by Rosanne Bane
But as Taylor points out, recovering from her stroke meant the Peanut Gallery, as she calls this peanut-size patch of cranky neurons, started to natter and nag again. Aware of the Peanut Gallery’s propensity for negativity, Taylor gives permission for this part of her to whine only at specified and limited times during the day. Persistently noticing what thoughts she’s entertaining keeps the Peanut Gallery in check.
“Having said that, however,” Taylor acknowledges, “I am often humored by the scheming antics of my story-teller in response to this type of directive. I have found that just like little children, these cells may challenge the authority of my authentic voice and test my conviction. Once asked to be silent, they tend to pause for a moment and then immediately reengage those forbidden loops.”5
If Taylor’s conscious focus falters, “those uninvited loops can generate new strength and begin monopolizing my mind again . . . I have also found that when I am least expecting it—feeling either physically tired or emotionally vulnerable—those negative circuits have a tendency to raise their hurtful heads.”6
Success Story
Even though author Jacquelyn B. Fletcher has known about the concept of the Saboteur since college, and learned to recognize and respond to variations on the “You’re not good enough” theme her Saboteur prefers, and has even written about the Inner Critic for Writer’s Digest (November 2005), she can still be surprised by her Saboteur.
Laughing gently, she says, “It absolutely helps to know about the Saboteur, but it’s still a surprise when I discover, ‘Oh, I’ve totally sabotaged myself again.’ I used to believe it when my Saboteur said I wasn’t good enough. I sent work out too quickly and I couldn’t stand up when I got feedback. I tried to please everybody and ended up destroying a couple of pieces because I wasn’t confident enough in my own abilities.”
As Jacque learned to respond to her Saboteur more effectively, how she saw that part of herself changed. “It used to be Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. I got a Gollum action figure at Target and when it said, ‘My precious,’ in its creepy voice, I’d get chills, but I’d laugh at myself and keep writing. But then it became something that was even more terrifying—it looked a lot more like me and said, ‘You’re not good enough.’ It was me saying that to myself, in a strange way. And because it was more like me, it was harder to get around. It seemed like it was telling me the truth.”
Jacque has shifted from the old, adversarial relationship she once had with her Saboteur. “Now it’s this little monkey, something I should have compassion for as a creature who is not as evolved. It was a spiritual evolution. When I’m aware of my Higher Power in my meditations, I can see that I’m really just this human wrapping around the Divine inside of me. So I have more compassion for the human part of me because it’s just doing the best it can.”
Meditation is a big part of how Jacque keeps her Saboteur in check. “I think the novel I just finished is one of the most mature pieces I’ve ever done. I finished it by doing meditations around, ‘Okay, monkey mind, shhhh.’ Treating that part of me like a little baby was how I could bring my writing to that new level.”
Jacque has also designed her own “PhD program” in children’s literature (to follow the MFA she earned at Emerson College in Boston). Reading dozens of children’s books every week highlighted that her Saboteur was lying when it said she wasn’t good enough. It also increased her ability to discern where her writing was strong and where she can improve her craft.
Jacque advises, “It’s vital that you develop ways to cope with the Saboteur. If you don’t, the Saboteur will push you away from your writing for your whole life, and you’ll end up on your deathbed without doing what you intend to do. We have these skills and talents for a reason, and that reason is bigger than our insecurities and fears.”
Know Your Enemy
As Jacque Fletcher pointed out, the Saboteur can and will morph. If you’re to have any hope of responding effectively to the Saboteur, you need to recognize its many guises. Your Saboteur will be unique, but there are five major forms to watch for: the Attacker, the Enticer, the Protector, the Innocent, and the Unlucky.
When people think of the Saboteur, the Attacker is what usually comes to mind. This is the hypercritical voice that nags, threatens, insults, judges, denigrates and disparages you. But as painful as that is, the Saboteur can do worse: it can disguise itself with one of its softer, subtler faces so that you can’t tell when you’re being self-destructive and undermining your creativity.
The Enticer is the smiling face of the Saboteur that reassures you that everything is okay and your goals will be magically fulfilled without needing to face challenges or exert real effort. The Enticer deals in fantasy and lulls you into inaction.
The Attacker sucker punches you; the Enticer soothes. The Attacker rages and screams; the Enticer whispers in your head. The Attacker predicts rejection, disappointment and doom (based on your assumed failings as a writer); the Enticer promises a sweet tomorrow you don’t even have to work for today.
This form of the Saboteur will sweetly sympathize, “You’ve had a really hard day. It won’t matter if you:
“Skip Process today.”
“Take the day off from writing.”
“Relax in front of the TV or with a computer game instead of going to the Y.”
“Have a cookie, just one, just one more . . . well, you may as well finish the bag now.”
“Wait until tomorrow; there’s always tomorrow.”
The wide-eyed Innocent form of the Saboteur watches in stunned surprise when creative endeavors don’t go as planned. This voice will say with all apparent sincerity, “How could this happen to me?”
