Every day, Becca gets new emails or comments asking “what happens if I…” And while she might answer a question in one place, not everyone sees it. So “Dear Becca” was created to answer some of the coaching questions Becca gets publically, in order to help everyone.
The “Dear Becca” weekly coaching column is available only through the Better-Faster Newsletter. 🙂
SUBJECT: But I’m Not A Real Writer…
Dear Becca,
My Relator (#5 and my only interpersonal strength in the top 5, but I’m also a high Influencer) is struggling a lot… a lot… right now. I don’t have people I talk to regularly about my writing, and that’s something that really motivates me to continue moving forward. A close knit mastermind would be amazing, but my need to trust people (because 1. writing is vulnerability and in this day and age of passive aggressive subtweets I don’t really want to open myself up to anyone, and 2. I need to know someone won’t run off with my WIP and call it their own) plus my #1 intellection time makes me a really shitty match for this because I work so slowly compared to a lot of people.
So I’m in this quagmire of where I don’t feel supported and it sucks. And then I recently had an interaction on Twitter where a fellow writer referred to all of us struggling to produce during the plague times as “complaining asses”.
I’m already dealing with physical health issues and mental ones as well (PTSD), and I feel a lot of shame that in the last 4-5 years I haven’t been able to do what others can. I feel less than. I feel like I’m not a real writer anymore. So this interaction just was a punch in the gut to whatever motivation and tiny successes I’ve been trying to foster as I crawl out of all this mess. It makes me want to pull further into myself and just stop trying to find a place where I belong in the writing community.
I don’t even know what my question is, to be honest, this is all ramble-y and I’m sorry. I guess, is there a way for me as a Relator to somehow muster up the strength to be my own team/cheerleader when I’m already so deep in my own head with Intellection?
– INFJ / Intellection, Strategic, Input, Discipline, Relator / Enneagram 9
Dear Writer,
Thank you so much for submitting this question. You are definitely not alone here. The first and most important thing is this: You Are A Real Writer. Whether you produce daily or monthly or yearly or once in your lifetime. You are still a real writer. I hope you can hear my voice as I say that because it’s important to **hear** those words in someone’s voice.
Why?
Because there’s a real voice (and sometimes it masks itself as our own voice) telling you that you’re not. So you need a real voice to talk back to it.
Here’s what we know to be true about the human subconscious. We know that our internal self is not only “one person.” (We have one body and one spirit/soul, but we have multiple parts inside that have developed individual wills because they want to accomplish their own goals. I’m talking about subconscious processes that want to get a certain thing. They want a chemical reward of some kind. So they’re going to talk to you, these subconscious parts of yourself, in your voice or the voice of whoever you listen to, to get you to do what they want.) What it means to have multiple different “voices” internally (even when they might take on our own voice) is that not everything we hear is equally helpful at that time. So that’s the first and most important thing to recognize.
Not all of “you” inside your head is really You. Some of the times you hear your own voice or feel your own instinct is actually an individual system inside that’s trying to get the dopamine or serotonin or whatever chemical it’s after feeling. It’s like an instinctual animal inside. A well-meaning and very benign animal, but still, not all of what you hear is helpful to your actual will and goals.
I know this is getting meta, but let me drill this down for a second.
When those processes formed, they originally formed to be helpful. The voice that’s trying to motivate you to get writing (or working or working out or whatever) developed as a psychosubsystem (a subconscious process that exists inside you with its own will) to be helpful. Your brain liked the chemicals it was getting; the voice worked as a catalyst to produce the chemicals. So la-la-la, a star was born. Over time, your brain kept doing that thing (using the negative voice as a motivator, reinforcing negative messages to help you process the world) because it was trying to be helpful.
It’s so important to know that this is not evidence of you hating yourself, or trying to sabotage yourself. It’s just a subconscious process that was, at one time, helpful. And now, that process is not as helpful.
So we want to unwire it.
The reason I asked if you heard MY (Becca’s) voice saying, “You Are A Real Writer” (and yes, in all caps) is: hearing my voice arguing with the internal voice that thinks it’s being helpful is to do that unwiring. Repeating what I’ve said to you in my voice (hearing me say it) will help to unwire those once-helpful psychosubsystems.
It takes a lot of repetition. And it takes a willingness to see those internal voices as once-helpful. They were really doing the best they could. Here’s the example I use.
When I was in high school, I was an extremely competitive musician. I was on target to attend a music conservatory after graduation. My sophomore year, I was up for the “Honor Musician” award–which was a big deal at the time, and I didn’t get it, but I was basically promised that next year would be my year. I repeated that in my head all year long. “Next year will be my year.” I was so hopeful. I worked hard for it. I had to keep my grades at a very high level to even be considered, and also excel in the music program. I was singular. I wanted that award.
Come to my junior year award’s ceremony and they’re about to announce the award. Everyone knew I was going to get it. I’d been telling people it was mine for a year. When they announced the winner (who was a rival of mine, which hurt my Sig even more), I was so embarrassed, I immediately left the ceremony and went home. Crying, literally, the whole way. Eventually, I heard myself say, “just don’t ever hope for anything ever again… it’s not worth it… you’re never going to get picked.”
