I have a confession to make. I haven’t been able to find my words.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been struggling to write a single thing; fingertips tentatively tapping laptop keys whilst my phone smugly declares a celebratory 50% drop in screen time on account of my notes app lying dormant.
There is so much I want to do, so much I want to give and create and be part of, I should have more to say than this, I kept telling myself, but I just don’t.
I’ve been stalling on a post about imposter syndrome in particular. Initially, for the most part I thought my writing was funny, thoughtful, considered, well researched – but then I started to spiral.
Is it smart enough? Is there enough science? Is my experience relatable? Am I the person to write this? Am the person to write anything? Am I writer? Do people want to listen to me? On substack? In the world? EVER? Is this helping? Am I helping? Am I even ADHD enough? Who cares?! I’m letting people down! I made a commitment! I shouldn’t even be here!
And so on and so on until full paralysis took hold and I was unable to write a single thing.
I know.
Its bitterly ironic that writing about imposter syndrome should exacerbate my imposter syndrome which in turn just exacerbates feelings of guilt and shame that further exacerbater imposter syndr… well, you get it.
I know many people would say “Just write anything even if its crap!” or “just keep going!” or quite rightly, “its only a bloody blog post!” but I can’t write like that. I can’t move from a place of lack or bullshit and in fear of sounding like a complete wanker, although not enough fear to stop me typing it out, I just can’t write if I’m not feeling it.
The thing is, I could feel this coming.
It might seem trivial to be so affected by writing a substack post but I care. I care a lot. I find it very, very difficult not too, about everything, even if the perfectionist in me has recoiled. And that’s left me feeling overwhelmed recently.
I started to feel heavier in my bones, so much so that I weighed myself expecting to see that I’d gained four stone. Walking had begun to feel like wading. My head was swollen from the incessant barrage of depreciating thoughts that rained down like bullets on a battlefield with the relentless pounding narrative that I was an idiot for not being able to do this.
I struggled to be gentle with myself, instead letting that story bang on and on.
Outside of my work I’ve been spending every spare hour I have in in production for my podcast. In one of the interviews, Loose FM founder and creative director Mark Freeman described the bad days in his brain as a siege of Game-of-Thrones-esque zombies/the undead climbing over the wall. I imagined them hell bent on chipping away at self-esteem with their gnarly yellow fingernails and foul mouths, hungry for a meltdown to feed on.
On good days you can keep the bastards at bay, but on bad days, despite all your best efforts, like crashing waves, they just come and come.
Unpredictable, untameable, and unforgiving.
I’d been having bad days.
It’s all very familiar now; the urge to flip the table and RUN, the procrastination, the sleepless nights, the self-sabotage of pulling away from all the things that make me feel good, the doom scrolls on antisocial apps, believing everything I assume, the whispers of self-doubt that swell to a scratch to a hum to a full fucking choir. They drown out my intuition so that I’m no longer in tune or even really listening to my body’s pleas to stop and breathe and notice and respond in a way that is helpful, one that is rooted in the reality of my situation rather than assumption and that can carefully lift me up and out of the descent.
But my zombies were already over the wall and so instead I began look for things to blame, to reinforce my emotional state and prove my brain right- London, the weather, the world (yes, all valid and likely to contribute to be fair) I suppressed my anxiety with impulsivity, propped my eyeballs open with coffee, convinced myself that if I just Push! Push! Push! My words and work will tumble out into the world like a perfect capitalist newborn and we’ll be back on track.
I know I know better than this.
But sometimes, i’m difficult to reason with.
Recently, I’ve been called an influential neurodivergent woman and a trailblazer. And I’ve been questioning whether you can be influential and still blaze a trail while you feel like this? I reconciled that yes you can. That it’s important, no, it’s essential to be authentic, to be honest, to be human.
To both honour and accept that ADHD like me is made up of so many contradictions and complexities that mean there are good days and bad days and days in between. Acknowledging that all I can do is try and fail and try again. There’s no shame in that. That’s the courage of living after all.
