ep 55: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Nicola Crawley

Are you struggling with limiting beliefs? In this enlightening episode, Nicola Crawley, a reflexology therapist and NLP practitioner specializing in neurodiversity, explores the complexities of managing ADHD and autism in daily life and business. She delves into how neurodiversity can impact self-perception and provides practical strategies to help you overcome these challenges.

Learn how to break the cycle of negative self-talk, develop techniques for quieting a busy mind, and build a healthier relationship with your neurodivergent brain. Nicola's advice will help you transform limiting beliefs into empowering thoughts, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally.

What you'll learn:

• How to identify and challenge limiting beliefs

• Techniques for quieting a busy mind and improving focus

• Strategies for managing ADHD in entrepreneurship

• The importance of self-acceptance and understanding in neurodiversity

• Practical tips for breaking down overwhelming tasks

• The value of seeking help and support in personal and professional life

  
  

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with ADHD and Autism

Throughout the episode, Nicola and Mande address common limiting beliefs that often hold people with ADHD and autism back. These include thoughts like "I can't focus," "I can't be organized," or "I can't run a successful business." They shares powerful techniques to reframe these beliefs and build self-confidence. By recognizing these limiting beliefs and learning how to challenge them, listeners can unlock their true potential and achieve personal and professional growth.

"My main message would be to know that whatever you're feeling, somebody will have already felt that and know that you're not alone with it because there is a way around it." -Nicola Crawley

Nicola and Mande share actionable advice and personal experiences to help you harness your neurodivergent strengths for success. Whether you're struggling with self-doubt or looking for ways to optimize your productivity, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you thrive with ADHD and/or autism.

Useful Links Mentioned:

• Learn more about working with Nicola: Belief Therapies

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolacrawleyinnerbelief/

• Instagram: @nicola_crawley

  
  

• Send Mande a text message: https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1954263/open_sms

• Learn more about private coaching with Mande: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/getcoached
  

No matter how daunting managing neurodiversity might seem, this episode is a powerful reminder that embracing your unique brain wiring can lead to remarkable growth. Nicola, diagnosed with ADHD and autism at 49, shares actionable strategies to help you align your life and work with your neurodivergent traits.

Share your biggest takeaways and "aha" moments with us in the comments or on social media. We're here to support your journey toward self-acceptance and personal empowerment!

Remember: By embracing your neurodivergent strengths and implementing personalized strategies, you can turn perceived obstacles into powerful advantages. Your future is in your hands, and with the right approach, you can thrive in a way that aligns perfectly with your authentic self.

#ADHDawareness #AutismAcceptance #LimitingBeliefs #Neurodiversity #PersonalGrowth #ADHDEntrepreneur #SelfAcceptance #MentalHealthAwareness #ADHDtips #ADHDhelp

Listen to the Episode:

Or watch the video on Youtube

Enjoying the show?

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or RSS

Leave a 5-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts

Click here to read the transcript:

All right. Welcome back, guys. Today I have and I didn't even make sure I was saying your name properly. Is that Nicola Crawley? It's Nicola Crawley. Nicola, thank you. I sort of checked out Matt beforehand, but I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Okay. So thank you. I am Nicola Chromium based in South Wales, in the UK.

I am originally from the north of England and I'm in reflexology statement and I replaced my sister in law practitioner and working with a lot of people who are neurodiverse across a whole range. She's on a daily basis and you like myself, got a diagnosis of ADHD, not just ADHD. Can you talk about that your, your late diagnosis.

Yeah. So I got my diagnosis last year when I was 49 is ADHD autism. So I kind of knew the ADHD was there. I discovered stumbled across it really in what it looks like in adult women in the last few years. And it made a lot of sense to me, like the autism did blindside me a little bit despite me having two autistic sons.

I think it did make a lot of sense When I think about it feels like a sign to my brain that constantly in conflict with each other that we're all following autistic side in the chaotic, messy, disorganized, ADHD side constantly battling with each other. And I was telling Nicola before we started recording, like I have a couple of clients that I've had several over the years, but I have a couple right now that have ADHD and autism and that fight between the two different sides of your brain where like one is like constantly going into disorganization and the other is like, no, we need structure and organization to feel good.

