WRITING FOR PERSONAL GROWTH

Liberty's Ladies    Laura Cerwinske

 

Modern psychology is based on the therapist’s recognition of the stories taught to us by our parents, teachers, clergy, and peers and of their effects on us. Out of this tapestry of history and values, we began, as children, to weave our own story, subconsciously accepting certain threads we’d inherited and rejecting others. Eventually the stories we swallowed and digested began living in us, governing our emotions and choices. They became the stage for enacting our beliefs. The more we identified with our stories, the more power they gained to shape our view of reality. With this power we continue to subconsciously enroll everyone we encounter into believing our stories just as we do.

Even Sigmund Freud likely recognized that what he was doing was very close to literature. He wrote, “Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues—[in] their knowledge of the human heart they are far ahead of (others) because they draw on sources not yet accessible to science. . . . With hardly an effort, creative writers . . . salvage from the whirlpool of their emotions the deepest truths, to which others have to force their way.”

Words hide the world.

They blur together elements that exist apart,

or they break elements into pieces,

bind up the world,

contract it into hard little pellets of perception.

But the unbound world, the world behind the world –

how fluid it is, how lovely and dangerous.

At rare moments of clarity,

I succeed in breaking through.

Then I see. I see a place where nothing is known,

because nothing is shaped in advance by words.

There, nothing is hidden from me. 

            Steven Milhauser. “History of a Disturbance.”

It makes no difference whether the story we tell ourselves or the world is “true” or not, healthy or unhealthy, constructive or destructive, tragic or romantic, debilitating or liberating; as long as we are unconsciously immersed in it, the story runs our lives. To whatever degree others’ stories color our own, they too are running our lives.

The nature of the role in which we have cast ourselves is irrelevant. Regardless of how we see ourselves  -- as the good child, the happy wanderer, the loyal friend, the outlaw, the martyr, the perpetual parent, the perpetual child, the hard worker, the heroic survivor, the perpetual victim, the die-hard rebel, the serious thinker, the devoted lover, the responsible citizen, or the free spirit -- we have invested our role with tremendous power—the power to define us and guide us, the power to destroy us, and the power to heal us.

Scientific, logical, linear, or left-brain thinking, which is based on the objective weighing of fact and detail, calls on a mode of seeing devoid of imagination. Myths and legends, on the other hand, which are nonliteral, nonlogical, and imbued with imaginary color, texture, and detail, cannot fully be understood without entering into a right-brain or metaphysical state of mind.

The subconscious mind is purely literal. It stands ready to follow the orders our conscious mind sends it, regardless of their degree of emotion or veracity. For example, the subconscious perceives no distinction between jealous rage and simple doubt; both represent equal commands to annihilate.

We fear uncensored, wholly passionate expression when we subconsciously believe it will either irreparably disrupt our lives or bring harm to the object of our thoughts. We also resist writing out our raw feelings for fear of seeing them recorded in black and white. The very thought of making intense emotion—or even minor anxiety—concrete can easily deter us. Yet only the safe acknowledgment of our most repressed or unacceptable thoughts will free them from the subconscious and drain them of their power. When we write in an undirected way (i.e., using an explorative process such as I teach), we find not the facts, but the fiction—the stories—that lead us to the truth.