I'm the Scholar with Writing Anxiety *insert peace sign emoji here*

I suck at writing things.

Which is funny, because I used to love it.
And I’ve been told that I’m good at it.

But, if you ask me, writing is stressful and a torture. Mostly because I know what I want to say, but my mind becomes convoluted and distracted, it feels the strain of having to force myself to sit down and try to make sense of something that’s complex and that I don’t necessarily fully understand. On top of this, my mind becomes preoccupied with whether I’m placing commas correctly, or if a sentence is grammatically correct. I begin to worry about whether I’ll be offending anyone with what I’ve written, and about all the ways my ideas could be misunderstood. I become obsessed with research, and wildly annoyed if I can’t verify all information, have trust worthy sources and/or read everything that has been written about a topic (which is, by all means, impossible in most cases). Needless to say, I become even more frustrated because I realize that when I visualize my map of ideas, there just seems to be no way of translating those images into words in a way that will satisfy me.

And this is what happens when you struggle with writing anxiety. And for me it’s a double whammy because writing is not just the thing that I NEED to do, it’s the thing that I WANT to do.

It has always been.

But somewhere along the way, writing became painful.

It has caused me anxiety attacks (aka panic attacks) that leave me feeling defeated because I can’t weave the words, structure the ideas or even think clearly. Any writer who’s had writer’s block (although writer’s block and writing anxiety are two different things) knows how much it hurts to stare into a blank computer screen or a piece of paper while knowing that there is so much you want to say, but just don’t know how. It’s also particularly embarrassing for me because I have done nothing but write essays, monographs, critical reviews, and reports for the past ten years.

I even wrote an MA thesis.

I guess that at some point writing stopped being that thing I did to pull into reality my wild imagination, and it transformed into a formula, a strict outline I had to follow in order to please my audience, which in my case, are all the professors I’ve ever had to write anything for.

And this is a problem.

Not just because I am currently in the nerve-wrecking process of renewing my love for writing, but also because I want to write academically sound essays for everyone, not just academia, and writing good academic essays doesn’t necessarily make you a good communicator. However, this addition to my writing checklist only causes me more anxiety.

And I do find amusing the oxymoron​ in all of this, but life just happens to be that ironic.

I am determined​ to be able to write again without feeling the heavy dread of "nor being good enough" over my shoulders and I know I need to make myself just “do it”, otherwise I’ll never be able to reach my professional and personal goals. I hope this blog with help me get on the right track, and it’s why I’m going to upload this ASAP before I change my mind and just erase this into oblivion xP

If there were anyone out there with ideas on how to tackle writer’s anxiety, I’d love to read your suggestions, so please feel free to comment below :)

Just a cute picture of me. And yes, that is a pokemon tattooed on my arm :)