This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 111, From Surviving to Thriving.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And let’s talk about survival mode. I was laughing, because I guess I like to get right into things here. You know, other podcasts will start off and say, “Oh, thanks to our sponsors. And hey, here’s what I’ve been up to.” But nope, apparently I’m just jumping right into the meat of our discussion, so…

So, hi, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s talk about survival mode. This isn’t really a good thing, but I think that many of us, if not all of us, have experienced survival mode, at some point in our lives. Survival mode means that you’re living in a way in which you are just kind of barely hanging on by your fingernails.

You’re not really enjoying the finer things in life. You are in a place where you are stressed and overwhelmed and afraid, and it’s all you can do to just keep surviving. Many of us experience this state on an intermittent basis. Maybe during finals week at school, if you’re cramming for a lot of exams. Maybe during some relationship issues. Maybe if your job is on the rocks. If you’re trying to desperately finish a huge project before a deadline, we’ll go into more examples later. But many of us live in this state and it’s not a very pleasant place to be. When we’re in survival mode, we’re basically giving over to what we colloquially call our lizard brain. The part of our brain that is in charge of our most basic survival instincts, or as you might have heard it called before, fight or flight. Driven by extreme fear or stress, we produce a stress response where either we fight the oncoming obstacle or we fly away from it or run away from it, depending on whether or not you have wings, I don’t. But both of those are reactionary responses.

When you’re living in survival mode, you’re living in a constant state of reaction. You’re stressed out, afraid, overwhelmed, overstimulated, just all you can do is react. You don’t feel you have the time or the luxury to sit and think and say, “Okay, what’s the most strategic thing I can do right now? Or what’s the most enjoyable creative thing I can do right now?” No, you’re in survival mode. And you’re in survival mode while still having to pretend not to be. You have to go through the motions. You have to go to work. You have to look like a normal functioning human being. You have to take care of your kids. You have to take care of the people in your life. You have to show up for meetings and go grocery shopping. You have to, or at least we assume you have to, at least look like you have some semblance of holding your life together for the sake of the people around you.

But on the inside you feel like you are facing a literal or metaphorical grizzly bear in the literal or metaphorical woods. And sometimes it’s all you can do to get through the day in one piece. Going from reactionary response to reactionary response, and never feeling like you’re actually in control of your life. Again, some of you may relate to this more than others. For some people this is a sort of once a year or once a decade experience. And for other people, I’m especially thinking of people who suffer from PTSD or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this is a daily way of life. Earlier I mentioned a literal or metaphorical grizzly bear, because the science behind this is actually really interesting. Several years ago I ghost wrote a book about our stress responses, and I’ve held onto a lot of that information, just because it was so interesting.

And at the time I was living in survival mode, because as it turns out, our stress response, that fight or flight response can be equally triggered by a real-life grizzly bear chasing us, or a metaphorical one. Our body doesn’t know the difference. A stress response is a stress response. So, the literal examples are pretty obvious. Again, you’re getting chased by a grizzly bear. You’re going to have a fight or flight response. I would suggest the flight response. I don’t know if you want to fight a grizzly bear. That is another podcast topic entirely.

But we can have that same stress response during a job interview. During the hospitalization of a loved one. During finals week, a looming deadline, an urgent situation, a global pandemic, political unrest. Maybe you are a new parent. Wondering if you are going to pay your rent or pay your heating bill or pay for groceries, and even worse situations. And in fact, if you have a traumatic past, if you have a past filled with abuse or some other very negative experiences that could have changed your wiring growing up, and you could still be living in that state to this day.

It’s important for me to point out right now that if you are living in survival mode, it’s not your fault. I know it can be really easy to go to a place of blame and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m living this really stressful, overwhelmed, awful life. And it’s my fault, let me heap some additional blame and awful feelings on top of myself.” It’s not your fault. Our responses to stressful situations are part of how our brains are wired, again for survival. Your brain is trying its best to take care of you. It’s trying to keep you safe. Just like we’ve talked about this before. Just like our fear responses is just our bodies and our minds trying to keep us safe.

But, and this is one of the hardest lessons that I ever had to learn. And again, I think part of me is still learning it. While we’re not responsible for getting ourselves into these situations, we are responsible for getting ourselves out. And I know that sucks and it isn’t fair and it’s hard. But If you want to get out of survival mode you have to get yourself out of survival mode. Okay, so before we talk about how to get out of constant survival mode, let’s talk about why we would want to get out of survival mode. Number one, being that it is not a pleasant way to live. And if you’ve experienced survival mode, you don’t need me to tell you that. Living in survival mode, living in constant overwhelm and fear is exhausting.

You’re not sleeping. Your nerves are raw. You’re barely scraping by, and every day you wonder how much longer you can hang on. In this state you’re facing down a grizzly bear, and you don’t have the luxury of time or space or energy to think about creative projects. Or if you do, if that’s the one thing that’s keeping you sane, then you’re doing it through a tunnel vision of fear and scarcity. Again, this is not your fault. We cannot control a lot of the things that happen to us, and a lot of the things that other people do to us, and the way that other people treat us. But we can control or learn to control and begin to control our reactions and our actions. I also don’t want to sugarcoat this, because again, I’ve lived through it and I understand. I understand so much how it feels to live in this state. And it can seem like a long and impossible journey to get from survival mode to a place where we’re actively living our lives. And you know, maybe even thriving, what a beautiful thought?

Depending on your current situation, it may take some time. It may take a long time. But it’s possible. And If you want to create your best and most meaningful creative work, necessary. Okay, so what the heck does this look like? I can share my own experience and it won’t be universal, but if you’re not sure where to start, this could be a starting point for you to take a look at. A good starting place is realizing that you are not alone. You are not the only person who feels this way, and you’re not the only person who is living like this. Many other people are experiencing what you’re experiencing. You’re not alone.

