273 | The Roots of Imposter Syndrome -Part 2

In Part 2 of our conversation with counselor and healer Madaline Blau, we move from understanding imposter syndrome to learning how to work with it in the body.

Madaline guides us through grounding practices and shares a powerful 10-minute guided visualization designed to help you return to your truth, your courage, and the deeper steadiness beneath your storytelling.

If you haven’t heard Part 1, start there for the full arc of this conversation. Then come back for this beautiful, restorative close to the episode.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Welcome back to the Screenwriting Life. If you haven't heard part one of our conversation with Counselor and Healer, Madaline Blau, we recommend starting there. It lays the emotional and creative foundation for what you're about to hear. 

Lorien: In the second part, we move deeper into the body, the nervous system, and the subconscious patterns that shape imposter syndrome.

This half of the conversation gets incredibly practical as Madaline walks us through grounding work, how to recognize self-sabotage, and how to return to our creative center. We're picking right up where we left off in a moment where everything we were talking about started to register physically for me.

Let's jump in. I'm aware that probably other people might be feeling this as well, listening to this. And, you know, I've worked with you before, so I am, I sort of knew what to expect. So I just wanna pause here for a second and recalibrate. 'Cause I, I feel like I took a lot in intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and so I need to figure out how to do that so I can get to the… so I can keep listening.

Madaline: So when you feel that…. Everything going up, that's adrenaline, right? Shooting up the next stage is to get outta the body, to be able somewhere to feel safe. So when that's happening, if you're in a meeting and that happens, right? You're doing a pitch, you're doing any time that happens. Begin to widen your eyesight, which means start, you can look ahead, but you look more to the side, the peripheral vision.

'Cause what happens when we become adrenalized is we become, we only are looking forward because we're looking to either fight or flee to get away. When you begin to let yourself look to the sides, and you can put your hands literally out to the sides, or imagine where they would be if it's not convenient for you to put your hands up in a meeting and just, just make sure that your hands, you are really seeing what's to the side of you and do that.

You'll notice that what happens, it sends a message to the amygdala in the brain. You're safe and it will stop the message to the adrenals to pump cortisol and adrenaline, and it'll start pumping noradrenaline, which is what neutralizes it, and you'll come back. The other thing to do is concentrate your attention into the bottom half of your body.

So if you're sitting in a meeting and it's getting heady for you. And it's and and you don't really have the right to say, Hey, I need to pause. That was a lot. I need a moment to digest some of this. That's another thing you can do. If it's in a personal conversation. Hey, that was great. I need a pause.

Give me a moment. You can focus yourself into the bottom half of your body. Nobody's gonna know, but you're sitting there listening, but your attention now you're bringing it back to you. So if you just now. Just anyone who's listening, just let your eyes soften and just begin to let yourself slowly take in what's, what's to each side of you.

But you can see out of your peripheral vision and just take that in and just kind of notice what colors are to the side of you. You don't have to name. You don't have to know what the objects are, but just the colors, you'll notice that that begins to shift your heart rate.

Things start coming back more into a present rhythm at the same time. Just allow yourself to imagine that you're in your pelvis. You really can feel your pelvis and your thighs and your knees and your calves, and your ankles and your feet, what you're sitting on, and just feel what it's like to be there.

That's, that can be your pause where you're pausing right now that we're back and grounded. 

Meg: I think it's important when we talk about this topic to talk about perfectionism and failure. Um, I think it's a lot of reasons that we drop back into fraud or syndrome or feeling like that because, well, we failed or we're not perfect and therefore there's a misunderstanding about that.

Madaline: I think anyone who decides that they want to write has to. Has to come to terms with failing is to be an artist. You have to fail over and over and over and over again until you get until that click that, hmm, that truth finally hits. You have to be willing to make mistakes. You have to be willing to go down the roads that may give you one little piece of it, but not the whole thing, and going there leads you down to the other place.

So you have to be willing. It's, it's just the cost to play is to be able to make mistakes because you can't grow and you can't deepen without that. That's how we learn. 

Meg: Why do you think that we sabotage ourselves? Why do you think that? I've met a lot of writers who've done it. They as if to just to pull themselves back down.

