This is not a lie.

Would you like to know about them? They are supremely daggy and what the kids now call ‘cringe’. They are the wrap-around mirrored kind you see on MAMIL’s and people who have mullets (I’m watching a hilarious series right now called Eastbound and Down, and the main character - a washed up baseball star called Kenny Powers- wears them. You get the idea).

If you would like to run a marathon too, but don’t think you can, they are available for sale right now. Sorry, I don’t have a discount code.

Anyway.

They are excellent for running because they don’t slip down your nose when you sweat while wearing sunscreen (this makes for supremely slippery bridge-of-nose conditions - something which I was previously unaware was very incompatible with sunglass-wearing in my former non-running life).

But here’s the deal. Like any ‘genie in the bottle’ arrangement, you have to sacrifice something before the threshold of magical promise is unlocked.

The deal was this. I had to POST SEVERAL PICTURES AND VIDEOS OF MYSELF WEARING THEM to social media - a previously MEGA cringe idea - that sealed the deal and propelled me forward to a finish line I had never in my life dreamed I’d be capable of.

I should probably confess that before I started running, I used to secretly judge people who wore these sunglasses. LOL, I still do.

So when I first bought them, I’d wear them while running, then if I stopped to film some content for FightMND (who I was fundraising for), I’d take them off, put my nice sunglasses on, film it, and swap them back.

Which brings us back to their magical properties. The magic required one final sacrifice.

I had to stop giving quite so much of a f**k, let some sh*t go, and start telling myself a different story about myself.

I’d spent most of my life saying, “I’m not a runner.” I actually hated running. I still do. I’m not good at it. Even after I’d started running, there was still a little separation between me and them. Running was this difficult thing I was making myself do.

To provide context on why the running all of a sudden, (brace for the downer) my mum passed away from MND in 2024. I needed a place for the grief to go. I wanted to fundraise and celebrate the gift and the privilege of the full use of my body - having seen my mum stripped of her physical capacity in such a short space of time. Running was something I knew would be the hardest possible physical challenge for me, which was why I picked it. I couldn’t even run 5 kms when I first started. The prospect of running 42.2 kms was TERRIFYING to me.

Wearing those sunglasses and then posting content in them was me finally leaning all the way into it. It was emblematic of a lifestyle I’d never thought I’d have the right to gain access to. Of doing an activity seriously - because serious runners wear those sunnies - I was rewiring my brain to expand what was possible for me.

It turns out that when it comes to confidence, there is some actual science behind my magical sunnies.

Psychologists have a theory called identity-based motivation, which, in basic terms, says we are more likely to do things that feel consistent with who we believe we are.

If your internal story is I’m not a runner, every horrible long run is further proof that running isn’t for you.

If you’ve always told yourself I’m terrible with money, investing can feel like something other, smarter, more financially savvy people do. Same with applying for leadership roles when you’ve told yourself you’re ‘just not that kind of person’ and the list goes on.

There’s another theory called enclothed cognition: the idea that what we wear can affect how we think, feel and behave because of the meaning we attach to it.

Todd Herman explores this in his book The Alter Ego Effect. Early in his career, he wore non-prescription glasses as a cue to access the more confident and decisive professional identity he was trying to develop.

Beyoncé famously created Sasha Fierce to access a more fearless, uninhibited version of herself on stage. She even described the physical act of putting on her stilettos as part of the transformation: her posture and the way she spoke would change.

My sunglasses were doing something similar, although I wasn’t creating an alter ego. I was expanding my idea of me.

Being ‘a runner’ wasn’t this other, this ‘them’ anymore. It could also be me.

And that distinction is key, because so much of confidence is tied up in the stories we have accumulated about ourselves: I’m not leadership material. I’m hopeless with money. I’m too old to start doing that.

So if you’re standing on the precipice of an identity you’d like to step into but don’t have the confidence yet to claim, perhaps borrow a prop from the future, more confident, version of you.

Put on the blazer that makes you feel like you deserve to be in the senior meeting or buy the cute workout set of someone you feel would belong at the gym you want to go to.

Or maybe you could put on the most hideous pair of wrap-around mirrored sunglasses you’ve ever seen and run.

The sunglasses didn’t solely get me to 42.2 kilometres - months of training did that.

But they helped me cross a different kind of threshold about my identity and find the confidence of someone who could.

An idea backed by science, but is actually pretty magical.

What is it that you would do differently in your life if you were the most confident version of yourself?

Your answer is a clue.

Last time, I introduced you to some powerful - if not perhaps vulnerable - questions you can ask of yourself and others to begin the process of cultivating true confidence.

I’ve called it the 360 Degree Confidence Interview because it can help you see more clearly the way you’re already showing up in the world that’s uniquely valuable to you.

It can also act as a bit of a reframe for some of the skills and attributes you may have been writing off about yourself or where you’ve been wasting energy trying to embody traits that don’t align. And the ‘celebrity’ question (where I ask you and others to pick a celebrity who embodies character traits you resemble or are drawn to) can help construct an avatar, if you like, of what some of your best attributes look like in the real world. It's funny how much easier it is to see value in other people than it is to recognise it in ourselves.

Even if you’ve only asked yourself these questions (go back to my last Substack piece if you want to give it a try, it takes a few minutes), we can still move on to the next step.

Whatever you have told yourself up until today about your confidence is a story. Our brains are like super computers whose function is essentially to filter through the masses of information and sensory input thrown at us every day and keep us safe, by helping us pay attention to the things that support our existing world view. You may have heard the expression: “you don’t see the world as it really is, you see the world as YOU are.”

So in order to change our confidence, we need to construct a different story for ourselves around it. A new set of beliefs for our brain to latch on to.

I’ve mentioned before that when it came to reconstructing my own confidence after an on-air panic attack, I approached the process like a journo. That’s how I’m trained to attack problems when I’m in an information vacuum. I think that framework is really helpful here.

In the newsroom, when we get a tip-off about stories, we gather information from multiple sources, then edit that information to fit the ‘angle’: a specific lens or focal point that makes that story ‘newsworthy’.

That’s what we’ll be doing - except in this case, the story we’re building is the most confident version of you. In order to craft that narrative, then broadcast it to the world, we need to work out what’s factual, inaccurate, or perhaps even just superfluous in the information you’ve collected about your confidence so far. Then we want to amplify what’s true in the new confidence story you want to tell.

But before we begin editing, let’s look at what confidence really is and what it’s not.

The dictionary definition of confidence is a feeling or a consciousness of one’s powers. In essence, having faith in yourself. A feeling of self-trust.

I think that’s a useful starting point on paper, but it’s not the whole picture of how confidence plays out in real life. Confidence isn’t a feeling and it’s not the goal.

People often look at others who appear confident - speakers, actors, sports stars, leaders - and assume they’re made of different stuff. I used to think that too. But after interviewing more than 50 different public figures for my podcast Claiming Your Confidence - including athletes, CEO’s, SAS soldiers - I now know confidence can come and go for everyone. It can be present for some activities and abilities and not others and it can escape you when you need it most for absolutely no reason at all.

What these high performance people do differently in those low confidence moments, is not take the story their brain is telling them at face value. They pause, challenge it, then draw upon a bunch of different tools to get them to their goal, in spite of whether they are flooded with fear, doubt or self-consciousness.

I’ll go into all these science-backed tools and techniques in other Substack articles, but at their heart, every one of these tools does the same thing: they act as circuit breakers to the inner critic who’s telling you the story of: ‘I can’t’ or ‘I shouldn’t’ or the ‘who am I to…’ and create space for different, more helpful stories to take shape and flourish.

The 360 Interview helps you identify your strengths. It also helps you identify which of your stories needs interrupting.

When I did this exercise, I realised I’d been chasing the wrong version of myself. Remember how I wanted to be heavy-hitting and serious but the people around me kept describing me as calm and warm?

That was a clue.

It told me I’d been trying to build confidence around someone I wasn’t, instead of amplifying who I already was.

So now look at your own responses. Even if some of those qualities are surprising to you, sit with them and reflect on why they have been listed as valuable to others. In what scenarios do you think they may have helped you to shine? How can you leverage those qualities to fully express your strengths during moments when you have previously struggled with a perceived lack of confidence? What are some ways you may have been showing up that have hindered you in the past? For example, have you tried to be someone you are not to fit in, pretended to know more about a topic than you really do, or even faked bravado - when expressing vulnerability may have engendered connection?

Confidence leaves clues - and I’ll add to this, a lack of confidence leaves clues, too.

It leaves clues in the opportunities we’ve turned down, the conversations we’ve avoided, the clothes we’ve never quite felt brave enough to wear, the dreams we’ve filed away under “maybe one day.” And it leaves clues in the stories we repeat without even realising it.

“I’m terrible with money.”

“I’m not a leader.”

“I’m too quiet.”

“I’m not creative.”

“I’m too old.”

“People like me don’t...”

Most of us don’t stop to question these stories. They take up real estate in our heads because they usually had a job. They might have protected us from embarrassment, rejection or failure.

But protective stories have an expiry date and what might have kept you safe at 15 might be keeping you small at 40 or 50. Those stories got you this far, they just don’t have to take you any further.

That leads me to a story I want to share about one of my coaching clients and her red suit. Many people people think that confidence is loud, right? They think it’s flashy or public-facing. But confidence can also be quiet, and it doesn't necessarily mean public speaking or nailing a TV interview or, holding court at a dinner party.

After I did the 360 Interview with one client of mine, she told me one of her secret wishes for the most confident version of herself was being able to wear the clothes she wanted to wear without being embarrassed or self-conscious of what other people thought. In particular, she told me, she would absolutely love to have the confidence to wear a bright red suit to work.

As someone who works in TV and wears primary colours every day, I was thinking “why don’t you just go ahead and do that?” But for her, this was a hurdle. She had told herself a story that she wasn't ‘that kind of person’ and that risking standing out by wearing such a bold outfit wasn't possible or safe for her.

The next time you catch yourself saying, “I’m just not that kind of person,” don’t dismiss it. Treat it as evidence.

Ask yourself:

Where did that story come from?

Is it still true?

Who would I be without it?

Once you can see the clue, you’ve stopped being controlled by it. Then you can become your own confidence editor and decide which stories get archived and which one gets published next.

I’m happy to tell you, that client ended up wearing a bright red power suit to work and she absolutely rocked it. The suit was never really about the suit. What she was really doing was giving herself permission to allow a fuller expression of who she already was to show up in the world.

Have a go at some of these questions for yourself, investigate the clues, take some time holding the stories you’ve been telling yourself up to the light and let me know what you come up with. Then ask yourself this:

Until next time.

Yours, in confidence,

KB X

To do that, though, I need to share a story about the years I spent trying, and failing, to become a hybrid of Christiane Amanpour and Jana Wendt.

