135: The Sneaky Fear Creatives Need To Watch Out For

 

There are many fears that can keep us stuck and prevent us from achieving the things we want, but this fear is particularly insidious. I share how this fear recently impacted my decisions, give some examples of other sneaky ways this can show up, and discuss how we can move through this fear. 

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the sneaky fear creatives need to watch out for

Hello, welcome back to your big creative life. I'm Katie Wolf, thank you for joining me, we're going to talk about this fear and the revelation I had and how this just completely threw a bomb and some plans that I had around my social media content and what I was going to do moving forward.

 

And I want to share this because I think it's so so so important for any creative person to examine the limiting beliefs and blocks and fears that we have, so that they don't keep us stuck so that they don't keep us from achieving the things that we want to achieve. From putting our work out into the world from being vulnerable and sharing with people. This is essential, this is essential, not in the sense that we have to work through all of our shit before we can write or publish or share online.

 

 It's not that but it's just, there's so many things going on in our subconscious that can impact our behavior. And I think becoming aware of those things is one of the most helpful things that we can do as people, generally but especially as creatives. So let's get into this. I talked a little bit about this a couple of episodes ago when I was talking in the update episode about this. But I'm just gonna give a little context here. A couple of months ago, I made the decision that I was going to split my social media accounts into. So I was going to have one account that was just for the business where I would post editing and writing tips. And like only writing related content, essentially.

 

That would be business. And then I was going to have a separate account where I was going to share more personal stuff more behind the scenes talk about my life. Talk about being a mom just like all kinds of other content. So that I could feel more I thought it would help me feel more free. Because I've been feeling some resistance I over the last year I have posted other types of content. But I felt kind of I felt resistance I felt blocked. It's felt scary to do that. And so I thought the solution was I really thought I was being pulled to just create two separate accounts.

 

And I was all set to go ahead and do this even switched my username. So you'll notice now on Instagram and Tiktok I'm katiewolfwrites, as opposed to thekatiewolf, which is what it was before. So katiewolfwrites is the new handle and I was all set to do this. I even like recorded a couple of videos. And in May. I felt I felt a lot of resistance to starting, but I chalked it up to just fear of starting something new and like starting from scratch, really, because that's hard when you've been posting consistently on your social media accounts, and then you just have to start over, over from scratch. And my mom came to visit for a week in May. And I didn't want to be creating a lot of content and really absorbed with that with the new accounts while she was visiting.

 

So I was like, Okay, let me just set aside this social media thing, and then I'll pick it back up once she leaves, then I'll really get going. And I even set a content plan for myself. I was like, here are the pillars I'll talk about. I'm gonna post every day for three months and just see what happens and see how I feel what I like talking about like I had grand plans, y'all. There was a video that came across my FYP a while ago from this woman named Whitney Yolande, and she's a coach. She talks about becoming a celebrity becoming famous, and and if that triggers you, I understand just the idea of someone coaching people how to be famous. Because I got super triggered when I saw her video, it was a video about like, some people just know, they're meant to be famous. They're meant to be to have people's attention.

 

They have this desire, and like, I was so bothered by that, because I thought in my head, I have all these negative associations with celebrities, right? That they're shallow, that they're vain, that they're self centered, that they are just in it for the money and I don't know just just all of these horrible thoughts, right? And I was like, someone is out there coaching people on how to become a celebrity. Like he just bothered me to no end. And then because I watched the full video, Tik Tok decided to show me more of her content and I can I'm getting triggered until I really sat back and looked at, okay, why is this bothering me so much? Why am I getting triggered by this?

 

And I realized that it was because a lot of what she was saying was stuff that I have felt stuff that I had experienced. I've never thought of it as becoming a celebrity. Like, I'm putting that in air quotes. I've never thought about it that way. But when I think about my life, and I think about like, becoming an author or becoming successful author, there's a certain level of fame that would go with that, where people are just aware of you. And she the way she says it is famous, just having the resource of people's attention.