Madaline: Yeah. So you may be born to be a writer or an artist. You may be very afraid of being seen or existing, or you grew up in an environment where it wasn't safe to exist or to be known, and so you feel more comfortable hiding. I'm giving you just one of many, there's a million different reasons why people sabotage as an, I'm just thinking of ones, really major ones for artists is that.

Being a successful writer puts you out there, you end up on book tours or you end up, you know, in screening rooms, speaking to audiences and, and writers a lot of times, because your midwives, you were trying to, you were bringing something else into the world. You weren't meaning to bring yourself into the world.

So when it become, it can be that if it becomes too focused on you. When that isn't really your calling, the calling is to bring through these other, I'm gonna call them beings. 'cause I think a story is, it has its own life. It's a, it's alive. Once it's brought into the world, it has its own specific audience and ears that it's meant for, which also we should talk about as far as timing.

There's so much pressure in our culture in a Western culture to produce. And when you have to produce, and when you think about what we were meant, our schools were designed to have us be able to work on an industrial manufacturing and to produce things identically. If it wasn't identical, it wasn't perfect.

It wasn't about originality. It was exactly the opposite. So we've grown up in institutions that have instilled in us that in order to be of value, we have to be able to produce. I call it, you know, being the me, a member of the, of the cult, of the goddess of Perfecta. And to take yourself back from that cult is not an easy thing to do.

You may lose your whole support system to become you again, right? To have the right to be sovereign, to be separate and exist and have your own value system, to have your own voice, to have your own desires, to have your own dislikes, to have your own limits, right? To have your own path in life. If that's really scary thing to do, you may sabotage the mean any means that.

That could lead you to that. And it's not conscious, it's subconscious. 'cause all these things are really in the get pressed into the subconscious. 

Lorien: We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. So I have a question. Um, in terms of imposter syndrome manifests in so many different ways, right? Yeah.

Hypothetically, there are women who are told they're too much, too big. People run a run away from us because we're obnoxious or overly confident or brazen, or whatever those words are that they might, I'm talking about myself. I come across as very confident, you know, and I talk about myself as a joke about how powerful I am, right?

Um, and I realized. That. Uh, for a long time I was craving being in environments where there was a strict, strict rules about how I was to behave, and I felt very safe and I learned how to operate within those systems very successfully. But I understood what the rules are and. As a freelance writer in Hollywood, it's different and it's difficult and everyone has their own culture, every little pod, every producer.

So it's harder to understand how to navigate this stuff. And so I find myself trying to calibrate how much and being afraid of that power that I do have and, and it, and I, and I sabotage in those ways. 

Madaline: I would say this, that I think everybody can relate to, 'cause it's human. When someone tells you you should do something, what's your response to that?

Lorien: No, resist, don't tell me what to do. 

Madaline: Yes. And in any cases when someone tells you, don't do that, what do you do? I do it but in a different way. Or you do it louder or bigger. Maybe, right? Yeah. Because they're telling you not to exist, right? The way you are, the way you want to. Some people will shy away from that, and some people will go on the attack and say, fuck you.

Lots of different kinds of ways of responding and whatever works, if it work, whatever works for you, you're going to start using more and more of. 

Meg: I wanted to make sure to touch on something. Um. When we talk about culturally, the thousands of years that women having power has been, you know, dangerous, literally physically dangerous, and all of which I, I agree with and feel, um, and maybe it's because I used to work for an actress, and so I got every famous woman's story that ever came in.

Right. So, and you started to see a repeat, which is Well, she was victimized. Well, she was victimized Well, she was victimized Well, she was victimized Well, she was victimized. Well, she was victimized. And after a while you're like. And like, and she did what? Meaning how do we as women or people who have suffered trauma of being disempowered, which can be many different people, how do we acknowledge, honor that sacred, um, experience and yet go to the second step?

To me, the story is the second step. The victimization is the situation. That you're in, right? That's the stuff that you're in,

Meg: But the story is how you reacted, had agent found, agency found to respond to it. So as we're claiming our, um, the situation or the culture or the voices in our head as we're claiming that, as we're connecting to it, hearing it, acknowledging it, I feel like there's gotta be a second step to your own heartwood.

