There are moments in my life when everything feels alive. Words come effortlessly. Insight feels very generous. Energy moves through me as if I’ve stepped into a current that already knows where it’s going. That is what I call being in flow. And then—without warning—it disappears. The current slows. The words retreat. I begin questioning myself. My abilities. My legitimacy. I start flagellating myself inwardly, replaying old doubts, wondering whether any of it was ever real to begin with.
I accuse myself of laziness, of fraud, of having imagined the whole thing. I reach for distractions. Netflix, Noise. Anything to escape the uncomfortable silence. And underneath it all is the familiar, merciless question: What’s wrong with me?
For a long time, I believed something had broken when this happened. That I had failed the flow. That I had somehow been expelled from the very thing that once carried me so naturally. But I’m slowly learning something kinder—and truer. This dry spell is not a collapse. It is more like a rebirth. It feels awful because rebirth always does. It dismantles identity. It dissolves certainty. It asks us to lie still while something deeper rearranges itself beyond our control. If I fight it, it feels unbearable. But if I am slowly learning something kinder and truer is brewing, this dry spell is not a collapse; it is more like a rebirth. I feel awful because rebirth always does.
It dismantles identity; it dissolves certainty and identity. It asks to lie still while something larger is rearranging itself beyond my control.
If I fight it, it feels unbeatable, but if I accept it, it stops waging a war against myself.
I can sense something quietly forming beneath the discomfort.
Quiet is not punishment, it is preparation. Old ideas are composing.
Growth doesn’t always feel expansive; sometimes, it feels like contractions.
Emptying self-doubt is a place I feel debilitating and out of control.
I am learning not to abandon myself here, not to rush silence, not to measure my worth by productivity or by creative output
Instead, I am learning to bow to this phase to trust that the same force that carried me into the flow has not left me. It is still present even when it feels invisible, especially then.
Please share your strategies when life goes south.