And then I started therapy.
Don’t get me wrong, therapy is good and helpful and I’m glad I started.
However, I have learned that when you haven’t dealt with a trauma or struggle, and then you start dealing with it, years later even, it will bring up all the fears and anxieties you never dealt with at the time. Or maybe even worse, because you’ve been having this bad response to situations that feel similar to that first bad one over and over and over again for years. So the bad response is really ingrained in your brain and your reactions.
Digging that up again can intensify that response while you deal with the original bad incident.
In my case, a nasty incident of being punished for being too creative in art class has been tripping me up. I knew this had happened — I don’t have clear memories of all of it but I know it happened — but I did not realize until literally this week that this is where my issue with confidence about my writing comes from.
Now, being punished for being too creative in art class sounds not fun, but the problem with this specific incident was that my teacher that year hated me and was constantly on my ass for breathing wrong. So this was just one more reason for her to humiliate me and be hateful towards me.
While listening to the “Unfuck Your Brain” podcast, the host outlined how to do a thought download — which is literally just thinking of the incident that presently gives you trouble and writing down every thought that comes to mind about it. Now you have a list of things to work on counteracting. The exercise isn’t about figuring out where the negative thoughts come from, it’s just to identify what the negative thoughts are.
I love the Unfuck Your Brain host, but she has said that therapy helps you identify where your thoughts and feelings come from, it doesn’t help you get past them. She’s also said it doesn’t matter so much where your thoughts come from, as much as figuring out how to change them. I think she needed a new therapist, and while I agree that changing negative thoughts is the key to life, I think knowing where they come from is incredibly helpful in coming up with positive thoughts to counteract them.
When I sat down to do the thought download as it relates to my fears around writing, one phrase kept coming back: People will be mad at me, and they will try to hurt me.
That always confused me. Why would people try to hurt me? Why was my brain fixated on people being mad at me and trying to hurt me if they saw my books? Not even if they read them, just if they saw them.
I worked my butt off on that phrase, and had started making some real progress after like, four years of trying to change my thoughts about that. Got my mojo working!
And then I got into therapy and the memory of being punished for being too creative in art class popped up. And my mojo withered back up and died. I actually had a panic attack trying to do some editing this past week.
I’m not dismayed, though. Well, maybe a tiny bit. But here’s the thing: Now that I know that’s the cause of my fears, I can work on it. I’m already in therapy for other traumas, I can just add this to the list and get it cleaned up.
This time, now that I know exactly where this fear is coming from, I’m betting I can get it cleaned up a lot faster, and probably for good.
My mojo may be temporarily unavailable, but when I get it back, it’s gonna blow everyone’s mind.
