Overcome Resistance: Why You Freeze Up At the Mere Thought of Creating Online Videos
If you’re a purpose-driven creative entrepreneur struggling with the fear of being seen, you’re not alone. The very things that drive business growth—creating content, making sales pitches, showing your face online—are often the hardest things for your nervous system to handle.
Why I Can’t Show Up Online: The Two Common Responses to Visibility Fear
When it comes to doing things that terrify us (YouTube videos, sales calls, pitching our business), we typically fall into one of two patterns:
1. Complete Avoidance: The Motion vs. Action Trap
You tell yourself the timing isn’t right. Maybe you convince yourself that AI will automate everything anyway, so why bother? You spend endless hours strategising, planning, and “spitballing with ChatGPT” about the perfect niche or approach.
As James Clear from Atomic Habits puts it: “You can be in motion but not in action.” Motion feels productive—you’re busy, you’re thinking, you’re planning. But you’re not actually pressing record on that first video or making that crucial sales pitch.
This is procrastination disguised as productivity. You avoid the thing that would move the needle most because you’re stuck in the freeze response, convincing yourself you’re “not ready yet.”
2. Overwhelming Your Nervous System: The Authenticity Problem
The other extreme is throwing yourself into situations your nervous system isn’t prepared for. You force yourself to make that video while your throat is tight, your chest is constricted, and anxiety is coursing through your body.
The result? You come across as inauthentic, and viewers can sense something is “off” even if they can’t pinpoint why. We’re hardwired to detect these incongruencies—that slight tension in your voice, the forced smile, the disconnect between your words and your energy.
This approach is like trying to overcome a spider phobia by putting a tarantula on your arm. It’s too much, too fast, and often backfires.
The Cost of Staying Hidden: What Visibility Avoidance Really Costs You
Every day you’re not showing up on video, you’re not just missing opportunities—you’re actively losing ground to competitors who are. While you’re perfecting your website copy for the tenth time or researching the “perfect” content strategy, someone with half your expertise but twice your camera confidence is booking your ideal clients.
The math is brutal but simple:
- No video = No trust = No sales
- No personal connection = Commodity pricing
- No thought leadership = Playing catch-up forever
Your expertise means nothing if nobody knows you exist. Your amazing service doesn’t matter if people can’t connect with you personally. In today’s marketplace, invisible equals irrelevant.
How to Be Visible Without Being Cringe: A Nervous System Approach
The solution isn’t to avoid visibility forever or to force yourself through it with white-knuckle determination. Instead, it’s about rewiring your nervous system’s response to being seen through targeted therapeutic techniques.
Traditional “fake it till you make it” advice fails because it doesn’t address the root cause. Your nervous system is designed to keep you safe, and if it perceives visibility as dangerous, it will sabotage your efforts every time. You need to work with your nervous system, not against it.
This requires a multi-layered approach that includes:
Hypnotherapy for Deep Belief Restructuring
Your conscious mind might know that making videos is good for business, but your unconscious mind is running old programming from childhood experiences, past rejections, or trauma responses. Hypnotherapy allows us to access and reprogram these deep-seated patterns that keep you frozen.
Nervous System Regulation Through Somatic Work
Your body holds the memory of every time you felt unsafe being seen. Through somatic techniques, we can discharge that stored tension and teach your nervous system that visibility is safe. This isn’t just relaxation—it’s literally rewiring your autonomic responses.
Parts Work for Internal Alignment
There’s a part of you that wants business success, and there’s a part that wants to stay hidden. Until these parts are integrated and working together, you’ll remain stuck in internal conflict. Parts work helps you understand what each part needs and find a path forward that honors both.
Somatic Tools for Public Speaking and Camera Confidence
Before you hit record or jump on that sales call, try these nervous system regulation techniques:
- Ground yourself: Feel your feet on the floor, take three deep breaths into your belly
- Check your posture: Are you collapsing inward or bracing outward? Find your natural, relaxed stance
- Voice warm-up: Hum, do vocal scales, or simply speak your name out loud a few times
- Set an intention: Instead of focusing on what could go wrong, connect with why you’re sharing this message
Finding Your Authentic Voice Through Small Steps
Think of visibility work like building muscle—you start with lighter weights and gradually increase. Your first video doesn’t need perfect lighting, professional sound, or a flawless background. It just needs to be real.
The goal isn’t perfection; it’s practice. Each “rep” you take—each video, each post, each conversation about your work—builds your confidence and helps you find your authentic voice.
Burnout and Creative Block: When Visibility Feels Impossible
Sometimes the struggle to show up online isn’t just about fear—it’s about burnout. When you’re in a creative block, visibility can feel like an insurmountable mountain rather than a gentle hill to climb.
