Self-Expression + Releasing the Fear of Being Misunderstood
Here we go, my first official piece of writing up on my website —
A few years ago, I decided to create a blog on Medium.com (here is the blog if you desire to read through any of my 9 posts that I published there). I wrote for a few months there and then fell off of that — focusing more on writing my weekly emails to those signed up on my email list and sharing in various instagram posts. Recently, however, I had a few things happen that I believe have inspired me to get started with writing again.
The first was a coaching session I had with one of my coaches/mentors, Julie-Anne Kelly. She is a brilliant woman and uses a method called kinesiology, which is an energetic and emotional healing tool, much more common in the country of Australia (where Julie-Anne lives) than here in the United States. Using this method, Julie-Anne is able to get to the root of whatever is challenging you to help you clear long-term limiting beliefs and emotional patterns you’ve been running unconsciously that have been limiting you. It’s very deep work and extraordinarily transformational.
In one of our recent sessions a few weeks ago, we were working through some unconscious patterns I was running around competition / comparison to other women. Interestingly enough, what came up very strong for me was my own “creative insecurity” and the belief that I am not “creative enough” compared to other women. I’ve been holding this belief that other women have this “it” factor when it comes to talent, creativity, style, and beyond. But I do not have the “it” factor. I felt less than and lacking in the creativity department. This was all stored deeper in my unconscious vs. something I am consciously aware of on a regular basis, but it most definitely struck a chord for me and I could see how much it was playing out in my life. You can also probably imagine how this belief has been holding me back and having me stuck when it comes to my own creativity and self-expression. They say comparison is the thief of joy. In addition to that, I also believe comparison is an energetic dynamic that holds us back from embodying our greatest gifts.
Now that I’ve cleared this energy and belief out of my unconscious with the help of Julie-Anne (which required a few weeks of integration time), I feel this newfound freedom to express myself and also honor the unique creativity within me.
One of the methods of creativity I’ve found to be quite freeing over the past few years has been expressing my thoughts and feelings through writing — in more of a stream-of-conscious style writing, such as this blog post and the others ones I wrote and published on Medium. I used to call myself a “bad writer”, but then I realized that was because in our school system they force you to write in a very specific, structured way. This always felt like a struggle for me. It required so much effort and energy to write my essays according to the rules, especially when it came to studying Biology and then doing and typing up the results of my research and creating things like annotated bibliographies — this all made me despise writing. As I allowed myself to be more authentically myself and just started to express, I realized that writing is something that gives my soul a voice and also something I do feel I have a bit of a knack for.
The second thing that I feel has inspired me to create this blog was actually the results of our recent election here in the United States. I was very upset by the results of the election and had a lot of mental and emotional processing to do — around how this happened, why it impacted me so much, and what I wanted to do moving forward. I wrote about this, more openly, inside of one of my Friday Faves (this is the name of my weekly email newsletter).
I was nervous to write about something related to politics, because I don’t consider myself to be a very politically-oriented person and my Dad has always told me to never mix business and politics. I also am friends with and connected to all kinds of people and don’t want anybody to think that I am judging them based on their voting choices or to create any kind of division energy due to politics. I’ve seen this happen in my family unit and it’s put a bad taste in my mouth. I want to be someone who stands firm in their own choices, while also open, curious, and accepting of the choices of others. Because I believe that is the kind of energy our world needs, that will ultimately create more inclusivity.
However, despite my nervousness to share more about my stance and reflections, post-election, I felt it was the right thing for me to do that week, and sending those reflections out to all the people on my email list liberated me in subtle yet tangible ways.
I had to also reflect on how much I want to be “liked” by people and also how much I fear being misunderstood by people. I genuinely believe that’s one of my biggest worries and something that I struggle with on a regular basis: this fear that I will be misunderstood — that my good intentions will somehow be skewed or misinterpreted. I also fear that being my authentic self could result in hurting someone else. This has been something I’ve batted with. Not always owning the bolder, strong-willed, straight-to-the-point, truth-telling sides of me because I’ve had people react negatively to those parts of me in the past. I’ve had people reflect that sometimes I’m “too honest” and because of this I find myself “toning it down'“ a lot.
In reflecting on these reactions and fears that came up (simply through sharing my post-election viewpoints), I felt a newfound desire to be even more authentic in my self-expression, in general.
I want to work on expressing myself more and worrying about being liked by everybody less. I also want to work on letting go of the fear of being misunderstood and I think a really good way to continue unraveling that one is by writing regularly, sharing my writing, and trusting that the people who are meant to read my writing will read it and that it will land for them in the way it needs to. Maybe some of it they won’t understand, hopefully some of it they will! This requires less control and more trust on my part. I know this is a very good thing for me.
It’s my intention for the rest of this month (of November) to just express myself, in my day-to-day life and also online in places like this with as little censoring or over-thinking as possible. Trusting that this is how my true impact will be made and how my personal freedom will be found.
All of this that I’ve shared above has motivated me to create a blog on my website and write again.
My goal right now is to publish something once / week for the rest of 2024. Then, we’ll see how I’m feeling at the start of 2025 as to how I wish to continue. I’m not creating too much pressure on myself with this one, as I am committed to so many beautiful things right now, and I don’t want to have any expectations surrounding my own creativity and writing — it feels like that could suck the joy out of it, and I want to keep this part of my life feeling more light and easeful.
So here’s to — self-expression, letting go of fear, and doing things simply because they feel right.