I was seven years old when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I appreciate this is an unusually young age to declare what you want to do with the rest of your life – especially when that fantasy is something as pedestrian as ‘journalist’ and not ‘ballerina’ or ‘fairy princess’. The idea of journalism had me hooked from the moment I asked my mum what that job was: the woman on TV who read the news. Then I saw Jana Wendt, impossibly glamorous, asking the hard-hitting questions on 60 Minutes.

Mum explained that journalists travelled the world asking important people whatever questions they wanted. I actually couldn’t believe such a job existed. On the very best days in television news, all these years later, I still can’t.

I would sit in front of the TV and study Jana. Polite, yet sharp – completely disarming world leaders and male celebrities.

As I grew older, I also developed a girl crush on the CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. To see a woman in a flak jacket, unflinching, as she reported on the Gulf War, and in Bosnia and Sarajevo – Christiane and Jana were icons to me and the template I modelled myself on when I rehearsed my imaginary pieces to camera in front of my bedroom mirror, and later, when I started my first full-time job.

That role was at what was then called Ten Capital News in Canberra. The very first story I was assigned to cover was a noise complaint by the neighbours of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. As Keating’s dogs barked furiously through the gaps in the fence palings behind me, I tried to channel my heroes while I spoke earnestly into the microphone, pretending this was a story of grave national significance.

Over the next six months, I chased exclusives and tried to become the hardest-hitting local reporter Canberra had ever seen. Then came my first performance review. The news director leaned back in his chair, stretched his cowboy-boot-clad feet onto the desk and sighed.

“Kiddo,” he said, shaking his head. “No-one takes you seriously. You look like you’re twelve. Can’t someone in make-up paint some crow’s feet on you or something? And you seem too...” He searched the room for the right word. “...kind. And... sweet... to do hard news.”

Over the following decade, I kept hearing versions of cowboy-boot man’s feedback. I’d stick my hand up to do the police round; they’d put me on red carpets. I wanted to cover a homicide; they’d put me on health stories. All of my air checks featured the same words: Warm. Relatable. Calm. Personable. Kind.

Still, I yearned to be taken seriously. So for years I heard those other words as consolation prizes.

I thought confidence looked like a franken-version of Christiane and Jana. But those roles in journalism were already taken. By those women.

Which brings me back to where we started. ‘Fake it ‘til You Make it’ assumes there’s a way confident people behave, and you just have to pretend to be that way until it eventually feels natural. Except that’s not how confidence works.

Confidence is something you cultivate, not borrow from someone else. And the confidence that will make you most effective in the world is unique to you.

It’s the fullest expression of who you already are, not the closest imitation of someone you admire.

I didn’t fully understand that until my own confidence collapsed. After my panic attack on live television, I genuinely wondered whether I could keep doing the job I’d dreamed about since I was seven. Around that same time, something unexpected happened.

My news director called me into his office to tell me I’d been chosen to take over the Queensland weekend newsreading role from Kay McGrath.

Kay had read the news for forty years and people had grown up with her in their living rooms. She wasn’t just respected, she was beloved.

“The reason I’ve chosen you,” my boss said, “is because you remind me of Kay.” Then he rattled off those words: Warm. Relatable. Calm.

I remember walking out of his office thinking... Really? Then I started watching Kay differently and I realised something I’d completely missed.

The qualities I kept devaluing were the very qualities people valued. They were why interviewees opened up to me. They were why some viewers trusted me to tell difficult stories.

So after a lot of reading, journalling and experimenting, I stopped asking myself: “How do I become more confident?” and asked myself a different question, instead:

How would the most confident version of me behave?

The problem is many of us don’t know who that ‘most confident version’ of us is. And that’s because, like me, we often spend years overlooking the very things that are our superpowers.

Being a journalist, I approached reclaiming my confidence the same way I’d approach a story I needed to investigate. You start by gathering evidence from the source. To begin with, that source is you.

So now I’m going to share with you step one in what’s become my Claiming Your Confidence Method. I call it The 360-Degree Confidence Interview and it will help you chart the map to your most confident self.

THE METHOD:

Grab a piece of paper and write whatever comes to mind (don’t overthink this!). Then, ask yourself these questions:

• Who do you think you are when you’re at your best? (for example: positive, witty, sharp, warm, engaging, decisive, inspiring, relatable, dynamic, quirky, down-to-earth and so on.)

• What do you think people trust you for?

• What qualities are your strengths when you do a presentation/speak to your team/pitch an idea/present at a conference (adapt for your role)?

• If you had to choose a celebrity/well-known figure who personifies the qualities you’d like to possess, who would they be?

After you’ve done that, just like a journalist would, you widen the scope to gather evidence from other sources.

Choose four people who know you from different parts of your life. A close friend. A colleague. Someone who’s seen you lead. Someone who knows you in a completely different context.

Then, you ask them the following:

• When have you seen me at my best?

• What do people naturally trust me for?

• What do I underestimate about myself?

• What’s one quality you’d never want me to lose?

• When you’ve seen me lead, what were the strengths that made me resonate and what were my weaknesses?

• If you had to compare me to a well-known figure or a celebrity, who would it be?

The last question usually generates some big surprises. In my own evaluation, I wanted to come across as a fearless war correspondent. But others saw me shine more like a ‘Reese Witherspoon’ or ‘Katie Couric’: kind, warm, personable.

I’ve since backed what I now know are my unique strengths and, most importantly, I feel like I’ve brought the best of myself to it.

This is the first step in claiming your confidence. It reframes confidence as something ‘out there’ and outside of yourself and instead focuses on cultivating the gold you already have within.

Next time I’ll show you what to do once you’ve uncovered some of that gold.

Yours, in confidence,

KB x

P.S. A tip if you want to try the 360-Degree Confidence Interview – it can feel a bit cringe or icky approaching others if YOU are the subject. I do it on behalf of my clients, but if you have someone you can trust such as a sibling, friend or partner, that can alleviate some of that vulnerability of putting yourself out there.

P.P.S. I often frame it not as a ‘confidence seeking exercise’ but as my client wanting to work on their presenting skills and presence. Hope that helps.

I think of it like the Big Mac of confidence. I say this with no disrespect to the burger, which is supremely delicious. But while it’s a grab-and-go quick fix, it’s not very sustaining.

Fake confidence might get you through this afternoon’s presentation. But if it’s your entire confidence strategy, sooner or later you’ll discover you’ve been surviving on empty calories. And like eating a tonne of Big Macs, after a while it probably doesn’t leave you looking all that good externally, either.

I came to this conclusion the hard way: I tried it, it didn’t work, and I wanted to understand why.

A few years ago, after I had a panic attack while reading the news live on tv and lost my confidence for a while, ‘Fake it ‘til You Make it’ was the advice people kept giving me.

So I gave it a go. Every morning I’d drive to work telling myself I was fine. I’d sit in the makeup chair, walk into the studio, smile and read the news.

On the outside, nothing looked like it had changed, except on the inside, everything had.

And it wasn’t just the studio. The panic attack knocked over my confidence in other things, too: speaking up in meetings, addressing my team, asking a question at a press conference, even emceeing events. Anything that required me to publicly show up, I second-guessed myself at doing for a long time afterwards.

And the pretending, day after day, didn’t make me feel more confident, it made me feel more disconnected from myself.

I think it failed because I knew I was being a fake deep down inside. Every day I told myself I was confident while secretly believing I wasn’t. I was riddled with self-doubt and second-guessing or replaying everything I did in my head. And every ‘fake’ act of confidence was like committing a tiny act of self betrayal, which chipped away at something much more important: my self-trust.

Now, just like a Big Mac after a boozy night out, there’s a time and a place for ‘Fake it ‘til You Make it’.

If you need what I like to call ‘performative confidence’ to get through a one-off meeting, a phone call, ask someone on a date, sing ‘Ring of Fire’ at your Johnny-Cash-loving Dad’s karaoke birthday party or summon up the guts to get through your presentation… go for it.

But if you want lasting, foundational confidence - something you build for life - you can’t rely on fast food and fake fixes.

If you’re mentally arguing with me right now that ‘Fake it ‘til You Make it’ holds weight because it gives you the guts to do the scary thing, and the mere act of doing the scary thing - like exposure therapy - builds confidence, let me introduce you to my friend Albert Bandura.

Back in the 70’s, when Johnny Cash dominated the country charts, Canadian-American psychologist Bandura was obsessed with the same question I am today: Where does confidence actually come from?

So he recruited people with an intense phobia of snakes and brought them face to face with their fear. Imagine trying to fake confidence in that situation? You can’t.

Bandura didn’t ask them to fake being brave - but what he did do was break the challenge into tiny steps. Stand across the room, walk a bit closer, touch the outside of the snake’s enclosure, then touch the snake wearing a glove. After each step, he asked the same question: “how confident are you that you can take the next one?”

The experiment culminated in the participants actually holding a snake - their greatest fear!

I love this study because it gets to the heart of building the belief and self-trust you need in a scary or uncomfortable situation: to take one confident step and then another. The participants in Bandura’s study proved to themselves they could, because they’d collected evidence in the choices they made along the way, each one carrying them closer to the future version of their most confident self.

Confidence didn’t arrive before they held the snake, it was built by every small act of courage.

This approach takes longer than faking it, I know. But it works like dominoes: one act of courage makes the next one easier to tip. The first few are always the hardest, because your brain is starting from zero - but they fall faster as you go.

After my panic-attack, I’d been trying to talk myself back into confidence. But my brain wasn’t asking for better self-talk, it needed evidence I could go live in a studio and be ok, cope if I felt anxious and trust myself again.

Fake confidence asks us to do something our brains aren’t very good at. It asks you to split yourself in two. One version of you is standing in the meeting, smiling, speaking, trying to project certainty. The other version knows you’re terrified.

Every time your internal experience says one thing and your words say another, you create a gap. And confidence doesn’t grow in the gap.

Notice Bandura’s participants weren’t faking anything. They didn’t pretend the fear wasn’t there - they were terrified, said so, and touched the enclosure anyway. Faking asks you to deny the fear while you act. Bandura asked people to admit the fear while they acted. One builds the gap. The other builds self-trust.

That’s what faking it does on the inside. But the whole bargain rests on a second assumption: that nobody on the outside can tell. And I beg to differ on that, too.

Behavioural researcher Vanessa Van Edwards argues that when people are trying to conceal what they’re really thinking or feeling, tiny inconsistencies creep in. People talk a lot with their hands when they’re truly confident in what they’re saying - but when they’re faking, their gestures become restrained, moving just a beat behind their words. They end on an upward inflection more often, like they’re asking a question… unconsciously imploring the listener to agree with them. Sometimes a fleeting facial expression slips through - ever seen someone smiling, but not with their eyes?

You’d have to be an FBI agent or a body language expert to actually pick up on these things in real time, they are super subtle. But to the regular person, something definitely feels a tiny bit… off. You’ll definitely know and they’ll know something’s a bit sus even if they can’t put their finger on why.

This is what Claiming Your Confidence is really about. There’s an enormous amount of advice out there, and most of it has never been held up to the light.

