On Writing Paralysis

First off, a big thank you to all those who have offered support and sent me messages since I launched this blog a week and a half ago!  To those who have asked, yes, I am in a much better place right now, and have been doing a great deal of healing with regard to self-image over the past several years. I have been well-supported along this journey! And to those of you still in the midst of your healing -- and aren't we all, really? I think learning to love ourselves and our bodies is a lifelong process! -- just know that you're not alone, and that you have my support and prayers.

Now... you may have noticed that I published that first post with a burst of enthusiasm and then fell off the face of the earth for the week. Again! This is the trend I've seen with myself in recent years. I start up a blog, convinced that I'm going to commit myself to a writing practice with discipline and passion, write for a few months on an important topic, get noticed by Nicholas Kristof for my prolific words on women's issues and became a widely-read author who changes the world. But after the first post I suddenly find myself stuck, tripping on words... paralyzed. 

Which makes sense, right? It's a little bit of pressure to post something (or even get the words out) when you've convinced yourself that you need to write brilliant, beautiful, prose that changes the world. But that's the kind of pressure I put on myself internally! Yesterday as I was talking about my writing troubles with Tim, he said, "It's not like anyone expects you to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist." Before I could even stop myself, I blurted out, "But I do!"

You'd think I'd have recognized that this was an unhealthy way to approach writing earlier in my life, particularly when I was gripped by debilitating anxiety as I fought to complete my masters thesis in time to graduate... but it took me until a month ago to actually notice that I had a problem with perfectionism. I'm in the beginning stages of recovery now, working hard to be what Brene Brown calls a "good enough-ist," but I recently learned that perfectionism has been plaguing me for years. Oh, the bliss of denial... More on this subject to come in the months ahead.

So yes. Writing has been hard for me these past few years, for many of the aforementioned and yet-to-be-explored reasons. But the funny thing is... this time around, it's not that I can't get the words out. I've had my next post ready for a week. It's that I can't seem to click on the "publish" button.

This never used to be an issue with me before Facebook. Back when I had my first blog in high school, I wrote much more freely, perhaps liberated by the illusion of anonymity and by the apparent lack of a "public gaze." The blog was just an extension of my journal: an open canvas, a space of exploration and freedom and poetry and struggle (usually masked in rosy, happy endings).

But everything changed when I got to college, and I slowly slipped into self-consciousness. I'm not even sure how it happened, and I can't blame Facebook entirely... but over time I began to feel that I needed to craft my online image in a particular way. Part of this was practical - you don't want to share too much personal info, particularly if future employers search your name, etc. - but part of it was much more subtle and insidious. You see, as I've grown older, I've honed the art of paying attention to everyone around me, of anticipating and meeting others' needs, of peacekeeping. This is one of the skills that best strengthens my ministry, and this other-focusedness (yay for making up words again! I've missed this.) has become a major part of my identity. (On the Enneagram spectrum, for those of you who are familiar, I'm a 9.) But the cost of this is that in my desire to keep harmony with others, I've silenced my own voice, and in my desire to be all things to all people, I've lost sight of who I really am underneath all my layers of placation. I've slowly and carefully, though largely unconsciously, built up a wall around me by sharing all the "good" stuff on Facebook and leaving out the bad. Even as I've tried to grow more courageous in sharing my opinions and beliefs on relevant current events/issues, I feel that I've shared and risked less and less of myself. Sure, I've shared articles... but I haven't been brave enough to take a stance as strongly as the authors of those articles, to attach my name to a story and toss it out there into the winds of the world. 

So this is kind of scary, y'all. I feel pretty exposed, and I haven't felt this way in a long, long time. And I haven't even written very much yet! But even this post stirs up a strange sort of anxiety in me, an anxiety that comes from wanting to be seen and accepted for who I am but fearing the risks of baring my soul through writing. Ever the self-critic, I find myself already falling short of the exceedingly high expectations I've placed upon myself... and the voice of my inner anxiety is doing everything it can to convince me that the world is watching, and that I will be judged and "found out." In reality, there may not even be much of an audience out there reading these posts, and I know that the vast majority of you reading this now are exceptionally kind and loving, but deep inside I still feel this irrational fear that the world will discover that I'm not to be as smart, as articulate, as good a writer, as [fill in the blank] as people expect me to be.

And the saddest part is... no matter how many kind words I receive, I'll never be able to really internalize and accept them unless I'm able to open my own heart to myself. This is the destruction of the shame that most of us carry deep within us: the fear that propels us to put up walls to protect ourselves also creates a barrier that prevents us from our receiving others' love. So no matter how many nice messages or kind words I receive (and believe me, I am grateful for them), in the end the affirmation and approval that I seek from others isn't what I need. As cliche as it may sound, what I need the most is the affirmation that can only come from inside.

I don't particularly want to hit the "publish" button right now. And I can virtually guarantee you that before I publish this and these next posts, I will pore over them and edit each and every word countless times before working up the courage to click on that little orange box. But my goal for this blog was to work on sharing parts of my story of my relationship with myself (mind, body, spirit) with all of you, and this writing paralysis has been a major part of my story these past few years. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be a factor in my efforts to sustain this blog.

So here goes nothing.

...

I've been trying desperately to figure out a brilliant ending to this post. Just now Tim looked over at me and said, "Are you okay?" because I apparently look pretty angst-ridden. And I replied "Well I'm trying to finish this blog post on writing paralysis. But I have writing paralysis..."

That about sums it up.