 

And so there are all kinds of things you can do with that it's not, it doesn't mean anything bad. It's just like, it just you have people's attention. So it turned me because it was something that I wanted. And it took a little while for me to realize that so anyways, I went super in the weeds with their content. And I was like consuming all this stuff and looking at why I was so triggered by this. And I came across something that she said about creating separate accounts used, she was coaching someone, someone had submitted a question about creating a separate account, because they didn't feel comfortable, you know, posting on their main account.

 

People didn't feel comfortable having people see certain content, or I don't know. And basically her answer was that this comes down to you being afraid of being seen. You're afraid of being perceived by people, you are afraid of showing your authentic self to people. That is why you want to splinter and create this new account, because it's like safer that way. And it took a while for this to sink in, like I heard it. And I was like, Yeah, okay. And then later, he just hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized that that is exactly what I was doing by wanting to create separate accounts.

 

It was a fear based decision. Because I was afraid of being seen. Now I have 50,000 followers on tick tock like I'm not, this is so much better. I'm so much more comfortable being perceived. I'm comfortable putting myself out there. But only up until certain to a certain extent, there's this threshold that I can reach that I can bump bump up against where it no longer feels safe to think about, like when I think about having 2 million followers. Yes, my mind is excited by that prospect. Like I'm a best selling author, I have 2 million followers. But there's something in my body that's like, Whoa, I don't know. Like it feels a little bit. It feels exciting, but it also feels really scary. So the work is like getting your body, getting your nervous system, all of those things like getting your brain to feel safe with that level of fame. So I want to pause right here and talk about you.

 

I'm also going to give you two more episodes, two more episodes, two more examples of how this how this can show up this fear of being seen. Because maybe you listen to that example. And you're like, Well, I've never felt the urge to create two separate social media accounts. So I don't really know what you're talking about. If you can't understand any of that, that's fine. Like I said, I'll give you two more examples of how this can show up.

 

But this is okay. Whether you want fame on a massive level, you want to be a New York Times bestselling author who gets their shows or their their books adapted into TV shows and movies and whatever, whether you want that level of success, or you just want to make enough money from your books that you can write full time and like live in a beach house somewhere and just like, right, it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

 

The the work is still about like getting comfortable being perceived. Because either way, the route that you're take, you're going to have to put yourself out there to some extent, even if you don't intend to become a New York Times bestselling author, even if you just want like what you in your mind would describe as like a moderate level of success, where you can just quit your day job and write for a living. That is still going to require you putting yourself out there and people perceiving you and people having opinions about what you're doing, how you're doing it, how you're showing up.

 

Social media is also a massive part of how this is done. Recently, I got a company contacted me who's doing advertising and marketing for authors and no, I think it was the actual publisher contacted me maybe. Anyways, they contacted me and said, Hey, we want to we want to send you this book by this author. You know, we he's it's being released soon. And I was like, Oh sure. Because it was it was a guy that I was familiar with. And I was like Yeah, sounds good. Send it to me.

 

And when I received it, I want to tag the author on social media because it was a nice thing, I got a free copy, you know, I wanted to shout it out on my Instagram stories. And I realized that this person didn't have Instagram. And I thought, This is so interesting, because this guy's been writing for years, like he's been around for years. That is probably why he doesn't have an Instagram, right? Maybe he's got other social media, but he didn't have Instagram. And that is a luxury that I feel like authors who are already established like they can, they can do that. For 99.9% of the rest of anyone writing or doing anything creative social media is a huge part of how we get to connect with readers how you to put our work into the world, or it's just an it's an integral part of this process. And we can't deny that.

 

So there is some work that I think all of us have to do, to a certain point to get comfortable with the idea of being seen, of sharing about our work, sharing our work, all of these things. So that is why I wanted to talk about this, this concept, this fear in this episode, because it's not just a matter of like me confronting the sphere. When I went to split my social media accounts, I decided not to, it goes so much deeper.

 

I think for anyone who identifies as a former people pleaser, if you are a woman, generally, this is more common with women. But not always, if you're not a woman, you still identify with people pleasing behavior, that's fine, too. But this is something that is so deeply ingrained in anyone raised as a woman like it just is.

