Crikey, check out that self-doubt complex: A personal adventure in search of self-belief

by Beck Ronkson

Manuscript, 2019

Status

Available

Call number

MANUSCRIPT RONKSON, B.

Collection

Publication

Process Oriented Psychology Australia New Zealand Process Oriented Psychology Inc. Australia, August 2019

Local notes

https://www.processwork.edu/files/Finalprojects/Ronkson_B_August_2019.pdf

“You don’t have anything to offer. You don’t have anything to offer other than your own self-absorption”. Meet Sharon, my inner critic. She had a few words to say in the process of getting to this thesis. It took a long time to get to this point of acceptance that I was going to be the topic of my own area of research. Incidentally she also likes a costume change, and has a few friends that she likes to call in from time to time to get her point across. She’s very resourceful.

When I was dreaming of this thesis, I wanted to create something original, to offer something to the world, to have an impact, to effect some change. It was my self-doubt process encapsulated – an extremely tall order, immersed in a process of high dream
obsessing. As such, it became loaded with pressure and tension. Enough to strangle nearly all my creativity.

Then one day I spoke to an Indigenous colleague of mine, and he reflected on how stories play such a significant role in Indigenous culture. He mentioned how they are given a story, and that they grow into their story, they discover new parts, they live it more deeply as time goes on. He spoke of how their relationship to it changes throughout their life, as they get more and more intimate with the story they’ve been given. I’ve not been given a story, but it grew an idea, that this thesis was part of my story, growing in me at this particular time in my life. I live this story – it is my lived experience, my own personal action research. It has
been and is, embodied. In Australian Indigenous culture, “embodying things becomes part of our living knowledge” he said. It really struck me.

Amy Mindell puts it succinctly when she says “The process paradigm would say that it is only through hindrances that we learn to follow ourselves and the Tao. To be truly congruent you must notice what is happening inside yourself even in you think it is
ridiculous and only your process”. I realised that perhaps the story was it. It is a story of my living knowledge – of what I’ve come to know and how I’ve come to know it. It captures a moment in time, and the fact that my colleague spoke to something deeper is poignant in hindsight.

Barcode

RON001
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