Lying - Guilt & TMS

[RikR]

To have something to do in my retirement I decided to get back into freelance writing for magazines and newspapers, which I have done years back. In October I attended a writers conference to update my contact skills and met a young man whom I started mentoring.

The longer I have known him the more I found out he has pretty severe TMS symptoms, especially insomnia, bad foot and leg pain and neck/shoulder pain and it is getting worse. I just last night shared the TMS work with him and he is slightly open to the possibility.

What I also found out that he has never really been a published author and has had to pad his resume and blow a lot of smoke at editors and make promises to companies who are going to supply him with products to review (his area is in cooking so he is getting cooking equipment to review).

So he tells the companies supplying products he already has publishers for the articles and gets the free media samples then has to pitch his articles to editors in a highly competitive market (probably less than 1% of articles presented to a magazine or newspaper by a freelancer will get published). He is concerned that the companies that sent him the free stuff will come back on him if he cant get the reviews/articles published.

So last night he did a Freudian slip and told me he is concerned about being found out that he is a fake. So I asked him how he handles this fear.....he said he runs faster...hmmm and your feet are killing you?

I know this man is a very kind person and he wants to do the right thing but he is flat out lying to start his business. He admits to having some guilt but also says he has to do denial to get started as no one gets published without a track record...which is pretty true.

I have seen his work and he is a very good writer and deserves a chance at this career and I understand that it is darn hard to get started.

I think I know this answer but I would really like the veterans opinion: will lying, fear of being found out and guilt cause TMS??

 

[RikR]

As I pondered this I know that many of us with low self esteem and were wounded had to create a false persona which is also a form of a lie.

I did in high school as we were very poor and I even walked to a bus stop a mile away so no one would see where I lived.

What do you think of living a false persona lie and TMS?

 

[Lori]

Since ANY conflict can cause TMS symptoms. . .

 

[Barbara M]

Hi

yes ... Definetly ... That is exactly how to get sick.

Barbara

 

[Leslie]

All comes down to pressure, internal or external, it's all the same and the end result is pain.

 

[BruceMC]

"We should only look in mirrors, because mirrors do but show us masks"

To badly paraphrase Oscar Wilde!

Writers always construct a persona when they write; it's called their voice. Interesting too how people construct a false persona to deal with tyrannical battling parents and then live with their fictive constructions the rest of their lives. Makes you wonder how much the process of writing has to do with skills you learned as child to confront a hostile or dangerous world, doesn't it?