 

And there can be this fear of being disliked. That just snowballs into this fear of being seen, because God forbid, we put ourselves out there, people perceive us People see us and they have opinions, and they don't like us. I mean, that feels so unsafe, that can feel so unsafe to us. And the way that this makes sense to me is, you know, our brains are designed to keep us safe. So when we have this adrenaline is flooding or flooding our body when our nervous system is freaking out and completely dysregulated when we have the fight or flight response, because of something that you know, even just the idea of putting a video out on social media, or maybe because of a comment that someone left us like, your brain is just trying to keep you safe.

 

And doing all of things, those things that it's doing, it's because it perceives a threat. And in the past 1000s of years ago, hundreds of 1000s of years ago, this was like a biological mechanism that allowed us to stay safe from wild animals from getting killed by a bear or something. When we left the safety of our small little tribe of people that we lived with in ancient times, you know, like it, there's a reason that our body and our brain, like have this mechanism to keep us safe. The problem is that it's like it's being applied to something that doesn't require it. So the work is really about getting your brain in your body to feel comfortable being perceived by a lot of people.

 

I mentioned giving two examples. I don't want to do that now. Because I think at a basic level, like most of us understand when I say fear of being seen people are probably like, oh, yeah, like, I get that I probably have that. Okay, fine. But I want to give you two examples that that maybe will illustrate this in a different way. Because I think what can happen, what happens with me. And it also I'm able to recognize this now in my coaching clients a lot more clearly than I was before, is that we can have all kinds of weird behaviors that we do. That feels it feels like it makes sense to us. But then we step back and look at it. And it's like, oh, this is just our brain trying to sabotage things because it doesn't feel safe being seen, like that's what this is. So I'm gonna give you an example of a client of mine a while ago, I worked with her a couple years ago.

 

And this was an editing client who or a client who was an editor, she was starting her freelance editing business, I don't advertise this, but I do offer coaching for people who want to start editing businesses or like other editors who want to get more clients. You know, just, I mean, there's a lot that goes into freelancing. There's a lot goes that goes into starting your business. And so I'm happy to help people in that process through like a mentoring capacity.

 

So we were working together and this client was obsessed with revamping her website. She had a perfectly fine website. It's described all of her services. It was professional. It was fine. It was like yeah, okay, great. And this client also had not been posting on social media actively for like months like I think had been maybe six months. And she posted on social media. And she had this belief that she had to get the website perfect before she could start posting on social media. Because then what if clients found her through social media and wanted to go back to her website to work with her and look at her services, and it wasn't ready, I'm putting that in quotes, because it was perfectly fine before. So her brain in that instance, thought it was protecting her from this like fear that she had embedded in her about being seen that it wasn't safe to post on social media.

 

And there were I'm not telling you a lot of other things about this, because I don't want to get too in detail about this, this specific client, but there were other things that made it very clear that she had a fear of being perceived by people that it didn't feel safe for her. So her brain was focusing on this website as a way to buffer those negative feelings that she would get when she thought about posting on social media. She was so fixated on this, because in her mind, that was the solution, she just had to fix the website, she just had to make it perfect. She had to tweak these things and do this things. This and she had to start this, it was just going to take a while because she had to figure out the tag and bla bla bla. And she wasn't letting herself post anything on social media until the website was like rebranded or whatever.

 

I want to reiterate again, her website was totally fine. This was like a manufactured problem. But she wanted she she had to keep herself busy with this website thing because it didn't feel safe to be posting on social media. So that's an example of where we can fixate on something else that isn't really where we should be spending our energy. Because the actual thing that we should be doing will make us vulnerable in a sense and put us in front of people. Maybe that for you is like creating social media content. I mean, that's such an obvious example. But maybe it's also querying or working with someone to help you get your book Ready, or getting BETA readers or submitting your book to a small press like there are all kinds of examples of this, where the being seen part is you putting your work out into the world.

 

And that can feel so scary and overwhelming sometimes on a subconscious level, that we can obsess about little details and fixate on those things and spend six months revising our query letter or working on our book blurb or whatever, even though like the book is ready to go is ready to query it's ready to publish whatever it might be. And I do mentioned subconscious because I think a lot of times for myself. And then for people I've observed this with like clients.