Madaline: The body is this miraculous transformation machine. Anything you put into it, you can transform on multiple different levels, right? Organically, inorganically. But here's the thing, Meg, when you can't admit what happened, you can't transform it. So to say that what happened? To say this was done to me, puts it back into the body.

Into the miraculous transformation machine. Once it exists, then the body can begin to digest and turn it into something else. You are wanting to, you're wanting that second step. So the first step is to acknowledge that this happened. That's what, that's what happened in the story, right? That's background.

Or maybe that is the story sometimes. I would think, going way back to what Joe was saying at the very beginning about instinct. What is the, what is this story wanting to bring forth? What is the aha? Which is actually the hope, right? What is it that needs, so the question would be, what is it in this story?

What this, what is the medicine that this particular wound needs? What happened is the wounding, what is the particular thing that needs to happen for the BO for this to be able to transform and return to its place of innocence? Because what we lose when we become a victim is we lose our innocence. Not to be confused with naivety.

Children are naive. They don't know anything. We want to learn and become wise and we only become wise through experience. It can't be taught, it's through experience, but what we never want to lose is our heartwood, which is innocence, which is universal. That innocence 'cause that innocence is, is is the capacity to love.

So what in that can bring this person back to a place? They're capable of love again, of themselves, of others, of finding a way. What is that piece? Because really at the core of hope is love. 

Meg: And in terms of the imposter syndrome, maybe a word that I would use for innocence is presence. Like just to be present with it and present with your heartwood.

Madaline: That's why it's so important. Presence. That's why. Right, because it brings you back into in touch with your center. 

Meg: Right. Versus overthinking it like me. 

Madaline: Many years ago I was at, um, an initiation that for years the Dalai Lama was doing these enormous initiations. It wasn't anything, I wasn't special.

You could go to Pasadena, you could buy a ticket, go to Pasadena and sit for hours and hours and days and, and go through an initiation. Which was a real thing. I mean, you could feel the energy in the room even if you couldn't understand the, the words, the prayers that were being woven into a field that would transform the whole audience's joint field.

And during, and so there would be these like prayers that would go on, and then the Dalai Lama would give a lecture for two or three hours. And the one thing I took away from the initiation, which I've said in class many times, was his definition in, in, in Buddhism, the definition of of laziness. And the definition of laziness.

They have two things, one. Is because, because they believe that inside of you, your heartwood is a latent Buddha. Your, your Heartwood is the unrecognized Buddha in this realm. You've come here to become a Buddha in this dimension. Most cultures have some way, uh, of sharing that mythology if you aren't working on becoming the Buddha.

Specific Buddha, meaning your real self, dot, dot dot, which is a Buddha, then you are just being lazy. I was like, okay, well I have to rethink these VA I took to be a Buddhist and because I don't know if that's where I wanna end up, but couldn't hurt. Then the second thing is. It's not nonstop. Doing 

Meg: busyness is the highest form of laziness. I do remember that.

Madaline: So that's really important because how you can tell when you're being an imposter is you're being very busy. You're filling your life rather than being in your life, being yourself in your life. If you're just writing, writing, writing, and it's not connected to anything that matters to you, chances are it's coming off of your effect.

It's, it's a, it's a, it's a distraction away from the Buddha writer, the Buddha that you are, which is here to impart these stories into world, to bring this. Stories are medicine that you bring into this world. I am not gonna name names. I'm just gonna say years ago in class, one of my students who is a producer, an independent producer, had been working on this project and it was already nine years and she came up to me after class and she was.

Uh, really confused about not being able to get this. It would just, it would come together, it would fall apart. You know, Hollywood come together, fall apart, come together, fall apart, come together, fall apart. She's like, I think I'm gonna give it up. And, and what should I do? And I'm not taking credit for this because I wasn't thinking it, it came through me.

I said, you have to understand that you are a midwife. That a story is alive and it has its moment that it is meant to be here on this planet to help those in this time of the Earth's evolution. Stories have their own timing. Your job is to make sure that it gets born. You don't get to choose when it gets born.

