Is Anyone Going to Read This?

It may seem slightly absurd that I am opening my blog with this question. But there’s a reason I chose to begin here. Right before I publish a piece (including this one), I always wonder if anyone is going to read it. I wonder if I am just screaming into the void. And I know I’m not alone. So many writers doubt whether or not their work is important. Today, I want to talk about why fear and self-doubt are so pervasive in our community.

When I listen to writers talk about their work, I can feel their invigoration. I can feel their excitement. Just as I am preparing to bask in the thrill of it all, something changes. These words seem to tumble out of every writer’s mouth:

This project is probably a pipe dream. No one is actually going to read it.

Whoa.

How can we be so thrilled about our work one moment, only to squash that dream with our next breath?

Please hold for a moment while I put my therapist hat on…

Ok, I’m back.

From a therapeutic angle, when we ask ourselves: is anyone going to read this? We are really saying: I don’t know if I matter.

Let me break that down.

If we have ever received a message around our lack of worth, then we can expect to hear from a part of us that wonders if our voice has a place in this world. Publishing a piece of writing (whether it is a blog post or a book) unearths so much raw emotional material. We are choosing to do something incredibly vulnerable and scary. Of course this action provokes our deepest fears to rise to the surface.

Sometimes we wonder if we are worthy because we had caregivers who also wondered if they were worthy. This is a very common response to intergenerational trauma. Even if we had parents who would never say it to our faces, the belief that we don’t matter can be passed down subliminally. It’s in the way our mothers accepted jobs well beneath their intellectual capacity and suppressed their rage. It’s in the way our fathers shoved down their pain so they could adhere to an impossible gender construct. These experiences shape our sense of reality.

And that’s only one of the many paths that can lead to self-doubt.

Society also reinforces this message on the daily. Since we live in a world that is overflowing with injustice, we are conditioned to believe that some of us matter more than others. We are explicitly sent this signal from birth. For those of us who hold one or more marginalized identities, this feeling of unworthiness is intensified. It can feel almost impossible to speak out in a world that wants to keep us quiet. In this respect, society assumes the role of the ultimate perpetrator. It wants to break us down so much that we end up silencing ourselves.

That is exactly why we must prevail.

—

Deep down, I think that we know our stories matter. I say that with confidence because otherwise, we wouldn’t be writers. So, how do we start to heal the part of ourselves that questions our worth?

We reframe the belief system that took us down this road in the first place.

The phrase I don’t know if I matter is actually a code. It's true form is: the world told me I don’t matter. And that’s a huge difference.

This redirection is crucial. The moment we take the heat off ourselves and place it back on society, something starts to shift. Even as I write these words, I can feel my initial feelings of self-doubt beginning to morph into something different. Something powerful. Something with purpose.

If the world told me not to matter, suddenly I’m angry. I want to do something about it. I want to share my truth even more.

I want to write.