#0041 Challenge your thoughts and emotions: From wannabe to authentic creative

Discover 3 Ways to Shift Your Mind and Heart

Welcome to a waste of your time. <Sword unsheathed> Why did you set aside tv/sleep/social media for “creativity”? <Sword raised> Your concept isn’t innovative. <Swing!> You call yourself a creative person? <Slash!> You don’t even know where to begin. <Stab! Straight to the heart>

If you’ve ever questioned your creative credentials, fear not. You’ve passed yet another one of the “Are you a real human?” quizzes. Congratulations!

Not a real human armed with a sword. Look out! (Source: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash)

Last time I introduced the concept of imposter syndrome, describing it as a sword wielded by the inner critic (#0040). (Here’s more on the inner critic.) Today I’d like to share 3 ways to disarm your inner critic:

1. Interrogate your imposter syndrome

2. Challenge your creative imposter syndrome 

3. Dig into the roots of your imposter syndrome

These techniques will help you shift your mind and heart from doubting to deserving of the Authentic Creative title.

Why pile rejection on yourself when sooo many others are already aiming dodge balls at your head water balloons at you? Challenge that imposter syndrome to secure your Authentic Creativity. 

Interrogate Your Imposter Syndrome 

When confronting your imposter syndrome, you must be strong and forthright. Imagine you are a police detective with only 12 hours left to get a confession out of the prime suspect. 

Here I’m recalling Homicide: Life of the Streets, season one, episode five, “Three Men and Adena.” Baltimore detectives Frank Pembelton (played by the indomitable Andre Braugher, RIP) and Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) question the lead suspect in the investigation of an 11-year-old girl’s murder. Almost the entire episode happens in The Box, or interrogation room, and the confining space adds to the emotional tension, which runs high throughout this powerful hour of television.

FYI, the Homicide tv series was inspired by David Simon’s book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Though Simon is known for creating and writing The Wire, I think of him as the former Mr. Laura Lippman, best-selling author of the Charm City–based Tess Monaghan crime series. As a PI, Tess interrogates many untrustworthy B-more folks. 

Stop the presses! I knew she writes an occasional column for Oldster Magazine, but I just found Lippman’s own Substack, called Shaved Meats, Piled High.

A tangent: Another amazing episode of the Homicide series is “Bop Gun,” season two, episode one, which premiered in January 1994. Robin Williams guest stars as a man on vacation in Baltimore with his family. Williams’s understated performance presages his Academy Award–winning turn in Good Will Hunting. Oh! How I miss the bright light that was Robin Williams. Back to confronting your imposter syndrome.

Put Imposter Syndrome in The Box

The scene: Your buddy on the beat (B.B.) nabs creative imposter syndrome, aka CIS, from a squalid downtown alley and deposits CIS in the precinct’s holding cell. Knowing how CIS badmouths you time and again, B.B. offers to let you take lead in the interrogation.

You toss CIS in The Box, intimidate the scumbag with your best Wonder Woman stance, and ask of CIS’s latest claim:

• Is it true?

• Is it really true?

Maybe you hear muffled nonresponses. Or CIS doth protest too much. Keep hounding CIS. Repeat the two short questions, perhaps varying your pitch and volume, again and again to make ’em sweat. Then…

Swerve your line of questioning to ask, low and quiet:

• Since something that’s not 100 percent true is the opposite, your claim is false, right?

Got ’em!

CIS signs the written confession for the crime against your authentic creativity.

Case Closed.

(Adapted from Byron Katie’s The Four Questions.)

Challenge Your Creative Imposter Syndrome

For this writing exercise, set aside 15–30 minutes with your keyboard or pen and paper. Try to focus on the specific thoughts and beliefs undergirding your responses to the questions rather than general or generic answers. Resist the urge to write what you guess you should.

Write Out to White Out Imposter Syndrome

Identify your creative imposter syndrome

• When doubting your creativity, what do you think?

