The definitive guide from Get Untrapped™ Media
You don’t have a confidence problem.
I need you to hear that. Because you’ve probably spent years — and real money — trying to fix one. Courses on showing up boldly. Journals about your enoughness. Affirmations taped to the mirror. Vision boards. Mantras before the microphone.
And still.
You finish the draft and don’t post it. You outline the talk and don’t pitch it. You write the email, preview it twice, and close the tab.
The confidence was never the issue. The self-trust was and those are not the same thing.
This guide exists because that distinction is the most important — and most misunderstood — line in personal development right now. Especially for women who write, teach, and speak. Especially for the ones who have the skill, the training, the credential, the message — and still freeze at the finish line.
I’m Shannon D. Smith. I’m a Certified Professional in Talent Development, a Self-Trust Architect, and the creator of Get Untrapped™ Media. I hold dual graduate degrees in Instructional Design & Technology and Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
I’ve spent years studying one specific phenomenon: why brilliant women do the work and don’t release it.
The answer is not confidence.
The answer is self-trust.
Let me show you the difference.
What Confidence Actually Is
Confidence is a feeling. It’s a state. It’s the emotional experience of believing you can do something — usually before you do it.
It surges when things go well. It dips when they don’t. It responds to external feedback. It fluctuates based on the room, the audience, the stakes, the last time someone said “this is great” or looked away mid-sentence.
Confidence says: I feel ready.
And that’s the trap.
Because confidence is conditional. It’s mood-dependent. It’s built on evidence that can be reinterpreted by fear at any time. You felt confident this morning. Then you reread the draft at 2pm and suddenly you’re not sure it’s “enough.” That’s not a quality shift. It’s a confidence shift.
The work didn’t change. Your emotional state did.
The entire personal development industry has been built on the assumption that if you feel confident enough, you’ll act. That if we can just get the feeling right — through affirmation, through visualization, through self-love — the behavior will follow.
But here’s what I’ve seen over and over again, in the women I work with and in the research underneath it:
Confidence does not reliably produce action.
You can feel confident and still not post. You can believe in your work and still close the tab.
You can know you’re qualified and still soften every sentence until your voice disappears. Confidence is not the bottleneck. Follow-through is.
What Self-Trust Actually Is
Self-trust is not a feeling. It’s a pattern of behavior. Here’s how I define it inside Get Untrapped™:
Self-trust is the willingness to act on your own authority — even when the feeling of readiness hasn’t arrived.
Read that again.
Self-trust doesn’t wait for confidence. It doesn’t need the butterflies to settle or the inner critic to quiet down. Self-trust is what happens when you post the piece while your chest is tight.
When you pitch the talk while your stomach is turning.
When you send the email before you’ve talked yourself into one more round of edits.
Self-trust is behavioral.
Confidence is emotional and that distinction changes the entire strategy.
When you chase confidence, you’re trying to feel your way into action.
When you build self-trust, you’re acting your way into evidence.
The thing is… and this is what most people miss… self-trust produces confidence as a byproduct.
You post the piece. Nothing terrible happens. Your nervous system logs that.
Next time, the freeze is a little shorter. Not because you told yourself you were ready.
Because your body has a receipt that says you survived the last time.
Confidence is the emotion. Self-trust is the infrastructure.
Why This Distinction Matters for Women Who Write, Teach, and Speak
Listen. I’m not making this distinction for theoretical reasons.
I’m making it because the wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong treatment and I’ve watched it happen hundreds of times.
A woman finishes her book proposal. She’s qualified. She knows the material. She has the credential and then she sits on it for four months, tinkering with the bio section, rearranging paragraphs, adding one more source.
She tells herself she’s “refining.”
She tells herself it’s “not quite ready.”
She doesn’t lack confidence. She told me herself: “I know it’s good.”
She lacks the behavioral pattern of releasing work when the fear of being seen is still present. That’s a self-trust issue, not a confidence issue.
Every day the industry tells her to journal about her worth instead of examining the avoidance pattern, she stays stuck. Here’s the mechanism, because I believe in naming what’s running you:
Avoidance reinforcement. When you feel the discomfort of impending visibility — the tight chest, the shallow breath, the urge to reread one more time and you close the tab or delay the post, your nervous system gets a hit of relief.
The discomfort drops. Your brain files that under “things that work.”
So next time the discomfort shows up, the urge to avoid is faster and stronger.
You’re not broken. You’re reinforced. Every time you avoid, the loop tightens. Every time you release, the loop loosens.
Confidence doesn’t break the loop. Action does.
And the willingness to take that action when it feels unsafe? That’s self-trust.
The Confidence Trap: How the Wrong Framework Keeps You Stuck
Here’s what happens when you treat a self-trust problem like a confidence problem:
You read the book about owning your voice. You feel inspired. You open the draft.
The fear shows up. You close the tab.
You conclude the book “didn’t work” or worse, that you didn’t work.
You attend the workshop on visibility. You make a plan. You even set a deadline.
The deadline arrives. The fear shows up.
You move the deadline and then feel ashamed.
You write the affirmation: I am worthy of being seen. You believe it, somewhere.
But you still don’t send the pitch.
The confidence framework asks: Do you believe in yourself?
