep you safe, which we know our nervous system is always trying to do? And when did feeling seen and being visible and being vulnerable and putting your story out there ever feel safe? It doesn't. It's training your body to understand that you are okay and it is safe to do this and to move forward. And this is what's really inspired me to shift into more of this line of work because I built my marketing agency very much rooted in strategy and in a lot of the masculine energy. I've talked about this before. But I would see a gap because we could deliver the most strategic content plan for a client that was still so rooted in being authentic to them and their message. We could build a beautiful optimized website that shared their brand story clearly, showed how they were different and how they stood apart, really rooted in strategic messaging that was so tailored to their specific target audience and designed and written to convert their users to take action. But if they weren't in a space where they were actually able to embody that next level, it would fall flat. And it's easy to blame the strategy, right? When things aren't working, we're like, what's going on? I need to try a different strategy. I need a different hack. I need to take another course, I need to hire another agency, whatever that looks like. And we're avoiding the work that matters the most. And that is the inner work. That is the nervous system work. And so that's this gap that I really feel so passionate about closing for our clients. Because if you don't feel safe being seen and being visible, the strategy will fall flat. I've seen it again and again with clients that we've worked with where they came to us feeling like they were ready to be the expert. They wanted to be seen as the authority, but they struggled to actually claim it. They wanted to attract aligned clients, but they were afraid to share their real thoughts and real perspectives. They wanted more visibility, but they were hesitant when it came to actually posting the content. Or they wouldn't even open the app and they would want to be as hands-off as possible. They thought done for you meant, okay, here you go, you take care of it. And really losing the ownership of being the human behind the brand, the person, the voice. You know, when you are outsourcing your marketing, you are not outsourcing your voice. You are not outsourcing your genius. We are pulling those pieces from you. We are helping you come up with a plan. We're helping you come up with systems to take that off your plate. But ultimately, it's still rooted in you, your voice, your story, the connections that you are making with your audience. And if you're not embodying that transformation and that message truly to the fullest, and sometimes you don't even realize it. I know from experience, trust me, we'll get into that. Then it's not going to click because again, there's the energy there and your audience can feel it. It's not that your audience feels like your content is outsourced and someone else is writing it. At least that's been our experience. Often our clients actually feel like we sound more like them than they do because we're eliminating the self-doubt and the limiting beliefs and all those pieces holding them back from taking that step. But that doesn't excuse them from doing the inner work themselves so that they can show up in that way and be fully embodied in that identity shift. So, really, it doesn't matter how beautiful your website is if you can't own the message that it's sharing. It doesn't matter how much value you are pouring into your content if you are still hiding behind the safest version of your voice. And this is where the mirror effect comes in. If you haven't listened to that episode, you can go back and listen to it. But in that I share how your brand can only reflect what you are willing to embody. Your brand will always calibrate to your self-perception. So let's get into it. I want to make this really tangible and share some really concrete examples for you. When we think about showing up online, what do you feel like is holding you back? Just let yourself think about that for a minute and reflect on that. Often we think the fear is associated with the post itself. Maybe there's something about that post that just feels vulnerable or feels cringe. But it's actually usually about what the post represents or what that feeling represents. And it's not necessarily on the surface. You need to be able to dig in a little bit and really pause and reflect and maybe journal on it when you're feeling yourself pulling back. And if we really get into it, what is actually beneath the surface is this fear of being judged, uh, fear of being misunderstood, of being seen as too much, of being rejected. A big one that often goes unrecognized is this fear of being seen trying, or this fear of being seen failing, being seen wanting something more, something bigger. There's sometimes even a fear of being seen as an expert. Some people are just so subconsciously repelled at that thought. And this fear of being seen before you feel ready. That's another big one, which is so tricky to navigate because the reality is that we never actually feel ready when we're taking those big quantum leaps. You know, we have to be ready to take action before we feel it in our body and the feeling of being safe and ready comes afterwards. I wish it was the other way around, but it's just the reality. Because your nervous system's job is to protect you. So if visibility is feeling unsafe or vulnerable or rooted to these feelings of judgment, your body may respond as if posting on social media is a threat and your nervous system wants to keep you safe. So let's dive into the four types of nervous system responses and how