And among a lot of other things that come up with that. But I one thing that I really want to talk about that we both work a lot around is limiting beliefs. Tell me how you help people with your NLP and your reflexology and hypnotherapy with their limiting beliefs. So I think the first thing is I identifying these limiting beliefs with people because people don't come to you and say, I have got a limiting.

Really. It's during the course of the conversation you'll hear quite a lot of I can't, I can't focus, I can't read, I can't be who I want to be. I can't hold down a job. I'm not sentences beginning with I can't and not very much about what I can do. So looking at that limiting belief for me with the work that I do is about looking if it's like all the time or if it's just some of the time.

And when we create beliefs in our minds, we we create almost like a picture with them. And the picture goes in the mind, effects the physiology and creates this state of permanent belief. So if we can change some of the characteristics of what that picture looks like, well, some modalities, as we call it an LP. So changing the the belief that we have.

So for example, if I'm thinking I can't focus, if I can get the characteristics of a belief that I strongly have. So I love my children, for example, and I change characteristics simply, I can't focus solely into the what if I love my children? And then that shifts things at the unconscious level. The unconscious mind creates a new picture and the belief is removed.

The limiting belief is remained. And I tend to then work with hypnosis to really reinforce the unconscious level and reinforce the fact that you can do things in the same way that you decided that you could do in three situations. Life, people saying things to you and maybe things being reinforced over a period of time. You can also decide that you can, and sometimes that's the first time that anybody said that to people, the first time that they've had the thought that actually this does not have to be a permanent state based can be something that I have the power with the right tools to change.

And just because we're kind of talking and a little bit of the lingo of our our world, where we work for people that don't know what a limiting belief is, this is something that you are thinking that you've decided is true, that is holding you back from something you want. Is that a good definition for you? Yeah, absolutely.

I always say it has to be something that is, as you said, holding you back something from stopping you from doing something or being somebody. I just can be the words limiting belief. I don't think always giving back the gravitas to reflect how debilitating it can be in somebody's life. Because if you believe that you categorically cannot do something, that that can just have a massive impact on you on your day to day life things and your overall well-being.

Yeah,

simple story that I've told before is when I was in coaching certification, they gave us these big books and my limiting belief was I don't absorb information. And because that would cause stress and I would think it on a loop as I was trying to read this information, it would create the truth of not absorbing the information.

But more than that, something interesting when you were talking about how you help people break things down and go step by step. What that triggered in my mind was having ADHD in high school. I knew I was different. I didn't know it was because of ADHD. But one of the symptoms that showed up for me is, of course, my my room was either a mess or it was perfect.

And for the most part my desk was like a dumping ground for everything. And it was always a mess. And that was where I was intended to study. And I would get home and I would put down the backpack and I would not open the backpack. And from being very little and going through like the court systems with like, you know, parents divorcing in the custody battles and things like that.

There was a lot of like me in a courtroom. And I looked up to these lawyers and I thought that they had like really cool jobs and they were really interesting people and they did really good things. And I wanted to be a lawyer from when I was really little. But because of that, like limiting belief of of like, I can't even do my homework.

I can't unless it's 10 minutes before class, I can't even unzip the backpack to study for the test. I'm just going to take the test and see what happens. I decided, how on earth are you going to go through college and then law school and and you talked about like sometimes we're we're very, like, zoomed out. And why don't you go into that?

How you help people, like, create those stepping stones and break things down? Yeah, it was something that I realized that I do all the time. It creates overwhelm for me. And Overwhelmed is a massive part of my ADHD that I still work with on a daily basis. And I think sometimes we can say, I want to be, for example, a lawyer, I want to be a lawyer, and we want to do it now.