While the true innocence of recognizing what you don’t know and asking open-ended questions is essential to the creative process, the Innocent face of the Saboteur is a calculated pretense. True innocence is open to growing through experience; the faux innocence of the Saboteur has no intention of changing or letting you get unstuck.
Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.” The Innocent claims it doesn’t have the information or experience to know anything for sure, and since it never knows better, it never lets you do better.
The Innocent deals in denial and inaction. Terminal indecisiveness makes it impossible to take action and move forward, therefore guaranteeing that your creative dreams will remain unfulfilled. And all the while, the Innocent will shrug and say:
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I can’t figure this out.”
“Maybe I should wait until I’m not so confused.”
“I wish someone would help me.”
“It’s not my fault; I didn’t choose this.”
The Protector form of the Saboteur promises to keep you safe from rejection, criticism and failure. Of course, it doesn’t admit that this safety means isolating yourself and your writing so that you also remove yourself from opportunities to receive acceptance, encouragement, discerning observations that could help you improve the writing, and, ultimately, success.
While the Attacker disparages your ability to ever finish anything worthwhile and the Innocent pretends you don’t know what to do, the Protector encourages you to keep tweaking, editing and rewriting. As long as the writing is a work in process, it can’t be criticized or rejected.
The Protector sounds like it has your best interests at heart and croons like an overprotective mother:
“There’s no sense in rushing to rejection. Make sure you do everything you possibly can before submitting it.”
“It’s too risky. Wait until you have a better shot at winning a contest.”
“Why set yourself up for failure? You know how awful it feels when someone doesn’t like your writing.”
“Be careful who you show your writing to. Hang back and
see what happens first. Oops, now it’s too late. Well, maybe next time, dear.”
“Maybe I should take a break from keeping a journal until I feel more secure.”
Sometimes sabotage comes in the form of accidents, injuries, illness, even relationships. Of course, sometimes an accident is just an accident; even Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But when the term “accident-prone” comes to mind, when there’s a repeating pattern behind the injuries, or when you end one unhealthy relationship just to get into another, consider the possibility that the Unlucky Saboteur is at work.
Please note that I am not making the New Agey assumption that if something bad happens in your life, you caused it. I don’t think people get cancer, for example, because they “wanted to create that for themselves on some level.” Misfortune is not a sign that you’re sabotaging yourself. But your Saboteur can and will make the most of any misfortune to interfere with your writing. And it will emphasize how bad your bad luck is and ignore the positive side of any situation.
The Unlucky deals in disappointment and dejection. It will heave a huge sigh and say:
“What’s the point?”
“Someone else has probably done it before.”
“Publishing is all about who you know, and I just don’t have the connections.”
“Someone will steal my idea.”
“I just can’t catch a break.”
The Unlucky Saboteur is a real inner Eeyore, and listening to it will only make a sad gray ass out of you.
Five Faces, Four Characteristics, One Goal
You need to know these four key characteristics of the Saboteur.
The Saboteur Always Lies
Sometimes the Saboteur will tell outright, bald-faced whoppers, adopting Hitler’s Big Lie approach—tell an outrageous lie loud enough and frequently enough and people will believe it. Often the Saboteur twists a partial truth to create a lie, for example, “Three magazines have rejected my piece (true), so it must be a bad idea (not necessarily true), and I’m a complete failure as a writer (lie).”
The Saboteur loves to draw false and hurtful conclusions from incomplete information. The Attacker and Unlucky Saboteurs exaggerate the negative aspect of any situation and dismiss any positives; the Innocent refuses to recognize truth; the Enticer uses fantasy and inflated positivity against you; and the Protector says, “I told you so. Better not try that again.”
The Saboteur Is Never Satisfied
No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you accomplish, no matter how much good your friends and allies see in you, it will never be enough for the Saboteur. This is the unending litany of, “You’re not good enough, smart enough, published enough, credentialed and degreed enough, recognized enough, persistent enough, witty enough, young enough (or old enough).” Unless, of course, you’re too good, too smart, published too much in this genre, too credentialed and degreed (overqualified and out of touch), too famous, too persistent, too clever for your own good, and too young (or too old).
Whatever you do, it’s not the right thing. You could spend hours every day for months making fabulous progress on a novel, and your Saboteur will say, “It’s been months since you’ve even looked at your poetry. Oh, and your family hates you now.” Whatever you are, it’s not the right thing.
Sherri H., another writer in my writers’ group, was afraid that her experience as a journalist would interfere with writing memoir, while I was concerned that without a journalism background I wouldn’t be able to conduct the kind of interviews that made other brain books effective. The Saboteur wants us to see everything about ourselves as bugs and flaws—but the truth is, all these things are features and strengths. The real truth is that Sherri has strengths she gained as a journalist that she can legitimately claim in her grant application and leverage in her memoir. I’m not writing the kind of brain book other authors write, and I bring experiences—like my years of coaching—to this book that other authors couldn’t.
