How to get out of a self-worth spiral

Notes from a surprise trip back to the edge

Dogs: unparalleled champions at reminding you that you exist

A break in scheduled programming this week.

As I mentioned last week, I’d planned to walk you through an exercise I use every day, to help me write from the body. This practice has taken my writing life from grind and misery to joy and sensory, even sensual pleasure. More than that—on a good day, it helps me access the imaginal realm, meaning: ideas that don’t come from me but which seem to exist beyond my own body and mind and the material world. Ideas that seem to be waiting for someone to find them and translate them into words.

I deeply believe that as multiple crises unfold and a genocide is ongoing, those of us who spend any part of our day writing or creating must do our best to listen for these bigger-than-individual stories. Must put ourselves at the service of the deeper wisdoms that are seeking human channels.

And I have found that the biggest impediment to my ability to access that place and those ideas is ego. Is that thought loop that seems particular to creative people, in which we alternate—sometimes at alarming, whiplash speed—between “I’m a fucking genius” and “I’m a fucking waste of oxygen.” Both of these feeling states—not to mention the whirlwind experience of looping between them—get us caught up in smallness, in trying to prove how clever we are, in asserting our selfness and our importance. And when you’re doing that, the ideas and stories that matter, the ideas and stories the world needs, are very unlikely to choose you; to consider you a good servant.

I spent years stuck in this exact, awful loop—but it’s been a few years now since I mostly clambered out, into a different way of feeling and writing. So I was surprised to have a kind of creative relapse on Monday, and find myself right back in the ego and self-worth whirlwind. Before anyone gets worried, I’m feeling much better now, because these days I can recognize this kind of thing coming on, and I have tools to work with it.

In a way, this little sally back to the edge of my sanity has been helpful, because it’s reminded me that there’s always a necessary precursor to embodied writing, namely: getting out of ego. Putting aside any need to prove how clever I am, and instead being in simple service to ideas and story.

As of today, I feel just about back to normal, so I wanted to share an account of what happened and how I got out of it, both as a precursor to the embodied writing exercise (coming next week, I promise!), and in case it helps anyone clamber out of a hole today.

So here goes.

First, what is this feeling? And where does it come from?

For me, it happens like this: I hit a block in my creative work—something I’m struggling to word, or a part of a story I can’t imagine or understand or move through. And instead of being curious about that thing and trying my best, knowing that all creative work falls short somehow, I start to panic. I tell myself this is happening because I’m actually a bad writer and I was all along, and that if I’m a bad writer that means I’m bad at the thing I care about most, and by the way, I tell myself, remember that you’ve fucked everything else up too; you’re a divorced, middle-aged recovering alcoholic who can’t write; what a waste of oxygen.

Truly, on a bad day, it’s as fast as that, and I’m back in the hole.

It’s important to note that it happens this quickly for me because this is a very, very well-worn thought pattern. I spent most of my life polishing this cognitive pathway. It comes from a lifetime (which I’m slowly unlearning) of sourcing my self-worth in entirely the wrong place.

I’ll share my story of this in case any of you identify with it.

As a temperamentally hypersensitive and anxious person born into a confused and unhappy national culture that’s been alienated from its rites of belonging for a couple of millennia, I felt pretty lost and unmoored as a child. I don’t think I could ever understand the point of me, or of life.

I also happen to have the kind of brain that learned fairly quickly how to jump through the hoops of the schooling system. When that happened, people started praising me, telling me that I was a good girl because I had memorized my times tables or written a story or report that they liked.

All those people had the best of intentions, but that praise was very dangerous. Because (like most people in my culture) I didn’t feel that I belonged on this earth simply because I existed. I felt I had to earn my belonging, which made me desperate to do just that. Ravenous for it. And now here was the solution! People liked me when I did well, when I jumped through the hoops, when I was a good girl, when I showed them how clever I was, when I performed. So that was how I would belong; how I would deserve to exist.

Pretty soon, performing well and being clever came to seem like life-and-death matters to me. Ideally, our subconscious scripts should tell us that we belong and have intrinsic value, and that like everyone else we were born with certain abilities that might help our communities and the world at large to thrive, and it’s a good idea to put them to generous use. But now, my subconscious script was telling me: You only deserve to exist if you get the highest grade, win the prize, impress everyone. If you don’t, you might as well die.

How did I originally move out of those feelings?

I can jump through the hoops of the schooling system, but when it comes to matters of the heart, I am a very slow learner. I seem to have to learn everything the hard way. So for me, climbing out of this very painful way of being has been a drawn-out process. Take heart, though. That doesn’t mean it has to be for everyone.

