Sometimes when I write, I wear heart-shaped, rose-colored glasses. Truly: they were $9.99, online. It’s one of the exercises my therapist Jess, who is the greatest therapist in the world, has prescribed to me in order to shift my way of thinking about my writing.
Article continues below
And since I’m primarily an essayist and memoirist, when I get hypercritical of my writing, it’s often because I’m hypercritical of myself as a human-in-general. Inside is a dangerous, self-flagellating voice that really serves no productive purpose, yet one that I frequently feed.
“Poop-colored glasses,” is what Jess said a few weeks ago. “You see your writing through poop-colored glasses and we need to nip that in the bud.”
She instructed me to actually purchase a new pair. And so, this exercise shifting my inner monologue is a tangible one: each time the harsh voice emerges and I become aware of it, I put on my heart-shaped, rose-colored glasses, and this physical act reminds me to redirect my thinking, shift my narrative and actively think something else about myself and my writing through a different lens.
Literally. I wore them a few times while working on this piece.
*
I came to therapy and Jess it after suffering a mental health breakdown (I’m talking walking-into-the-ocean-fully-clothed-not-planning-to-turn-back sort of breakdown). It happened not long after I published my first book, a memoir.
Each time the harsh voice emerges and I become aware of it, I put on my heart-shaped, rose-colored glasses.
Like most memoirs, Poor Your Soul is a story about love and loss, and I wrote it in the wake of the events: I was twenty-eight years old, got pregnant while on birth control pills, lost the baby in the fifth month of my pregnancy, and married a man I had known for less than a year.
My memoir also weaves the story of my mother’s immigration from Poland to America, the adoption of her son Julian from Poland, and his tragic death at the age of fourteen. Poor Your Soul is a book about two women who lost a child they wanted to save.
Mary Karr suggests you should wait seven years to eight years before writing your memoir but I disagree. I wrote my memoir nearly in real time, and writing about my own loss in the wake of the events did two things: exorcised the demon out of me, and let the reader know what it really felt like to experience these things in the moment, not seven plus years later, with a wiser, less stinging outlook that comes with time and perspective.
*
The act of writing was a valve for my pain, but at the same time, I developed an unhealthy habit: as I wrote my sorrow into my book, I started to believe that once the book was published, it would make all the suffering worth it. For years, my manuscript was met by publishers with rejection after rejection, and with each rejection, I took it personally, as if my pain was not worthy of their attention, not worthy of care from others.
The rejections made me angrier and more driven, and this drive became my reason to live, more or less. Once my book gets published, it will all be worth it. With this belief, my path to healing was stunted.
Eight years later, my memoir did get published, and by then, the deeply entrenched story of victimhood became my identity, which morphed into my brand, which became deeply entrenched in the neuropathways of my brain. Close to your book’s publication date, writers often submit essays that are related to their book’s topic; they give interviews, go on tour, and the summary of their story becomes a rote set of talking points that one can recite without even thinking.
My narrative was so deeply entrenched that I didn’t even have to think about it: I am a victim. The world is a harmful, dangerous place. And writers, more than anyone else, knows that thoughts become things.
I was on a bus with pneumonia holding my newborn daughter on the way back home from a book tour in New York when I started to reach my breaking point. I am a victim. The world is a harmful, dangerous place. A few days after that, I walked into the ocean near our home, fully clothed. Not long after that, my doctor led me to medication, meditation, and therapy. And then I met Jess.
But if you want to become your protagonist, shift your perspective, change your internal script, and relish the emotional experience that follows.
I consider Jess my fairy godmother. I see her sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly, and we talk. She’s an eclectic therapist, exercising not just one modality but cognitive behavioral, insight-oriented, relational, and problem-solving therapy. Ultimately our goal is to notice and observe thought patterns, and how they may or may not help me.
“Thoughts control feelings control behavior” is something Jess remind me often. In therapy, rather than memorize and sleepwalk through my narrative, I actively create it and hit the refresh button when it no longer serves me.
“Choose your own adventure,” Jess tells me. Writers know the importance of context, plot, and character development. Intentional editing, rewriting, and story development are crucial to the process and understanding how the reader absorbs the story.
A memoir needs to be anchored by facts, yet each of our individual stories can be seen from unlimited perspectives with slight shifts. Does the focus remain on the child diagnosed with cancer, or does it shift to the strengths that emerge while fighting it? Does trauma ensure he never finds a healthy relationship, or does the story pivot to illuminate his emerging loving relationship with himself? Are they forever the less intelligent sibling, or do they burst through creativity and connection to others?
Writers don’t stop writing when the main character is self-deprecating and stuck in unflattering patterns. The book wouldn’t sell. If you want to remain the antagonist in your life, keep telling yourself the same repetitive story.
But if you want to become your protagonist, shift your perspective, change your internal script, and relish the emotional experience that follows. “This life is your adventure. Be intentional. Choose to be the character you will fall in love with.”
Examining and upgrading our own personal narratives allows us to grow and evolve from old stories. Our thoughts and stories reside in our frontal lobe, influencing our behavior and emotions.
Rewriting our internal script can evoke confidence and optimism. Choose hope over fear. Write it down, repeat it to yourself, put on heart-shaped rose-colored glasses and ask yourself: what story have you been telling yourself? What is the new story you want to tell?
