TEDx Talk 2023 The Power Of Selfgentleness

This is a reading of my TEDx talk of 22nd of April 2023.

My name is Femke Bakker.

I am a previous perfectionist.

Pretty scary this.

Standing here.

Awkward silence.

You shifting in your seats.

Coughing starts here and there.

Impatience arises.

I guess.

Me.

My heart racing.

I feel my throat soaring a bit.

Are my hands shaking?

I am standing in front of you.

An audience that came to hear my TEDx talk.

You expect me to tell you my story.

An important one.

Worth spreading,

No least.

Quite high expectations.

In my head,

At least.

After all,

I am a prehistoric.

Previous perfectionist.

There always remains a hint of wanting to please an audience.

I stopped living up to expectations,

Especially my own.

That I can and want to stand here.

Not as a perfectionist who needs to prove herself.

But as a human being.

With all my flaws and mistakes potentially showing.

Is because I taught myself to be self-gentle.

My story.

Is about the power of self-gentle-ness.

Radically accepting yourself as the most important person to consistently deserve your own gentle-ness.

Sound simple?

Well,

It's easier said than done.

Especially when you have a racing mind telling yourself that you're never good enough.

As a perfectionist,

I was my own worst enemy.

I started my life as a perfectionist as a young kid.

As a perfectionist.

As a young kid.

Because I found myself suddenly alone.

I was a highly sensitive and smart kid who needed to feel loved a lot.

Maybe not so weird when you're five years old.

But at that age,

My mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital.

And somehow I must have believed then that it was because of me.

I vividly remember the feeling when I was walking alone to school and I decided.

From now on,

I am on my own.

I will do it all by myself.

And when my mother returned half a year later.

I felt unable to restore our connection.

And again I thought it was because of me.

After all,

I was too loud a kid.

Too bold.

Too sensitive.

I needed too much attention.

Or so she often told me.

In an attempt to keep her distance from me.

And thereby her own emotional balance.

Something that I can understand in retrospect.

Being an adult now.

Much better.

Three years later she left again.

For good.

I took it up on myself to take care of my dad.

And my little sister.

And so it started.

My quest to be perfect.

Living up to expectations,

Especially my own.

Being there for others.

Being strong and mature.

And keeping all those feelings and emotions at bay.

Even though my father loved me dearly.

And I had grandparents who helped out a lot.

I deeply felt I had to stand on my own feet.

Keep performing at the best of my being.

To show I was worthy of being loved.

And not risk being abandoned again.

And then my father died of pancreatic cancer.

It deeply reinforced my belief that I was on my own.

I have spent the better part of my life proving myself to the world.

And mainly to myself.

I did so by working really hard to gain respect and love.

I studied at theatre school and worked two decades as an actor on stage and for television.

Only to find that my success didn't bring me the feeling I was looking for.

I started to write scripts for television.

Same story.

I started to write articles for magazines.

Only to discover I didn't know too much about the world.

So I returned to study.

At the age of 35.

Graduated cum laude.

Even got a PhD at age 45.

Students appreciate my work.

I won awards with my research.

I got a job as a tenured professor in Leiden University in achievement in these academic days.

I got two awesome kids.

Having no idea how to be a good mother.

I gave everything I have in me to show them that I was not my own mother.

In other words.

I have worked really hard to show that I matter.

That I am worthy.

But no achievement.

No success brought me that inner sense of worthiness.

Not structurally.

Every expectation I put out there for myself I managed to fulfill.

But besides moments of happiness about my success.

No achievement would convince me that I was truly worthy.

And that is because.

I was looking outside of me.

Rather than within me.

What was it that I needed to give myself to feel worthy.

By experiencing time and again that nothing outside of me.

No living up to expectations.

No success would take away that feeling of unworthiness.

It took me a lifetime.

To understand I had to accept and love myself.

So.

I taught myself.

To be self gentle.

Self gentleness is the capacity to radically accept yourself.

As the most important person.

To consistently deserve your own gentleness.

What do I mean by that?

Everyone can relate to being gentle with yourself from time to time.

But to do so consistently.

Meaning also when you fail.

Also when you mess up.

So in all those times that you would get angry with yourself.

For not living up to expectations.

That you will treat yourself with gentleness.

To do so radically.

Also forgive yourself when you have to say no to expectations by others.

And you feel guilty.

For taking care of yourself first.

But how can you do that?

Especially when you're not used to it.

I radically stopped explaining myself.

To others.

And in particularly to myself.

I now tune in on a regular basis.

To feel what is going on inside.

I sooth myself.

To be okay with not knowing what I'm feeling.

To be okay with just being aware of that feeling.

Without trying to find a story to explain what it is I'm feeling.

Because in those stories.

I would not acknowledge the moment.

But I would put the reason of the feeling outside of me.

It would just be me.

It would just be me and myself.

And then asking myself the question.

What can I do right now.

To feel a little bit better.

And then simply do that.

And this seems like a really simple step.

But it really takes some guts.

To acknowledge.

Because a truthful answer could be.

No,

I don't want to celebrate my birthday with my family.

Even though they might not understand.

I want to say no.

It could be.

I really need to sleep now.

So I will have to cancel that important meeting.

That class.

That opportunity.

That fun moment.

And so on.

To me.

Self gentleness is about.

Deciding every second of every day again.

That I want to feel as good as I can right now.

Not faking.

But truly feeling what is going on inside.

Acknowledging that.

And then deciding.

That I will find thoughts.

That help me.

To feel relatively better.

Because it is in the thoughts.

That I beat myself up.

It is in the thoughts.

That I am un-gentle.

After learning to be more gentle with myself.

I stopped being a perfectionist.

The truth is.

We've all had experiences that affected our lives.

That make us feel unworthy from time to time.

Even when you had a loving childhood.

We are all affected by the expectations of our parents.

Our family.

Friends.

Teachers.

Society.

And on the least.

Ourselves.

In this day and age.

It is really hard to connect with who you really are.

What you really want out of life.

Because we all so easily start believing in the stories of expectations.

Work hard to succeed.

Toughen up.

Don't be a loser.

Don't be weak.

Think and act strategic.

Meet expectations and you will succeed.

I am part of an educational system that sends out that message every day.

We often live our lives without giving too much attention to how we feel about what we do and think.

We follow the path we think are expected of us to follow.

We push through when the going gets tough.

And when we fail we punish ourselves with harsh and critical thoughts.

And the more we do that.

The less we take the time to be still for a moment.

To tune in.

And feel.

What is going on.

Inside.

So.

Here.

Is my message of today.

Be gentle with yourself.

Be here and now.

As you are.

Being in touch with whatever is going on in you.

Even when people are watching you right now.

Even when you don't know what is going on in you.

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