My job is to investigate what actually builds confidence - the strategies with evidence behind them - and report back. On that menu, ‘Fake it ‘til You Make it’ is a sometimes food.

If you want to start before then, pick something you’ve been faking your way through and shrink it right down. What’s your version of the snake’s enclosure? If wearing colour feels like too much attention, wear the red shoes. If you’re the one with the camera off in every Zoom meeting, turn it on. One small version of the scary thing, once this week. That’s all your brain needs to start collecting evidence.

Next time, I’ll step you through the approach I developed to re-claim my own confidence after that panic attack. It’s called the ‘Act as If Method’ - and no, it’s not faking it with better branding. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Until then - yours, in confidence,

KB X

I want to share three new breathing techniques for building different kinds of confidence. The first is for summoning the confidence to act in the moment; the second is for when you need confidence to perform under pressure; and the third technique is for when you find yourself overthinking, and need to draw upon the confidence to stop the spiral.

Many of you may have heard of box breathing, and it’s fantastic. But the research has since evolved.

Where I’m finding the science particularly exciting right now is researchers are discovering how different breathing techniques appear to produce different outcomes in the nervous system.

In other words, not all breaths are created equal.

Some breathing patterns seem particularly effective for improving mood. Others help regulate stress. Others appear to work best when you’re under pressure and need access to your calm, confident self.

What I love about this as a confidence building technique is that your breath is free, portable and discreet.

I’ve used breathing exercises while standing at the lectern before a presentation or sitting at the news desk during rolling coverage. I’ve done them in the bathroom before a difficult meeting. While sitting in my car before a tough conversation. Even before a first date!

Here are three brand new evidence-based breathing techniques to access three different kinds of confidence.

1. The Physiological Sigh

Best for: When you need the courage to take action.

How to do it

• Take a deep breath in through your nose.

• Before you exhale, take a second smaller inhale.

• Slowly exhale through your mouth until your lungs feel empty.

• Repeat three times.

Why it works

This is one of the newest and most exciting areas of breathing research.

In a 2023 Stanford University study, 111 adults were randomly assigned to different breathing exercises or mindfulness meditation for five minutes a day over a month. The group practising ‘cyclic sighing’ showed the greatest improvements in mood and the largest reduction in respiratory rate, a marker of physiological calm.

The key is that second inhale. It helps reopen tiny air sacs in the lungs called alveoli, improving gas exchange before the long exhale activates the body’s calming system.

Think of this one as an emergency reset button.

2. Resonance Breathing

Best for: When you need to perform under pressure.

How to do it

• Breathe in for 5 seconds.

• Breathe out for 5 seconds.

• Continue for 2 minutes.

That’s six breaths per minute.

Why it works

Researchers call this your ‘resonance frequency’ because it synchronises your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure rhythms.

A growing body of research from sports psychology, biofeedback and cardiovascular science has found that breathing at around six breaths per minute reliably increases heart rate variability (HRV), one of the strongest markers of emotional regulation and adaptability under pressure.

In simple terms, it helps your body become less reactive and more responsive.

Exactly what confidence requires when the stakes are high.

3. Extended Exhale Breathing

Best for: When confidence is being hijacked by overthinking.

How to do it

• Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4.

• Breathe out for a count of 8.

• Repeat for 90 seconds.

Why it works

Recent research suggests slow breathing with an extended exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system: the branch responsible for rest, recovery and regulation.

The longer exhale is what matters here. It’s essentially a signal to your brain that you’re safe.

And when your brain feels safe, it’s much harder for anxiety and overthinking to take over.

So the next time you’re having a confidence dip, ask yourself: “what kind of confidence do I need right now?”

Is it the confidence to act? The confidence to perform? Or the confidence to stop overthinking?

Then choose the breath that matches the moment.

Screenshot these graphics and add them to your phone. Future you may need them.

Yours, in confidence,

KB X

For many women, perimenopause and menopause don’t just change their bodies. They change the way they see themselves.

At the very stage of life when women have decades of experience and wisdom to offer, many find themselves second-guessing their judgement, losing trust in their own minds and wondering what’s happened to their confidence.

Yet most workplace menopause initiatives focus on the symptoms everyone can see.

In this episode of Claiming Your Confidence Katrina asks whether we’re missing the real issue, and whether that blind spot is costing women their confidence and their careers.

In this episode:

• The unique confidence gap women face in midlife due to hormonal shifts

• How physical and psychological symptoms differ and affect confidence

• The story of Lauren, a woman who nearly lost her career to menopause misdiagnosis

• Innovative workplace policies from the UK and Australia addressing menopause challenges

• The shift from focusing on visible symptoms versus underlying psychological impacts

• Evidence-based approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and manager education to support women

• Practical tips for women: paced breathing, catching catastrophic thoughts, and psychoeducation

• The inspiring findings from Harvard on women emerging more assertive post-menopause

• Clarification on hormone therapy (HRT) benefits and considerations

• A call to women to understand the temporary nature of these changes and support each other better

Timestamps:

00:06 - Introduction to menopause, confidence, and midlife challenges
00:35 - The confidence gap and societal conversation gaps
01:03 - Hormonal influence on brain systems and confidence
01:52 - The importance of naming hormonal symptoms
02:22 - The challenges women face in safe spaces for honesty at work
03:20 - The flaw in current workplace menopause policies
03:49 - The story of Lauren and career near-loss due to misdiagnosed menopause symptoms
08:08 - Workplace initiatives that are making a difference worldwide
10:15 - The gap between physical symptom management and underlying psychological impacts
12:05 - Lack of evidence linking policies to career retention outcomes
13:02 - The psychological symptoms most responsible for career damage
14:21 - The limitations of visible symptom-focused solutions
15:42 - Evidence-based supports: CBT and manager coaching
16:42 - Practical self-help strategies: paced breathing, cognitive restructuring, psychoeducation
19:00 - The positive transformation in women post-menopause, becoming more assertive
20:24 - Brief notes on hormone therapy (HRT) considerations
20:52 - Key takeaway: understanding and support are crucial for confidence recovery
21:22 - Closing thoughts and encouragement for women to seize this transitional stage
21:46 - Call to action: subscribe, review, and connect on social media

Resources & Links:

• Women of a Certain Stage - Lauren’s consultancy on menopause in the workplace

• Harvard Business Review Study on Women Leaders - The confidence boost after menopause transition

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) - Evidence-based support for managing menopause distress

• Transitioning Well - Australian organization training managers on menopause support

Connect with Katrina Blowers:

• Instagram

• Claiming Your Confidence - Instagram Profile

I was reading the TV news, live on-air, to an audience of hundreds of thousands, when my body decided to have a complete melt down.

I wasn’t new to reading the news - I’d done it hundreds of times before. I’d also been a public speaker since I was a kid, so it wasn’t like this was some sort of stage fright.

But as the news theme played and the countdown began in my ear, I sat under those lights, tried to take a breath and I couldn’t. My heart was racing, my palms were sweating and my chest was so tight - it felt like there was a vice around it and I couldn’t catch my breath.

The bulletin began and there was nowhere to hide. I wanted to rip off my clip-on microphone, tear out my earpiece and bolt. Then the camera zoomed in on me sitting alone at the desk. “Good evening,” I managed. All I could think about was how I needed to give my director a signal to roll the first news package and get me off air.

I skipped two paragraphs of the autocue, and read the last sentence of the intro to the lead story. What I read would have sounded like gobbledygook to anyone watching at home, but it bought me a reprieve from being live. The tape rolled, the camera went off me, and I slumped on the desk.

“What happened?” asked my director. “Did the autocue fail?”

“No,” I said on the verge of bursting into tears. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

I got through the rest of that one hour show - mostly thanks to my director and autocue operator who calmly talked me through it and did breathing exercises with me in the ad breaks. What I remember most clearly is the thought that came afterwards, sitting in the car, shaking: if I can’t trust myself to do the one thing I know how to do, who am I? Do I need to walk away? Can I ever get it back?

That question is, in a roundabout way, how you’ve ended up reading this.

What I didn’t realise then was that the panic attack itself would be over in minutes, but the loss of trust in myself would take much longer to repair.

For a while afterwards, reading the news became a trigger. Speaking at events became a trigger. Anything that put me in front of an audience carried the fear that it might happen again.

There was a sudden loss of certainty in someone I’d always relied on: myself.

I’ve since spoken publicly about what actually led to that day, because for a long time I think people assumed it came out of the blue. My panic attack was the consequence of months of accumulated stress I’d swept under the metaphorical rug, telling everyone - and myself - I was absolutely fine, while doing none of the work to deal with what was really going on. Mine arrived in the middle of a divorce. That stress had to go somewhere, and it eventually built up until my body couldn’t contain it. Like a glass of water that keeps getting filled until the final drop causes the whole thing to overflow.

With the benefit of years of hindsight and vulnerable conversations with lots of others, what I know for sure now is that cracks in our confidence can happen to any of us, and they arrive in all sorts of ways. For some people it’s a redundancy. For others an illness, a death, or a relationship ending.

It’s usually something that changes the way you see yourself and shakes a foundation you didn’t realise you’d been standing on.

For so many women, as I now write about here, it’s the hormonal upheaval of midlife: a crack that arrives right when they least expect it and can least explain it.

And interestingly, all these years later, I find myself returning to some of those same questions. Perimenopause has brought occasional moments of anxiety and self-doubt that feel familiar enough to make me curious. I want to get to the bottom of the role hormones play in confidence, how much of our inner narrative is biology, and why so many capable women suddenly find themselves questioning things they once took for granted.

In the journalling I did in the weeks and months that followed after that night on the news desk, I started to slowly realise something. I’m a storyteller by trade and as I began to pull at the thread of what confidence really is and how we can harness it, it became clear to me that my confidence - or the lack of it in that moment and afterwards- wasn’t a fixed fact about me. It was a story. The panic, and certainty that I was about to fail, the voice insisting I wasn’t up to it - all of it was a narrative my brain was running and asking me to believe.

Now, nearly ten years on, after a lot of reading, writing, talking and thinking about it - I can tell you this:

Confidence is a construct. It’s the story we tell ourselves about whether we can or can’t, right at the moment it matters most.

I have become completely fascinated by these stories. How they get embedded in our brains in the first place and why we keep returning to them and believing them, even when the evidence says otherwise.

Most importantly, how we can rewrite those stories into truer, healthier, more useful versions we can leverage to reach the things we’re capable of.

I’m a journalist by trade and curious by nature, and I’ve always believed the answer is out there somewhere if you’re willing to go looking. So after that awful night I went looking - using myself as the guinea pig. I’ve tried all sorts of approaches; spiritual ones, immersive therapies, CBT-style techniques and hypnotherapy. I read widely and dived deep into the research. And I’m happy to report there are so many strategies out there that work, and so many more people who’ve been through their own crisis of confidence than you’d ever realise.

That last part is what led me to the podcast.

