Introducing your number one creative enemy

9Jan2009 Filed under: Beat your creative block, How to be happy, What shall I do with my life? Author: John

If you’re creatively blocked, if you can’t work out what you’d really like to do with your life, if others’ criticism cuts you to the bone, if you’re haunted by negative visions of the future, or if your mood takes a dive at the smallest trigger, there’s one culprit behind it all.

It’s the number one enemy of your creativity (and your happiness). And the enemy is inside of you. It’s a subpersonality referred to in Gestalt Psychology as the Top Dog.

The Top Dog is the part of you that says the most damning things:

“You can’t write to save your life”
“So now you want to be a starving artist?”
“You’ve always been useless with money”
“You’re mad to change career in a recession”
“If you start a business, you’ll lose your house and end up on the street”

And if it doesn’t come out as words, you might see images in your mind or feel sensations in the body which represent the same message.

When you believe and obey these messages, you limit your creativity, your happiness and your life.

Others call Top Dog the internal critic but I find it more helpful to name it as a separate subpersonality. And “Critic” suggests it might give some constructive criticism. The Top Dog’s messages are not constructive.

The Top Dog grew inside you as a child with repeated messages from your parents and other significant authority figures.

You see, the same people who taught you important things like “don’t run into the road” and “keep away from the fire” also taught you less useful ideas like “all artists are broke”, “you have to sacrifice your happiness to be successful”, and “no one enjoys their job”. The most charged of these created your Top Dog.

Now these messages are a deeply ingrained habit within your own mind. And the first step to conquer it is to recognise it.

What messages does your Top Dog give you about your creativity and your work? Leave a comment and I’ll come back to this topic to help you get a leash on the beast.

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5 Responses to “Introducing your number one creative enemy”

Teresa McCrone
January 9th, 2009 at 1:09 PM

Yes, my top dog thinks work is pain too. Interestingly, when I get on with it (work) I mostly enjoy it. Even dull things I can find satisfying. But i haven’t yet learned how to stop my top dog de-motivating me.
Julie Shackleton
January 9th, 2009 at 6:20 PM

My top dog tells me to stay in my job of 19 years as its safe and secure and pays the mortgage. In the words of my father when I failed my MAths O’Level many years ago but got A for ART. “What can anybody do with art?” I think I’ve being trying to find out ever since for myself when i am clearly a creative and capable person.
Lynne Smith
January 10th, 2009 at 8:08 AM

Interesting topic. I’ve got a feeling Top Dog has been in operation most of my life, without me even knowing it was at work! I have had many ideas that have excited me about what to do for work - and then the inevitable, and now exceedingly familiar, feeling of diving to the depths of hopelessness within three days of the original impulse - TD bringing in all sorts of objections - you’re not pretty enough (ahem!! I know that’s not the sort of thing a woman who has come through the feminist movement should still be concerned with!), you haven’t got enough money to do this, you’re not intelligent enough, you don’t have any staying power, is this REALLY what you want to do?, what’s the point you won’t make it to any great degree, you are too soft and you don’t have enough drive etc. etc. The list is actually extraordinarily long, maybe even infinitesimal, and would take billions of pixels to record. Somewhere in TD’s childhood he was probably deprived of his PAL Meaty Bites and decided to eat into us instead!
Karen Field
January 10th, 2009 at 9:46 PM

I think I get many messages from Top Dog… But I share one with Lynne which crops up time and again - ‘is this really what you want to do’. In fact, I could repeat most of Lynne’s post and it would be applicable to me too!
Jay Versluis
January 14th, 2009 at 2:06 PM

The Top Dog is a vicious one! I first heard about it in therapy, and getting the concept of it solved a lot of hassle I had with how I saw myself and others. Like John says, not everything that the Top Dog says is getting me down - that’s why it’s so hard to spot him!

For example: he can say “you’re fat and ugly, and you’ll never be a success”, he tells you “I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to get hurt”. The difficult bit is to distrust the wolfe in sheep’s clothing.

Once I had learnt which voice this is, and which suggestions not to trust, my life became so much happier. I hadn’t realised how much and how often this voice would get me down, getting me sad and depressed, all under the disguise that it’s apparently “better for me”.

I fought him with heavy weapons, but that just made me sadder, angrier, and more depressed. So I sat down with Top Dog for a chat. I acknowledged his presence, and I acknowledged messages that at one point in my life MIGHT have been truthful, but aren’t necessary anymore. More so, that aren’t working for me anymore. Doing the opposite of what Top Dog suggests (i.e. “stay away from people, they’ll hurt you”), I tried the opposite. It worked, and seriously turned my life around.

Great post, John!

about this blog

This is the personal blog of John Williams, author of "Screw work, let's play: How to do what you love & get paid for it" to be published by Pearson in June 2010.

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