I’m writing this now almost out the other side, and I’m passing no judgement on myself either now (but believe me I have.)
I had a particularly troubling morning, waking up after another sleepless night, flooded with the familiar hot white heat of shame for being (in my mind) incapable which spiralled into frustration and tears that were only extinguished by a swim in near freezing ponds at Hampstead Heath.
I emerged from the cold, and something had shifted. What I take into the water, I usually leave behind and I regained enough clarity to bring myself back into the land of the living and reconcile that what I needed wasn’t to berate myself and thrash it out, but to take a step back for a moment to recalibrate and remember what’s really important. Not my projects or productivity, but me; how I’m meeting and responding to the world, how i’m showing up for myself and others and ultimately how I am. Not based on my output but as a person that lives, breathes, thinks, loves in this world.
My work is only as good as I am, after all.
But how am I, really?
I daren’t say it out loud.
So, I take out a pen and my notebook.
… how are you feeling?
[I write gently on the top line]
Not great.
[I answer truthfully but shortly. The writing is a little smaller, tentative, lighter on the page thought the full stop is defiant – “end of conversation” defensive let’s say… but wait!]
In fact,
[courage summoned, pen a little firmer on the page now]
I feel
.
.
.
L O S T.
Many more emotions followed, though I couldn’t tell you what they were exactly, the urgency of my confession renders my writing illegible. The ink stains the side of my hand as I drag the lines out of me. And when I said I didn’t know where I’d left them, the words, I guess what I was trying to say is that I didn’t know where I’d left myself or indeed when.
I’ve since said many words out loud to people I love and trust and one that charges by the hour. They have listened, challenged, responded in a way that offers perspective and brings a sense of peace and the ammunition to take out a few zombies.
I’ll share that with you soon, but while I continue to gather myself back up, I wanted to leave you with this piece I wrote a couple of years ago,
on burn out.
This body is the only place I’ve ever felt homesick for. When I’ve lost myself somewhere else, too in my head or out of it completely. When I’m no longer listening to or trusting what it needs. It starts to feel unfamiliar, distant.
“I am so far from myself” I tell a friend.
We’ve become detached somehow, this body and me.
The warning comes from my feet first, the weight shifts unevenly into my heels in protest, trying to ground me to a halt. “It’s time to stop,” they say, but I’m not listening. I’ll drag them if they won’t run. We haven’t got time for this.
And when my bones become too heavy to be carried in this skin, I’ll just leave them here, I think, they were holding me back anyway.
My brain is at full pace, chaos chasing, racing me against me. It’s a strange feeling, to move outside of yourself.
It ends how it always ends, with injury or defeat, both, if I’m not careful. And each time I have to face myself, I look at the pile of bones stacked on top of two furious feet.
“Where have you been?” She says to me.
A body that looks like mine but feels like a stranger until I hold her and she holds me, reminds me that it’s safe to surrender, to stop. That the world will spin madly on, whether I’m here or not.
“Better to be here, babe.”
Tells me that there is grace in bowing out when it gets too much and that pushing yourself beyond yourself is a bullshit construct. And for what? Productivity doesn’t define us; love does.
And yet how rebellious it can feel to be tender with ourselves.
I forget sometimes that like bones, machines can break too.
How are you feeling?
Have you checked in with yourself today?
Loved reading this Hana. Thank you for brave enough to show us your vulnerability & fear. I go through many of these "dark nights of the writer's soul" myself so it's sort of comforting to hear I'm not alone...
I’m not a person who really believes in fate or manifesting or any of that stuff. But as I read your piece about losing your words, the thought that struck me was “this was supposed to happen, so that you could write and share THIS piece.”
I recognised so many of the doubts, shame and all that other negative stuff you describe so well. Thank you for sharing the vulnerability. Hope it helped you write it as much as it helped me to read it.