The Artist's Way

He wrote, “I, Paul, am a brilliant and prolific writer.”
From deep in his unconscious there erupted a spewing
torrent of self-abuse and self-doubt. It was numbingly
specific and somehow familiar: “You’re just kidding
yourself, a fool, no real talent, a pretender, a dilettante, a
joke ...”
Where did this core belief come from? Who could have
said this to him? When? Paul went time-traveling to look for
the villain. He located him with great embarrassment. Yes,
there was a villain, and an incident he had been too
ashamed to share and air. A malevolent early teacher had
first praised his work and then set about a sexual seduction.
Fearful that he had somehow invited the man’s attention,
ashamed lest the work really be rotten too, Paul buried the
incident in his unconscious, where it festered. No wonder
secondary motives were always a fear when someone
praised him. No surprise he felt that someone could praise
work and not mean it.
Boiled down to its essentials, Paul’s core negative belief
was that he was only kidding himself that he could write.
This belief had dominated his thinking for a decade.
Whenever people complimented him on his work, he was
deeply suspicious of them and their motives. He had all but
dropped friends once they had expressed interest in his
talents; he had certainly stopped trusting them. When his
girlfriend, Mimi, expressed interest in his talents, he even
stopped trusting her.
Once Paul brought this monster up from the depths, he