Every New and Full Moon, I give myself a tarot reading. It’s a way to recalibrate after two weeks of taking action in a particular direction, ensuring that this direction still feels groovy to my soul, and to spotlight any inner/outer resources I might need for the weeks ahead.
My recent New Moon reading yielded some valuable insights about shame, art-making, and manifestation that I’ve been dying to share with you (including a very messy diagram, straight from my journal), so let’s dive in…
📖 For context, I’d just finished editing my romantasy novel—at last!!—and I was preparing for the book-formatting stage.
What arose was a fear of failure as my book’s release date approaches, but you know me—anything surface level is just begging to be excavated with double-fisted psychological pickaxes (blame it on my Scorpio Moon and jam-packed twelfth house). I needed more than simply “fear of failure.”
What, exactly, does failure mean to me in this case?
As it turns out, my first impression was totally wrong, and what I’m actually afraid of is way juicer!
As a quick side note, something I find endlessly fascinating (and endlessly frustrating, at times) about the psyche is that it’s actually possible to not know what I think. Isn’t that kinda funny? I mean, if anyone should know what I’m thinking, I should, right? Apparently not! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I initially believed failure meant negative reactions to the book, but…nope.
For one thing, I stopped reading my reviews years ago after realizing I can’t take that stuff in—either positive or negative reviews—without getting off-kilter and distracted from the work I’m trying to do, so I just don’t do it anymore. I take feedback from editors and writer friends and beta readers, but not The Internets at Large.
Plus, I already know some people aren’t going to like this book. They’ll think it’s too long, too smutty (or not smutty enough), too woo (or not woo enough), and so on. When I sit with this, I’m surprised by how little this bothers me, because I really thought it would! 🤔 Instead, it feels like a big ol’ bucket of things I can’t control, and if I try, this will only distract me from the fun of writing these books.
So, what am I actually afraid of?
What failure means to me is getting disappointed by reality and then giving up, something I’ve done many (many) times, so I have inner parts who are primed for this possibility.
But guess what? There’s more underneath the disappointment! 🧐 So, pull out your pickaxes, and let’s dig through this messy diagram:
We’ll use my Upcoming book launch as an example.
Let’s say I launch my book with certain expectations (many of them unconscious), and these expectations slam into the brick wall of reality, as expectations tend to do.
When my inner parts associated with this diagram (aka, a psychological complex) are active, I walk around feeling brittle, because every little thing gets evaluated based on whether it meets certain expectations. Rather than viewing events as information that I can flexibly choose how to respond to, things are strictly “good” or “bad.”
This puts my parts in a defensive position, always on the lookout for “problems,” and it increases the likelihood that I’ll feel disappointed, which brings us to the next part of the diagram.
My plan is to launch the book on Kickstarter with a low campaign funding goal, and because I’m a brand new romance author and I haven’t yet built an audience for this work, it’s possible I won’t meet that funding goal.
When this complex is activated, not meeting the goal translates to disappointment (understandably), but what’s hiding beneath the disappointment is shame, and the shame feels cringy and embarrassing. 😬
Here’s where the diagram gets to the heart of the complex: The project—in this case, my book—is now linked with shame, and a host of inner parts kick in to help me avoid touching it with a ten-foot pole.
These parts employ all kinds of avoidance strategies, like:
- Getting easily overwhelmed by simple tasks and spinning out
- Getting so frustrated to the point of angry tears
- Feeling suffocated by indecision over simple choices (e.g., which formatting software should I use???)
Do you see how these effectively keep me from furthering this “shameful” project by freezing any action-taking? Which brings us to…
Procrastination is a key strategy, and this gets bundled with:
- Shiny Object Syndrome (i.e., distracting myself with other projects that are, as yet, “untainted” by shame)
- A lack of motivation/enthusiasm for the project, often accompanied by the rationale that I “can’t” work on it unless I’m feeling inspired
When shame is the hidden driver, I might also inflate obstacles or even generate them. For example, if I’m feeling too busy to work on the project, I’ll inflate my busyness in my mind and/or take on a bunch of bullshit tasks to “prove” how busy I am, thereby justifying my avoidance. (Or referencing a point above, I’ll work myself way past my limits, virtually guaranteeing a bout of angry tears and further derailing the project, instead of building in breaks.)
As with most parts-driven strategies, this whole diagram (i.e., psychological complex) tends to bring about precisely what it’s trying to avoid—in this case shame. For example, if I indulge in Shiny Object Syndrome and never launch the book (or I launch it but fail to do any marketing because I’m already moving on to 30 other things), what do I feel, eventually?
Shame. I abandoned a project that was genuinely important to me, and this feels seriously icky.
Sometimes, another part will step in to distance me from the shame using cynicism, a strong ancestral pattern for me. This part will rail against “people” who don’t understand the value of what I have to offer. Really, this is me railing against reality not meeting my expectations, but in a way that absolves me of the responsibility to develop skills, problem solve, etc.
If my book isn’t selling well, I could rail against “readers” or the “world of publishing” or blabbity blah blah. Or I could learn how to write a stronger blurb, get my cover redesigned, run ads, etc. 💡
A few points I find particularly interesting:
Once the project gets linked with shame, it just feels off.
Since the shame is (was) in my shadow, it has the characteristic feel of shadow material: uncomfortable, Other, unwanted, don’t go there. This is the ego’s reaction to psychic content it has disowned, and it acts like a barricade—nothing to see here, folks!
This effectively keeps this material (i.e., me) from changing, so I must be willing to approach what the ego deems unapproachable in order to break out of patterns that are keeping me stuck.
Another point: I’ve noticed that when I transition from one phase of a project to the next (from the first draft to the first edit, for instance, or from editing to formatting), there’s a gap, and the above diagram/complex can squeeze into that gap, causing hiccups.
One way I visualize this is that, with each of these gaps, I’m getting closer to ushering this project into manifest reality, and each time, this encroaches on the fantasy of what the project could be and gets closer to what the project will be.
It can no longer exist in the perfection of the hypothetical.
The climax scene between the protagonist and love interest is no longer a swirl of heart-warming emotions, sparkly hopes, and brilliant ideas; it’s a string of words on a page that may or may not capture what I was going for. To these inner parts, that’s a big no-no! Better to keep things in a state of irreproachable potential.
Every creative project is a stair-stepping from possibilities into actualities, which is synonymous with manifestation. This diagram maps one of my primary manifestation blockers, which allows me to be on the lookout for signs that it’s waking up, things like a desire to procrastinate or using cynicism to avoid taking action.
Your turn 💞
What do you notice cropping up on repeat (thoughts, emotions, behaviors) when things feel stuck? For instance, what do you tell yourself and what do you find yourself complaining about to others? How do you explain what’s not working and what it “means” about you, your work, or the world?
This content is often rich with shadow material.
What tools can you use (journaling, therapy, tarot, meditation, a pendulum…) to help you dig deeper, mapping hidden drives?
Use the lingering energy of Mercury retrograde (great for retrospection) and the Gemini Moon’s ability to parse out connections to empower your exploration.
Happy Full Moon! 🌝
Melissa
P.S. A potent creativity blocker in my own life was enmeshed relationships. If this sounds familiar to you…
You have a heightened sensitivity to how the other person behaves toward you. If it seems like they’re unhappy with you or withdrawing, you feel deeply unsettled and can’t relax until you “fix it.” More generally, you feel like it’s your job to manage their emotional state, perhaps by not doing or saying things that could upset them.
…check out Unblocking Your Creative Flow. It’s a mini course exploring the energetic overlap between creativity + relationships from a Jungian Magic POV.