You may at seven months say, I'm done being pregnant, but sorry, the baby isn't cooked. It's not coming yet. And she just looked at me and I'm like, I'm just saying it's your choice. No guilt either way. I mean nine years long pregnancy, several years past, she decided to continue to not give it up. She invited me to a screening of it and she came up to me after the screening and she said, I know why it took so long, and I said, why?

She said, because the main actress wasn't old, had to be old enough to play the part,

and that is Whale Rider. So think about that. As you're writing your story, understand that you are shepherding this into a world for people that you may never know. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, who was, you know, desperately trying to get him to do portraits and do the art of the day, and Van Gogh wrote back to him.

He said, you don't understand. I'm not painting for these people. I'm painting for people that aren't gonna exist for hundreds of years. He was right. I'm sorry. He didn't get to benefit from it, but he knew who he was. He was surrendered to who he was to his authentic self. 

Meg: When you talk about if you're busy, busy writing, writing, writing, that might be a sign that you're not attached.

I would add to that. Sometimes even when you're in those busy writing, your brain kind of needs to move through that. Like if you're very busy writing, writing, writing, but it doesn't, nothing's connecting. It's sometimes static that you have to move through. And then I really do believe even in that static, you'll get a ping.

Mm-hmm. Heartwood and then that's where the choice is made. Am I gonna go on with the static I, because I wanna stay a victim of my stories never work and I'm stuck. Or do I wanna just be daring and go, what was that ping? It's not at all what I said I was gonna turn in. It's not anything but what was that?

And that to me is the work of the artist. That's where, 'cause there's a lot of static sometimes, I don't know, for myself, sometimes I just have to talk and talk and talk her. Right. And write and write because I, I'm, I'm disconnected. And yet I trust that instinct just to go back. That it, a ping will come if I just keep going.

But I also, to be fair, I also can get wrapped up in what I need that they want and how I, you know, how do I do give, give everybody what they want in terms of this story. And that is also the bravery of. Uh, yeah, my manager. Just telling Joe and I, the most important thing is, is it authentic to you? That's the most important thing. The word courage comes from the French, and it means to be with heart, to act from heart. 

Lorien: Right now in the industry, you know, we have a huge contraction of available jobs of. Shows, movies being purchased, being made. Like it's this constant narrative from external voices of, no, no, it's not gonna work, and I have to make it work. So I am figuring out how to do that.

Madaline: Right. 

Lorien: But that is such a trigger for. See, I'm not one of these special people who already knows everybody and has all these opportunities and, and has an agent, and all these people. It's not the, these people who are professionals aren't even doing it. How could I do it?

I am getting from emerging writers and. I tell them, well, it's all nonsense and make believe. You gotta keep doing it and keep showing up and figuring out creative ways to like stick with it as I'm telling myself that. Um, but it feels like a way to let fraud syndrome, imposter syndrome go like sleep told you you're never gonna make it bail.

Madaline: Well, imposter syndrome and or feeling like a fraud is driven by fear. The opposite of fear is love. Right. It's hard to connect to love, which is inclusive forgiving of, of not being special enough, right? Um, and so the first thing to do is to say, I'm scared. 'cause now you're back in your transformation machine.

So you have to at some point decide that. Yeah, I'm gonna feel scared. I'm gonna think I'm not enough. I may not be enough. This time has nothing to do with the future. Next time I may be enough, or maybe this time I'm gonna learn something that's going to help me the next time. I'm committed to being me, and it's okay for me to be scared to be me.

Let me just pause and say, I'm feeling really scared of being me right now, and I just accept. I'm scared of being me. And then ask yourself just for now. 'cause we're not really talking to the conscious mind. We're talking to the subconscious mind. Would I be willing to just, just for now, let that dissolve that energy?

Because thoughts and feelings are just energy. It's all they are that are coalesced around an idea. It's just energy that you're molding into a certain thing. Would I be willing to let that dissolve, melt, soften, or let go? And inside you may wanna say yes, but you may hear no. But you'll notice even when you say no, that you may soften something, will let go.

And then the next question would be, uh, and this is part of, it's a donor method, it's an old teaching from the seventies process. Would I, would I, if I could. And the answer may be, yeah, when now, and you may feel a shift and you may need to do that three or four times. And then also the resistance. Can I, can I just like for me, 'cause I, well tend to wake up in the morning adrenalized.