In my job, I get a backstage access to high-profile, accomplished people. And over the years I noticed that off camera, once the formal bit was done, so many of them would open up about exactly this - their wobbles and self-doubt. These were people I admired, people the rest of us assume have it all figured out and they were telling me, in private, that they didn’t always. It struck me that if those stories were shared publicly, they’d help an enormous number of people.

So I launched a podcast called Claiming Your Confidence, and I sat down with them. I talked to SAS soldiers, elite athletes, chief executives and other high-profile names whose whole public image is built on certainty. And almost every single one told me some version of the same thing. Their confidence wasn’t innate and at some point, often after something had broken it, they’d had to build it back from scratch and treat it as a skill.

That reframe changed everything for me.

Confidence as something you practice, not something you have. It’s a muscle and you need to use it – or you’ll lose it.

Seriously! It meant the thing that abandoned me on air wasn’t gone for good.

Along the way it felt like a natural progression to start teaching what I was learning: keynotes, workshops, courses, and one-on-one coaching with high-performing leaders. And somewhere in all of that, I started building something of my own.

Over years of testing things in real life - on myself first, then with the leaders I coached - I developed a set of strategies that became my Claiming Your Confidence Method™. It pulls together breathing and cognitive techniques, ways of rewiring the neural pathways that keep us stuck in the old stories, visualisation, and what I think of as an antidote to ‘faking it ‘til you make it’ (that old chestnut which gets quoted so often but doesn’t work). Practical, science-backed tools for when you’re about to present, speak up in a meeting, or steel yourself before turning on your video on a Zoom call.

I’m obsessed with the science behind all of this. Being a journalist, I read the latest research constantly, and the whole point of that obsession is to bring the best of it back here, to you.

There’s a genuine explosion of research happening in this area right now, and it’s the most exciting time to be talking about this topic.

It won’t all be serious on here. There’ll be the occasional wildcard - a piece about jorts, or cooking, or makeup, or the strange new world of midlife dating.

But underneath all of it is the same question I started asking in that car, shaking, all those years ago.

How do we rewrite the story that holds us up - and how do we make sure it’s still there when we need it most?

I look forward to answering this and sharing more with you.

Yours in confidence,

KB x

P.S My original podcast with all those interviews can still be found. Search for ‘Claiming Your Confidence’ on the major podcast platforms. The blue background is the heritage version with around 50 episodes and the red background is where you’ll find all my newer stuff - with a focus on confidence in midlife.

I ended that piece on a caveat: radical honesty only works in a room that’s safe enough to be honest in. And most women, before they say a single word, are running a lightning-fast risk assessment that men in the same meeting don’t need to do.

So this week I went looking for the answer to what felt like the obvious next question:

What does a workplace actually have to do to make that room safe, and to keep experienced women in their positions rather than watching them go?

Where I got to, is this: I think the entire workplace menopause movement - all the policies, desk fans, the moisture wicking uniforms, every bit of it rolled out with the best of intentions - might be aimed at the wrong thing. We’re pouring our energy into the symptoms we can see. Except the evidence suggests those aren’t the ones pushing capable women out the door.

I’ll get to that in a sec. But first, some numbers, because they’re the reason this matters.

Fourteen percent of Australian women have left the workforce because of menopause symptoms. A quarter retire before 55, despite most saying they wanted to work until 64. One in ten women globally has turned down a job opportunity for lack of menopause support.

And with nearly 80 per cent of women aged 45-55 employed in Australia, the risk of losing experienced talent due to unmanaged perimenopause and menopause should be a massive, urgent concern for organisations.

So who’s getting it right?

Credit where it’s due, because after decades of inaction it’s no small thing that anyone is doing anything at all. The silence is finally breaking, and some workplaces are well ahead of the rest.

Britain has been the unlikely trailblazer. Channel 4 built the media industry’s first menopause policy back in 2019. This included paid leave for symptom days, a cool quiet space, flexible working, and a dedicated menopause champion. What I find most telling is that it didn’t come down from HR. It grew out of the company’s own women’s network running a panel discussion they called ‘The M Word,’ and the policy followed the conversation rather than the other way around. It’s since been downloaded more than 2,000 times by other organisations.

The corporates followed, which surprised me given financial services still has one of the widest gender gaps. Santander UK (the British arm of the Spanish bank) acknowledged back in 2019 a quarter of its workforce were women of menopausal age and responded accordingly. They ran awareness sessions for staff and managers and then in 2020 became the first major UK employer to give staff direct access to real menopause practitioners through an app.

Vodafone went global, committing to menopause training and support across every market it operates in, explicitly tied to a goal of women holding 40 percent of its leadership roles by 2030. This is a rare case of a company connecting menopause support directly to keeping women in the pipeline to the top. Diageo, Aviva and Lululemon have built their own versions including counselling, mindfulness, menopause leave, and HR advisers trained to have a conversation with women about perimenopause and menopause.

In the UK, Tesco rolled out menopause-friendly uniforms to its 275,000 staff: tops, pants and blazers made from moisture-wicking fabric designed to move heat away from the body. The NHS, where a fifth of the workforce are women aged 45 to 54, issued national guidance urging fans, cooler uniforms, flexible hours and staff training.

Here at home, the Australian Federal Government launched the country’s first national awareness campaign, ‘Could This Be Perimenopause?’ just a few weeks ago. The creative is a little cringe (said with peace and love) but even overly earnest messaging is better than nothing. The Australian Public Service has also committed to supporting staff through this transition and has made its managers responsible for ensuring women know what support exists.

So after decades of silence, there is momentum. That’s worth celebrating. But the moment you look at whether any of it is being measured, you start to wonder whether we're throwing darts blindfolded.

Are any of these policies actually keeping midlife women on the leadership track?

This entire workplace movement has been built on almost no outcome data.

There isn’t a single robust study showing a workplace menopause policy has kept women in their jobs.

Every corporate announcement promises a policy. None can yet show it changed who stayed.

While I think it’s really valid workplaces hold space for the physical symptoms of this life transition, I think it’s largely the invisible, internal, symptoms that prompt so many capable midlife women to doubt themselves, and ultimately, quit their careers. That’s what I want to talk about here - because it relates directly to confidence.

There’s so much we still don’t know about how and why the fluctuating hormones during perimenopause and menopause can rock a woman’s sense of self. There’s the brain fog, the difficulty remembering names or why you’ve entered a room. Then there’s the less talked about stuff: anxiety that shows up out of nowhere, the loss of emotional regulation which the internet has reduced to ‘menopause rage’ memes but can feel more unsettling than humorous in the moment, and the ‘I just don’t feel like me anymore and I don’t know why’ feeling.

All of it leads to a loss of confidence the researchers note often gets missed because it doesn’t present as a physical symptom. It just looks like a woman going quiet and heading for the door.

The research bears this out. When you break it down by symptom, the adverse career outcomes cluster around the psychological symptoms, not the physical ones. In one large US study, the women most likely to report a damaged work outcome were those scoring highest on the psychological domain of the Menopause Rating Scale. The only individual physical symptom that reliably tracked with lost productivity was joint stiffness.

So I’m all for the fans and the breathable uniforms, but the bulk of the workplace response is built around accommodating the visible, physical symptoms and the evidence suggests those may be the ones least responsible for driving women out. The real damage is being done in the psychological domain: the anxiety, brain fog, and the gradual erosion of self-trust. The part nobody can see, which is a lot harder to build a policy for.

What does work?

The two interventions that have actually moved the needle in controlled studies aren’t environmental at all. The first is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). In the MENOS@Work randomised controlled trial, a brief self-help CBT programme improved not just hot flushes but presenteeism (showing up and being present) and what the researchers nicely called ‘mental resources for work.’

What’s fascinating here, is the CBT didn’t reduce the frequency of the hot flushes. But it changed how problematic the women found them. It worked on the distress and the felt loss of control and improved the perception of those things.

The second is manager education. An Australian program run by Transitioning Well uses psychologists to coach managers on how they can have constructive conversations about menopause with their teams. What I found impressive about their approach is they also focus on the strengths menopausal women bring to the workplace. Finally a silver lining! They believe in leveraging the enhanced insights and wisdom of midlife women so they can bring more authority to the table. How refreshing.

Neither of these approaches is a fan or a cool room. One rebuilds a woman’s relationship with her own mind. The other rebuilds the room’s capacity to talk about it.

Three things you can do yourself

If the evidence points at the psychological, I don’t want to leave you with a diagnosis and no tools. The CBT that worked in those trials isn’t mysterious, and it isn’t only available in a clinician’s office. Three of its core techniques are things you can use yourself.

The first is paced breathing. Slow, abdominal breathing at the first signal of a flush or a wave of anxiety. It sounds almost too simple, but it’s one of the most evidence-supported tools in the programme, because it interrupts the panic response that makes the whole thing feel like it’s spiralling beyond your control.

The second is catching the catastrophic thought. The women with the highest distress tend to be the ones who catastrophise in the moment - everyone’s looking at me, I can’t cope, they can all tell. CBT teaches you to notice that thought, then ask whether it’s overestimating the threat and underestimating your ability to cope. What would you say to a friend in the same chair? Our thoughts aren’t facts.

The third is psychoeducation, which is a clinical word for the thing this entire series has been trying to do. Understanding what is physiologically happening to you, because the knowledge itself is the intervention. When you know the fog and the flush are a hormonal transition and not the beginning of your decline, the threat shrinks.

Finally…

There is a genuinely hopeful end to this. An HBR study of 64 senior women leaders who came through perimenopause found almost all of them hit an initial dip in confidence and then reached what the researchers called a pivotal moment of letting go. After it, their confidence didn’t just recover - it came back harder. They became more assertive, spoke up more and cared less what the room thought. They had, in their words, no more F***s to give.

I love this. For them, and us.

____________________________________________

P.S. A few of you have messaged asking why I haven’t talked about HRT. I’m a journalist, not a doctor. Menopausal hormone therapy has strong evidence behind it and for many women it’s genuinely life-changing, but it isn’t automatically right for everyone. So I’ll leave that chat between you and your GP - but I really do encourage you to have it.

The women who get through this and keep rising aren’t the ones who white-knuckled it in silence. They’re the ones who understood what was happening, gave themselves some grace, reached for the right support, and refused to read a temporary biological transition as a permanent verdict on their confidence and ability. That’s a boss confidence move and one I want to be a part of building.

This is the final piece in my series on hormones and confidence - for now. I’ll be back soon with more practical confidence strategies which actually have evidence behind them. Until then you can check out my podcast Claiming Your Confidence on all the major platforms or follow me @katrinablowers or @claimingyourconfidence on Instagram. Thank you for being here and please share with someone who would benefit from this. KB X

Have you ever had a moment at work where something felt off - and then spent the drive home telling yourself it probably wasn’t that bad? That nobody noticed? That you were just being too hard on yourself?

This episode is going to gently — and then not so gently — challenge that.

