Day 8 Writer’s Block

[Carl]

I swear this program is reading my mind! I did some journaling this morning and struggled with getting anything written down. I wrote, “I don’t want to seek out anger when I don’t feel it with great ease. But maybe that’s important. Perhaps I need to dig deep, finding the unconscious rage I buried long ago. Maybe that’s the key to healing”. It’s a weird feeling when you’re otherwise having a good morning, to take time, for lack of a better term, to intentionally get mad. But that really is where progress happens I believe. It’s not all about the conscious, although it’s important to feel the conscious rage while it’s there instead of bottling it up, but you need to dig deep into the unconscious and give yourself space to experience that emotion as well. Today’s activity gave me a second wind with my journaling. Writing in the third person as if I’m writing a biography about myself helped immensely with seeing a different perspective on my pain, my unconscious rage, and what healing looks like. I’m really seeing more and more that the environment I was raised in forced me to overcompensate my emotional regulation abilities, to the point where I didn’t feel emotion. I mistakenly thought my entire life that nothing would happen with that, and those emotions would never bubble up to the surface again. Now, like many others before me, my unconscious has hit the safety relief valve that is chronic pain to avoid actively feeling those emotions. This journey of convincing my mind that it’s okay and safe to feel those feelings will definitely be a long one, but something I believe I can do!

 

[Diana-M]

You got it, Carl!