So you’re going along just fine, you’re writing, everything is beautiful, and then, all of a sudden, this voice in your head starts to tell you you’re not good enough, you can’t be an author. What is going on here?

Why, now? Why do I all of a sudden feel like an imposter? Again? Let’s talk about this.

Do you have writer’s block? Do you struggle with procrastination when it comes to your writing all the time? Do you often feel worried or doubtful about your writing with every click of the keyboard? If so, you are in the right place. My name is Cheryl Reynolds and I help fiction writers become authors. Here at Finish Your Fiction podcast, I will share easy ways for you to move beyond writer’s block, smash those self-sabotaging behaviors and finally stop procrastinating. It’s time for you to cultivate the writer’s mindset and finish your fiction book now.

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Welcome to the podcast.

Before I begin, you may hear my cat, Mr Bailey, aka Mr. Nuggy from the book, he’s Snoring. He goes from snoring to purring and you’ll pick up on it. It’s really cute and I let him sit on my desk in his little box while I’m recording. He’s also very hypnotic, so you can enjoy that.

Does this scenario sound familiar? I want to toss some words out for you, things that you might feel when this comes up Fake, fraud, charlatan, deceiver, an imposter We all feel like that at times.

So congratulations, you’re normal, Podcast over.

It is not uncommon at certain times in your writing to start to feel as though you shouldn’t be an author, that you can’t be an author, and everybody who is calling you an author is soon going to find out that you’re really not one and you’ve been faking it all along because that imposter starts to rise up in our head.

This is called the imposter syndrome, and I want to share with you a different way of looking at it, because we often think that when we call ourselves an imposter, as a whole we are an imposter. We are a fake person as a whole, and this isn’t inherently true.

We are derived by having moments of feeling extremely confident in our writing and we can take on the world and we see ourselves out there at a Barnes Noble’s book signing, with a string of people out the door waiting for us, and then we can turn around and go on the flip side, where we’re terrified if anybody sees our writing. So these extremes happen, but it’s usually somewhere in the middle where we sit.

Now, one of the reasons why this imposter comes up is your mind is wanting to keep you safe. It’s a part of you that wants to make sure you’re protected, that you are not stepping outside your comfort zone because the moment you do that is when fear and anxiety comes up.

Remember that I talk about that all the time. It wants to keep you safe. It’s looking at every angle, it is seeing what you’re doing and it’s going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why is she doing that? This is not comfortable. This is going to make her anxious. We need to keep her safe so that all of a sudden, those thoughts start coming into your head.

Imposter means that you don’t believe that you deserve your success, that you don’t believe you deserve alkylates and such. You don’t deserve to have other people appreciate or admire what you do. It’s uncomfortable sometimes to get that external praise because I know some when I hear it from people who love my book, I say thank you. I’ve learned to say thank you and not go. Well, you know the next one will be better, because that’s the first thing I wanna say. And I’ve learned to shut my mouth and say thank you and smile, even though on the inside I’m thinking Is it really that good? Is it really my best work?  I have nothing to compare it to because it was my first book. I’ll know after the second and third, in the fourth, so I get that. But we have to shut it down and I’m gonna talk about that in a moment.

When you start to go down that rabbit hole And you start to feel as though you’re being that fake person, that fraud, that charlatan, there are a few things that I want you to do. Sometimes we just have the inability to appreciate the comments of others. But this whole Imposter feeling goes much deeper than the external praise we get because we really don’t feel internally that we deserve the praise. The phrase, not phrase, can speak. This morning it’s early.

And it’s really hard to put on that happy smile face and say to somebody thank you, I appreciate it, and walk away because we want to explain ourselves. We want to try to explain to somebody else outside of us how we’re feeling on the inside, and They don’t need to hear that. We can keep that on the inside for now, because eventually, our confidence will start to grow.

There’s also another thing when it comes to imposter, we often feel incongruent between what we think and how we feel, and it’s frustrating because there is a little tiny part of us inside of our brain that knows we can write, that knows we can be an author, but we don’t always feel it. So we have to connect with that.

How do we go beyond the imposter thinking?

So I want to take a little bit of a different twist here, and this is one of the things we do in hypnosis is we look at what’s called parts. We all have a part of us that is the writer. We all have a part of us that maybe a daughter or a son. Some of us have a part of us that is a mother. Some of us are cat moms or dog moms or dog dads or cat dads. We all have a part of us that maybe the student, the neighbor, the friend, the lover you know. We can go on and on. Whatever you work at, that is a part of you as well, and how these work is you may not share the same thing with your Co-worker as you do with your best friend. You may not share something with your mother as you do with your neighbor

. So we tend to break ourselves up into parts. And this imposter is a part of you that is trying to keep you safe from what it believes to be fear. It is trying to keep your ego from taking over and it is trying to help you do what’s right now. It may not be what is right, because your brain may not know what is right, especially if you don’t step out your side, your comfort zone. So it’s doing what is think is. It’s doing what it thinks is right to protect you and sometimes the advice misses the mark. Another part of us which is kind of fun we have that inner child. We have that fun side of us that maybe only a few people get to see. Maybe we have that you know, humorous part of us. We also have that superwoman, superman. That doesn’t come out as much for some people, but it’s in there And when we find it and we embrace it, it is so powerful And I will talk about that some other time.

