Breaking the Generational Code of Self-Doubt
8 Dec 2025 · 12 min
Kris Plachy examines how ancestral and cultural programming erodes women's self-trust, even among successful founders. She traces the roots of guilt and overfunctioning, then maps four domains where women lose confidence: as visionaries, with money, in love, and in how they communicate.
Questions this episode answers
Leadership is Feminine
TheVisionaryCEO Trust (referred to in transcript as 'TheVisionary CEO Trust')
Visionary trust; money trust; love trust; communication trust
Chapters
Foreign.
Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Leadership is Feminine. This week I am going to be sharing with you the second segment of Female Founders and self worth and Self trust. Now, as women, we are often taught from our family, our culture, and even other women not to fully trust ourselves or to embrace our own success. So in today's segment, I'm going to dive deeply into those deep rooted beliefs and how they hold us back even after we've built amazing businesses and amazing lives. It's time to let go of guilt, stand proudly in what we've achieved, and change the narrative for ourselves and the future generations that are going to come after us. Self trust and worthiness aren't just possible, they're necessary. And I want to help everybody really break free from these limits that we're putting on ourselves that we might not even know our limits. They may just feel like the truth. And instead, let's step more boldly into the lives that we're living, the lives that we're entitled to just because we're human, because we are who we are. So I hope you enjoy this second segment. And don't forget, if you want to access all of this information and more and take the Self Trust Self worthiness index, go to TheVisionary CEO Trust and that's where you'll find everything you need to get all of these fantastic tools. See you next time.
Okay, so in this first segment, I want to talk to you about sort of a broad topic, the broad subject related to women, self trust and worthiness that is part of why we all in, in our own way struggle here. And that has to do with, as I mentioned, you know, my conversation with my coach and so much of the work that I have really been studying and focusing on with my clients is this sort of built in intelligence that women have. And I, and I use the word intelligence because I don't necessarily mean or think that it's smart. I just think it's like programming that we all get from the time we're little, time we're born almost, that is rooted in ancestral, generational.
Systemic knowing beliefs about women that make it harder for women to trust themselves, to believe themselves, to believe in themselves and to believe in their inherent worth. We may be raised in our nuclear family, whatever that looks like, and we may be raised to completely trust ourselves, completely believe in ourselves, completely know that what we know is right. Trust your intuition, trust what you believe. Most women are not raised that way and all we have to do is look at the world to know that that's true. Women are still fighting for basic, basic rights, basic support, basic equality in a community, in a society. We're not there. And I believe for every one woman, if there is one woman who is living a life where she cannot be who she is, then we are not free of that. We all are part of that. I believe that to my core. I took a retreat recently, and I was doing a journaling exercise, and I was journaling to my ancestors because I was actually in a part of the world in the Catskills where my family is from generationally since the late 1600s. And so I just did this really cool journal exercise where I, like, asked for ancestral wisdom. And one of the things that I wrote that really stuck with me as I was just sort of asking for insight, was this message that they said to me that I wrote. And that was, we had freedom of personality, but not freedom of circumstance like you do. We could be who we wanted to be with one another, but we could not choose and live a life of choice as women. But you can. And I still get goosebumps when I reflect on that, that, that that message came through because that's our. All of our history, not just mine. And so even as we stand here today as successful, accomplished women, we are still surrounded by society, community, culture, messaging.
That comes from men and women that pushes us, we have to resist against. To believe in ourselves and to believe ourselves. It is constant. This is one of those things that as a young woman, I started to notice because I was raised by a single mom. I had a lot of independence, and I. I reflected and lived a life that was different than my friends because I was kind of one of those first little latchkey kids right in the early mid-70s. And so I just noticed how I didn't have some of those limitations because I didn't live in an environment where the girls were treated differently than the boys. I didn't have that. And so as I grew, I realized I didn't want that. But most of the people I knew, most of the girls I knew, the young women I knew, and now the women I know still live that way. They still live with the. Live with these limitations about what they should or shouldn't believe about themselves. And I think we have a long way to go. But where I. Where I want to focus is with you. With you as a woman who's really successful, has built some really amazing things, really trusts herself in so many ways, and yet still. Still questions herself, doubts herself, lies awake at night, second guessing, should I have said it that way? Is that was that the right decision? Should I have asked for somebody else's opinion? I did ask for 12 people's opinion, and I still don't know if I made the right decision right like that. That aching, unsettled, not knowing is what I want to help you resolve, because you don't have to carry that around. We don't have to believe the programming, that somehow you are not worthy of the life that you've even built already. How many of you listening have built these beautiful lives, but you feel guilt for it. I've had so many coaching conversations about how women don't want other women to know that they have, you know, housekeepers or that they have, you know, a really nice car, but it's in their garage, that they take really great trips, that they have all these fun things planned. They don't talk about that even with their girlfriends, because what do they get? Oh, must be nice. That's awful cool. Look at you. I mean, some of the biggest challenges we have with our own expansion are as other women. I don't understand it, but it's the truth.
