Keeping the Demons of Self-Doubt At Bay.

Survival Techniques For When The Self Shit-Talk Gets Rough.

Tim Crossland-Page
3 min readMay 4, 2023
Photo by Dalton Smith on Unsplash

If there is one thing I’m good at, it is the art of toxic thinking.

It is 05:20 and I’m awake. I have work in a few hours. And I lie there and my mind starts to spin.

I get up. Drink a coffee. Take some deep breaths. Check my bank balance on my banking app. Again. Why? It’s no different to when I checked it yesterday. I’m flat broke. Getting out of debt is a long process.

I tell myself again that there’s no need to check the damn thing every day and worrying won’t make the time required to fix things to move any faster. Then I ponder, is this just another form of self-criticism. That I’m not being positive enough about the situation. That I need to be more zen and pay attention to the moment where everything is fine and quiet and well erm quite lovely actually which lifts my spirits a little momentarily at least.

I move on. The next thought is I’ve started writing again. I read some great articles last night. Much better than anything I can produce. Who do you think you are publishing your dross. And your titles are lousy. And who is going to read it anyway?

I’m currently writing in a bit of a nicotine deprived haze. Giving up smoking, nicotine…

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