And it needs to happen immediately. I mean, I envisage it has been like trying to cross the river without any stepping stones. So I'm a designer, I'm not a lawyer, I want to be a lawyer. But I find that for myself and for a lot of my clients, we we can only ever envisage getting from here to here, but without actually looking at the steps that we're going to take in between.

So I work with clients to turn things all the way down to the smallest possible element to say What small step do I need to take, and then what's the next step? And then what's the next step? And suddenly everything becomes more manageable and it becomes more doable. I'm still going to the same, same path. It's just that we're doing it in a more realistic way.

But it's not always the first thought for somebody within Gate State things to be. I've got to do it now and he's got to be everything right now. Yeah, which makes it very difficult to prioritize, to break things down. And as you were talking about that, my what I hear a lot from my clients is, well, shouldn't I be able to do that myself?

You know, like they think that they shouldn't have to have somebody else help them break those things down. And I'm like, No, of course you shouldn't have to do that yourself. Like you've tried that. And just because you know, certain executive function skills are, you know, not where they maybe need to be, that it's difficult for you to do these things.

And that doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It just means you need to either build up tools and resources or get help through people. And so, yes, I think executive functioning skills is probably the bit that we as people with ADHD sometimes feel the most shame about, because anybody who's neurotypical looking would be like, well, why? You just need to do things, so you just need to do that.

Some of my struggles have been with being with managing money. I really, really struggle with the budgeting side and I guess I like the dopamine hits from spending money that just conveyed. So I was speaking to my mum about it and she was like, Why can you be so easy, so straightforward? You just you just manage it. It just comes in and it goes out and you work out what's left.

And then I actually said to her, because she was so confused when I said, Mum, I could have a conversation with you in fluent French and I would know exactly what to say it and you would have no clue. When you're speaking to me about managing money and about being organized and about to start in a project and well, it's the point completing the project, you might as well be speaking in a completely foreign language to me because it just does not make sense how you would love the person that I interviewed yesterday because she is with ADHD people and money and we had a really fun conversation, so you'll have to look for that

one. But know, it was something I struggled with for many years to enable. A lot of it was the impulse control and then also seeking emotions like you talked about, like the dopamine hit me and and once I learned to deal with the impulse issue and basically I just I talked about this on on the episode with her, too.

But the way I help people with impulse control is we have to not answer the impulse enough times that it no longer becomes a problem. And so a great example is like if I'm going to, you know, go get a cookie every day after lunch and your brain says, go get the cookie and you don't go get the cookie enough times.

Pretty soon you don't even want the cookie. And it's the same like with spending. And

and I don't know where where I found this.

This is way before coaching, but like, dealing with the impulse control in a lot of fun ways, actually, I played games with myself, and what happened is we were just in such massive debt that I had to figure this out. Yeah. And if it's, you know, somebody with ADHD that's just, you know, not having as much money at the end of the month as they would like, it's not as much of a problem as know your $90,000 in debt like it was with.

Yeah. And so I really, really had to figure this out. And so somewhere along the line I learned, you're seeking a feeling by doing by purchasing the thing and what would happen. And I think it was a big realization too, was like, and now you have all the things and now you resent the things because they are causing you negative emotion because you thought they were going to cause you these, these happy emotions.

And they did for a moment. But now they're causing you negative emotion because of the debt that you're dealing with or the arguments that you're having in your family or, you know, that was my case anyway. So that's that's very interesting. But, yes, let a lot of people just don't understand. Right. And that's why there's people like us in the world.

I bet you get told all the time. But I, I get told I think the biggest thing I get told is, you understand my brain. And I'm like, yes, because I, I have either dealt with or I'm thinking the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. I had a client say that to me just today. I mean, she's an older lady and she came to me and he said, All my life I've just felt different.

I've just felt what I feel. I can go too far. I'm being surrounded by friends and family. I'm being lonely because I just feel so different. I was like, okay. I completely I was like, Wow, That's the first time that anybody has said that because everybody else is like, How can you be lonely? There's there's lots of people here, you know?

