This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner episode 144: “When You’re Not Okay”.

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers – aspiring, professional, and otherwise finds the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner and perhaps appropriately for today’s topic of discussion. I have not been doing okay lately. I know grammatically, I should probably say I have not been well lately, but I like the phrase “doing okay”. More so than the word, “well”, I feel like, “okay” encompasses sort of the baseline for life. Like, “how are you doing?” “Well, I’m okay. All things considered.” Or maybe this is cynical of me to drop the baseline for daily existence from doing “well” as the norm to doing “okay” as the norm. Maybe it’s reflective of modern society. Maybe it’s simply reflective of me <laugh> but whatever it is, I am not it. I am not okay. And maybe you are not okay either. Maybe you haven’t been okay for a while. I have not been okay for a while. And I promise this podcast episode is not just going to be a laundry list of complaints, but it starts like this:

Lately, I’ve woken up every morning to a pounding heart, to racing breath, and to a very intense feeling of panic and anxiety. I told my newsletter subscribers that I feel like my heart is a runaway stage coach driven by a horse that got spooked and is now dragging my body through the crowded town square of life. I can’t say for certain, whether it’s anxiety, fear, overwhelm, burnout, depression, ADHD, just the world that we live in today… Maybe even simple excitement that I’m misinterpreting. Maybe it’s a combination of all or several of these things. Maybe it’s none of them. And maybe it’s something that’s accentuated by me paying attention to it and focusing on it.

Like when you have a cut on the roof of your mouth and your tongue, can’t stop poking at it and making it hurt more and more and driving it further and further into your own focus. So I don’t know precisely what this is or if it’s something that we can even be precise about. But I do know that it is making it increasingly difficult for me to focus on my work instead of panicking through it and not doing a good job. It’s making it increasingly difficult for me to get through my day without being exhausted and knowing that I’m going to have to get out of bed and face a nightmare, circus of emotions, panic, fear, overwhelm, burnout, et cetera, makes me really not wanna get out of bed in the first place.

I was telling Tim this morning, that lately the only thing that’s been getting me out of bed is the desire for a really delicious cup of coffee. Like that’s the one thing that I’ve been clinging to. And one of the many difficult things about feeling this way is it is so difficult to communicate what you’re going through with someone who is not going through it. It’s not visible. It’s not like I have a broken arm and the bone is jutting out. And I think it’s rather easy to conflate a situation like this into some sort of moral failing like, “oh Sarah, you are just lazy. Oh Sarah, you just don’t want to write enough.” It’s really easy for people on the outside who don’t know what you’re feeling or what you’re going through to say, “well just pick yourself up by your bootstraps, just set an alarm,” and it can even get into places of blame. “Well, if you had a writing routine, you wouldn’t feel this way,” et cetera, et cetera, cetera. But that’s not what I wanna focus on today, though we will spend a little bit of time talking about labels. Instead. I want to talk about what we can do when we don’t feel like doing – when we can’t do.

Years ago, or at least it feels like years ago at this point, my good friend, Michelle recommended a little iPhone app to me, it’s called Woebot. So like robot, but woe as in “woe is me,” or should it be woe is I? I don’t know, but W O E B O T is the name of this app. And it’s basically a free little app that walks you through cognitive behavioral therapy exercises, which I know sounds like a blast <laugh> but bear with me. So I opened up the little app and Woebot, the AI says “‘hi, Sarah, good morning. What are you doing right now?” And I typed “panicking” because that’s what I was doing. And Woebot said, “well, it seems like you might be experiencing some stress and anxiety. Let’s start by challenging those anxious thoughts. Is that okay with you?” And I typed “yes.” And Woebot said, “okay, focus your attention on your negative thoughts. And imagine that they had a voice. What would these negative thoughts be saying to you?” And this is where things get interesting.

I had no intention of typing this. I didn’t even know that this was what I was specifically feeling, but I typed, “I am no good.” And Woebot said, “how about a second one?” And “I said, I’m lazy.” And Woebot said “one more, write it here.” And I responded, “I’m wasting my life.” Whoa, <laugh> uh, not what I thought. I hadn’t recognized until prompted that I was feeling like I was no good that I was lazy, that I wasting my life. Wow. Those are really powerful things to say. Those are really concerning things to say. But immediately when I typed them into this little app to a friendly little AI robot named Woebot, I realized that… Not necessarily that they were true, but I had been perceiving them as true. I have felt like a horrible person lately. I have felt worthless. I’ve been sinking into imposter syndrome and thinking, “who am I to write? Who am I to tell a story? Who am I? I’m no one. Who are you?”

As promised. Woebot walked me through each of the statements that I had made starting with “I’m no good” and encouraged me to consider where these thoughts and feelings were coming from, but you don’t have to have an app to do this. And also, I feel like I’m obligated to say an app is not a replacement for a therapist, so just FYI there. But if you asked one of my good friends to verify any of these statements that I had just made about myself, what do you think they would say? What about you? If you went up to your best friend and you looked at them and you said, “I’m worthless,” how would they respond to you?