'cause I have a lot of nightmares. So I'll wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh. Okay, can I, and I just wanna get into my day. Instead, I stop and I say, oh, can I just accept that I'm in resistance of feeling what I'm feeling right now? I'm in resistance of feeling the fear, because when you act over it, that busyness, the avoidance is resistance.

It's an attempt. It's actually an attempt to control yourself. Control what's actually happening, which takes you away from yourself instead of being in yourself. To be authentic is to say, this is where I am. When you accept it, yeah, I can accept that. I can accept that, you know, I'm not enough. Could I let that dissolve?

Always go with the answer that it is because no release is just as good as yes does, and we need to be able to have hear our own inner nose because it may be being able to say no to you. That even though you so desperately want to say something different is you finally standing up in yourself for yourself.

Meg: Yes. Very powerful. 

Madaline: That's the inner practice that then is going to be able to make its way out into the world with others. Yeah. One other thing about storytelling and about women and stories, not just about women that are victims, but stories where people are being victimized and finally being able. To say I have been victimized, right?

Already is one step out of fear because you've all, that person has been having to, or has been resisting, being able to feel that they were, what it actually felt like to them to be victim rather than intellectually. What we tell ourselves a victim feels it's very different and it's very. Unique to each person in each situation.

You know, we are all like snowflakes. We're we're uniquely made. And so when we go through a situation, even though the same thing may have happened to 10 people, each one of them is going to experience that slightly differently and hold it differently in their tissue. 

Meg: Madaline, you, when we started before we came on the recording, talked about a piece that you thought really held the, the, such a, a powerful version of this fraud syndrome topic. And we will put this a link to this so that you don't have to worry about writing it down as she talks. You can literally be present in your heartwood and listen. 

Madaline: So this is a letter, a snippet of a letter that Martha Graham wrote to Agnes Demill who was deciding whether she should quit being an artist or not. And this is what Martha wrote to her. 

Meg: And they were both female choreographers just to, they were. 

Madaline: There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. Because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique and if you block it, it'll never exist through any other medium and be lost.

The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours. Clearly and directly to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction, whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. 

Meg: Pretty amazing. And Madaline, when I first met you. I don't know if you told us that 

Madaline: a zillion years ago.

Meg: Years ago I, you told me that and I had it over my computer. Uh, 

Madaline: Really? 

Meg: So it's very special and I believe it wholeheartedly. Madaline has generously created a visualization for us today. For those of you who would like to participate in this kind of exploration. 

Lorien: Just a heads up that this section is a guided visualization, so please pause if you're driving or out in the world, or plan to operate heavy machinery while listening to this, and then come back when you can and sit somewhere quiet and safe.

Madaline: So find a place that's comfortable for you. It could be sitting in a chair. It could be lying on the ground or your bed. Or leaning your back against a tree.

Once you find that space, take a moment to just settle in.

Feel your body being supported by whatever you have chosen to be on

gently that feels comfortable for you. Close your eyes so you can bring your attention inward.

And just begin to focus your attention on your breath.

Just allow yourself to feel your breath moving through your nose, down into your chest, and perhaps your belly. No strain. Just following your breath, gathering your attention into your own rhythm of now.

Notice how you're physically feeling in your body and welcome, whatever you feel how you are. Is exactly right for you right now.

Continue to focus on your breath.

And now gently take a deeper breath and imagine that with this breath, that each whore in your body, we're breathing in and out.

Take another gentle, deep breath and let yourself feel the space you are inhabiting at this moment. As if your breath were gentle waves melting into your flesh, through your pores, permeating your whole being,

it another slow, deep breath and just allow the air to move through you.

And again and again,

and as you sink into this quiet rhythm of breathing, allow yourself to begin to imagine. That you are becoming the air you are breathing.

Imagine that all the traces of your body, your mind, your name. Your age, your responsibilities that you carry are dissolving into the vast expanse of space surrounding you until

you are the heir that is flowing out of the room. Out of the building

beyond the city and even the sky, like a gentle breeze that moves you into this vast darkness beyond our sky, beyond where there is light. Until you are floating in a sea of warm, safe darkness,

in fact. You are the darkness and the gentle warm darkness is you

air. You have no name, no sex, no responsibilities attached to being in any form. You just exist as vast, spacious darkness.

