Expression

I am sitting down to write my first post in over a year. Something in me is saying I need to write and bring some new energy and content to my site as well as let people know I am a therapist who is passionate about what she does. Yet, I don’t know what it is I want to say in this first post. As soon as I felt an internal urging and restlessness to write this post, I had been writing and writing and writing. So many words; so many ideas. Yet, whenever I think about what it is that I want to lead with, I draw a blank.

In Eidetic Imagery therapy, every situation/problem can be turned into an image which is vivid and can then be interacted with for clarity, feelings generated and perhaps resolution or a healing response. So, I turned my not knowing what to write about into an Eidetic image, with a simple prompt of “See an image of not knowing what to write, what do you see?”

I see myself at a desk in my bedroom in Hong Kong. The surface is lilac purple, cold to the touch. I am around 13 years old, facing a wall. I am gripping a pen with my right hand and holding the left side of my head with the other hand. I shake the pen vigorously willing some words of brilliance to pour out of the pen. All I see is rich blue ink sputter on the blank page. As I see the ink sputter, I am scared of the stains left on the desk if I am too careless with the pen. My left hand supports the left side of my head and the fingers massage and plead with my brain to come up with something that would make me feel worthwhile.

As I look at this image, my stomach feels heavy with a denseness that feels leaden and impenetrable. I can sense the pressure of my 13-year old self as I sit to write the post that this has to be the most amazing thing that has ever been written. She so wants to get it right. A primal need.

I take the pen from the hand of my 13-year old and put it down. I hold her in the warm, nurturing embrace of my 51-year old body. She relaxes a bit. I tell her, “Let the words flow when they are ready. Don’t stress. Have fun with it. More than anything, just allow whatever.”

The body softens with the reverberation of these words.

I guess I just took myself through a mini-therapy session as I sit down to write this post. The pressure to get it right has been (and I know I am not alone in this) the driving force of much of my life. When I was pregnant with my first child at age 31, I read 6 pregnancy books and did an excel spreadsheet, determined to get childbirth right. Didn’t quite work that way. More on that in another post!

I have been on a deep inward journey for the last 12 years of my life (I was 39 then.) Initially, I was trying to control the process of finding myself in that I had it all figured out and felt I just needed some tools and strategies to not feel so depressed or out of sorts. Ultimately, I felt pulled towards a process that very much was going to have its way with me. I now understand it to be a process of transformation or individuation where we are ‘urged’ to integrate parts of who we are into a unified whole, all of who we are. It has not been a pretty process by any means. Feeling the gravitational force of triggers and suffering them to the other side where the elixir of healing could be tasted has not been easy. The first time I faced my need for love, I felt myself drowning internally for 2 weeks. Being witnessed and supported during that time helped move me forward towards knowing my inherent lovability from the inside out.

I had tried techniques and tools to tame the mind and control it in some way around my compulsivity, whether it be around food, alcohol, relationships, work and yet, trying to control my mind always resulted in a ‘fuck you’ after a while. I am grateful for the part of me that said ‘fuck you’ to my mind control attempts as it was a part of me that knew I was wired for a life much beyond living in a box of control and pleasantries. Thankfully (I can say this now), my life feels so richly alive and the pathway to getting there has been strewn with intense feelings and experiences which actually add to the feelings of strength and aliveness in being able to face it all, feel it all.

Thinking of my 13-year old at the desk struggling to write this piece, she has been burning with the question “What nourishes me?”, a question I have carried into my adult life. I see how she hides in her bedroom, ravenously consuming chocolates. To her, milk chocolate is love - yes it is! I see how the appetite with which she consumes and achieves has an edge to it. I see how I had taken this appetite and hunger into much of my adult life and tried to satisfy it through external means. And one day, I finally listened to the grace that has always been with me, urging me to follow another course, that of authentic healing and allowing. No more trying to outrun the imprints of painful experiences but to sincerely work on myself so I can touch the wellspring of nourishment which exists right within me.

My 13-year old is still resting very comfortably in my embrace, starting to dose off, feeling relaxed and content. I remind her, “I love the freshness with which you view life. You have so much passion and vigor that just wants to come out. Let’s let it. I know the pain you feel to not be gotten by those closest to you, to even at times think that your presence is an inconvenience. What pain…and yet, look where we are now! Let’s just express what’s in the heart. There is nothing to get right. Isn’t that so freeing?”

And so it begins.