But if you're feeling like the other one out, then it's it's a really lonely place to be. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

one thing that we talked about earlier was and this goes along with the limiting beliefs and goes along with like for example, my limiting belief that I don't absorb information. The clutter that happens in your mind is something that you help people with and and calming them down. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So as well as helping people with limiting beliefs, I find that being able to focus is one of the biggest limiting beliefs that people come to me with and they will say, I can't focus and sometimes it can be number one. They've got the belief that the karma. So any time anybody asks them to do it, that's the instinct I call.

So if you think that, then guess what? You can't. But also it can be because your mind is just so, so busy, so I like to teach people techniques to quiets in the mind. And I think some people come to this from a point of conquest in my mind. I always think it's constantly going and they expect to be almost like Buddhist monks who have spent years practicing, not amounting to have total silence, but teaching people techniques around doing hypnosis, doing the relaxation, allowing yourself to relax and allowing just just giving yourself 5 to 10 minutes of time each day.

Take some of that chatter out of the mind, because the challenge is that because we're constantly wired and we're constantly on the go. So being able to stay the same and also looking at different strategies even for your head. So for me, that can be just as simple as anything else. Yes, I am. Because it becomes like a toddler and it gets louder and louder and louder and louder if I try and ignore it.

And so I can't ignore it. And so just writing about time, I started to do journaling and I encourage my clients to do that. At first I was like, I don't do journaling because some of the thoughts that are in my head, I don't really want to revisit them and I don't want them written down. Both Very real, Yes.

Yeah. The benefit of getting out of my head is far outweigh that concern I had. And if I don't want to go back and reread them, I don't need to. I just appreciate the fact that I had some clients whom I, as you were talking about that I wrote down ADHD, self coaching because this is something I'm working on that I'm going to offer to everybody free.

And because the reason I'm offering it is because I think it's so foundational to quieting the mind and being able to focus more. And it it's through. One of the methods is getting all the information out of your head. But it is very real that sometimes people will resist coaching themselves because it's too scary to go into that thought process.

And what I tell people is I don't care if you burn it. I don't care if you read it. I don't care what you do with it. But you need to get it out of your mind. And then with myself coaching process, there's also a process and I'm sure with your work to have like questioning and that thought, what else?

It's true. Or how is this not true or how is it if this is true, what does that mean and why? Why is that a problem? Or there's just a lot lots of questions that we can ask ourselves that get us through that. But there's several different methods of self coaching because for some people, sitting down and writing in a journal can be very difficult.

And so there are some methods where we can like do things much faster and do things on the go that are also going to be in that process. So I'm excited that that's coming. But there was another thought that I had about the quieting the mind and I have lost it so. So I work mostly with professionals and entrepreneurs.

And what would you say from the work that you do? Like what? What would they need to know? I think the first thing that I, I like all my clients to know is that you are not alone with these thoughts, with these behaviors because it can feel sometimes like you aren't that unique, that you just don't fit in and that that can affect so much because he stokes your abilities.

Sometimes it causes you to to just freeze and to not go down the path that you think we want to go down because your questioning whether you can actually do that. So knowing that there are tools and techniques available to you to help with the different challenges that you're facing through ADHD or autism, whatever it is, knowing that people are being there and knowing that people get you, I think he's really quite empowering.

So my main message would be to know that whatever your feeling, somebody will have already felt that and know that you're you're not alone with it because there is a way around it. That is exactly what inspired me to do these conversations where I invite people on is is to see like, here's another example of somebody that's like you, or they're going to see themselves in you.

And to some degree, one of the saddest things that I think happens is people stop wanting because it gets too painful and I don't want that to sound like some sort of lingo. But what I mean is stop wanting to be that thing. Like, I gave the example of like just deciding, well, I guess I'm not going to be a lawyer that people stop wanting like the simplest things, like they stop wanting to, you know, feel comfortable in their morning routine or to have a tidy house or to go out with friends or to they stop wanting like the simplest things.

