Podcast: The Problem With Feeling Relief
With sue campbell
Why do we crave the feeling of relief—and at what cost? In this solo episode of the Write Anyway podcast, mindset coach Sue Campbell explores how relief, whether circumstantial or engineered, can lead us away from achieving our creative goals. Discover why your inner saboteur pushes for short-term comfort, how avoiding discomfort sabotages your growth, and how reframing discomfort can empower you to tackle your most meaningful creative projects. If you’re a writer or an artist feeling stuck, this episode will help you recognize self-sabotaging patterns and inspire you to embrace the discomfort that leads to growth.
What You’ll Learn
The difference between circumstantial and engineered relief
Why relief feels good but isn’t always good for you
How tolerating discomfort can lead to creative breakthroughs
The long-term consequences of giving up on your creativity
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Do you ever just want to give up on your big writing project and feel the sweet relief of the freedom from it? Well, this one's for you.
Hello and welcome to The Write Anyway Podcast from Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, mindset coach Sue Campbell has some wise words that will help you decide to stay the course.
Sue Campbell: Hey writers, Sue Campbell with a solo episode of The Write Anyway podcast here. Today I want to talk about the relief you feel when you give up on something, when you decide I'm not gonna do that thing. And the problem with feeling relief and the problem with seeking relief. So we give up on big goals like finishing a book or building an audience for it because we wanna feel relief from uncomfortable emotions.
But I submit to you that I don't think relief is a reliable indicator that we've made a choice that's in alignment with our creative goals and with our own personal growth. And I know this is confusing because it pretty much always feels good when we are relieved, but it helps to understand that there are really two types of relief.
So let's just use a non-writing example for a minute. Imagine you find a lump in your body and you go get it checked out and you worry like hell while you're awaiting for the results. And after this knuckle biting week, the biopsy shows that it was benign. And you have this cascade of relaxation through your body as the stress of the idea of having cancer is gone.
I call that circumstantial relief, right? Something that's largely beyond your control resolved itself in a way that you prefer, and then it alleviates your worry or your distress or your discomfort. So writing-related examples of circumstantial relief would be like, you're worried your critique group won't like what you submitted, but when they actually read it, they love it.
Right? Whew, I'm so relieved. Or you're worried that your new book might not be selling well, but you don't know because your publisher hasn't given you any data yet. And then when the report finally comes, you sold way more than you thought. So thank goodness, right? Hallelujah.
But. We can't always count on circumstantial relief. Things don't always go our way. So what do we do? We summon up little doses of relief on our own. So imagine, again, non-writing example. Imagine that you have a job you hate because your boss is such a jerk. So you quit and you find another job and you get this flood of relief of not having to deal with that person anymore.
This is what I call engineered relief. You intentionally did something that caused you to feel relieved, at least temporarily. There are a few writing life examples we can look at. You're like, oh, I'm, I'm gonna write a book. And then you really look at your life and you realize all the changes that you're gonna have in order to make time to do that.
So you give up on the idea of writing a book, and you're like, whew, now I'm not gonna have to work so hard. I'll still have some downtime or you don't like feeling like an idiot, right? Grownups don't like feeling like idiots, so when you try to write something book-length. Maybe you're used to writing things that are smaller.
So when you try to write something bigger, you feel like an idiot and you don't like that feeling, so you give up on the idea of writing something longer and you go back to writing something shorter so that you feel smart and happy again.
Or you can't stand the thought of getting rejected by an agent or getting a bad review, so you keep writing books, but you don't actually publish them because it's way more comfortable to dodge the bullet of risking being judged negatively. So that's engineered relief.
Your desire for relief can self-sabotage you. There's a little voice inside you that I call your inner saboteur, and in those examples of engineered relief, following through on that project is something that could greatly benefit you.
Finishing the book or trying to write something full length if you've written something short, or risking rejection and having the experience of actually getting your book out into the world and having an impact, you could benefit from those things, but your inner saboteur makes you crave that feeling of relief instead, because those things are also uncomfortable.
So circumstantial relief. Remember circumstantial relief is like, oh, something happened to go my way, and that feels way better. That sets us up to think that relief is always a good thing.
But engineered relief is not always a good thing. It's also not always a bad thing. The problem with engineered relief is that your inner saboteur will use that feeling to justify that you made the right decision, whether or not it leads you away from your goals or weakens you. Makes your world even smaller. So you just simply can't trust the feeling of relief or the anticipation of feeling relieved when you're trying to make a decision about a creative project or something that you'll be satisfied with in the long run.
When we realize that relief is not always in our best interest, we can tell ourselves a story that helps us get through that discomfort. Like, yeah, this doesn't feel good, but I'm willing to tolerate this discomfort because I want what's on the other side of it. I want the kind of person I'm gonna become by having tolerated these uncomfortable emotions, and tackled this creative project that's really important to me.
So we crave relief from discomfort. So we'll do almost any self-sabotaging behavior to attain it. That's a problem. Our old stories that we tell ourselves are gonna cause us to seek relief, and seeking it keeps us sucked into our past ways of procrastination and avoiding things that are challenging.
But I also believe that you have a wise inner editor inside of you, not just an inner saboteur. And she'll keep making you think about that creative project maybe for years. If you let yourself off the hook for something so that you can feel relief, but you're actually supposed to do it, your wise inner editor will keep giving you chances to change your mind and get to work.
But she's not gonna do it forever. Eventually she'll give up on you. And in my opinion, that's like the saddest thing that can happen to a writer. When you fought it for so long, you fought the feelings of discomfort for so long that you don't even get visits from the muse anymore.
And the ironic thing is that you go through all of this trouble to avoid this discomfort. And the result of that is discomfort, but of a different sort. You may avoid the acute discomfort of doing the hard thing right now, but you're left with this daily low grade throb of abandoning yourself and your creativity. But we're used to that.
So the paradox is, I love a paradox, if you are willing to tolerate a little discomfort, some acute discomfort, some temporary discomfort, it has the power to heal the chronic discomfort that's come from you giving up on your creative projects.
So I really hope that that's helpful and you look within yourself to see if you are avoiding certain creative projects, because you don't wanna be uncomfortable, because you wanna feel the relief of letting go of something because you don't then have to be in a little bit of emotional pain.
Because I can tell you the job of a writer, the job of an artist is to be willing to tolerate discomfort because it's how we grow and it's how we show other people how to grow, and it's how we make an impact on the world. So if you find yourself seeking relief, I really want you to examine what's worse. The short-term discomfort I might experience by doing something hard and something that feels unsafe? Or the long-term demoralization that happens when I seek short-term relief and give up on myself.
I really hope that you choose the discomfort.
Anne Hawley: If you'd like to hear about Sue's next mindset and marketing programs and get a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway Newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.