What Happens When INFJs and INFPs Fall in Love

When I was in my 20’s, I fell madly in love with a guy and ended up moving across the country for him. We were together for three months in Seattle before he broke up with me and started dating someone else. A couple of friends had moved out to the West Coast with me, so I wasn’t totally alone, but I was still devastated. Not only over losing the guy, but also because it seemed like no one else around me understood what I was going through.

This had been a pattern before the Seattle-guy breakup, and it continued to be a pattern afterward. For a long time, I assumed that I was too sensitive, or that I got too attached to people. For a while, I just thought something was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I get over people as fast as others did? Why did it take me a year or two, or an even longer amount of time, before I wasn’t actively in pain over a relationship crashing and burning? And maybe the weirdest thing of all, why did I still FEEL the energy of the person long after we had ceased to speak or even glimpse each other in real life? Continue Reading

When Writing Isn’t Fun Anymore

I was working with a new client who had come to me because she said she hated her writing life. As I sat with her on Zoom and asked her questions about her writing, I watched her face change as she described how she used to feel about writing when she was much younger, and how she felt about it now.

She looked troubled, and sad. And also confused. Why was writing so hard for her now? she asked. She didn’t understand why it felt like pulling teeth to sit down and crank out 500 words. Writing had always been something she loved. She didn’t understand why it now filled her with so much dread.

As we dug deeper into the layers of her problems with writing, the truth became more and more clear. Continue Reading

Step Into Your Power as a Writer (Stop Being Afraid to Promote Yourself!)

Although most writers are well aware that they struggle with a fear of failure, many writers don’t realize that they also harbor a fear of success. For a lot of writers, the thought of being a successful writer carries with it the assumption that they will have to promote themselves and their work in ways that make them uncomfortable.

This is understandable, because marketing can be scary. When you put yourself—or your work—out there in the world, you may experience rejection or negative comments, or you may just feel more exposed than you ever have before. This is why the thought of marketing makes most writers cringe. Continue Reading

Are Your Writing Dreams Sitting on Hold?

The choices around publishing these days are probably some of the toughest choices a writer has to make. We’re all familiar with the first big choice between going the traditional publishing route or deciding to self-publish. However, even after that choice is made, many other choices follow.

One of the biggest roadblocks to writers deciding to self-publish is the sheer amount of information and options that are out there in regards to self-publishing nowadays. There are many different companies that make a lot of promises to help writers self-publish, and there are also many different ways do everything entirely on your own. This is usually where writers get stuck. It’s like trying to pick one good movie out of the bazillion options available on Netflix. At some point, your brain goes into overload and shuts down, and then you just want to forget the whole thing. Continue Reading

Write a Book that Serves the World (This Works Great for Procrastinators!)

Over the years, I have worked with many writers who dream of writing a book that will help serve humanity. Much of the time, the writer has experienced some sort of deep trauma, gone through a healing journey because of that trauma, and then come out on the other side with a unique perspective on everything they experienced. Usually in these cases, the writer realizes that what they’ve learned could greatly benefit others who are currently going through the same sort of trauma they experienced, and that the best way to get this knowledge into the hands of other people is to write a book that contains all of the insights the writer learned the hard way.

However, it can be confusing to write this kind of book that serves the world when you have no idea what direction you need to go in to even start. Some writers feel it’s important to include extremely personal pieces of their own journey (memoir), and some want to focus more on learning strategies for the reader (self-help). Some feel like they might want to do a mix of the two, but they’re unsure about how to pull that all together. Continue Reading