 

We're not always aware that this is going on. Like I think in the example of that coaching client, it really made sense to her. She's like, No, like, I need to focus on this website and redo all of this stuff. Because I want to be prepared. When people come to my social media, then they click on my link, then make a thick, go to my website, like I have to be ready for that. So it made total sense to her. If I had asked her directly in a coaching session, like, Hey, do you think some of this might be related to your fear of being seen? She would be like, no, like, look at my social media I've posted before on social media, what are you talking about? So I think this can be subconscious a lot of times and in my example to when I wanted to create those separate accounts, I didn't even realize that it was because I was afraid of being seen. I didn't realize that fear was motivating me to want to do this. And then I was fixating on. Okay, let me come up with come up with like, really specific, like content pillars and like, look at examples and figure out okay, what should my new user name be for this new account?

 

I was getting caught up in all of these little details from the new account. It was just a way to distract myself. So yeah, okay, I want to give you one other example of this. Okay, I was working with a coaching client who was writing a memoir, and I don't normally work with people who want to write memoirs, but the type of book that this person wanted to write the structure her story, everything about it felt like something I could really help her with. And I know a lot about memoir, I really have studied it because a number of years ago, I had it in my head that I wanted to write a memoir at some point. And so I did a lot of research and all that read a lot of memoirs etc.

 

I've since put that to the side maybe someday but definitely not ready for it now. And so I did feel like I could help her for sure. So we created a unique sort of coaching package for her because again, I don't normally work with network writers. And we, okay, this client was so good at getting shit off the ground. Like she had so much drive to start things. She had started a business, she had started all kinds of things in her life. And it was incredible to watch from the outside because it was like, wow, this person is like really has it together, really is able to do all of these things. But what would happen is that her attention would.

 

It's like it would just sort of diminish, once she got past that initial excitement of starting the project. And this had happened with her book. And this book was something that she had wanted to write for years, she'd started it, and then she'd stop. And then she'd start and stop. And she'd get excited by something else. And so she goes toward that thing. And then once that thing got to a certain point, she would pivot and start with this new thing. And I want to be clear that it's not, it's not wrong, she was paying attention to where she wanted to be pulled and was honoring her her direction, about about things like it, you can work on multiple projects at once, and you can pivot and if something is no longer enjoyable, you can stop it like that.

 

That's perfectly fine. Everything she was doing was fine. But she was aware of this pattern that she had. And so she signed up to work with me because she wanted to finish this book finishing was it's like this book kept getting put on the backburner. All of these other things in her life were very important. Everything felt of equal priority. And the book was always the thing that got pushed, and she knew she would just be in this pattern of working on it a bit and stopping working on a bit and stopping if she didn't get some support and some accountability.

 

And so that's one of the things that we really worked on. And again, I'm, I don't want to share too much about any specifics with clients. But writing a memoir is a very vulnerable thing to do. It's, it's extremely vulnerable, writing it, but also the idea of letting anyone read it. So much more so than a novel than any piece of fiction because you are infusing yourself into it. It's your story. It's your relationships, it's your truth. And that is scary for a lot of people. I think that's why when a lot of people say that they want to write a book in a general sense, I have found that a lot of people want to write a memoir they want to share about their life, but they never do it. And I think part of that is because it's very hard. It's very hard to examine your own life. And to be honest, that's part of the reason why I have never really started on any sort of memoir project is because I'm not ready, I'm not ready to go excavate some of the shit that I went through, I'm not ready to look at it. And and to process it on the page. Like I'm just I'm not there yet.

 

And so that was part of why this person was having so much trouble writing her memoir is the idea of people perceiving her looking at her story. And the fact that because of some things that she went through, there's the chance that people might look at her differently. People online people in her real life. So all of this comes back to this fear of being seen. And yes, there were a lot of other fears that went into it. I'm giving you the like, Cliff Notes version of this is a cliff notes. I just had a brain fart. It's Cliff Notes, right?

 

Anyways, the summary will give you a summary, a high level overview. I'm gonna Google that after this episode. But that's really what it came down to is this fear of being seen of her story being seen her work being seen her being seen, because especially with a memoir that you're writing, where you don't really have a platform, meaning that you don't have like hundreds of 1000s of followers, you're going to have to do a lot of promoting it, which you'd have to do anyways, even if you did get a traditional publishing deal, but there's more work on your end when you don't have those things. So that was going to be required, that was going to require a lot of her. So it just it made sense. Like it made sense that she was having trouble. It makes sense that the coaching or the coaching client who wants to fixate on her website, instead of posting on social media, it makes sense for me with wanting to start the separate accounts, it makes sense.

