What happens if you offend your boss or your company? How about if you offend your significant other, your family, or your friends in your writing? What if there was a backlash involved? You may start to develop anxiety and have a grave fear over your next post. You may wonder if you are going to write again because of that fear, especially if that blog post is on Twitter or Facebook. In drastic instances, you may even end up getting fired. Many famous people lost their celebrity endorsements because they said the wrong thing or went hysterical and offended someone. But then the anxiety settles in and there is fear. How do you recover from anxiety and fear over writing again?
When you have anxiety and fear about your next writing project, there are several steps you can take in overcoming it. First, if the anxiety is severe enough, seek professional help, such as a therapist. They can help you overcome your anxieties.
You can also seek out a life coach to help overcome anxiety. One example of a life coach is Anthony Robbins. Coaches help you to overcome that fear by helping you to embrace the challenges you may face with writing. Maybe you can’t overcome it right away, but you will be able to deal with it.
If a professional life coach is not a viable option, you can always try motivational tapes, like the Anthony Robbins Personal Power Series. It came out in the 1980s, and many people have been helped by the series. It talks about Neuro-Linguistic Programming and how people get programmed. These same people have had bad experiences so they stick to comfortable experiences as a way to avoid anxiety. This program is helpful because it allows users to identify that programming and change. These programs take time, but the techniques have been effective.
Also, a few books that are helpful are The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life and Everything Is F*cked by Mark Manson and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. These books have proven helpful to me. They broke down the worries and helped me to get out of my own way. They also help readers to gain the courage to act. In one of Manson’s stories from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*cK, he wrote about Charles Bukowski and his fight to write. Bukowski spent many days on the streets homeless and drunk because he sacrificed to keep writing and working on books that were not very successful. But he didn’t care about his financial security; he would rather do something he loved such as write rather than work at the post office where he was miserable everyday. Eventually, his hard work paid off. Like he stated in his poem, “If you are going to go all the way, go all the way.” Charles Bukowski went all the way.
Sometimes you have to face your fears of rejection, humiliation, and anxiety to be able to write again. Fear will keep you down, and it will act like poison to the writer which is why it is good to use some of these techniques to get your writing back again. There are many other books besides the one I listed about that might help you face those fears.
Anxiety can be a troubling thing to many writers, but don’t lose hope. There is always help. You can be encouraged to do what you love again. Many writers or authors have had fears or anxieties of publishing and many have fears of even writing that prevent them from doing so. Some say, “I will write,” but fear the process and fear the rejection. Writers need the ability to face rejection. Some projects will fail; that is a part of life. But it takes a strong person to gain courage again for the next story.
A little story of mine is that when I made some unfavorable, hysterical blog posts that got me in trouble. I faced the ridicule from friends and family that followed. Most of that stuff I could have left in a personal journal just for me. As a result, I started to develop a fear of posting my writing to the public. It was a trying time for me as a writer. But through encouragement and good support, I gained the courage to publish my work again. Facing anxieties and fears as a writer is not easy, but gaining the courage and posting to write is worth it. Think of all the lives that will be touched with your testimony when making a comeback to writing. Also, it is something that you can be proud of when you do start writing again.