And that can cause loneliness and cause anxiety and depression and all kinds of problems. But it's because they have tried and failed so many times without the tools that they are wanting. Does that bring up anything for you? Yeah, and I think I got to the point where I was beginning to think, can I actually do my business?

Because when I'm doing the very things that I think I know that I'm good at and I know that I get results, I come from a background in corporate world where I was operating at a senior senior level, where people did my marketing people did micro-targeting, people change all of the administrative tasks that I completely struggled with, and there'd be days where I would sit an hour just even thinking about what I needed to put on social media.

And then when I got the concept, it took me a full day to create it and we took stock perfectionism before it had to be completely perfect. I didn't want to go out to the world thing because of the fear of rejection of people going either she thinks she is because rejection forms a massive part of my ADHD.

For me, I am, and more recently I have been lucky enough to be able to employ an assistant and my assistant has been my godsend for me. That was accepting that sometimes, yeah, sometimes we can't do everything. We're not superhuman and sometimes all that. We need some help to say, I can't do this, but somebody else can, and they might actually love doing that.

And then suddenly there's this new vitality in my breath of fresh air that's come into my business. And I've seen my business grow and grow and grow as a result of saying I need help and I can't do this. Yeah, yeah. I completely agree about the getting help like that consistency that my audience sees from me about showing up on YouTube every week and showing up on the podcast every week is because I got an editor and an assistant and it made all the difference and so like and there are programs in the UK, I know from working with clients in the UK where through government funds you can hire assistants or a system for

people in the UK. That's, that's where I got mine from the people in the UK, it's called access to what exactly is just know. It's looking at what does your disability as well refer to it? What does your disability prevent you from doing? What do you need support with? And that was what my ADHD prevented me from doing.

So we are very, very lucky to have that. And like I said, it's been life changing for me and it takes some time and it takes some paperwork. But if you're in the UK, definitely looking into access to work, it's the very cool thing. But if you, you know, maybe don't have that opportunity, maybe you're at a point in your business or in your career where you're having to do everything yourself.

You don't have to do everything you can do just what you can do. It's so funny. I had he's a coach certified through the same school as me. His name is Chris Hale, and I had him on just a few episodes ago and I asked him and I don't know if I asked him on air, so I can talk about it here in case I did it.

But I'm like, How are you so amazing with your social media? Because I that's something I kind of struggle with. And he goes, I'm not. He goes, I'm actually really inconsistent with my social media. And I'm like, It looks like you're showing up all the time. And he goes, No, I just do it when I feel like doing it.

I do it when I keep it fun for me and for me means not doing it on a schedule, not doing it all the time. But I tell that story to say from the outside, people are going to think that you're just doing all techniques. It's only you that's judging yourself and deciding that you're not doing enough. So if you can't afford assistance and another example of that is like, I have somebody that comes and cleans my house twice a week and that is wonderful because I don't want to scrub a toilet.

I don't I'm not going to clean a shower. It's just not going to happen. And I, you know, have the funds to do that. But if you don't have the funds to do that, before I had the funds to do that, the shower didn't get cleaned every week and just didn't happen. And you know what? Nobody died and nothing that terrible went wrong.

And so, yeah, I just thought that that's that's an important thing to do you think about. But I do because I was thinking about it so true. One thing that I stop myself from doing is reading about the days of what we should be expected to do. Whether that is a business. I arena. So every day you should be posting names to clients every week, you should be doing nice, or whether it's in the hotel saying, right, your house should be cleaned from top to bottom.

In this time period, you should be hoovering the floor every single day because all that was serving to do for me was to make me feel even more of a failure than I already felt. So doing it how I can do it seems like nobody's died. Everybody still here, My businesses in my house, these folks, they maybe know how some people would want anything, but it works for me and it works for my family.

So I think being able to take that pressure off yourself, even however you can do it, is is a game changer. And then it goes back to what you were saying earlier about people stop wanting to do things, because when you realize that maybe you don't have to do it, how society expects you to do it, do it in your own unique way, then the desire to do it comes back.