Okay. If they’re, if they’re a jerk, they’re gonna be like, “well, yeah, you’re, you know, you’re worthless.” But, uh, in, in this scenario, I’m really hoping that your best friend is a person who is genuinely caring <laugh> or, you know, at least somewhat nice. But seriously, if you ask somebody who truly loves you, “am I wasting my life? Am I lazy? Am I no good?” They would be like, “uh, where are these thoughts coming from? Because they are not true.” I think it was Brené Brown who encouraged us to talk to ourselves like we would talk to somebody that we love. To be generous with ourselves as we are generous to other people. And even outside of that, objectively, am I no good? Am I a bad person? It might depend on your philosophical stance, but you know, I <laugh>, I haven’t murdered anyone. I don’t run red lights. I drive the speed limit in school zones. I eat my vegetables.

Am I lazy? No. Am I wasting my life? No. And yet those statements had somehow insidiously worked their way down into the core of my heart – so much so that I wasn’t and fully conscious that they were there until prompted to dig them out. So this is why I’ve been saying lately that “I’m not okay.” And maybe you’re going through something similar. And I want you to know first and foremost, that if you’re dealing with something like this: negative self talk, anxiety, depression, burnout. If you’re going through a rough spot in your life. If you or someone you love is sick or unemployed or underemployed or overwhelmed, or simply scrolling through Twitter and looking at all the dark and terrible news about evil people, frustrating politics, the dread of climate change, people kicking each other down instead of lifting each other up. It’s a lot. It’s too much. And you’re not alone.

A couple of days ago, Chuck Wendig who is an author who I really appreciate, a nd I’ve been following for years on Twitter, went through and sort of explained how Twitter has evolved – even over the past couple years. How it’s gone from sort of a chit-chat, water cooler kind of place to a stage where you were required to shout and perform and have your voice heard. And then… It became a fight club. And Chuck says on Twitter, “no matter what night it was for you, you had to fight.” And I noticed this shift and it’s the reason I’ve been avoiding Twitter lately. It’s the reason I’ve been avoiding most social media lately because I don’t want to spend my energy and time and mental wherewithal debating with a random stranger on whether I am indeed an idiot.

So there are things that we can do with a little bit of processing and identification about what we’re feeling and perhaps. Why I’ve noticed that scrolling on Twitter, AKA “doom scrolling”, sucks the joy out of my life and trains my focus onto the angry and hurtful things that are happening and being said by people who I can’t control. I can control one person… And that is me. And as that person, I can decide to get off of Twitter. We choose what we focus on. We curate our lives. We create consciously or unconsciously, actively or passively our very lives.

So I’ve been avoiding Twitter and looking for other places, other less hurtful and contentious places, to connect with people. I’ve been using apps like Woebot to process, “how am I feeling?” And I think it’s important to say that these won’t necessarily make it all go away. Taking a break from Twitter, using a little AI chat bot… It’s not gonna cure your anxiety, depression, overwhelm, et cetera. In fact, I’ve been on medication for anxiety and depression for, oh gosh, is it going on seven or eight years now?

<laugh>

Yeah. And I still have periods of my life when I feel like this. So I wanna tell you that you’re not alone. And I want to tell you that as you, not necessarily dismantle, but as you begin to untangle the threads and the reasons behind what you’re feeling, you’re taking, what feels like small actions, but they will lead to results. At the very base I wanna make sure that we’re not actively making things worse.

I also want to assure you that if you’ve identified with any of the labels that I’ve throwing around – labels such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, overwhelm, burnout, going through a rough spot; these might be labels, but they don’t describe the entirety of you. I wanna tell you this because it’s very easy to let a, a label, which is labeling some small part of your life, become your full identity, your full focus, your full being. I remember years ago when I was first diagnosed with depression, I was like, “Oh! A label! Okay! You know what? It feels really good to label this horrible thing that’s been following me around. I like that it has a name. Names are powerful.” But everything that I did, I did with the knowledge that I was a person with capital D depression. And even though I had a diagnosis, and even though I was on medication, I was looking at life through a depression lens.

I was allowing it to become a main factor in my identity. Labels can be helpful, but to a degree, they can also be harmful. And if you do have a label or a diagnosis like this, I want you to know that you’re not broken. You’re not bad or wrong. You’re not a mistake. You’re just maybe not doing okay. And there are things that we can do about that. In fact, sometimes I like to think of myself doing things despite having depression, or in spite of my anxiety, or in spite of my writer’s block, or burnout, or overwhelm. There’s something really <laugh> – this is gonna sound weird, but there’s something really empowering about doing something out of spite. Another thing that I’ve been doing is writing through it. Now, I know this is going to sound counterintuitive or oxymoronish or even impossible, but a little over a year and a half ago, I started a daily journaling practice.

