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 so many ways, one of which is in resistance to sitting with myself, in 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 these past two weeks, I told myself that I would use my time this weekend to catch up on my story, to write for hours so I would have something good to submit to my writing coach next week. I ended up spending most of the day practicing avoidance and in resistance, eating, napping, and consuming other creators' content instead, including one randomly on re-parenting. It wasn't until I came across this synchronistic post @the.holistic.psychologist so brilliantly made that I was able to synthesize what was happening, what my resistance truly is, and what I had to use as it's 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 to have massive implications for my creative process, and approach in the myriad of other ways these things effect my life.

This was originally featured in a February 24, 2019 post on Instagram at @themorganmay