The next thing that you’ll need to do is ask for help. With where I was in my space of survival and anxiety and depression and all of this stuff, to me it felt like at the time asking for help would be admitting my weakness, admitting that I couldn’t handle all of these things that life was throwing at me. In my mind, asking for help felt like admitting defeat. And it took me actual years, not months, not days, it took me years to take that step forward and ask for help. And when I did take that step, when somebody realized that I was not okay and pretty much forced me to ask for help, I realize that doing so wasn’t weak or silly or indicative of my lesser nature, but instead an act of great bravery and strength.

Depending what your situation is, asking for help can look like different things. It might be getting a deadline extension on a school or work project, getting support from your fellow creatives in a creative community, visiting a doctor and being honest about what you’ve been dealing with. Even opening up on a blog or on social media. I know that when we’re living in survival mode, there’s a tendency to self-isolate and to withdraw. But that’s the opposite of what we actually need to be doing. I know that even the writer’s life seems like it’s a very isolated state, but we need to be in community with each other. We need to be reminded that we are worthwhile human individuals worthy of love and care.

I’m not a huge subscriber to the whole Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I know that it’s not incredibly scientifically proven, but it makes sense. Once we take care of our more basic needs, once we get out of survival mode, then we can get into a place where we can focus on thriving, on living a richer life. Once the grizzly bear is no longer chasing you down to eat you, again literally or metaphorically, then we can sit and we can think about the novel that we want to write. Then we can get out of that tunnel vision of fear and expand our minds into the possibilities that are all around us. But the first steps in that are A, realizing it’s not just you, you’re not alone. It’s not you versus the entire world. And to B, asking for help.

I remember in high school we’d have this thing called hell week where it was, I think simultaneously finals week. And I was in the orchestra pit for a theater production. And again, I did this all four years of high school. And every year there was this thing called hell week, where everything just collapsed on you. And I know it seems from a distance. It’s not exactly life or death survival, but it felt like it at the time. And I remember thinking years ago that every week was hell week and every week I was fighting to survive. And I want to tell you, having come through the other side of that, again, after asking for help, and after years of working through a lot of this stuff, not every week has to feel like that. Not every week has to be hell week for you.

I want you to take a proactive role in your life. I want you to feel like you are more in control. You know, it will never be 100% in control of our lives, because we simply don’t have that kind of power. We’re limited beings, being buffeted about by the whims of fate or however you choose to put that. Sometimes we can just say, “Life happens.” But we can begin to control how we respond to all of the stuff that life throws at us. I realize this week, this is kind of a heavy topic and you might be listening to this and being like, “Whoa, Sarah, I do not relate to this at all.” And that’s okay.

Hopefully other episodes of the Write Now Podcast have been more specifically for you. But if you are listening to this and you have just been nodding along the whole time like, “Oh my gosh, Sarah is describing my life.” Then I want you to know that it’s possible to come out on the other side and thrive. It’s possible to get into a place where you are proactively living your life, where you are feeling more in control of things, where you are sitting down to write, and you are able to access the whole realm of possibilities and creativity all around you. It’s possible to rewire your responses. It’s possible to change. It’s possible to grow, and it’s possible to become the creator that you’ve always dreamed of being.

It gets better, and life can be good. I would love to hear about your own experience and your own thoughts on this issue, if that’s something that you’re comfortable sharing. If that is something that you would like to do, I invite you to leave a comment on the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 111. You can find the show notes out at sarahwerner.com. That’s, S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com, and by navigating to the show notes for this episode. Again, that’s episode 111. I’m not always able to respond to every email or every social media nudge that I get, but I do respond personally to every single comment out on my website. Please do let me know your thoughts, let me know what you’re struggling with. And I want you to know again that you’re not alone.

Speaking of not being alone, this episode and all episodes of the Write Now Podcast made possible by my amazing supporters and sponsors out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $3 per episode, a million dollars per episode, whatever you feel is appropriate for you. You can find that out at patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/sarahrheawerner, that’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. Or you can once again navigate to the show notes for today’s episode and click on where it says, help support this podcast. And that will take you out to my page on Patreon, where you can sign up and make your pledge. So either way, I appreciate it.

I especially super appreciate patrons Amanda L. Dickson, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, Garrett, Leslie Duncan, Tiffany Joyner, and Sarah Lauzon. Thank you all so much for funding the work that I do here at the Write Now Podcast, I truly and deeply appreciate it. If you’re not in a place where you can support the show financially, you can also support the show simply by telling another creator about it and encouraging them to listen. If they’re not familiar with podcasts, maybe set them down, show them how to download podcasts, how to listen to them. But that is a really, really wonderful and helpful way to spread the word of this show.

Finally, thank you for listening. Seriously, thank you for listening. I make this show for you. I hope it’s helpful. I absolutely love connecting with other writers. If you would like to connect with me, I do have a few ways that you can do that. You can connect with me on social media. You can leave comments on my website. You can also join, I have a discord community as well as a Facebook group called I Am A Writer. And so I invite you to join us in those communities, especially if you are feeling alone and like there are no other people who are experiencing what you’re experiencing. Come join our creative communities. I’ve also been doing live streams on Twitch every Wednesday and Friday evening at 7:00 PM central. So that is out at twitch.tv/sarahrheawerner. Again, that’s, S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R.

They’re free come join us. They’re fun. We hang out and we talk about writing a little bit for the first 30 minutes or so. We write together or create together for an hour. And then we come back together to discuss how that went if we ran into any issues or challenges. The whole thing goes about two hours more or less. And it’s just a really great touchpoint to connect with other writers and creators and to be in community with one another. So I do invite you to join us for those. And with that, this has been episode 111 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I know you can do this.