First Tool for Emotional Blockage: Writing
The emotional blockage is one of the greatest and most widespread evils of this time in which we live. According to Michael Brown in his book The Presence Process, and I subscribe to it, adults are generally trapped in the emotional world of a child (we could also say it the other way around, that we are children trapped in an adult body): […] emotionally, nothing new happens to most of us since we leave our first seven-year cycle. Although it may seem like we are constantly going through novel circumstances and physical experiences, nothing really changes on an emotional level.
Emotionally, we are repeating every seven years the same cycle that was imprinted on our emotional body during the first seven years of our life experience. When we learn to identify the subterranean emotional current that permeates all our mental and physical experiences, we will see clearly that it only seems that we are growing and that we are having varied and different experiences.
Writing is one of the best unflickers of emotions that I know, and much more so, if you add meditation to it, of course.
This being the case, it is advisable to use all the tools at our disposal to unclogging our emotional sink, and writing (and even more so if you combine it with meditation) is one of the best unclogs of emotions that I know.
Below, I give you some tips that can help you use it in this way:
1. Unintended Writing
Good oral hygiene requires you to brush your teeth several times a day. To have good mental and emotional hygiene, I recommend meditating for a minimum of ten minutes a day and, immediately afterward, doing five minutes of unplanned writing.
In this article, you can read in more detail what what I call “memoir ghostwriters” consists of and the guidelines for you to get started.
Thoughts are a great nuisance to get your emotional world going. Not because there is anything wrong with thinking, but because we use our minds to cover our emotions, which leads us to have mental hypertrophy, while we suffer from emotional atrophy. We are so used to explaining everything with our intellect, that there comes a time when we do not know how to distinguish thinking from feeling.
Unsought writing is an antidote to clarify a little this mess that we have, to learn to distinguish when we are thinking and when we are not, to let go of control, to clean the pipes of limiting beliefs, and open the tap of the unconscious and spontaneity.
2. Use Your Characters
We are emotionally blocked because we are scared children managing a very complex life as adults. We are terrified of being alone, of not being loved, of making others uncomfortable, of breaking the rules, of making mistakes, of things changing… At this level of paralysis, it is difficult to even put the car in first gear to start the car.
What trick can you use? Let it not be you who gets behind the wheel, but someone who is not so blocked does it for you. You invent, completely, a character who moves for you, who does things, who faces what he fears, who can accept changes, who is capable of making his way through adversity.
So, if you feel emotionally blocked, don’t try to write “from yourself”, because then you will get into the swamp of ideas, where nothing ever happens and you can go around in circles all your life. Get out of yourself, put on a costume, and play, like children, cowboys, and Indians, or Star Wars, or The Matrix. Suddenly you are Neo and you were born to fulfill a mission. Deep down, neither you nor I nor anyone else is here by chance: we are all indispensable pieces in the Cosmos, and we have the free will to take the red or blue pill. Awaken to that truth through your characters.
3. Write Down Your Dreams
Another magnificent emotion unblocked is dreams. They already are, because through them we process part of the life experience that we are unable to swallow throughout the day. If we also remember them and extract the emotional message they contain, we will get more out of them. But if we also recreate them in writing, we will do a complete job.
To do this, I recommend that you make a commitment to yourself for a few weeks to write down your dreams. Leave a notebook next to your bed and, when you go to sleep, tell yourself to remember what you dream about and write it down. There will be times when you wake up in the middle of the night in the middle of a dream and you will be infinitely lazy to write it down. That is where your commitment has to act. Write it down even in broad strokes, that will be enough. It is about capturing on paper that moment when we still have a notion (even if it is diffuse) of what we have dreamed of. And then, when we are fully awake, we can try to outline what we have written down a little better.
The most important thing about dreams is not so much the actions or characters that appear (after all, they all represent yourself), but the emotional texture. How did you feel in the dream? Was everything tinged with guilt, joy, sadness…? Do those emotions also permeate your life (or have they done so in the past) to some extent? I also encourage you to draw out sensory details and symbolic objects.
4. Write As if it were a Dream
Continuing with what I said in the previous paragraph, I not only recommend that you write down your dreams, but that when you write (even when you write in your diary, on your blog, or in a Facebook or Instagram post) you do it as if you were recreating a dream, with that sensory and emotional quality. In dreams everything is intense, nothing goes unnoticed, and every detail seems to have a meaning within it. There is something very lucid about dreams, even if we classify them as “not real”, or even crazy or absurd. But, as a great Buddhist teacher says: “Life is like a dream, like an illusion, and towards those who do not know it, I cultivate compassion.”
If you write anything as if it were a dream, that will unblock you emotionally, because emotions are implicit in that type of symbolic recreation.
5. Write a Letter
Ninety-nine percent of emotional blocks (and I say this from my experience) have to do with conflicts in our relationships. The conflict can be with our partner, children, a friend, a co-worker, a family member… It can be with living people or with people who have already died. If you find that your block is related to a person, I encourage you to write to them.
It is not about writing to him with the intention of sending him the letter, but as an exercise that allows you to integrate what you feel. Thinking about sending the letter could block you even more, and besides, it is not the objective. It is important that you feel free writing.
Some additional tips:
- Don’t turn the letter into a string of reproaches. Talk about yourself and what you feel, taking charge of it, instead of talking about the other person (which would be mere speculation).
- Write as if you were speaking out loud to the person. Don’t try to get formal or literary.