But let’s go back to the inner child. Think about it this way You’re a successful person, you’re out there, maybe you’re running a company, maybe you’re writing a book, you’re on your third book, or even if you just start writing, but you’re independent and you’re doing your own thing and you’re jamming it. And then you go home And the moment you walk in that door, one of your parents says something to you and you automatically feel like a five-year-old again. It is automatically that inner child is on the inside screaming I’m not a kid anymore, listen, i’m in my 50s. And every dang time I feel that way, it’s like, wow, we all have this, this happens to us. It’s just part of life and it’s hard to shake it. Now I have a dear friend who, years ago, i was talking to her about our friendship. We were friends for a very long time We still are, though I moved, so I haven’t seen her as much, and we were talking about how there’s certain things that I wouldn’t tell her, and she got a little upset with me going what do you mean? you don’t tell me everything. And I said I don’t. There are certain things I would tell you, and there were certain things I would tell another friend because I know I’m going to get different answers and I know the answer I need I may not get from one friend versus the other, so it’s the same thing. It’s like you take a part of you and you know what works and what doesn’t. After a while she started to see that, oh, you’re right, i don’t tell you things about X, y, d, z And you don’t tell me things about ABC. I’m like, exactly. It doesn’t mean our friendship is any less. It just means if I know, if I go to you for this particular situation, you will work at it in a different way. That may not work for me And vice versa.

So this whole parts thing and in hypnosis terms is called parts therapy and we work with people to integrate it. It is very powerful. I use it for my clients, I’ve used it for myself. It was one of the most powerful experiences I ever had. And I want to mention one thing before I explain a few things you can do to work with that part of you that is causing trouble right now. This has nothing to do with disassociative identity disorder, aka multiple personality disorder. That is a mental illness.

This is different. You are normal to have different parts of you. I just wanted to get that put out, and I’m also not a counselor, so remember that too. But I do have a few suggestions. When this imposter person shows up, i like to name the part And I like to name it something silly. One of my mentors she, would call it the imposter monster. I’ve called it the imposter Fraud. I’ve called it the imposter Amoebi. Amoebi Is that even a word? You know the bug, anyway, but even a name. You know Fred, thelma, whatever you like. But you want to name it something that takes away its power, maybe even something childlike, because it is, if you think about it, a smaller part of you. It’s a part of you that is pulling you down to be small, so you want to give it a name that reflects what it is.

When I think of what my imposter looks like, did you ever see the Mucinex slob, that little mucinex, you know dude, that runs around coughing and sneezing? It reminds me of him. Just this little, small, annoying thing that bothers me, because when you give it something that is silly, something that is reflective of what it does, it takes away its power. And I would also take a seat, sit down when you’re in this feeling of feeling like an imposter, just sit back and think about it And visualize what this imposter, person, or monster looks like, And then ask it directly what do you want?

You will be surprised by what you come up with. I mean completely surprised where you go in I never thought about that And write it down. You don’t have to do anything with it, but just write it down. But listen for that internal chatter, listen for those thoughts and feelings. And the next time somebody says to you hey, you know your book was great, hey, you’re doing wonderful, do me a favor, say nothing negative about yourself, just smile and say thank you. But then check into your body because you’re gonna hear that imposter in there. But now you’re gonna recognize it And now it’s gonna take on a different connotation because you know what his name is, you know what it looks like and you kind of have an idea why it’s there. But you can also at that point make peace with it And you can either tell it to go packing or you can tell it to shut up and it can sit there and it can only pop up when it’s necessary. But you have the control of this part of you because, let’s face it this part of you is you, it is all you, and I don’t want any part of you holding you back from writing your book.

So remember you are more powerful than you think. Even with that imposter feeling, that fraud feeling, that deceiver feeling. You can get beyond that by recognizing why it’s there and why it is there to protect you. But if it’s not serving you, then you need to take action. All right, until next week. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening all the way to the end of this podcast. Head on over to the webpage to read the show notes at FinishYourFictionNow.com. Be sure to grab the Vibre Resources and never miss an episode by joining my newsletter. Remember you have the power to go from overwhelmed to overjoyed as you become a published author.

Go Finish Your Fiction Now. See you next week.