they might be showing up in your content. And as we go through this, take your time to really reflect on it and maybe again do some journaling afterwards to figure out which one feels most relevant for you. I myself have experienced all of these and continue to experience them in different seasons. Sometimes I feel them all in one week, if I'm being honest. And the key is being aware of them. And once you are aware of them, you can work through them and move past them. So the first one, which maybe is the most obvious one, is the fight response. And that's this feeling of I need to prove myself. Oh, I spend so many years in fight response without actually knowing it. In your content, this might look like over-explaining your value or creating content from this place of defensiveness. Like you have to really perform or outperform your peers. Maybe you feel frustrated or irritated when a post doesn't take off, like you're feeling like your audience doesn't get it. It could be this feeling of really trying to prove your expertise instead of actually just embodying it and showing up knowing it's a given and it's the baseline and trusting in that. This is a big one that can send you into comparison. And again, that feeling of feeling like you need to outperform others in your space and ultimately creating from this energy of like pressure or urgency or sometimes even resentment. And fight energy in your content sounds like, oh, I'll show them. And while that can create momentum, it usually doesn't create the kind of grounded visibility that actually feels sustainable in your business. The momentum is temporary. And then there's the flight response, and that's this feeling of, oh, I need to keep moving so that I don't have to feel this. It's that escape kind of feeling. So in your content, this can look like constantly changing your offers, your niche, rewriting your bio, updating your website constantly, always looking for the next best strategy, constantly reworking your content calendar instead of just posting the post. It can look like diving deep into signing up for every course, every master class, but not actually implementing and taking action, and really like just focusing on learning, but not integrating. It can look like just tweaking the caption forever and spending so much time on one post. And also this feeling of like staying so busy behind the scenes, but not actually moving the needle forward. So flight can be deceiving because it can actually look productive from the outside or from your own perspective. Your calendar feels full, but that's exactly what makes it sneaky. You feel like you're doing a lot, but you are avoiding the actual moment of being seen, which is the piece that will actually drive real results for you. I'm so curious if which one is resonating. We're still going though. The next one is the freeze response. So this is exactly how it sounds. It's this feeling of I know what to say or I know what I want to say, but I can't move. I can't say it. So this can be in practice, that feeling of just like staring at a blank screen and feeling like your brain just like switches off whenever it's time to actually start writing or creating. And it's not a lack of ideas, like maybe you're getting ideas in the shower when you're out for a walk. But then as soon as you sit down at your computer or pull out your phone to actually capture them, you go blank. This can look like delaying launches, constantly pushing them back. It can look like avoiding the app, like not even opening Instagram, refusing to even look at it. It can feel like this feeling of being just stuck, or it feels like a heavy weight or really foggy. Like there's a lack of clarity. And that's what's important to distinguish between because, like I said, freeze is not a lack of ideas or lack of creativity, but it's that lack of safety. And then the last piece is the fond response. And that is this energy of I'll become who I think they want me to be. This one's a bit of a hard reflection to look at when you see yourself in it. Because it can look like really watering down your opinions and diluting your message. It can look like copying or constantly looking to emulate what others in your industry are saying, or even hiding behind the trends. You know, literally taking a hook and a trending audio that you saw someone post and have great success with, and then you try to repurpose it and hear crickets. It can look like only posting what feels agreeable, what's not going to rock the boat, and really avoiding any like polarized or personal perspectives or stories. It's also this feeling of trying to sound professional instead of just sounding like yourself. And really ultimately creating content for approval or validation instead of creating it for connection. And fawning in in your content is really when your voice starts scanning the room before it speaks. It's a big one. And I think this is where I felt stuck for a while in that feeling of the perfectionism and always feeling like I needed to speak, show up as a certain way in the marketing world. And I posted actually about this recently on Instagram when I shared my new bio, which I promise I didn't just rewrite a million times, when I finally stepped into this role or this title of intuitive storyteller. Because the truth is that I avoided that for so long because I thought I had to show up a certain way in the marketing world to be seen as a trusted authority in the marketing space. And honestly, it never resonated with me. I didn't go for I didn't go to school for marketing. I didn't go to school for business. Everything that I do is rooted in this creativity, in the storytelling. And the feedback I got from clients early on when I was working myself as the social media manager, as