So what you're talking about there really makes me think of undiagnosed ADHD. You know, I had an idea early in my twenties that I had ADHD, and I've told the story where I was a full time sub in a school and there was this little boy and I was like, I have ADHD.

And I saw myself in him. And I just thought, Well, what does it matter? I'm not in high school anymore. I had this idea that that was only for high schoolers. And I think where I got that idea was in college. I learned to reteach myself like one of the specific ones I remember is college algebra. In high school, I was hopeless with algebra, with geometry, where I was just like I remember just sitting in the classroom and like looking at the board and looking at people doing the work and going, I know this should make sense, but it doesn't make any sense.

And or I'll get this like one little part, but I won't get the rest of it. And so in college I actually sat down with the answer key and with the text book and re taught myself. And so I got an A-plus in the class. I had the highest grade in the class, had no problem, and just learned that I had to learn in a different way.

And so I think that's where I got that idea that it didn't matter. But as a mom and, you know, it's like I should you said hoovering the floor. We we call it vacuuming. You should vacuum every day. That never happened. That never, ever, ever, ever happened in my life for two days in a row, ever. And there were a lot of things about like, well, yeah, your family's going to have allergies or you're going to ruin your carpet.

Never did I have to buy a new carpet because I didn't vacuum the floor every day, everything. But I remember being like, I guess I'll say the young mom, like sitting on the floor crying or sitting at the table with my husband going, Just tell me how to do this. And I would constantly be looking for like the right cleaning system or you'd like download the thing off the Internet that's going to give me.

Okay, on Wednesday, you do this, this and this, and on Thursday you do this, this and this. And it never worked, ever. Did it work? And like now I've almost been tempted to like, give people things like that, create a resource like that. But I think if I were to create any kind of resource like that, it would really look like what really matters to you.

Like if the floor does not get vacuumed except once every two weeks, does that really matter to you? Does that matter to anyone in your family? Because I remember feeling an overwhelming you mentioned over more and more than once. That was my go to emotion, just always overwhelmed and thinking the house was just a disaster and my husband would just look around and go, It's really not that bad.

And from my perspective, I saw like all the things that had to be done and and we'd always try to like if you're out there and you're trying to find that perfect system, it's not out there. It's within you. Like doesn't matter if the shower gets cleaned. How about we just clean the shower when it looks dirty? Like I know some people might be hearing this and be horrified, but I'm like, No, it really.

Some of this stuff really does not matter. So but to your point of like, let's stop looking at what people think we should be doing and just decide what matters to us most. So yeah, and it's interesting you should talk about that because I was just only in the last couple of days looking at some research. I talk a lot about postnatal depression, mind, and since being diagnosed with ADHD, it made more sense to me that this could be something to do with estrogen levels.

I'm postpartum and there's lots of studies now looking at the prevalence of ADHD with postnatal postpartum depression. And one of the things that people are saying that could trigger it is the fact that we put so much pressure on ourselves to be the perfect mother and to do everything as part of the books and babies not bother with real books, things they don't understand.

But we feel like we're in. And I always describe it as gaining. Even now. Sometimes with ADHD, it's like being under a microscope. So we put on ourselves and there's so much pressure I should be doing this and my baby should be doing amazing. Well, already failed, I bet. Yeah, that's what I think. The main reasons for the prevalence of 888, eight.

Shame postnatal depression. Very interesting. Very interesting. All right. Well, I want to you give us time for you to tell people where they can find you, how they can interact with you, any resources that you might have. So go ahead and do that. Thank you. So you can find me. At the moment my website is being rebuilt because I've just rebranded I again because now we've got the organization to help me to do that.

What needs to be something that's been on the map in it for a long time because it has to be perfect. So you can currently find me on Facebook and belief therapies. I'm on my team is Nicola Crowley. I am and a lot of my resources around the to do with fertility and hypnobirthing and the maternity care. So if you're somebody who has ADHD or not and is interested in how they can get support through that, then you'll find that on there.

Very good. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And I know this is going to help so many people. I appreciate you and thank you for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank