You Can’t Trust Your Voice If You’ve Stopped Hearing It

Most professional women don’t lose their clarity.

They lose access to it.

Not because they’re confused.

But because they’ve stopped hearing themselves beneath everything they manage, hold, and navigate.

It’s a quiet disconnection; the kind that doesn’t look dramatic, but slowly erodes self-trust.

The Everyday Analogy We Never Question

Think about noise-cancelling headphones.

They don’t remove your voice.

They remove the background noise so you can hear what’s actually there.

But what happens when the noise comes from inside your own mind — the pressure, pace, expectations, and overthinking?

You can’t cancel that noise.

And after a while, your own voice becomes faint.

Not gone.

Just buried.

Many women tell me, “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

But the truth is simpler and far more compassionate:

You can’t trust your voice if you’ve stopped hearing it.

The Research Behind What’s Really Happening

Dr Judson Brewer’s research on anxiety and the brain shows that overthinking reduces our ability to perceive internal signals by up to 30–40%.

Not because we’re broken because the mind becomes louder than the body.

When that happens:

• Decision-making becomes mentally heavy

• Choices feel risky

• Certainty feels impossible

• And our voice gets drowned out

Not lost.

Drowned.

Self-trust isn’t a mindset issue.

It’s a listening issue.

A Case Reflection: When Her Voice Came Back

A client once said to me:

"Monica, I keep waiting for a sign. But all I get is noise."

She was brilliant: senior leader, respected, capable.

On the outside: confident.

On the inside: circling the same question for months.

She didn’t need more thinking.

She didn’t need another list of pros and cons.

What she actually needed was space to hear herself again.

The moment we slowed down, she said something powerful:

"I can feel what I want now. I just wasn’t quiet enough to hear it."

Clarity didn’t come from pressure.

It came from reconnection.

The Metaphor That Makes Self-Trust Make Sense

Imagine a lake.

When the surface is agitated with wind, rain or constant movement, you can’t see through the water.

It’s cloudy. Distorted.

You question what’s underneath.

But when the lake settles, the water becomes clear.

Your inner world works the same way.

Self-trust isn’t built by forcing clarity.

It’s built by quieting the internal weather long enough to see what’s true.

Why This Matters Right Now

High-functioning women often think they need to “try harder” to find clarity.

But:

• More thinking doesn’t help.

• More analysing doesn’t help.

• More external advice doesn’t help.

Your voice isn’t weak.

It’s simply competing with too much internal noise.

Reconnection comes before clarity.

Clarity comes before confidence.

Confidence comes before momentum.

That order matters.

A Gentle Next Step

If you’re moving fast on the outside but feel unclear inside, start small.

Not by making a decision.

But by returning to yourself.

The Reignite Your Spark Assessment is a simple way to check where your clarity is being blocked without pressure, without urgency, and without overthinking.

Take the 2-minute Spark Assessment and discover which part of your inner clarity needs attention right now. https://www.shevive.com.au/spark-assessment