- Don’t get too reflective or abstract. Try to go to the concrete. Talk about situations, memories, experiences… And introduce concrete elements (actions, gestures, objects, places…). You can also add metaphors.
- Try to transmit emotions through the written voice (tone, modulations, cadence…) and not in an explicit way.
6. Write an Experiential Diary
Writing a diary is a very healthy habit that we should all have, especially those of us who have some inclination toward writing. Writing every day will keep you connected to your emotions — whether you want it or not.
I add the adjective “experiential” to “daily” because we have a certain tendency, when we write a diary, to reflect. And there may be some reflection, but what will help you most to unblock yourself is not writing reflections, but experiences.
Throughout the next two points, I will tell you two keys to being able to do it.
Avoid “abstract” writing and try to make what you write “seen. ”
7. Transform Experiences into Images
Avoid “abstract” writing and try to make what you write “seen.” If you want to express “sadness” in writing, for example, find something visual (or sensory) that for you has to do with sadness.
In the case of the diary, I would tell you: if you feel the need to explore sadness or anxiety or any emotion that causes you rejection or with which you feel blocked, do not start reflecting on it in writing, but go to some of the things that have happened to you that day in relation to that emotion. Whatever happened to you, visualize it, and then put in writing what you have visualized, without trying to “explain” it. Just show it.
And how can you show it? Well, read on.
8. Use the Coordinates of Place, Time, and Action
To show something that has happened to you throughout the day (and that, in turn, carries an implicit emotional atmosphere), present it as if it were a scene from a movie, in real-time. Frame it in the coordinates of place, time, and action. Even before you start writing, you can make yourself an outline of this type:
- Location: the kitchen of my house.
- Time: 15 minutes.
- Action: I lost my temper with Luis due to his lack of support in things around the house.
Next, tell what happened in a way that allows the place to be seen, the passage of time to be perceived, and the actions and dialogues to be understood. That is, and I put this in capital letters, DO NOT WRITE AN INTERPRETATION OF WHAT HAPPENED, but simply narrate what happened.
Don’t go to the extreme of narrating it in an “objective” way (something that, on the other hand, is impossible). Allow the way you tell it to be infused with what you feel, but do not express what you feel explicitly or make value judgments.
9. Look for Change
I have said before that the emotional world is, by its very nature, energy in motion. It is our resistance to living it as it is that keeps us blocked, and in a state of emotional freeze.
When you write something in your diary, for example, a scene from the previous day, let it evolve, don’t keep it frozen as a still frame. For this, you still have to use your imagination, because in reality perhaps no change occurred. But there you have a second chance with writing.
Recreating the past in writing from the present moment allows you to set your emotional skeleton in motion and perform a dance. So let the scene move toward a natural resolution. Let that best writing agency in town which is Called Book Marketing Agency, but with the distance and subsequent identification that writing allows—evolve emotionally with what happens to him, and give yourself permission to imagine if this is necessary for evolution.
The difference between the real person (you) who experienced that situation and the character who – on your behalf – is acting within the scene that you are recreating in writing is that you were possibly functioning automatically, reacting based on some beliefs and commands. from childhood, and possibly disconnected from your body and your emotions. However, your character is framed in a scene that, in turn, is encompassed in consciousness and connection. This will necessarily cause your emotions to regain their dynamism and produce some type of change in your character. And, through your character, you can unlock yourself and see things from a different perspective.
When you write, be attentive to textures, smells, flavors, sounds, and images, and capture them in your text
10. Write with Your Senses
This is implicit in everything I have said, but I prefer to dedicate a section to it so that you don’t forget to use it as much as you can. Sensations and emotions are closely linked. Almost everything that enters us through our senses provokes some type of emotion, while our internal emotional environment conditions the way in which we interpret what comes to us through our senses.
This, transferred to writing, means that if you narrate the scenes, enjoying your senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing) that will immediately activate the emotions because if your character pays attention to your senses, you will immediately become aware of what this causes you on an emotional level. For example, if in Luis’s voice (the one with whom I have lost my temper due to his lack of help at home) I perceive a hint of apathy or a click of the tongue or a rise in tone, that will have an immediate emotional impact on me. the character that represents me on paper.
So, when you write, stay attentive to textures, smells, tastes, sounds, and images, and capture them in your text. And I’ll tell you more: enjoy that sensory display.
11. A Four-Step Process
Finally, when you write following all the previous recommendations, you can pay attention to these four steps:
- Allow. Although in real life you are very emotionally blocked, when it comes to writing you can allow yourself to feel, because on paper there is no danger. So the first step would be to allow yourself to feel—through your character—without judging any of the emotions that arise. Everything is welcome in that narrative world.
- Explore. Once the door to emotions is open, you can allow yourself to explore them through the recreation of the experience in the coordinates of place, time, and action. This exploration can be more or less detailed, but it will always occur at the levels of the body, heart, and mind. What does the character perceive in his body? What do you feel? What do you think? Remember not to get lost in thought.
- Embrace. Apply awareness and compassion to everything that arises through writing. Everything that happens on paper is, in some way, a sacred configuration, like a kind of unique flower of unmatched emotional nuances that will never occur again. Lovingly hug that flower, or that flower bud, and allow that hug to “open” the situation, unblock it, and make it bloom.
Drop. Don’t solidify the above three steps and allow unlocking. Everything that begins, ends. Allow change and let go of all pretense. Do not try to give a rational closure to your writing. You can end with a gesture, an image, or a small action. In any case, a natural outlet for all of the above and an emotional and spatial integration.