the copywriter, doing the client work was clients would tell me that they felt like I was like this channel that I could channel their ideas and articulate their story in a way that they were really struggling to articulate. And I love doing that for them. And I was so good at doing that for them. And I was at the same time struggling to do it for myself. So again, it's that hard look in the mirror sometimes. And now it wasn't really till I was in the position where I had trained my team to be able to build upon these skills and create content and copy this way with this approach. And then I was finding myself a step back from client work to the point that sometimes a project would come in that I wouldn't even edit or need to make any changes to. And I started questioning my worth and my value. Like if I didn't make any changes to this website copy, then what did I even bring to the table? And that's when it really became clear to me. It's also where my story was in really being the writer and feeling safest behind the keyboard and wanting everything to be as edited and polished and perfect as possible. And then hiding behind the client work and feeling comfortable making others visible online while hiding from my own visibility and from being seen myself and from my own truth and story. I knew how to tell other people's stories, but I had to realize that I was being called to share more of my own. And that was the flip for me. And then that turned into the stretch of speaking on stages and podcasting and writing my book and really stepping into my personal brand and becoming more visible and seen. So I am sharing this from firsthand perspective. Like I said, I have bitten through and experienced all of these responses, and I continue to experience them, especially when I'm stepping into an up level. The key is the awareness and knowing what it is that's holding me back and being able to do the nervous system work to rewire in order to feel safe stepping into that. And again, that safety often comes after the action. You can go back and listen to the story of writing and publishing my book to hear that firsthand when I share my story of getting the hives and how that was my body really not feeling safe, stepping into this next level of visibility and vulnerability. And the hives didn't just go away on their own. They they went away after I had taken the action and put my story out there. And this is why I think it's really important to call out that visibility can continue to activate these old stories, these limiting beliefs. It's it can feel a little bit like a loop. It can feel like, wait a second, I thought I did this work, I thought I worked through this. And then it starts showing up again in another way. And this can be questions like, who do you think you are to write the book, publish the book, launch the podcast, launch this new program, have this six-figure launch, build a seven-figure business? Who do you think you are to share this story that don't be too much or you are not enough? Don't take up too much space. Stay humble. What if people judge you? What if you succeed and people start treating you differently? What if you fail publicly? What if people from high school see this and judge you? What do they think? What if your next level self no longer fits the identity that others in your life are used to? What if it changes relationships? What if you lose relationships and people in your life? That's a big one. Sometimes we think we are afraid of failing online, but we're Just as afraid of being fully seen in our growth. And this is why entrepreneurship is so brave, so courageous doing this work and showing up and putting yourself out there. And I say that, you know, with the utmost admiration for my clients, my peers, my friends who are doing this work. And that's why it's so much personal development required to build the business. And the whole saying that you're not just building the business, you are building yourself. Because the fear isn't always that people won't see you. The fear is actually often that they will. And I do believe that you need to get comfortable with that feeling in order to actually be seen and to attract that level of visibility that you are wanting to call in. And maybe you think you're wanting to call it in, but your body doesn't feel on board. To wrap this up, why doing this work first matters so much is because before the strategy can fully work, you need to build capacity for visibility. And this isn't about being perfectly healed or definitely not about needing to wait until you're like fearless and you don't give any fucks. It's really that just you need to understand what's happening underneath the resistance so that you don't keep making it mean something about you, that you're lazy, that you're inconsistent, that you're bad at content. You don't need to be fully healed to show up, but you do need to understand what your body is doing to try to protect you so that you can stop fighting yourself and start building that capacity and expanding into that capacity. Because the most magnetic content, the content that really resonates with your people, you know, that's going to attract those dream clients and dream opportunities into your inbox without you feeling like you even had to lift a finger. That's not coming from a person who is performing authority. It's coming from someone who is truly embodying it. And if you're in a space where you're like, okay, I have the awareness. Now what? Now how do I put this in practice? I would say start with small steps. Start with that low-stakes content. Uh, one of my favorite tricks is actually to record voice notes before writing your captions. And actually just like, especially on your walks or when these ideas are coming