So we'll put it here as real, because it is so. But here's what needs to happen. We need you, who does have that life, who has built that kind of world for yourself. We need you to stand in it with confidence and grace and pride because it extends it further into the next generation. Because men don't do that. Yo, men don't hide their success. They're not meek about their support, are they? I don't think so. They're proud. Right. It's actually a sign of being a man is being successful. Why not a woman? So if we're going to. If we're going to fix this, we got to tell these truths. Love. Yeah. This is the paradox that I talked about. This is why it's hard for you. You're. You're not alone.
Is what I want you to understand. But this is why it gets hard for you to have that difficult conversation with the gal that's worked for you for 15 years, who's now all of a sudden not performing because you don't want to hurt her feelings. And she's really dependent on you. And she. And you know her kids and you know her family, and she's a really nice person, but she's dropping the ball all the time, and she works in your company and you're paying her money. Can. That has to stop. But how do we do that? Because the, the. The split screen happening over here, is that the way the world wants to advise you to handle. That doesn't sit with you. It doesn't work for you. That's why this podcast, or the podcast I I have, is called Leadership is Feminine. Because there are ways for you to possess, have advocacy to. To believe in yourself and to believe yourself that is more aligned with who you are. But we have to understand that we come at this challenge already with a lot of systems and processes and beliefs, cultural beliefs that are so, so systemic that we don't even see it. I just had a pest control guy here yesterday, and he. He talked to me like I was an idiot. He really did. And I thought, wow, wow, wow. Now, it didn't really phase me because I don't really care about the pest control guy, but I watch it at observation. Right. My plumber one time came to my house, asked me how my little business was, like, oh, you mean my seven figure one? And he's like, I just think that the woman. What he said to me, I just think that the woman is happier when she's home. Like, well, I mean, for a woman, that could be true. Not this one. Although I do like to work from home, but I like to make money and provide and express myself and. Right. Like, it's just. It's so insidious, y'. All. Guys, I. So I say that in this, this segment here because I just want to give frame to. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not the one who's like, broken. Why don't I trust myself? Why. Why is this still so hard for me to believe I'm worthy of my success? You're not broken, okay? You're just a part of a world that wants you to believe that you aren't worthy of it, that you shouldn't trust. Oh, sweetie, you. Oh, sweetie, you shouldn't trust yourself. I just had a client tell me yesterday that she got this note from a partner that she's working with that said, if you don't do this right, everybody's going to wonder what's happening going on in. Like, who says that there isn't a right, there's just the next step. And you know what we'll do? We'll fix it if it doesn't go the way that you would have liked. But that is ridiculous. The pressure, and this was. A woman said this to a woman. The pressure that we put on ourselves and on other people to somehow, like, live out this perfectionist space. It's causing you to over function, hyper function to the point of exhaustion, to the point of burnout to the point of total resentment of a lot of people in your life. And you're also boxing yourself in and you're not living into this gorgeous life that you have. And we're going to change that, right? We're going to unpack what is actual self trust. What are those domains? That's up next. Here we go. You coming? Let's go.
Everything that you've already created. I know it might seem crazy to say that you don't trust yourself, but I have found that that is really true. And what I have found is that trust is not linear. It falls in different categories as female founders. There's visionary trust, there's money trust, there's love trust, there's communication trust. And so I built an index for you as well as a masterclass and I want you to have it.
It's free.
It's a powerful tool for both of them are for you to get some insight into yourself. So go to TheVisionary CEO Trust so we can start this conversation and stop you second guessing yourself, questioning yourself and kind of having those like cringe moments where you wonder if you said it right or did it right. You're doing a great job and I want to give you more tools so that you feel more confident, more empowered and more emboldened as the amazing person that you already are. Go to TheVisionary CEO Trust. Take the self trust index and get access to my free masterclass on self trust and self worth for female founders.
Let's do it.