I recently found a brand new piece of peer-reviewed research about hormones, confidence and women in leadership. It’s so new it’s barely been cited anywhere. And what it found completely reframes the way I think about those moments when your body or your brain does something you can’t control in a professional setting.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: some of what we’ve been telling ourselves to feel better — nobody noticed, it’s probably in my head — turns out not to be entirely true.

Here’s the useful part: the same research tells us exactly what to do about it. Something specific. Something that works in real time. And it has nothing to do with faking it till you make it — which I’ve always believed is the wrong advice for women anyway.

In this episode I also tell you about a woman in Denmark — one of the most senior labour market figures in the country — who figured out the solution before any research proved it. While sitting in high-stakes, male-dominated negotiations. With a fan on the table.

And got promoted.

This is part of my ongoing series on hormones and confidence in midlife — the conversation I think women leaders most urgently need to have. If you’re new here, go back and listen to Episodes 1 and 2 first. But if you’re jumping in here, you’ll be absolutely fine.

In this episode:

— Why the “maybe nobody noticed” story might be costing you more than you think

— The brand new 2026 Penn State study — what they tested, how they tested it, and what it proved

— What actually happens when a woman names what’s going on for her in the room

— The story of Pernille Knudsen — the Danish labour leader who figured this out before the research caught up with her

— Why this isn’t just a personal challenge — and what workplaces urgently need to do about it

— Why both imposter syndrome and “nobody noticed” might be two sides of the same self-gaslighting coin

Research referenced in this episode:

Grandey, A. et al. (2026). “Do Hot Flashes Get the Cold Shoulder? Menopausal Symptoms and Disclosure Influence Leader Ratings.” Journal of Business and Psychology. Open access. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-025-10039-2

Pernille Knudsen / Nordic Labour Journal (October 2025). “Denmark: Menopause Should Not Cost Women Their Jobs.” https://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/denmark-menopause-should-not-cost-women-their-jobs/

University of Copenhagen — Women in Healthy Transition (KISO) Survey (2025). First nationwide survey on menopause in Denmark. 153,800 women aged 45–59. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-women-denmark-symptoms-menopause.html

Astellas Menopause Experience & Attitudes Study (2025). Global study of 13,800 people across six countries on menopause stigma and workplace disclosure. https://newsroom.astellas.com/2025-03-07-New-Research-Reveals-Impact-of-Menopause-Stigma

Catalyst Global Survey (2024). 72% of women have hidden menopause symptoms at work at least once. https://www.catalyst.org/about/newsroom/2024/menopause-workplace-support-global

MetLife Australia (2024). 14% of Australian women have left the workforce due to menopause symptoms. https://www.metlife.com.au

Read more

This episode is also a full piece on my Substack — with all the research linked and a lot more context. It’s free to read. katrinablowers.substack.com

Want to do me a huge favour?

If this episode resonated — share it. Send it to a woman in your life who needs to hear this. Or a leader who manages one. This conversation only gets bigger if we have it together.

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. I publish every week and the series is building toward something I’m genuinely excited about.

And if you have two seconds — leave a rating or a review. It sounds like a small thing but it makes a massive difference to how many women find this podcast. If this has been useful, that’s the single best thing you can do to help it reach more people.

You’d be doing me — and a lot of women who haven’t found this yet — a huge favour.

Find me here:

Instagram: @katrinablowers Instagram: @claimingyourconfidence Substack: katrinablowers.substack.com

Next week:

I’m looking at the workplaces that are actually getting this right — and asking the honest question of whether it’s going far enough. Because naming it only works where naming it is safe. And making it safe isn’t just an HR policy. It’s the people sitting in the room.

See you then.

You know that feeling after a meeting or a presentation doesn’t go the way you wanted it to?

You probably do what I do: replay it in your head on the drive home, or pick it apart at 2am. You might have felt off or self conscious or lost your train of thought mid-sentence. Maybe you felt a flush of heat move through you at exactly the wrong moment and spent the rest of the meeting managing that instead of managing the room.

And then - because the self recrimination becomes unbearable - you start appeasing yourself. ‘Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt’. ‘Maybe nobody really noticed.’ ‘I’m just being too hard on myself’. ‘Maybe it’s in my head.’

I want to gently challenge that. Because while this kind of self-talk can feel kinder than the other kind, we might not be actually fooling anyone - least of all ourselves.

Last week I wrote and spoke about the hormonal blind spot in the confidence conversation for midlife women, and why so many of us have been reaching for the wrong explanation.

This week I want to go further.

In a moment I’m going to tell you about a study that came out just months ago. It’s so new, it’s barely been cited anywhere. It tested something most of us have never thought to question around confidence and hormones in midlife - and how that shows up both internally… and also externally. What it found will reframe the way you think about those moments when your body or your brain does something you can’t control in a professional setting.

It’s sobering because some of what we’ve been telling ourselves to feel better - nobody noticed, it’s probably in my head - turns out not to be entirely true.

But this same research delivers something I think has the potential to be game-changing. A specific, evidence-based thing you can do - in the room, in real time - that completely changes how you’re perceived.

But first, let me tell you what’s been happening. To me, to the women I know and to women I’ve never met.

When I first wrote on LinkedIn that I was exploring this topic, women slid into my DMs sharing with me the most private, heartbreaking things.

One had stopped speaking up at board meetings because she was terrified a hot flush would make her look out of control. Another - known in her industry for a dynamic, commanding presence - told me she now never leaves the lectern. That’s because she feels self conscious about the incontinence pad she has to wear when she presents. She once bled through her suit on stage and the memory of it still paralyses her.

These are not women who innately lack confidence - their confidence has been eroded by something biological. And rather than risk exposure, they made themselves smaller.

I couldn’t be more relieved the conversation around perimenopause and menopause has finally gone mainstream. But I’ve been struck by how little of that conversation has reached the specific place where I think women need it most: their professional confidence. Right at the stage of life when their careers are finally hitting their stride.

So I went looking for answers. And what I found surprised me.

The new research.

Professor Alicia Grandey works at Penn State and is one of the most cited researchers in her field of Industrial-Organisational Psychology. Earlier this year, Grandey and her team published a study called ‘Do Hot Flashes Get the Cold Shoulder?’

Here’s how they did it.

They recruited 241 full-time workers through an online research platform with an average age of 35. And - this is important - 58.5% of them were men. So this wasn’t women judging other women. The majority of raters were men.

Each participant was given a written scenario and asked to imagine they were walking into a workplace meeting. Four colleagues enter the room - a middle-aged man and woman, and a younger man and woman. All four contribute to the discussion at the same level of competence.

But there were three different versions of what happened to the middle-aged woman during that meeting.

In version one, nothing unusual. She just participates.

In version two, mid-meeting, she suddenly starts perspiring. Her face flushes, she fans herself, removes her jacket then leans over to the person next to her and says: “I may have to step out for a few minutes.” Except she doesn’t leave - she then stays and contributes through to the end.

In version three, exactly the same thing happens. The flush, the perspiring, the fanning, the jacket coming off. But this time her line to her colleague is: “I’m having a bad hot flash again. It’s that menopausal stage of life. I may have to step out for a few minutes.” Again - she stays. She doesn’t leave.

Same woman and meeting with one sentence of difference.

After reading their scenario, participants rated both the middle-aged woman and the middle-aged man on their leadership potential.

When the woman’s symptoms were visible but unnamed (in version two) her perceived leadership ratings dropped. The gender gap between her and her male colleague widened.

So that thing we tell ourselves - maybe nobody noticed - the research says: THEY NOTICED. The human brain fills unexplained gaps with its own story. And that story, it turns out, isn’t kind to women.

But wait - because here’s the kicker.

When the woman named her experience and explained it to her colleague - in version three - her perceived ratings went back up. In some measures, back to where she’d been when there were no symptoms at all.

It turns out actually naming the elephant in the room, rather than pretending to ourselves and everyone around us that everything is fine, is the secret sauce when it comes to navigating the hormonal hit to confidence in midlife. Being honest and just calling it out.

Initally, reading that finding, my first instinct wasn’t relief. It was: easier said than done.

Naming it in a meeting out loud in a room that may be full of men some of whom may be older and describe these things as ‘female issues’ or ‘girl’s problems’ - wow. Kill me now.

Thinking about doing that feels exposing in a way that’s hard to explain. Like being seen walking to the bathroom carrying a tampon. Which, I’ll be honest, I still feel weird about. And I’m a grown woman who has been doing it for thirty years.

So I don’t think the answer here is simply ‘be braver.’ The research gives us permission to name it. But permission only goes so far when the culture in the room hasn’t caught up.

This is where workplaces have a role to play that most of them aren’t playing yet. Because the disclosure finding only works in environments where disclosure is actually safe. Where a woman can say ‘I’m having a hot flush’ without reading the room first and calculating the risk.

And yes, it is deeply unfair. Nobody should have to announce a medical transition to be taken seriously in a meeting. But this is what the evidence shows. The instinct to hide it - to never say the word, to work extra hours so nobody notices, or grip the lectern and hope nobody sees - is doing the opposite of what women hope.

And yet the embarrassment is completely understandable.

A global study of 13,800 people across six countries, published in March last year found just shy of 60% of respondents believe menopause is a taboo topic people are uncomfortable discussing. 72% of women have hidden their menopause symptoms at work at least once. When asked why, seven in ten said it felt too personal.

What the research says still needs to happen.

We have experimental evidence and satisfaction surveys. What we don’t yet have is large-scale longitudinal research specifically tracking senior women leaders through perimenopause and menopause and measuring what happens to their career trajectories before, during and after.

That gap is itself a statement. The Grandey study of 64 leaders is groundbreaking. But it is preliminary. We’ve been studying men’s career trajectories for decades and we still haven’t properly measured what happens to women’s at the precise moment the biology and leadership window collide.

So what does this mean for you?

The Grandey research, as uncomfortable as it is, points toward something actionable.

The woman who names it fares better than the woman who doesn’t. It gives her agency over the story being told in other’s perception about what’s happening to her.

The cost of not naming it is real. Fourteen percent of Australian women have left the workforce because of menopause symptoms. A quarter retire before 55, despite wanting to keep working until 64.

Naming it reframes the narrative from ‘something is wrong with her’ to ‘she’s navigating something real, and she’s doing it in front of you.’

We talk a lot about being kind to ourselves after moments where we feel like we’ve failed ourselves. Treating ourselves with grace or not being so hard on ourselves. And I genuinely believe in the validity of that.

Imposter syndrome is a story. But it’s built on a foundation that’s missing vital information. Fifty years of research about what actually happens to women’s brains and bodies in midlife that nobody factored in when they handed us that label.

In that same vein, ‘maybe nobody noticed’ is also a story. It’s a kinder one, but the research tells us it’s a false one.

Where I’ve landed is this: both ends of the internal response we’ve been relying on - the self-blame going in, and the reassurance coming out - are forms of self-gaslighting. Two different stories, both of which keep us quiet and stop us from doing the one thing the evidence says actually works.

