Resilient You, Open to Pain

I’m more comfortable being left than leaving. I discovered (or probably re-discovered) that the other morning as I said goodbye to family and friends in New York. The feeling surprised me. But naming and accepting it was a comfort.

The last time I recall feeling this way, I was leaving New York as a young adult. Returning to Chicago because of a strong pull I felt to return home and begin the next part of my life. I wrenched myself away from people who were extraordinarily important to me, flew back and forth once a month for awhile until the pain lessened and my new life took hold.

Then I cleverly managed to live these past years without having too much ‘leaving’ in my life.

And although I could feel in my chest the tearing away from beloved people, I was glad that it didn’t frighten or anger me. I was glad that I’d done and keep doing the work in my life to keep myself open to all kinds of human emotion. Even though this particular emotion is quite painful, like a peeling away of some part of me, right at chest level.

What does this have to do with creating and maintaining resilience as a writer?

Because openness to pain can strengthen us, let alone enrich us as writers.

Once again, I’m not talking about the gratuitous negativity that can set in and begin a downward spiral that saps energy, creativity and time.

I’m talking about the painful experiences that can build resilience if we’re open to them.

What’s the difference? Well, to me it’s the difference between saying, “This hurts,” and saying, “This hurts…I wish it didn’t…what’s the matter with me that I feel this way?”…and on and on.

Wishing away feelings brings down a scrim on writing and life.

Emotional pain can inform and heal us if we are open to it. But how to learn that if you’re in the habit of wishing away negative feelings?

Make a choice once you know you are feelings something painful about the kind of language you use to talk to yourself about it. Optimistic explanatory style will allow you to experience the feeling and gather information about yourself – and energize you in the process. Pessimistic explanatory style will send you spiraling downward.

Here’s an example. In the course of sending out an award-winning unpublished ms., you notice that all of your concurrent contest winners’ mss. are published. Not only that, they are well-published. Yikes! Why is your manuscript still in slush piles?

Now you have a choice about what thinking-path you’ll take:

1. Pessimistic Explanatory Style (personal, permanent, pervasive)

Oh, no! This always happens to me. I’ll never get published. What’s different about my work? Does the universe somehow know that I am simply unpublishable?

Result: Anger, depression, loss of energy

2. Optimistic Explanatory Style (specific, transient, not personal)

Ouch. This really hurts right now [a minute or so goes by, just letting the feeling move through]. Well, I can’t let myself sink into a funk about this, so I’d better take a look at the manuscript and see if there’s anything else I might to do push it one more level. Then I have to be honest with myself that I haven’t really sent it out that much since I left my agent a year and a half ago. And last, I guess I’ll get busy and send it out to every appropriate editor I can.

Result: Energy and hope created by focused activity, as well as distraction from worry about whether or not you will ever be published.

Resilience begins with a gentle, accepting, open approach to your own very human emotional response to the “events” of life.

Then you create the path that builds and maintains it.

More from Carol Grannick

• Jealous Much? SECOND in a series to help you change jealousy into inspiration
• Three Things You Need to Become a More Resilient Writer
• Jealous Much? FIRST in a series to help you change jealousy into inspiration
• Jealous Much? THIRD in a series to help you turn jealousy into inspiration
• How to Dispute Pessimistic Thinking

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