Dealing with self-doubt can be an important skill to learn as a writer. While doubt often feels like a negative experience, it’s actually arguably a natural, healthy one. Once you properly understand doubt, the trick is to keep it from becoming toxically unbalanced.

Quite a while ago at this point, a follower asked me a question that related to self-doubt.

Now, I’m certainly not a psychologist or a therapist or anything like that. But I’ve certainly been plagued by self-doubt as much as probably any writer–and when I was starting out, likely even more.

I definitely don’t know everything on the subject, and if you are dealing with legit trauma, you’ll probably want to go to a professional.

With that said, I think my views on it may be useful to some people. (They are also useful for me to revisit.) And I know there will be some people who disagree with what I say–and that’s okay. No one has to agree with me on everything.

But maybe you will learn something new.

Because we all deal with self-doubt on occasion.