In order to bring something into the light that’s been buried, swept under the rug, or explained away, you have to be willing to tell a different story.

The moment you name something, it loses its power to define you without your consent. And this research says that naming it doesn’t just help you. It changes how the room sees you.

Next week: what the workplaces getting this right are actually doing - and whether it’s going far enough.

Lorraine Candy — What’s Wrong With Me?

Available wherever books are sold.

SWAN Study (Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation)

https://www.swanstudy.org

Dr Louise Newson & Dr Rebecca Lewis — survey of nearly 4,000 women

https://www.newsonhealth.co.uk

Next episode — the 2026 Penn State research on how perimenopause symptoms are perceived at work, and what women can specifically do about it:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-025-10039-2

Full series on Substack:

katrinablowers.substack.com

Lately I’ve been having a very specific kind of social amnesia.

I’m often invited to events through work, which means over the years you end up orbiting around the same set of familiar faces. These people aren’t ‘friends friends’ that I hang out with on the weekend, but we’re close enough to hug and be excited to see each other and DM on Instagram. So I should definitely remember their names.

But lately I’ll see someone I absolutely know approaching me - or I’ll be walking toward them - and my brain starts spiralling, because I realise I need to introduce them to whoever I’m with… and I’ve got nothing.

It’s not just that.

My colleague Max, who sits opposite me at work, has lately become an unwilling contestant in what I can only describe as a deeply pedestrian version of Guess Who?

I’ll be writing a story, draw a complete blank, and start feeding him clues.

“Max…. Who’s that person? Used to be on that TV show. Famous for driving that green Lamborghini. Bit of a scandal in the 90s?”

Or:

“What’s the sport I’m looking for? With the small racquets. Not like tennis exactly, but kind of adjacent to ping pong without the table.”

And Max, bless him, will stop whatever he is doing to kindly help me through this slow-motion reverse-engineering exercise involving my brain.

If you’re a midlife woman reading this and thinking… ‘yep, same’ (although for Max’s sake I hope there isn’t more than one person in his life quizzing him on the daily like this) know you are in crowded company.

For me and my friends this ‘not feeling like myself’ topic has become a laugh/cry feature of our group chat and sometimes veers into a bit of ‘WTF?’ despair.

“Every now and again I feel like I get a full perimenopause imbalance where I feel really unmoored and anxious... despite being on HRT,” I sent to the chat last weekend. “It always shifts and resolves, but it’s so destabilising.”

One of my friends wrote back: “This is so real… Why can’t we just feel grounded and like ourselves?? Yes, it passes but it’s so insufferable. I feel like I wasted the whole long weekend in a bit of a malaise. It’s all a bit unfair.”

It IS all a bit unfair. But it’s actually more than that - and it’s part of a conversation I think we need to bring out of the group chat and into the open.

Let me tell you about a woman author Lorraine Candy met while writing her book on perimenopause and menopause called ‘What’s Wrong With Me?’

This woman had spent her entire career flying jumbo jets long haul. She’d logged thousands of hours in the air, navigated emergencies, landed planes full of people in conditions that would make most of us freak out.

But by the time Candy spoke to her, this midlife woman had stepped away from her pilot career and had given up even trying to reverse park a small car. One day, after several attempts, she dissolved into tears attempting it and just walked away.

“I don’t tell anyone I used to be a pilot nowadays,” she said. “They wouldn’t believe me.”

That woman didn’t have a confidence problem - or even imposter syndrome - what was actually going on is that she had a hormonal transition that nobody had diagnosed properly. And without that information, all she could do was conclude that something was wrong with HER.

Here’s what’s actually happening - to the pilot and to us.

The research tells us oestrogen has receptors throughout the brain - in the regions responsible for memory, finding words, planning and even regulating anxiety. During perimenopause, oestrogen levels don’t just decline gently - they fluctuate wildly. And when they do, all of those systems feel it.

Clinical studies specifically identify difficulty remembering people’s names and finding the right word in conversation as among the most documented cognitive symptoms of perimenopause.

More than 60% of women report cognitive difficulties during their menopause transition. But here’s the silver lining: research from the SWAN study done in the US - one of the most comprehensive projects tracking women’s health through midlife - found that cognitive function often improves after menopause, once hormone levels stabilise.

Hallelujah! This isn’t permanent, it’s NOT you losing your mind or your competence in life… it’s a transition. And transitions end.

But here’s what doesn’t end without the right information: the story you’re telling yourself about why it’s happening.

A survey of nearly 4,000 women by menopause specialists Dr Louise Newson and Dr Rebecca Lewis found that of the women who went to a doctor, only a quarter had hormones discussed with them. Thirty percent were given antidepressants, despite no clinical evidence they help with perimenopausal low mood. Over a third received a sickness certificate listing anxiety or stress. Only 5% had their actual condition documented.

They weren’t being treated for what they actually had. They were being given the closest available label.

These symptoms don’t just show up for us in our personal lives or at social functions - they follow us into offices and boardrooms. It's why so many competent, capable women at the peak of their careers suddenly feel like frauds. This study found 60% of workplaces offered no support for menopause at all.

We know enough now to recognise that the hot flushes and the sleepless nights are the canaries in a hormonal coal mine. But I keep thinking about the other symptoms - the fog, the self-doubt, the creeping sense of unreliability and existential anxiety - and how many women are googling those feelings and landing on ‘imposter syndrome’. Yes, that must be it. That must be what’s wrong with me.

It might be part of what we’re feeling. But it’s not the full picture - particularly when this version of self-doubt is new, showing up in places and spaces where we once felt completely at home.

I’m not a doctor. And I’m not saying everything we’ve called imposter syndrome is hormonal. But we’ve been using a fifty year old term, with fifty year old solutions, as if nothing has been learned since. A lot has.

This is why I believe what’s become the ubiquitous use of imposter syndrome is a kind of self-gaslighting. The feeling might be real, but the framework we’ve been given to explain it suggests the uncertainty is our fault. And so we believe it and beat ourselves up about it.

You are not failing yourself. You’ve been failed by the information available to you.

We handed women a label in 1978 and we are still, in 2026, handing them the same label - while fifty years of new research about what actually happens to women’s brains in midlife sits largely outside the conversation. I think we need to start having a different conversation.

And speaking of conversations… if you happen to see me walking toward you at the next work function with mild panic in my eyes, please don’t judge me.

I absolutely know who you are. I just need a minute.

Or maybe I’ll just start bringing Max.

Next week: why ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ is the wrong way to power through this confidence transition in midlife… and what women should do instead.

Hope you enjoy :)

Women don’t just recognise the term - we claim it. Like it was written for us.

Because in a way, it was.

A few months ago I wrote a piece arguing that what many of us call ‘imposter syndrome’ isn’t really imposter syndrome at all.

I called it a kind of personal gaslighting.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the feeling isn’t real - it absolutely is - I just think the label we’ve been given to explain it is too small for what’s actually happening. It turns something complex and layered into a personal failing. And the framework we’ve been given to explain it suggests the uncertainty is our fault.

This resonated with a lot of you, too, and after reading all your messages I went in search of the original research. That’s when I realised the gaslighting runs deeper than I thought.

Imposter syndrome was named in 1978 by two psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who spent five years working with over 150 high-achieving women. They included PhD graduates, professionals respected in their fields and academics. Women who, despite every external marker of success, were still secretly convinced they weren’t actually intelligent or they’d fooled everyone and it was only a matter of time before they were found out.

Clance and Imes ended up calling it the ‘impostor phenomenon’: an internal experience of intellectual phoniness. And they noted from the beginning it occurred far more frequently in women than in men, and with much greater intensity.

The research wasn’t just done predominantly on women, but they concluded ‘imposter phenomenon’ was predominantly a women’s experience.

Clance and Imes also proposed some solutions and many of them were genuinely useful. Things like group therapy, journalling positive feedback (I’ve even used this with some people I’ve coached - we call it a ‘success journal’), interrupting patterns of self-doubt and reframing the internal narrative.

But that was 1978 and we’re still using the same term, in the same way, pointing it inwardly at women as if nothing has been learned since.

And I think a lot has been learned since.

What Clance and Imes didn’t know then and we DO know now, is what happens to women’s brains in midlife.

Research tells us oestrogen doesn’t just regulate our cycles - it regulates mood, memory, verbal fluency, and the neurological systems which underpin confidence itself.

During perimenopause, which can start in the mid-thirties, levels can fluctuate wildly. And we know now that it doesn’t just affect your body - it affects your brain.

Women in perimenopause describe variations of the same experience: I don’t feel like myself… I can’t find words... I used to be sharper and ‘better’ than this.

Now put that woman at the peak of her career, in rooms and places where people expect her to be across everything, and ask her to explain why she suddenly feels like a fraud.

She reaches for the only language she’s been given.

I think I have imposter syndrome.

And then she’s handed tools designed in 1978 to fix her thinking, developed before this dimension of her experience was even visible.

The research that produced those tools wasn’t wrong - it’s just now myopic in the way all research can be. It’s limited to what was known at the time.

The problem is we stopped updating the conversation.

Fifty years of new information about women’s neurology, hormonal experience and midlife biology has accumulated and we’re still using a term that predates all of it to explain why capable, accomplished women feel like frauds.

The label tells women the problem is their relationship with their own success - when part of what’s actually happening may be biological, structural, and partly, or maybe even entirely, outside her head.

The problem I have with the term ‘imposter syndrome’ is that it’s calcified around a partial understanding of women’s experience and many of us have been using it as if it’s the whole picture.

Next week I want to get into exactly what the picture looks like when you fill in the missing parts.

You can read my original piece - It’s Not Imposter Syndrome. It’s Something Else - here.

I’ve been deep in a podcast project for Seven called Kiss and Kill. Narcissistic killers, the relationship patterns around them and why experts believe they can never be rehabilitated. I’ve been sitting with victim survivors, families, and former detectives who refused to close a file that everyone else had written off years ago.

It’s some of the most meaningful work I’ve done, and also a lot to process.

So I stepped back from here for a while. And then, like anyone who’s been sitting in heavy things for too long, I started reaching for lighter ones.

This is that.

The Truly Elite Microwave Chocolate Pudding

Yes, yes, I know you’re thinking wtf… a microwave?! Yes, yes - I know. I’m also a food snob and I’m as surprised as you are. From the New York Times “Top 50 recipes” list. It’s ten minutes prep, one bowl, and somehow you end up eating something that tastes like you’ve made a real effort. I don’t understand how it works and I’ve decided not to look into it too closely. You will thank me.

I groomed my own dog and we both survived

Brisbane dog groomers are booked out until approximately 2031, so I bought Wahl clippers and a pair of scissors, watched three YouTube tutorials, ignored a fourth one that opened with “this is actually very easy,” and had a crack.

About $200 all up. The result? He looks like a brown Maltese who spent a gap year in Portugal and came back with a slightly different personality. One ear sits higher than the other. There’s a patch near his tail that we don’t discuss.

