"The next day you were able to write… Was it really that easy?"
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Chris writes: "I was just reading your personal story on your web site with which you touched and inspired me again…. But one thing you told, puzzled me.
"You wrote about how you were Focusing with your writer's block and how you were speaking with the part that didn't want to write. And you were getting this clear picture of being shot at and that was leading you to the feeling you had as a child, being shot at by the sarcasm of your father. And the next day you were already able to write… And then you wrote that book which is a bestseller now.
"That sounds very inspiring; I just thought: Was it really that easy? One Focusing session and all the blocking structures originating from early childhood are gone? I am interested in this question because in my own process a quite similar "father" thing seems to block me and and although I had some helpful Focusing sessions similar to yours, the blocking structures keep coming back and are certainly not that easy to boost away!
"They seem to be very deeply involved in my system and even when I feel that I make progress in some parts of my life, it seems to me that I can`t really get rid of them….
"Can you tell something about your further process with that?"
Dear Chris,
You're absolutely right. It wasn't that easy.
"The next day, writing was easier." That is true. But it wasn't easy every day after that, and it wasn't as easy as I knew it could be.
So I did Focusing (with my Focusing partner) again and again. I returned often to the issue of writer's block. Each time, my Focusing brought some relief, some kind of shift — and each time writing became a little easier.
A few months later I had what I remember as the big Focusing session that brought the big shift. That's how I remember it… but I'm sure it was all the sessions along the way that really did it.
"I don't want to do it if I HAVE to do it." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Focusing session that brought the big change is one I remember like it was yesterday. At the start of the session I invited "the part of me that didn't want to write." I didn't assume it had to do with my father.
(This is important: Don't assume! Long-time patterns are held in place by many interconnected strands. That's why Barbara McGavin and I in the Treasure Maps to the Soul work call them "tangles.")
Even though I was trying not to assume anything, what came in this session took me by surprise because it was so different from what I expected. I felt strong, stubborn energy in the middle of my body. Feisty. Like there was an inner teenager! It was as if she had her hands on her hips and she was saying, "I don't want to do anything that I have to do!"
I could see her point! Who wants to do something if they feel they have no choice? For the rest of the session I simply kept telling her that I heard her. She had a lot to say! But by the end I didn't feel different, and I assumed not much had changed.
Was that assumption ever wrong! The next morning I turned on my computer to try to write, expecting the usual struggle as part of me had to drag another part of me to the chair.
Instead I felt strong, young energy inside me. Teenage energy! And it was saying, "Oh, boy, let's write!"
I guess she finally believed that she didn't have to do it.