The self-trust framework asks: Will you follow through on what you said you would do — even when your body is telling you to stop?
One is about feeling. The other is about pattern.
Here’s where it gets specific — because I don’t believe in vague advice.
Safety behaviors are the things you do to manage the discomfort of visibility without actually being visible. Over-editing is a safety behavior. Adding disclaimers is a safety behavior. Softening your language so the reaction will be “manageable” — safety behavior. Sending the draft to three friends for feedback you don’t actually need — safety behavior.
They feel like quality control. They’re not. They’re your system trying to reduce the risk of being fully seen.
Confidence doesn’t help you see safety behaviors. Self-trust literacy does.
Threat appraisal is what happens when your nervous system reads visibility as danger. Not metaphorical danger — neurological danger. The same circuitry that responds to a physical threat responds to “what will they think of this.” Your chest tightens. Your breath shallows. You start scanning the draft for what’s wrong — not because something is wrong, but because your brain is looking for the threat.
Confidence says: push through it.
Self-trust says: name what’s happening, and choose to release anyway.
Not because the fear is gone. Because the fear is not the authority.
The Untrapped Self-Trust Framework: How Self-Trust Actually Gets Built
Self-trust is not built by thinking about it. It’s built by logging evidence.
Inside my framework I call Self-Trust Receipts. Here’s the principle:
Every time you release something — a post, a pitch, a talk, an email, a piece of work you were afraid to share — you create a receipt. A record. Evidence that you followed through when your system told you to stop.
The receipt isn’t about the outcome. Nobody liked the post? Still a receipt.
The talk didn’t go perfectly? Still a receipt. The pitch got rejected? Still a receipt.
Because the receipt isn’t measuring the result. It’s measuring the behavior: you did what you said you would do.
Over time, those receipts become counter-evidence to every story your fear tells you.
When fear says “you never follow through” — you have receipts.
When fear says “this time will be different” — you have receipts.
When fear says “who are you to put this out there” — you pull up the log and show it exactly who you are: a woman who releases her work.
That’s not confidence. That’s infrastructure.
If you’re a woman who writes, teaches, or speaks and you’re tired of doing the work but not releasing it — this is your space. Subscribe to Get Untrapped on Substack. Every post names the pattern, gives you the mechanism, and hands you something you can use at the finish line. The confidence gurus wants you to feel ready.
I want you to have receipts.
Here’s how the framework works in practice:
Step 1: The Readiness Check-In. Before you release, you assess — not whether the work is ready (it usually is), but whether your hesitation is about quality or about fear. This is the diagnostic. Most of the time, the answer is fear wearing a quality-control costume.
Step 2: Name the pattern. Is it avoidance reinforcement? A safety behavior? Threat appraisal? You name what’s running so it stops running you. Language creates distance. Distance creates choice.
Step 3: Release it. Not when the fear is gone. When the fear has been named.
Step 4: Log the receipt. What you released. What fear said. What was actually true. How it felt after. Your streak count.
Step 5: Review the evidence. Over time, your receipts become the most honest mirror you have. They don’t reflect how you felt. They reflect what you did.
The Comparison, Side by Side
Confidence says: I need to feel ready before I act.
Self-trust says: I act, and the evidence of my action creates readiness over time.
Confidence says: If I believe in myself enough, I’ll follow through.
Self-trust says: If I follow through enough, I’ll have evidence that I can believe in.
Confidence says: Fix the feeling.
Self-trust says: Change the pattern.
Confidence asks: Do you believe in your work?
Self-trust asks: Will you release it anyway?
Confidence is disrupted by: a bad comment, a low open rate, a room that doesn’t respond, a rejection letter.
Self-trust is disrupted by: nothing — because it’s built on what you did, not what they said.
Confidence is weather. Self-trust is climate.
You can’t control the weather. But you can build a climate where visibility becomes sustainable — not because you feel brave every day, but because you have a pattern of following through that your nervous system can rely on.
What This Means for Your Work Right Now
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself — the finished draft in the folder, the outline you haven’t pitched, the course you haven’t launched, the email sitting in your drafts — I want you to know something.
You’re not stuck because you lack confidence. You’re stuck because your system learned that avoiding the last step drops the discomfort. And nobody taught you to see that pattern for what it is.
The freeze at the finish line is not a character flaw. It’s a reinforced behavior. And reinforced behaviors can be interrupted — not with affirmations, but with action, evidence, and a framework that names what’s actually happening in your body when you’re about to be seen.
That’s what I built Get Untrapped™ to do. Not to make you feel confident. To make you someone who trusts herself enough to release her work — consistently, specifically, on the record.
Self-trust isn’t a vibe. It’s a practice with receipts.
Where to Go From Here
This post is the foundation. Every piece I write at Get Untrapped™ connects back to this distinction because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Once you stop treating a self-trust problem like a confidence problem, the strategy changes entirely.
Shannon D. Smith is a Certified Professional in Talent Development, Self-Trust Architect, and creator of Get Untrapped™ Media. She holds dual graduate degrees in Instructional Design & Technology and Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Get Untrapped is a Substack publication and methodology for women who write, teach, and speak — so they can release their work without talking themselves out of it.
© 2026 Shannon D. Smith / Get Untrapped™ Media. All rights reserved.