through, record send yourself a voice note and then transcribe it into the caption and then edit it from there. I think a big one is to really let yourself post before it feels perfect. And maybe this looks like having a little mini challenge with a friend where you, you know, agree to hold each other accountable in this. And also it can look like creating content from your lived experience and not just your expertise. And then notice in your body what happens before you hit post, before you hit publish. And then reflect on that and ask yourself, what am I afraid of here? What am I afraid that this will mean for me? And then separate that discomfort from these alerts of danger that your body is feeling. And talk yourself through that. You can even name this voice that's trying to keep you safe. Give it a name, bring it along. I always say it can ride in the passenger seat, but it's not driving the vehicle. One of my best pieces of advice also is to create in rooms where you feel supported. So gather your biz besties. Again, have a group chat, have an accountability, share posts with each other, ask for feedback, share when a post feels more vulnerable first with an inner community that makes you feel safe. And then as you keep stretching that muscle, you'll be able to show up on the stories and actually talk to your online community about a specific post or podcast episode that just made you feel extra vulnerable and share that with them and bring them along for the ride and let them see the growth behind the scenes, pull back the curtains. Because I'm telling you, that is where the deepest connection happens. And as you're doing this work, you are really letting your brand become a mirror for the version of yourself that you're becoming. And remember that the goal is not to force yourself to be visible. The goal is actually to create enough safety so that visibility no longer feels like a threat to your system. And then as you've done that work and as you've got that awareness, then you can look to outsource the pieces that drain your capacity. But make sure that you are staying connected to the core message. You are holding true to your voice. You are truly being the CEO and stuff showing up in that energy. You know, as for us as your marketing team, we are there to support you and offer our recommendations and implement the strategy and encourage you and also share the mindset work and the inner work and make recommendations there as well. But you are the leader. You are still the voice. You are still the expert in your space. You are the one with the lived experience. And we can share that and channel that from you and share it with your audience in a way that really resonates with them. Your job is to embody the message and make sure that you are actually showing up fully in your authenticity and your authority. And this is also why the work that we do with our social media retainer clients isn't just about taking content off their plate. Yes, like I said, we help with the strategy. We also are writing the copy, we're building the websites, we're refining the messaging, we're leading the implementation. But the deeper work that I love so much is really helping our clients see themselves more clearly, have the confidence in their story that they're sharing and helping them articulate what they just couldn't quite find the words or the content to say on their own. We're helping them really own their expertise so that they actually come to a place where they feel almost, they feel so natural about it that it feels neutral putting it out there. And then when the opportunities come in and the results start showing, the content takes off and it lands with the right people and they get the messages and they get the sales calls. It's just like, of course, of course. Because Done For You marketing shouldn't be about outsourcing your identity. It should be about having the right support to express it. So as you're reflecting on this, a couple questions I want to leave you with. And feel free to come back to this and journal through it. If you're listening to this in the car or on a walk, come back to this part of the episode and ask yourself, where are you telling yourself that you need a better strategy when what you actually need is more safety? Where are you hiding behind perfection? Where do you find yourself performing professionalism or authority or expertise instead of just sharing your real perspective? Where are you still waiting to feel ready before allowing yourself to just be seen? And what would change if you stopped treating your resistance as this like personal flaw or failure and started seeing it as information and awareness? So to close, I just want you to remember that what's stopping you from showing up isn't that you don't know what to say. I really don't think that's it. It's not that you're inconsistent, it's not that you don't have time. It might feel like that, but again, that can be a block. It more likely is that part of you knows exactly what you want to say, and then another part of you is terrified of what might happen if you finally say it. And that's the work. It's not just creating more content, it's becoming the version of yourself who feels safe enough to be seen. I hope this resonated. I can't wait to see you again next week. Thank you for listening to the Favorite Self podcast. If this episode stirred something in you, there's a reason for it. If you could take a moment to share with a friend, someone who's also building something brave, that would mean so much to me. Better yet, leave a review. It helps this message reach even more women who are ready to lead differently. And before you go, remember this your favorite self is already within you, waiting to be heard. See you next time.