You may notice how it feels to be completely supported. In this warm, dark, peaceful pace where it is almost as if something else is breathing you in and out.

You have no will, no ambitions, no weight. Just a gentle sense of spaciousness.

You notice what it's like to have no identity and not be alone, but to be a part of this gentle, vast space.

As you float, notice that you become aware of something, drawing you into a kind of awareness. We could call it attention, a sensation that seems to be gathering you and pulling you towards a destination somewhere below you, a sensation that is akin to your curiosity.

Allow yourself to begin to follow that, pulling that curiosity.

Notice that as you do something wondrous begins to happen. You begin to experience yourself inside a pulsing body, still floating in a warm darkness. You become aware that as you are coalescing into this space, you have the memory of being a rock. A tree, a snake, a fish, a bird, a mammal with four legs, and then you begin to feel yourself forming into a mammal with two legs and two arms, shedding gills, webbing fur.

You are beginning to take on form. Not only form, but images and sounds and sensations going back generations, just like you did with the rocks and trees, snakes, birds, mammals, your organs are forming with all of these memories of your ancestors'. Evolutions all twisted into the double helix of your DNA.

This human form, you are becoming filled with their knowledge, stories, histories, hopes, dreams, dying. This goes on for months until the day comes when you leave the darkness and enter into this world at this moment in its history. And inside of you in this new flesh, heart, nervous system, you carry with you all the memory of your ancestors, the rocks, the trees, the snake, the fish, the birds, the four-legged mammals, the two-legged.

All these memories of these. Your ancestors are born with you and all of their stories into this moment in this world's evolution. They're there in your consciousness along with the memory of the deep, dark floating world. You once were so graciously floating in. You don't have a name for it yet, but you can feel how you are a part of everything and everything is a part of you.

This is who you are. You are this being, coming from afar, carrying all these stories of all you have been along with all the stories of your human ancestors, those who long to have their stories remembered for this world at this time in its evolution, so their children will remember. They're not alone, never alone.

They are part of a very long story that is still unfolding. This is who you are. The bridge between that which came before that, which is here now, and that which is yet to come. And even when this sensation, this knowing fades in the hustle and bustle of taking on your new name and with it all, the ambition will need that may come with it.

Pushing this instinct into your own dark and beautiful consciousness enthroned in the four chambers of your heart. You can remember it in the beating of your own heart, your own drum calling to you to remember who you really are and why you have come. Take a moment, listen to your heart beating.

Listen to the energy it carries.

Listen as if it calls you by your real name and is whispering to you why you have come and what story is waiting for you to tell. Live share. Bless this world with This is who you are when you are ready, and only when you are ready. Gently open your eyes and take a moment to let three words rise into your awareness that describe what you are feeling.

Write them down and circle them on your page. And let yourself write down any other thoughts or images or messages that may have come. Whenever you forget who you really are, which is so easy to do, let yourself return to this journey where your heart is waiting to drum you back into yourself. 

Meg: Thank you, Madaline, for that incredible gift to, uh, us and people who will be listening to it.

Madaline: I made many notes. Thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity too. Let what wants to come through come through. 

Meg: The Screenwriting Life is produced by Jonathan Hurwitz and edited by Kate Mishkin. Head to thescreenwritinglife.com to check out transcripts of our recent episodes, TSL Merch, like our I Love Getting Notes notebook or some really cool coffee mugs.

And our premium membership workshop, TSL workshops. We have a growing library of prerecorded workshops that cover all sorts of craft related topics from character want to outlining a feature. We also have two live Zooms a month, Lorien and I with you, where you can chat to us directly about the projects you are working on.

Lorien: You can find us on social media. On Instagram and TikTok, and of course on Facebook we have a private group you can request access to, and it's a really great safe space to talk about all things writing. So give us a follow. We have links for all of the above in our episode descriptions. And if you have any questions, you can email us at thescreenwritinglife@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening, and as always, you are not alone and keep writing.