He is clean, though. And happy. I haven’t been reported to anyone. I’m counting it as a win.

Money, midlife, and doing it anyway

I’ve been reading Dare To Be Wealthy by Mel Browne - partly off the back of a series for Seven where we spoke to women over 40 doing financial things they’d long convinced themselves were off the table. Buying their first home, investing and booking a one-way ticket for work or study.

The conversation that stayed with me was about clearing personal debt and the shame that still clings to it, more than most people admit. Mel’s new book goes there as much as it goes to the spreadsheets, which is why it’s worth the read. She is like a wise, aspirational big sister.

Hydration, but make it something I’ll actually drink

After coming down with something called ‘walking pneumonia’, I’m now back in marathon training. Yep, I still hate running but after running three half marathons last year and feeling quite smug about it, a tiktok video brought me undone. It was a stand-up comic doing a bit about how people run halfs and think they’re superheroes but “who eats half a sandwich? Who watches half a movie? Who reads half a book?”. I’m ashamed to say, it got me good and now I’m training for the GC full marathon in July. Anywayyyyy… I’m using HydraMama powders, which are - yes - technically formulated for pregnancy. I am not pregnant. I am someone who doesn’t want to drink something fluorescent and feel worse for it an hour later. The passionfruit and mandarin flavour is genuinely good, which feels like a small miracle given what most “functional” beverages taste like. This is not an ad or sponsored, I just really like it.

Beauty things that get on with the job

The Breeze Balm range has been sitting on my bench for a few months now and worked its way into daily rotation. The BB cream is so nice and creamy and even prompted my make-up artist to exclaim “your skin is skinning today girl!” which put a bit of a pep in my step that day. The brow pencil is as good as the Hourglass ones. One of the lip balms smells like jelly snakes, which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but here we are. I’m looking forward to putting it on, and that’s not something I expected to be typing. It’s a female-led company on the GC. Disclaimer - they sent me these products but with no expectations. I’m writing about them because I genuinely like them.

Depop: letting things go, getting money back

I’ve been selling pieces I’ve loved - dresses worn to events, things that have had their run. There’s something super satisfying about knowing they’re going somewhere they’ll actually be worn and cherished again, rather than hanging in a bag at the back of my wardrobe.

You also get decent money back, which makes the whole exercise feel both virtuous and practical. On the buying side, if you’re patient enough to scroll, the finds are real. Worn once, tags still on, sometimes not worn at all. Hard to argue with the economics.

What I watched start to finish in an embarrassingly short time: 100 Foot Wave

I don’t love watching sport, but I LOVE a great sport doco. I have been searching for a good one since The Last Dance had me captivated and… THIS IS IT. People doing extraordinary things that have nothing to do with my life. It got me in completely. Garrett McNamara and Andrew Cotton are clearly wired differently to the rest of us, and the series just lets you observe that with no judgement, rather than trying to explain it. What it’s really about, though, is how far some people go towards the thing they love, and what that asks of your life, and the people in it. Worth every minute.

That’s where I’ve been. In some very heavy stories, and then in these smaller things. Glad to be back here and I’ll be around a little more. If you make the pudding, let me know.

KB X

She reached into her bag and handed me a stack of love letters written from prison. The stack was about an inch thick and they were addressed to her. One page had two words written in large block letters in the middle of the page.

#I’M SORRY

Another looked like something written as punishment at school. The same sentence repeated again and again.

I miss.
I miss.
I miss.

The word miss was spelled with only one “s” every time.

“I mis the way you touched me.”
“I mis the takeaway food you used to order.”
“I mis the music you used to play.”
“I mis your cuddles.”

These letters were written by the so-called ‘baby-faced killer’ Tyrone Thompson.

The woman sitting across from me used to be in a relationship with him. She managed to get out - the next woman didn’t.

In March 2022 Thompson stabbed 21-year-old Mackenzie Anderson 78 times in her Newcastle apartment.

The attack lasted less than three minutes.

Police arrived to find Thompson on the landing of the apartment building covered in blood. Inside, officers were trying to work out whether Mackenzie was still alive. Thompson, meanwhile, was yelling for help for a cut to his own finger.

“I’m bleeding out everywhere,” he said. “Man, can you please help my blood pressure?”

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Thompson didn’t plead guilty until almost three years later, just a week before his trial was due to begin.

In May last year he was sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison, with a non-parole period of 15 years and six months. Mackenzie’s mother tried to have the sentence increased, but the appeal failed.

Thompson will be eligible for parole in March 2038. He will be about 38 years old.

I was on the Central Coast as part of an investigation for Seven News called Kiss and Kill. It’s a podcast and series of stories examining some of Australia’s most notorious domestic violence murders.

The project looks closely at a number of cases, including those of Gerard Baden-Clay and Borce Ristevski, and the patterns of manipulation, control and violence they have in common. Thompson’s former partner agreed to speak as part of that investigation.

The letters, she told me, are only part of it. From prison he has continued contacting her, through letters and phone calls. One moment he is begging her to forgive him and take him back. Sometimes the messages turn sexual, asking whether she still thinks about him.

Then the tone shifts again. Threats, including warnings that when he gets out he will kidnap their daughter. If Thompson is released on parole in 2038 and returns to the Central Coast, she told me she will have to move because she’s so terrified of him.

Like other relationships we’ve examined in the Kiss and Kill series, things moved quickly at the start of this relationship with Thompson, she tells me. He love-bombed her and wanted to move in almost immediately. He embedded himself in her life - coming to school pick-ups with her children, inserting himself into the routines of her family.

At first she enjoyed looking after him - but then things started to change.

One morning she made him Vegemite on toast for breakfast and he flew into a rage because she hadn’t spread the Vegemite right to the edge of the crust. Over time the nit-picking became constant. Driving somewhere together, he would point out other women he thought were ‘hot’ and compare them to her.

When she tried to break up with him, the threats escalated. He told her if she left him he would steal a car and burn it in her driveway every day until she took him back. Another time, he attacked her car with a hammer.

The only reason she eventually got out was because his attention shifted to someone else - Mackenzie Anderson.

Around that time she also discovered she was pregnant with his child. Before that, he had talked endlessly about wanting a baby with her.

“Our baby will be so beautiful,” he would say. “Imagine if we had a little girl.” But when she told him she was pregnant, he exploded and accused her of ruining his life.

In the months before her murder, Mackenzie was documenting the abuse she was experiencing on social media. She posted videos showing bruising, black eyes and marks on her throat. She reached out to Thompson’s former partner, trying to understand the behaviour. The woman sitting across from me said she tried to help - counselling Mackenzie and contacting authorities.

It wasn’t enough.

She has now managed to cut off contact with Thompson completely, so there’s no more letters and phone calls from prison. But there is still one question she hasn’t quite worked out how to answer.

Their daughter.

When Thompson becomes eligible for parole, the child will be 18 - old enough to decide for herself whether she wants a relationship with her father.

Speaking publicly about what happened wasn’t an easy decision, but she said she wanted other women to recognise the signs.

The love-bombing at the start.
The speed of the relationship.
And then the slow erosion of confidence that follows.

Of course, not every relationship following that pattern ends in murder - but it’s important to note: every one of them leaves damage. Even if they are scars you can’t see.

Fourteen years ago, I was a relatively junior reporter when I was assigned to cover the trial of Gerard Baden-Clay for the murder of his wife, Allison.

I’ve been thinking about that time again because I’ve been working to promote Kiss and Kill, a new podcast series examining the psychology of narcissistic killers and the patterns that often precede these crimes. Being immersed in this project has taken me back to that courtroom and to the young reporter I was then.

The trial became the first truly national story I covered. Every night I filed the lead package. Then I would sit at the news desk and answer more questions because the appetite for detail was relentless. At barbecues, at school pick-up, at dinner parties - it was all anyone wanted to talk about. They even had to open extra courtrooms to accommodate members of the public - some of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres to be there. People wanted to understand how something like this could happen in a suburban Brisbane home.

There is a moment from that trial that has never left me.

By chance, I was moved into Gerard Baden-Clay’s eyeline in the courtroom. He smiled at me. Raised his eyebrows. Flirted. Tried to create a private exchange across the room.

Here was a man on trial for murdering his wife, behaving as though he were somewhere else entirely.

I was deeply, deeply rocked by it. The dissonance was extraordinary. At the time I just knew it felt wrong. Looking back now, through the lens of everything we understand about narcissistic pathology, it speaks to grandiosity. To a belief in being exceptional. To a detachment from consequence.

Over the course of that trial I formed close relationships with Allison’s parents and sister, and with the lead homicide investigator, Mark Ainsworth. We were all in different roles, but there was a shared determination that the public see clearly what was unfolding. I was bound to report fairly and impartially. But I was also changed by it.

One of the most powerful pieces of evidence during the trial was Allison’s journal.

That was where she told the truth.

She wrote about Gerard telling her she smelled. About him belittling how she looked in her underwear. About being told she was a bad parent. When she learned of his affairs, she wrote lists of questions she wanted to ask him - how often had he been with other women? Had they laughed at her?

The journal revealed a pattern: degradation, isolation, erosion. At the time, we did not commonly use the language of gaslighting or coercive control. But it was there, in her own handwriting.

Working on Kiss and Kill has made me reflect on how much the public conversation has shifted since then.

Today, there are entire social platforms dedicated to naming red flags. Women share stories of belittling, betrayal and manipulation. They compare notes. They validate one another’s experiences. It is sometimes dismissed as oversharing. I’ve come to see that it can also be a form of collective clarity.

I am careful here. Awareness is not a shield. Social media is not a solution. And nothing about Allison’s fate rests on what she did or did not have access to. Responsibility lies solely with the person who killed her.

But I do think about the loneliness that sits between the lines of her journal. I think about how she wrote those questions into the pages because she had nowhere else to put them. And I wonder whether having a wider public vocabulary - and the ability to see other women articulating similar experiences - might have shifted how isolated she felt.

That, ultimately, is why projects like Kiss and Kill matter.

They move beyond the headline moment of violence and look at the patterns that precede it. They ask us to pay attention to the clues - sometimes left in journals, sometimes shared online - and to take them seriously.

Fourteen years later, I read Allison’s words differently. Not just as evidence in a murder trial, but as testimony. And I don’t think we can afford to stop listening.

You can download Kiss and Kill wherever you get your podcasts.

They’ve launched an independent media company called Ette Media, and this was their first run of live shows. I felt an almost ridiculous swell of pride watching them on stage. The room was full of smart, engaged people nodding along as Antoinette and Jan did what they do best: sharp, funny, deeply thoughtful conversation. It was one of those moments where you can feel a collective appetite for nuance. Which is something I think we are all hungering for at the moment.

Anyway, during the audience Q&A, someone asked Jan how to be a good ally.

She paused and said, “first of all, you shut up”.