• What barriers to creativity do you think up?

• How much do you believe your creative doubts and barriers, from 0 to 100 percent?

Question your creative doubts and barriers

• What evidence supports your creative doubts and barriers?

• What evidence shows your creative doubts and barriers aren’t true or at least not completely true?

• What’s the worst thing that could happen if you listen to your creative doubts and barriers?

• What might happen if you stop listening to your creative doubts and barriers?

Move away from your creative imposter syndrome 

• How much do you still believe your creative doubts and barriers, from 0 to 100 percent?

• How willing are you to believe in your authentic creativity now?

(Adapted from Greater Good in Education’s questionnaire on challenging thoughts and beliefs.)

Dig Into the Roots of Your Imposter Syndrome

I’m a visual learner, so it’s not surprising I edit more visually than aurally. When I write via keyboard, my visual editor often kicks in, filtering and suppressing raw emotions and reflections. 

Sometime pre-Covid, I took a multiweek therapeutic comics workshop at City of Hope, where I figured out a way to bypass at least some of those filters: doodling. And I learned something amazing. When I hand draw ideas and scenes, my feelings flow onto the page. It’s messy and authentic. Heart centered. Plus I’m able to tap into seemingly long-gone memories via echoes of these unfiltered feelings.

Around the same time I attended an event (details, including who presented and when exactly it occurred, I cannot recall) where I learned of Dr. Lucia Capacchione’s art therapy  

techniques for drawing and writing with the nondominant hand [to] access the right brain for healing, recovery, and emotional literacy.

Research indicates we can access unprocessed memories by using our nondominant hand when handwriting and drawing.

According to psychologist and clinical social worker Dr. Rivka Edery, using your nondominant hand

leads you to the terrain you usually cannot access. We typically use a straightforward thought process, and most people are uncomfortable with irrational thoughts and feelings… If we have unprocessed trauma memories, this technique can be helpful because unprocessed trauma memories remain unintegrated and, therefore, not accessible through linear, rational thinking, which is linked to our dominant handwriting hand. 

Your inner child’s unfiltered memories can emerge in doodles and nondominant handwriting and drawing. Though unprocessed, the memories probably are part of your inner critic’s arsenal and contribute to your creative imposter syndrome.

For this artistic exercise, trust in the power of doodling’s heart-hand connection. When you doodle responses, allow yourself to deep dive into the origins of feeling inauthentically creative. You may dig up some of the familial, cultural, and societal roots of your creative imposter syndrome.

If doodling is too far afield for you, try handwriting responses with your nondominant hand (if you write right-handed, switch the pen or pencil to your left hand).

And if you primarily express your creativity as a visual artist, you might want to doodle with your nondominant hand. 

Root Out Imposter Syndrome

1. Grab a blank sheet of paper. 

2. Draw three rectangles, which are the panels for your doodles, on the page, leaving room at the top. (Skip this step if handwriting responses.)

3. Label the top of the page with the worst claim of wannabe creative your imposter syndrome flings at you. See examples, including  “Welcome to a waste of your time,” at the top of this post.

4. Doodle how you feel when you hear something like “Welcome to a waste of your time” in the first panel. 

5. Question if something like “Welcome to a waste of your time” is really true. Doodle how you feel now in the second panel.

6. Ask what would happen if “Welcome to a waste of your time” actually happened. Doodle how you feel now in the third panel.

7. Wonder how you might feel if you stopped believing “Welcome to a waste of your time.” Doodle to your heart’s content on the back of the page.

8. Repeat steps 1–7 on additional blank sheets of paper to root out other false claims.

(Adapted from Jackee Holder’s column in the UK magazine Psychologies.)

When you doodle, write, and interrogate to face creative imposter syndrome thoughts and emotions, you stand up for your Authentic Creativity.  I hope by challenging your inner critic’s weapon, you discover your true Creative Personhood. Please share in the comments if any of these techniques help!

Next time: Celebrate vulnerability