 

So I think one of the biggest things with this fear of being seen when we look at our behaviors when we look at the decisions that we're making out of fear. Self Compassion is so fucking important. Because I could have easily looked at myself and just been like, what an idiot. Katie, like you already announced to people that you were going to switch your accounts and split them. You already announced that you were going to start posting personal content on a different page, you already changed your username, like what the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so like wishy washy on this?

 

And I could have internalized all of that. And I did for like, 5%. But then I stopped, it was like, Okay, let me just have compassion for myself. Because I know more. Now I know, things that I didn't know before, when I made that decision. And that's the truth of it. So I think the self compassion part is really important and looking at what is motivating us. So for you, if you have a suspicion that there's a lot more going on underneath the surface for you that is driving your behavior. Look at okay, what is my motivation for doing this thing for doing X, Y, or Z?

 

Is it truly this thing that I'm telling myself that my brain is telling me? Or is it possible that there's more going on, and it might be kind of that fear based decision? Again, it makes total sense that we have this all of us do to some extent, it's just a matter of like, getting comfortable with that fear. Maybe recognizing that we're not going to ever completely get to a place where that fear goes away. But just being okay with it, for me, bringing this fear out into the light and really examining it, and looking at how it has, honestly driven a number of my decisions over the past few years, I can understand that and have compassion for that part of myself, and just continue to work through it. That's really all I can do to try to rewire those, those thoughts and those beliefs in my brain, and to also get my nervous system on board like to get my brain, my body, my nervous system, everything, to a point where I feel safe showing up as my authentic self, where I feel safe, sharing on this podcast, sharing on social media.

 

Putting my writing out into the world that I feel safe doing, all of those things are mostly safe anyway, because again, maybe that a little bit of that fear will still be there. But yeah, it's I'm gonna, I'm gonna recommend when you lend to y'all, if you if you got triggered by that whole like celebrity, like she helps people become celebrities. Or if you have a suspicion, maybe there's some work that you need to do to get comfortable with being perceived by a lot of people, then you can look into her work. She's got a podcast in a ton of great like social media content.

 

And, yeah, it's it's just been so helpful for me to look at all of this stuff and examine where I still have work to do. And this is not new. I mean, I've talked about this on the on the podcast before, when I did that post, like an influencer challenge for a month, there were things that I wanted to share, but I didn't feel comfortable or like styles of like vlogs. I've talked about vlogs before where I feel like I'm still learning how to do vlogs in a way that are interesting. And so my vlogs like when I do them don't get many views at all, which is fine. It's part of the process of like, improving and getting better and figuring out when I watch vlogs what makes me want to watch them.

 

But when I was doing that challenge of posting like an influencer for a month, I did have some judgment and some mindset stuff that came up about some of my content. So that was interesting to see. And I knew that's that's what it was. But yeah, this whole splitting social media accounts like it just was mind blowing to me. So okay, that is that is the sneaky fear. Gotta watch out for we've got to be, we've got to be willing to sort of like befriend that part of ourselves, that does feel scared.

 

Because I really feel that for a lot of us success, achieving the things that we want. It's all on the other side of this, it's all on the other side of fear. So if we can just continue to work on these fears to continue to put ourselves out there like, we'll get there eventually. I would just hate for myself or anyone anyone listening to this who has big dreams and has big goals and you really want something great for your life. I would hate for this fear of being seen to be the thing that stops you.

 

You know, okay, I feel like I'm getting a little bit like motivational speaker ish, but it's true. That's how I feel and I'm gonna continue to work on my shit. I hope that you continue to work on your shit as well. We've all got it as people as creatives. And yeah, we'll we'll see how this goes with with posting more content on my main account and just like being more vulnerable and showing up as my authentic self. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. All right. Thank you for listening. I hope this is helpful. And I will see you all next week.

Katie Wolf