The theatre laughed, but she meant it. She talked about learning over the years that being a good ally often means staying in your lane. She told a story about speaking at a feminist writers festival alongside a First Nations academic who had written a book 15 or 20 years earlier. It was the first time that academic had ever been invited to a writers festival. A huge moment that had taken too long to arrive.

Part of allyship, Jan said, is doing the work to read and engage with the scholarship of others. Even if, as she admitted, you find reading hard. Immersing yourself in someone else’s thinking is a way of understanding their worldview. And by staying in your lane, she said, you widen the lanes of others.

That line followed my friends and me out of the theatre and into the car. It was what we talked about on the drive home.

One of my girlfriends put words to a feeling I suspect many of us carry. As white, middle-class women, we are acutely aware of our privilege. We have empathy for experiences that are not our own, but there is a constant fear of stepping clumsily into conversations that are not ours to lead or engage in. Of imposing our worldview in the very act of trying to be supportive.

So sometimes we stay quiet.

And yet I often sit with a competing instinct. A gnawing sense that silence can be read as passivity. That if you have a voice and a platform, there is a responsibility to use it in some way that extends beyond your own story.

In the car I tried to articulate that tension. As a journalist, my particular privilege is access to a microphone and a greater audience - both courtesy of my employer, and by extension, on social media. I am not convinced that the world is crying out for my personal opinion on every issue. But I do have the ability, within my lane, to create space for other voices. To point people toward thinkers, writers and advocates whose lived experience and expertise run deeper than mine.

Perhaps that is one practical expression of allyship. Not speaking for, but making room.

The more I sit with Jan’s idea of staying in your lane, the more I hear it less as a restriction and more as a discipline. It asks you to be precise about what is yours to say and what is yours to amplify. It requires a certain humility. It also requires effort. Reading outside your comfort zone. Following people whose perspectives unsettle your assumptions. Resisting the urge to centre yourself in every conversation.

None of this comes with a safe checklist. There is an awkwardness to it that I don’t think ever fully disappears. You are constantly calibrating: am I contributing, or am I crowding? Am I helping widen the lane, or unwittingly narrowing it again by taking up too much space?

What struck me most in that theatre was that the question of allyship is less about performance and more about practice. It’s a series of small, ongoing decisions about attention and restraint. About when to step forward and when to step back.

I am still working out what that looks like in my own life and work. I suspect many of us are. If there is an invitation in Jan’s answer, it is an invitation to curiosity. To ask ourselves whose voices we are listening to, whose work we are reading, and how we might use whatever platforms we have to widen the field a little.

It is a tricky balance. But maybe the starting point is as simple, and as difficult, as she suggested: listen first. Then decide what is actually yours to say.

I’d love to know what you think.

Which was not where I expected to find it.

This was back in 2019, after I’d had a panic attack while reading the news on air and subsequently developed stage fright. My nervous system decided that bright lights, microphones and an audience were now dangerous. It didn’t matter that I’d done this job for years. It remembered one moment when something went wrong and treated everything similiar as a threat.

So I did what I later learned is basically exposure therapy, just without the clinic or the clipboard. I said yes to everything. Every speaking gig, MC role and panel. If someone asked me to stand up and talk in front of people, I said yes - even when every cell in my body wanted to say no.

But the moment that really tested me came when I was asked to MC the opening night of Cinderella with Queensland Ballet at Riverstage. An audience of around ten thousand people - the biggest crowd I had ever stood in front of by far.

Backstage, I told the Ballet’s then Artistic Director - Li Cunxin (best known for his book Mao’s Last Dancer) how nervous I was. Part of my duties for the night included doing a Q & A with him on stage.

He surprised me by saying he used to be terrified of public speaking too, and had worked with a coach for years to overcome it.

“The biggest shift for me,” he said, “was learning to approach it with playfulness.”

Instead of letting fear define the moment, he’d ask himself a simple question:

What if I just have fun with this?

This floored me, because when you are afraid… fun feels like the furthest thing from your mind. But the more I thought about it, the more it landed like a release valve. Not because this shift made the fear disappear, but because it stopped the fear from being the whole story.

I use that question now all the time. Before I read the news, when I feel myself bracing. Before meetings where I feel out of my depth. Before conversations that make my stomach tighten. Instead of treating the moment like a test, I try to see it as an experiment. What if instead of freaking out about it… or feeling anxious… I just have fun with it?

I was reminded of this lesson again recently while listening to Brad Stulberg on the Rich Roll podcast. Brad is an author and performance coach who writes about sustainable excellence and the psychology of growth. He was talking about preparing to lift a weight he had never lifted before - in his words, an eye-watering amount. He genuinely didn’t know if he could do it.

One of his mates looked at the bar and said, “Sure you’re up to that, bro?”

Brad said, “Well, we’re about to find out.”

And his friend laughed and replied with three words that changed how Brad now approaches uncertainty: “Brave new world.”

Not: don’t mess this up. Not: this could go badly. Just: you’re stepping into something new.

Which is really the same idea in a different accent.

Neuroscience helps explain why this works. Fear narrows your attention and locks you into threat-detection mode. Curiosity and playfulness activate different neural networks linked to learning, creativity and flexibility. In simple terms, your brain struggles to stay in rigid fear mode if you invite curiosity in.

Fun, or playfulness, it turns out… is regulatory.

And sometimes I think about that night at Riverstage, standing in a headset and heels, waiting to walk on stage in front of ten thousand people, while a former ballet dancer who once defected from China casually handed me a life lesson.

Li Cunxin probably doesn’t remember saying it to me. It was just a throwaway line backstage.

But it’s followed me into newsrooms and meeting rooms and moments where my chest tightens and my old fear tries to reassert itself.

What if I just have fun with this?

Cinderella had glass slippers. I got a sentence.

And somehow, it’s done the same kind of work.

Hope you find this helpful, too.

Jorts are back.

Whole groups of men in their twenties and thirties wearing them with a calm confidence that suggested this had been decided somewhere official and I’d missed the memo. Esquire says so. Designers say so. TikTok says so. They are the cockroaches of the fashion world - they always come back.

What surprised me was the full-body visceral reaction I had, which felt excessive for a pair of denim shorts. My dislike hit me like a punch to the gut. I’m not easily offended by fashion - I love people who dress playfully, who treat clothes as a language rather than a rulebook.

But I have a major beef with jorts. Specifically, men in jorts. I needed a few days to work out why.

A Practical Problem (Which Is Not Really the Problem)

Let’s deal with the obvious first. Shorts exist because it’s hot and you want air on your legs. Denim exists because nineteenth-century miners needed protection from gravel and machinery. Jorts are like wearing a puffer vest with thongs - dressed for two climates at once.

If it’s hot, why are you in the thickest, least breathable fabric available to civilians? If it’s cold, why are your knees out?

But that’s not really why they bother me.

It Turns Out Nobody Is Neutral About Jorts

I ran a straw poll in the newsroom. It escalated almost immediately.

A couple of people were firmly pro, but most were passionately opposed. Someone said they were “emotionally confusing.” Another said “deeply suspicious.” A third said if a man arrived at a date in jorts, she would assume it was a prank. Or she’d stage a choking incident and leave.

Without prompting, the conversation drifted into the jorts-adjacent category. Other male fashion choices that bring the ick: flavour-savers or soul patches, leather phone holsters worn on belts, single Bluetooth earpieces in public (“what are you expecting, an urgent call from Geneva?”), and cargo pants that zip off at the knee.

My friend Laura said something illuminating: “Women mostly dress for other women. Men should dress for women. But when men wear jorts, who exactly are they dressing for?”

An excellent question.

The Real Problem with Being In-Between

Jorts aren’t just jeans cut into shorts - they’re like Dolly the sheep. A hacked, engineered garment that’s been trimmed and transmogrified into a category that can’t justify itself. They’re not fully pants and not really shorts. Not rebellious enough to be interesting, not practical enough to be useful.

They sit in the middle. And that’s the real issue.

Jorts are a hedge. One foot in, one foot out. Not brave enough to stand for anything. They try to coolly occupy the middle but end up looking emotionally stunted - because that’s what the middle of something is.

Adolescence.

Consider Tobias Funke in Arrested Development, a character who is a ‘never-nude,’ someone who refuses to be completely naked ever. And what does Tobias choose as his compromise garment?

Cut-off denim shorts.

This is not a coincidence. The never-nude thinks they are all about modesty, but underneath it’s really about avoidance. Jorts are also psychologically unfinished.

Comedy Gets This Instinctively

The fact that there’s a whole musical universe of jort-based comedy should tell us something.

“Bonjort!” sings Will Ferrell alongside Jimmy Fallon and Nick Jonas in a Tonight Show skit devoted to their praise. They detail wearing their “jort shorts” to “all sorts of racket sports” and giving “book reports” because “I’m smort.”

Another viral song called Jort Storm treats jorts like a natural disaster - a denim-based apocalypse full of jean-short splicing technology, “jortnados,” “jortquakes,” and the dangers of chafing.

No-one writes songs like this about chinos.

Comedy understands something we don’t always articulate: jorts are inherently unserious because they’re earnest and ironic at the same time. They want to be silly but also kind of cool. They want to look effortless, but effortlessness is the entire performance.

The Performative Male and the Aesthetic of Not Trying

There’s a phrase going around online: The Performative Male. This describes men who adopt an aesthetic of nonchalance that is, in fact, highly curated.

The dudes who pretend to read feminist literature between sets at the gym. Who drink matcha and carry a tote bag with an ironic print and a labubu clipped to it. Who wear jorts with loafers.

Clothing is communication whether we like it or not. And when you try very hard to look like you’re not trying, that becomes a message too. Jorts feel like a visual version of ‘I don’t care’ - except caring about not caring is still caring. It’s still a performance.

And what it’s saying, I think, is: don’t expect too much of me.

Where This Gets Psychological

Jorts feel like a sartorial hedge - a way of staying half in, half out of adulthood. Adulting is exhausting. Jorts offer a soft opt-out.

They say: I’m not trying to impress you. I’m not trying to grow up. I’m not trying to mean anything.

They’re unserious without being playful. Ironic without being clever. Casual without being relaxed. They’re the used-car salesmen of clothing: slightly dodgy, not technically doing anything wrong, but you still don’t trust them.

If Peter Pan were a millennial, he would absolutely wear jorts - projecting ‘I’m chill’ while quietly panicking about what comes next in life.

So, In Short

My issue with jorts is more than aesthetic - it’s existential. They are adolescence as a garment. Emotional limbo with belt loops. What happens when you want to opt out of meaning while still being perceived.

And listen, if you, dear reader, are an adopter of this garment, I need to be clear: I don’t hate you. I’m sure you’re lovely. I just hate your jorts.

But I beg you… commit harder! If you’re going to wear them, mean them. Grow a flavour-saver. Clip on the Bluetooth earpiece. Strap on the leather phone holster. Take those urgent imaginary calls. Become the full character.

Because the only thing worse than a bad decision is a half-made one.

And jorts are nothing if not half-made.