Self-Betrayal & Creative Resistance
I've been observing a pattern in my life of self-betrayal, self-abandonment, and a fear of intimacy with myself, especially lately. It manifests in many ways, one of which is my resistance to sitting with myself, experiencing pain and difficult emotions, and writing. I learned about the concept of resistance in Steven Pressfield's The War of Art (which I'll never be able to recommend enough to anyone) and had since been on a quest to understand what it actually is, where it grows from within me, what exactly the force is that prevents me from creating what I dream about most.
Having fallen behind on my work over the past weeks, I resolved to use my time this weekend to catch up on my story and write for hours, so I would have something substantial to submit to my writing coach next week. I ended up spending most of the day practicing avoidance and resistance, eating, napping, and consuming content from other creators, including one on re-parenting. It wasn't until I came across this synchronistic post by The Holistic Psychologist that I was able to synthesize what was happening, identify my true resistance, and determine that I needed to use it as an antidote.
Creative resistance and self-betrayal, self-abandonment, and fear of intimacy with the self are synonymous, I have learned. After reading this post, I experimented with re-parenting myself using each of these approaches and ended up writing 3x longer than I have been able to stand lately. I know it is a seemingly small victory, but I believe it has massive implications for my creative process and approach in numerous other ways, as these things affect my life in many other ways.
This was originally featured in a February 24, 2019 post on Instagram.