Burnout often manifests as shut-down visibility. You know you “should” be creating content, but every time you try, you feel depleted, uninspired, or like you have nothing valuable to say.
This is your nervous system protecting you. Instead of pushing through, try:
- Reconnecting with your why: What originally inspired you to start your business?
- Starting smaller: Maybe it’s not a full video today—maybe it’s just a single Instagram story
- Focusing on service: How can you help one person today, even in a small way?
How to Tell Your Story Online Without Losing Yourself
One of the biggest visibility blocks is feeling like you have to be someone else online—more polished, more confident, more “together” than you actually feel. This creates an exhausting performance that’s impossible to maintain.
Your story doesn’t need to be dramatic or perfectly packaged. It just needs to be yours. Share the struggles you’ve overcome, the lessons you’ve learned, the problems you’re passionate about solving.
Remember: people connect with authenticity, not perfection. They want to work with someone who understands their challenges because you’ve been there too.
Video Anxiety and Camera Confidence: It Gets Easier
That first video might take you three hours to make and get five views. That’s normal. That’s how everyone starts. The difference between successful creators and those who give up isn’t talent or luck—it’s the willingness to make imperfect content consistently.
Each time you show up, you’re rewiring your nervous system’s response to visibility. You’re proving to yourself that you can be seen and still be safe. You’re building evidence that your voice matters and your message has value.
Why Video is Non-Negotiable for Small Business Growth
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re not creating video content, you’re leaving money on the table. Video is the single most effective way to grow a small business online in 2025. It builds trust faster than any other medium, allows people to connect with you personally, and the algorithms on every platform prioritise video content.
While your competitors are still hiding behind text posts and static images, video creators are:
- Getting 10x more engagement on their content
- Building deeper relationships with their audience
- Converting followers into paying clients at higher rates
- Establishing themselves as the go-to expert in their field
The businesses thriving right now aren’t necessarily the ones with the best products—they’re the ones whose founders show up consistently on camera.
The Unconscious Beliefs That Keep You Hidden (And Cost You Clients)
Often, our visibility blocks aren’t really about cameras or sales calls—they’re about deeper beliefs stored in our unconscious mind:
- “Who am I to have an opinion on this?”
- “What if people think I’m a fraud?”
- “I’m not qualified enough yet”
- “Someone else is already doing this better”
These limiting beliefs create what we call “parts” that actively sabotage your success. There’s the part that wants to grow your business, and there’s the part that’s terrified of being seen. Until these parts are in alignment, you’ll stay stuck in the same patterns—planning, researching, “getting ready”—while your business stagnates.
This is where surface-level mindset work falls short. You need to address these blocks at the nervous system level, where they actually live.
Taking the First Step: Your Visibility Action Plan
Ready to break through your visibility blocks? Start here:
- Identify your pattern: Are you avoiding or overwhelming? Be honest about which camp you fall into
- Practice nervous system regulation: Try the somatic tools mentioned above before your next visibility challenge
- Start small: One post, one video, one conversation about your work
- Focus on service: How can you help someone today through your visibility?
- Celebrate the rep: Every time you show up, you’re building your visibility muscle
Remember, the goal isn’t to eliminate fear entirely—it’s to find your voice despite the fear. When you speak from creativity, passion, and alignment rather than anxiety, that authentic energy comes through.
Why 30 Days Changes Everything
Here’s what most people don’t realize: camera confidence isn’t built through willpower—it’s built through nervous system rewiring. And that rewiring happens faster than you think when you have the right tools.
In just 30 days of targeted work combining hypnotherapy, nervous system balancing, and somatic techniques, you can completely transform your relationship with being seen. This isn’t about “fake it till you make it”—it’s about genuine confidence that comes from deep nervous system integration.
Clients who work with this approach typically see:
- Week 1: Reduced anxiety around the idea of making videos
- Week 2: Ability to record without overwhelming physical symptoms
- Week 3: Natural, authentic presence on camera
- Week 4: Excitement (not dread) about creating content
The difference between someone who’s “trying to be confident” and someone who genuinely feels safe being seen is obvious to viewers. Authentic confidence converts. Forced confidence repels.
Your business needs your voice. Your ideal clients are waiting to hear from you. The world needs what you have to offer.
The question isn’t whether you’re ready—it’s whether you’re willing to do the deep work that creates lasting change.
Ready to overcome your visibility blocks and build genuine camera confidence in 30 days? If you’re tired of letting fear cost you clients and ready to make video content the growth engine of your business, let’s talk about how targeted therapeutic work can transform your relationship with being seen.