So I worked my way through “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and every morning I got up and I wrote what she calls “morning pages”. So this is just three pages of stream of consciousness, stuff that sort of clears out your brain so that you can focus on telling a good story when you get to your “real” writing. Now I do my own version. I don’t hand write three full pages because for me that’s a lot, but I do do it every day. I wake up, I drag myself outta bed. I go to the coffee maker, whether I’m using my Keurig, or a French press, or my little stove top espresso makers – And I need something to do while I drink the coffee that I’ve been looking forward to so much. And so I open up my journal and I start to write, I’ve done it every day for over a year now.

And it’s become a habit. And there’s such liberation in having this as a habit. It’s so freeing. And again, this is maybe it sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s so freeing to just be on autopilot. Make coffee, feed the cats, sit down, drink the coffee and just exist on the page for a little while. I don’t do more than 15 minutes, even though I think you’re supposed to do like 20 to 30 minutes, but I sit down every day, first thing, and I write. And I’m not saying this to like flex on you. I’m I’m not saying this to be like, “oh, I’m such a good and cool person. And I’m such a good writer and I’m so disciplined, et cetera, et cetera.” No, I’m sharing this with you because since I’ve built this as a habit, it’s something that I’ve been able to do throughout the anxiety and the depression. And it gives me a place to take a look at what I’m feeling, to articulate how I’m feeling and to begin to explore, why am I feeling this?

This may be surprising to you, but the majority of writers who I talk to do not like journaling. But you know what, no matter what it is, we’re writing fiction, stream of consciousness, nonfiction… It’s all telling our story. I’ve done this before, where I’m writing fiction and I realize that what I’ve been doing is exploring something that I’ve been struggling with, or working through an issue that’s very personal to me and is apparently now very personal to my main character. So you don’t have to journal, but I would encourage you to process what you’re going through, to tell your story, through writing… Or some other creative medium. If you feel drawn to paint or to sculpt or something like that, please do that.

This is part of how we live our lives by processing it on the page. That’s how we come to understanding our ourselves. I tweeted the other day, ironically, because we were just talking about how awful it is to be on Twitter. But I tweeted the other day that, “our lives are a story that we tell to ourselves.” In a sense, we create our own reality. We choose what we focus on. We decide on the elements of our story. We interpret our circumstances. Like I mentioned, in the last episode, through a lens. And it’s easy to focus on the negative. It’s called “the negativity bias” and I’ve spoken about it on this podcast before. And this is exactly what I was doing when I was waking up every morning: I was focusing on what I was lacking. I was focusing on my perceived failures instead of my actual successes.

After using my little Woebot app, I went for a walk and I reflected on the things that I have accomplished, instead of all the things I haven’t accomplished. And at the end of that walk, I realized I felt a little bit better. And yes, walking is also very good for you. If you are in a place of anxiety, or depression, or burnout, et cetera, because something,-something sunlight, something-something endorphins, something-something – I am not a doctor <laugh>. And I am not qualified to tell you these things, but I think I am qualified to tell you that I understand. That I’ve been there. That I’m there right now. That life can be really hard and really challenging. I’m qualified to tell you that you’re not alone, that you matter. I wanna say that again. You matter, and you have a story to tell, not only to the world, but to yourself. What stories are you telling yourself today? And are they objectively true? I invite you to stop doom scrolling, to gently exit any community that’s not serving you, to be kind and generous and gracious to yourself, to go for a walk, to call a friend who cares, to see therapist or make an appointment, and to realize that life has its ups and downs, but it doesn’t get to control what we do.

Thank you for listening to this episode. I’m so grateful that you’re here. I hope this wasn’t too much of a bummer, but I felt like it was something I wanted and needed to talk about. So thank you for being here. If you’d like to interact with me, if you would like to share your own experience, please do head over to the show notes for today’s episode. Again, this is episode number 144, and you can find the show notes over atsarahwarner.com. That’s S A R A H W E R N E R.com and scroll down to this episode again, episode 144, and let me know in the comments for that episode, what is on your mind? I always love hearing other people’s stories and insights. And so I do hope that you’ll visit my website and share yours.

I would also like to thank, especially my patrons over on Patreon. So you’ve heard this from me before, but Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows people like you to donate $1 per episode, $2 per episode, just to help me defray costs and keep the show going. I am very grateful to everybody who is a current patron, including Tamara Kay Selman, Amanda King, Laurie Regina Calabrese, Amber Fortesi, Charmaine Ferara, Dennis Martin, Melissa Green, Michael Beckwith, Mike Teft, Sarah Banham, Summer, Tiffany Joiner, and Whitney MacGruder. You are all just amazing, wonderful people and I am so grateful that you’ve decided to support the show. If you’re not yet a patron and you’d like to support the work that I do here at the Write Now Podcast, you can run over to- well, I don’t know about run physically… but you can head on over to sarahwerner.com and scroll down in the show notes to where it says, “support this podcast”. Click on that. It’ll take you through Patreon and you can go from there. And with that, this has been episode 144 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 rwriteight. I’m Sarah Werner and I’m not okay right now, but I will be, and you will be too.

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