Episode #71
EP71: I Wasn't Broken | The Stories We Tell Ourselves & the Trance of Unworthiness
October's theme in the Clean Break Collective is 'the stories we tell ourselves'. And this week's episode turns into a live example of exactly what that means. It starts with Rich asking Andy a simple question about the stories that hold him back. What follows is Andy going back to the beginning - a remedial class at 12, dyslexia that was played down as "very minor" while he was having to learn how to write again, failed A-levels, and a decade of job-hopping in his 20s because every time something got hard, the voice said: if you stay here too long, someone's going to find out you're not good enough. So he walked out before they could. Rich asks what feeling that story is protecting him from. There's a long silence on the podcast. Then Andy gets there. They dig into how the fear of failure quietly becomes a fear of success - how Andy comes back from running 230K through the Amazon and finds himself saying "anyone could do that," because somewhere underneath, he's still not sure he's allowed to have it. And how Rich recognises the same thing in himself. Rich brings in the work of psychologist Tara Brach - the trance of unworthiness, that persistent background belief that you're fundamentally not enough, shaped by the things people said to you and the failures you never forgave yourself for, until it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like the truth. He walks through her RAIN practice - recognise, allow, investigate, nurture - and the idea of radical acceptance: not lowering your standards, just seeing clearly where you are without the layer of judgment on top. And then Andy lands the line that gives this episode its title. For years, he thought he was broken. He kept looking for the fix. The moment things changed was when he accepted there was no fix, because there was nothing broken. He was neurodiverse in a neurotypical world. He just needed tools, not repairs. They also get into why alcohol works so well as the volume control for all of this - not enough at work, have a drink; anxious at the party, have a drink - and why taking a break from it means you can finally look at the thing you've been turning the volume down on. Then Andy flips it. Two weeks to York, no watch, no data. What's the story Rich is telling himself? The answer is more honest than you'd expect - and his gut says 3:10 to 3:15. Also: Andy has three marathons in five months, has accidentally entered a 100K walk along the Jurassic Coast, and there's a gaggle heading to Knebworth 10K on November 1st if you want to join them.
