You want to get to work. You think about getting to work. You’ve got one, two, seven projects on your mind.
But nothing happens. You walk past your writing space and imagine yourself writing. Your heart glides over and sits at the desk. But your body stays away.
Why can’t you work?
Maybe you get agitated. Then you get annoyed that you’re agitated. Before you know it you’re feeling down or even depressed, further from your writing than before you began questioning yourself. Affirmations don’t work, and you use the fact that they don’t work to further torture yourself.
How can you catch yourself in this Negativity Spiral heading down? Here are three tips:
1. Learn your own personal “symptoms”.
The sneakiest thing about an emotional downward spiral is that it’s caused by negative thinking sometimes barely audible to our consciousness. So you need to discover your particular symptoms, whether physiological, verbal or behavioral. (While “writer’s block” may seem like it could be the easiest ”symptom”, the experience itself has so many causes that it would be unfair to see it only as a symptom of negative thinking.)
I have a few symptoms I’ve come to know and love. Well, not love, but greet as acquaintances. They’re messages to me that I’m heading in a direction I’d like to reverse. Here they are: a sinking feeling in my chest; a clenched jaw; words like “should”, “have to” and “can’t” beginning to pop into my brain or out of my mouth.
They could be anything (or everything), from knots in your stomach, to tightened fists, to headaches, to sleepiness or lack thereof, to pacing, to…Well, you get the idea.
Get to know them and make a list if you want to, so you’ll be ready to greet them with Tip #2.
2. Buy a second of time and one step of emotional distance by creating a neutral or positive catch-phrase for yourself.
My catch phrase is, “This is interesting.” Bam! With those words, I insert a Slow Down sign in the negative spiralling emotional road. And (Bam #Two!) “this is interesting” also puts me at a tiny bit of a distance from the behavior, just enough so that my brain can understand that this is something that happens when I am having some kind of trouble. A deep, full breath added to ”this is interesting” never hurts, either.
When you have one second of time and one step of emotional distance, you can use Tip #3:
3. Gently and with curiousity, let your negative thinking (Martin Seligman calls this “pessimistic explanatory style”) come to the surface. You need to know what it is that you’re thinking, what you believe, to understand that it is (and how it is) causing the negativity spiral.
You need to know exactly what you’re thinking to create a heartfelt and rational challenge to the negativity.
Not sure what your exact thoughts are? One question I often ask clients who feel stuck in “writer’s block” or a down or depressive episode without being aware of any negative thinking is, “What do you think might happen if you begin to work?” It’s an “I’m curious” question, rather than a judgment.
Often the answers include comments such as: “It won’t be worth it, because I’ll never get published,” “Everything I write is sub-par,” or “I feel guilty for not earning enough money.”
These words of yours may surprise and shock you, or they may seem absolutely true.
But once you know them, you can work to create a heartfelt dispute that will begin to build the upward spiral of positivity…and probably get you back in your chair.
How do you know you’re heading downward? What do you say or do that’s been an effective ”catch” for negativity?
Ahhh, yes. I know that spiral… as, I think, do 95% of my writer friends. Maybe 100%, but there are a few who seem to defy the odds!
For me, when I sense it, I guess my catch phrase is “write something!” But by that I mean write something “easy”… something that I am likely to “succeed” at. I use quotes because it’s all a matter or perspective, of course, but for me I tend to break the spiral by turning to poetry, even if I’m in the middle of a novel or screenplay. And not epic, great poetry – often it’s just “write a couplet.” For me, that’s pure fun, but it’s also writing. And once I’ve done it, I am hard pressed to stay as negative.
I don’t really head in a downward spiral. No, it seems I plunge into it!
One moment I’m writing and happy about the work. Also surprised when I reread the stuff later. I have a good sense of pride that I wrote and wrote it well.
Then, I read something by another author, especially fiction by member of my writing community, and then I fall into a second guessing spiral: “What am I doing here? How can I even pretend to call myself a writer” etc. etc.
It does pass and I start all over again.
Negativity–from myself–is most damaging.
So thank you for your tips, I definitely needed to read this.
Great post! I just posted something in a similar vein about hating my new story. Negativity is like The Dark Side in Star Wars… it grabs and holds us by the throat! But when we keep a focus toward what we want, we can’t give the negativity any more power, and the spell is broken (well, sometimes a glass of wine or some candy helps with that, too!).
- Julie
My negative thoughts are always so close to the surface that I don’t really have to go looking for them. (“Who am I kidding?” is a favorite.)
What gets me through is repeating over and over, “Do it anyway”–which is my hard-won strategy of not trying to justify the project at hand. Believe me, I’d lose every argument. The day I decided NOT to engage myself in that debate was a breakthrough.
I’m usually pretty good at pushing through, greeting whatever form the self-doubt is materializing. And telling myself that at this particular moment I am doing the best I can. I’ve also found exercise to be a good mood changer. Or some upbeat music.
Thanks Carol