“You’re never going to get picked.” And there was a rush of relief. Such a rush, I can still almost feel it in my chest. It was like I’d unlocked everything that was important about life, in that moment. “You’re never going to get picked,” became my mantra. Literally, for decades, after that.
I was in therapy in my thirties and had just finished recounting that story, and my therapist looked at me (in a very QTP way, looking back on it), and asked, “But don’t you get picked all the time?” And I just stared at her. The evidence was there. She helped me recount all the ways I’d gotten “picked” over the years, even though I was telling myself that I wasn’t, and I realized… that voice was just trying to help me, and it was no longer helpful.
Unwiring it took a lot of time, but I literally hear her voice in my head saying, “but don’t you get picked all the time?” in that QTP voice, whenever I hear that old wiring say, “you’re never going to get picked.” And every time I hear it come up, I talk back to it. Because I know it’s just doing what it’s programmed to do. It wants to release the tension that I feel inside (my #Significance wants to be The One all the time), and the biggest rush of relief I can remember was the relief when I was able to soothe myself with that line. But that line isn’t helping me today. It’s doing the opposite. So I do the work to unwire it. (Thank you so much, 16-year-old Becca who was trying her hardest to self-comfort. It was all we knew how to do at the time.)
This is my suggestion to everyone who has a negative voice in their head that seems to hate or dislike them… Remember, that voice was once helpful and it’s just trying to help you now. There’s something inside that needs soothing (I’ll give an example below), and that voice is trying to be helpful, but it’s no longer helpful. We want to thank it for the work it did, and then disagree, respectfully. (If we get too angry at it, it fights back… it really wants the reward.)
So let’s take that one example of, “You’re not a real writer.”
My first guess is: you’re in survival mode sometimes. Especially in the last year. When we’re in survival mode, we shouldn’t have the same expectations of ourselves that other people who aren’t in survival mode have of themselves. So, immediately, when we look back and see a lot of “I’m just trying to get through” (and this isn’t just about the pandemic… it’s often about day to day life for many of us), we need to have so much grace for ourselves. We survived. That was the goal.
My second guess is: at some point in your past, this voice was helpful for you. It brought relief to some kind of internal essential pain that was creating stoppage. It explained something that your other thoughts didn’t explain. (And it may not have been about writing, per se, it might have been about creativity, or being successful, or hoping for something that hasn’t yet happened.) But it was helpful. In that moment.
And now, it’s not helpful anymore. So we want to disagree with it.
Let’s look at the facts. Haven’t you written in the past? Aren’t you trying your best to write? Aren’t you learning about writing? Aren’t you setting aside time when you can to get the writing done? Aren’t you thinking about your stories? Just because you’re not writing every single day doesn’t mean you’re not a real writer. And whichever author said that on Twitter… they were just trying to be helpful. They were trying to motivate you. But that’s not what they did. Instead, they de-motivated you. That’s when it’s time to disagree with their message. The intent was motivation. So instead, hear Becca’s voice saying, “No need to feel ashamed of not having written. Tons of writers aren’t writing and it’s not because they’re not real writers or they don’t want it bad enough. It’s literally because they have other things to do. Being a writer is a vocation. Not an action. If you have stories inside you to tell, you are a real writer. You don’t have to prove to Joe Blow that you’re a real writer. I know–we know–you’re a real writer.”
What we don’t want to do is let Joe Blow stop us from writing once we get into a Stability place and can start producing words again. So we want to disagree with him/her. S/he is a lovely person, I’m sure, but they don’t know you. And they don’t know what you are capable of, so they don’t get to be the decider. Question their premise.
In general, when someone’s advice makes you feel shameful, you need to question the premise. Whenever that happens, assume that there’s a psychosubsystem inside your head that’s doing something unhelpful in response to what should have been a helpful comment. Either that, or it just isn’t for you.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t suggest therapy. I’m a huge fan of therapy. Counselors and therapists are really the only ones who can effectively help with shame spirals. I especially recommend programs like CBT, DBT, and EBT, which are skills-based (behavioral training) and will do more than just tell you what you “should” be thinking. They are made to give you skills to unwire these wires. The way we utilize this psychosubsystem work in success coaching is different than the way it’s used in therapy, and if you need to unwire deep messages, therapy is the best place.
Anyone who resonated with this letter, please make sure to read Dear Writer, You’re Doing It Wrong. It’s so important to understand the concept of psychosubsystems and how they can impact our behavior without us even choosing it. If you can’t afford to buy a copy, please reach out to Kate and we’ll give you one. And keep doing the work. Keep disagreeing with the voice. Keep hearing my voice disagreeing.
Thank you so much for asking this question, dear Writer (and yes, you are a Real Writer). It’s one that a lot of us struggle with. Hear my voice. You are a Writer.
<3 Becca <3
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