It started gradually, with therapy and finding friends who seemed to simply like me without giving much of a shit about whether I aced my Chaucer exam or made my boss love me. This gradual improvement gave me the confidence to start writing creatively in the first place—something I didn’t do until I was 30, because I was so terrified of failure (and the death it seemed to promise).

But as I’ve mentioned, the early years of my writing life were pretty miserable. It’s only in the last four years, really, that I’ve managed to quiet the desperation of my ego and start writing simply because I enjoy it and I want to be of service to stories and ideas. And it’s happened in the last four years because in those years, I’ve been through an incredibly painful ego-death experience. It took simultaneously getting divorced while realizing that the manuscript I’d been pinning all my hopes on had failed. It took six months of deep winter in a Vermont forest, facing down my core misbelief that I didn’t deserve to exist. It took starting a whole new life in which I prioritize loving community, generosity, and feeling fully alive every day, rather than career success or arbitrary markers of approval.

I don’t think the path has to be this tortured and painful for everyone. Remember, I’m an idiotically slow learner. But if you’re struggling with these feelings of ego-hunger and low self-worth, you are going to need to find people who can reflect to you that you matter and are valuable and lovable even if you never write another word again, and you’re going to have to find things that bring you joy while having nothing to do with your ambitions. In other words, you’re going to have to start sourcing your sense of belonging and the value of existence somewhere other than the success or failure of your creative work.

Why did the feelings recur on Monday? Why do such feelings ever recur?

Looking back, I see that I have been isolating myself. I’ve been hibernating this winter, and slowly, slowly, I think I began to slip again into sourcing the value of each day not in how much I showed up for my community or the causes I care about, or how much I enjoyed being alive, but in the success of my morning writing session. This was easy because the writing had been going well. I’m fine now, I was able to tell myself, because I’m not beating myself up. Then I hit a difficult part of the story, around the same time that I skipped a couple of regular community gatherings, was surfing some hormonal disturbances, and had a sleepless night . . . and bam: there I was, on the fast train to the hellscape of self-loathing.

How can you get out of a self-worth spiral once it’s begun?

The key is to reconnect with sources of true belonging. To remind yourself that you exist and you deserve to exist, no matter what. Some ways to do this include:

• Reconnect with community. I’m very lucky in that I have a 12-step recovery community of people who know me deeply and are fellow travelers on a soul path, but who don’t really know what I do for a living, much less give a shit about whether I’m any good at it. It’s a place where I can be accepted and loved simply because I exist and I’m doing my best, even when my best doesn’t look like much. When you’re in a self-worth spiral, seek out the people who make you feel this way, whether that’s friends or family or a community group or your pets (truly, dogs are the best at this) or even a place that makes you feel held. Spend as much time as you can with them and try to actually, truly receive their care and affection for you.

• Collect small interactions. Go into a shop and speak to the person behind the till. Ask them about something in the shop, ask how they are—have a totally normal conversation about something that’s got nothing to do with your work. Walk a dog and speak to other dog owners. Order a coffee and be very conscious while doing it that this is you, being a person, interacting with a person. Collecting and savouring these small interactions will remind you that you exist and that other people see you. You will start to notice that you can go out and have a conversation and maybe even have a nice time anytime you like, whether you’ve won a Pulitzer or not.

• Give something away. The ego likes to tell us that we don’t have enough—enough fame or money or possessions or followers. And the best way to show yourself that you’re fine, that you have plenty, is to give something away. Even if you truly feel you have nothing to give, I would bet there’s an old T-shirt or book or knickknack that you could part with. Take it to a charity shop and show yourself that you have plenty because you have enough to give something away.

• Do something kind for another person, and don’t tell anyone about it. If anybody finds out about it, it doesn’t count.

• Engage in activism. Sometimes when we’re at the bottom of the spiral, this feels a long way out of reach. But once you’ve begun to pull yourself out, taking tangible actions towards creating a better world is a great way to step into your own sense of worth and belonging. You can start with small actions like writing a letter or calling your representatives, and repeat them over time. Sooner or later, you will start to feel like a person in the world, and able to take on bigger actions.

Do any of these things on a regular basis, and you’ll shore up your sense of solid self-worth, and stand a much better chance of avoiding the ego spiral.

And that is when the imaginal realm might start to flirt with you; when you can start to offer your services to the stories and ideas that are looking for a channel.

Next week, an exercise on how to attune your body to receive those ideas. I promise!

Love,

xx Ellie