The Saboteur Knows Where You Are Vulnerable and It Always Goes for the Throat
After all, your Saboteur is you, so of course it knows what will hurt the most. If you lean toward perfectionism, your Saboteur will point out each and every mistake you make, taking particular glee in those that have gone out into the world already so you can’t easily correct them, and insist that if you can’t do it perfectly, you shouldn’t even try. If you have doubts about your credibility, your Saboteur will highlight other people’s credentials, insist you really should get a more advanced degree, and constantly tell you that you’re a fraud. The Saboteur will attack wherever you are most vulnerable and afraid.
The Saboteur Is Never Going to Go Away
It’s like the Tar Baby in the B’rer Rabbit stories. The more you try to reason or argue with your Saboteur, the more entangled you get. Fighting the Saboteur is like playing a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole—just when you think you’ve figured it out, the Saboteur will morph into a different form and use different techniques. You can’t get rid of the Saboteur and you can’t control it.
But you can learn to respond so that the Saboteur no longer controls you. Every time you respond appropriately, you reduce how much influence the Saboteur has. You can reduce how frequently and persistently it will show up, but you can never assume it’s gone for good.
The Saboteur is at its nastiest when you take action to further your dreams. So you may be tempted to appease it by giving up on your creativity, hoping that if you don’t rock the boat, the Saboteur will stop attacking you. And it might. Giving in to the Saboteur can provide temporary relief. As you block your creativity and lose awareness of who you really are and what you really want, the Saboteur usually gets quieter—for a while, anyway.
But the ultimate cost of trying to appease the Saboteur is diminished self-esteem, unfulfilled dreams and feeling spiritually disconnected and confused. Worst of all, the Saboteur never really goes away. It’s only quiet for a while, and when it returns, it is stronger and more vicious, like a junkyard dog that’s been rewarded by your timidity. You only wanted to get the Saboteur to stop criticizing you, but appeasing it has fed it. It’s like a mythical monster that seems to get bigger and more powerful no matter what you do to fight it.
Vicious or seductive, innocent, protective, or unlucky, all forms of the Saboteur have one common purpose: to keep you from writing by making you miserable and destroying your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Don’t Give In and Don’t Give Up
Your Saboteur won’t go away and it won’t play nice. But you’re not going away, you’re not going to abandon your writing, and you don’t have to play nice either.
You don’t have to let the Saboteur run and ruin your life. Your best strategy is to observe your Saboteur closely. Notice which faces of the Saboteur are most active in your life.
Which forms show up most frequently? I see the Attacker and Enticer forms more than the Innocent, Protector or Unlucky. Learn to recognize your Saboteur’s voice—is it nasty, seductive, baffled, condescending or whiny? Take note of the kinds of things each of Saboteur’s five forms say. Highlight key phrases. Pay attention to the habits and behaviors your Saboteur uses to delay or inhibit your writing. Learn to recognize your Saboteur—the faster you recognize it, the less havoc it can wreck.
It can be a relief to recognize your Saboteur. After all, the Saboteur always lies, so when you recognize the voice of your Saboteur, you know what it says is simply untrue. Alerted to the Saboteur’s presence, you’re willing and able to take corrective action. One of the best ways to challenge the Saboteur is to refuse to accept its lies as truth.
Another effective strategy is to refuse to let your Saboteur call the shots. Ignore its demands. The Saboteur is never willing to be ignored, so it takes a bit of effort to keep telling yourself, “That’s just my Saboteur; I don’t have to pay attention
.” But it is possible, and it’s liberating to know what’s going on. When you remind yourself, “Oh, that’s just my Saboteur,” use the same neutral tone that you’d use to observe any other frequent but unimportant occurrence. Ignore its suggestions. Just keep doing what you set out to do.
Do not let the Saboteur detour you from honoring your commitments, no matter how sweetly—or viciously or bemusedly or patronizingly or despairingly—it talks to you.
Success Story
John Drozdal used to have “pretty much every excuse possible to avoid writing or, worse yet, to cast aspersions on my ability to even write at all. ‘It’s too late in the day; it’s too early in the morning; I’m too tired; I need to clean, do the dishes, shower, make a pot of coffee, check the baseball scores, call my therapist, and run a marathon before I am ready to write’ were common thoughts running through my head.”
John named his Saboteur Sergei because it bears a striking resemblance to Boris Badenov, Rocky the Flying Squirrel’s nemesis. “Boris’s preoccupation was to ‘give squirrel bad time,’” John recalls. “Sergei enjoys giving me an equally bad time about my writing.”
Once John recognized that this was his Saboteur talking and that, as far as Sergei was concerned, there would never be any hope of writing today, tomorrow or ever, John was determined to change the old delaying tactics.
“When I sense Sergei is paying a visit, I simply greet him before he does his mischief. I say, ‘Hello, Sergei. I’m much too busy writing and don’t have time for your interruptions, so kiss off.’ It usually works, and he goes back to his underground abode.”
John is done with excuses—Sergei still suggests them of course, but John’s not buying. “The biggest accomplishment I gained from facing my Saboteur is the ability to keep consistently showing up for my writing commitments. I’m convinced every writer and creative person has a Saboteur. I encourage other writers to get acquainted with their Saboteurs, learn their behaviors and how to head them off at the pass.”