From Blocks to Bridges

A Road in the Fork I always face an inner sense of opposition, fear, and a preference for the illusion of stasis when I contemplate initiating something--this writing included. So I am thinking, why not begin this effort by acknowledging the block: that self-generated, self-molded, self-situated obstacle that sits in my way, fed by all the overt and covert disconfirming messages regarding endeavor and worthiness that I've soaked up like a sponge throughout my years in this body, this identity. The bearers of bad news have assumed the form of parents, teachers, peers, strangers, television programs, advertisements, institutional policies, social standards, religious mythologies, practices, and principles--the list continues. Countless influences have, over the years, morphed into inner voices that have served to protect me, perhaps from failure and rash decisions, or from exposing who I truly am amidst a hostile world, while they have simultaneously coalesced into a pattern of prohibition from living a gifted life, based on talents, desires, and dreams. At the time I began to take notes for this article, I had been contemplating writing it for two or three weeks, since my trip to Boston, and had been thinking more generally of writing on this theme for several months. On a bus bound for Ithaca, New York, as I sat next to a napping travel companion and wrote in my notebook, more out of a desire to keep myself occupied than anything else, it occurred to me that the confluence of two recent sources suggesting that I write this article was serving as a validation to punctuate the message for me. The first suggestion had come from my therapist, in response to my description of a workshop that I had developed, entitled From Blocks to Bridges. As I shared my concepts and spoke of how I had come to implement the workshop, having faced several struggles along the way, my therapist suggested that I write an article. She felt that a presentation of this theme would merit publication. A couple of days later, I was offered the possibility of publishing this as yet unwritten article. A friend I had known for thirty years had just welcomed his first child into this world and the bris was scheduled for Saturday that week. I had hoped to stay a night or two to get away from the hustle and bustle of New York City. Fortunately, despite the short notice, another set of friends, Anna and Behrooz, who also lived in Boston, warmly offered me a bed at their place. I had not seen them for several years. During one of our lengthy late night conversations, the topic of blocks emerged and I began to describe my workshop to them, how I had come to develop it, and the fact that I was considering writing an article about it. Behrooz had been publishing a sociological journal for several years centered on an area of study he defined as the sociology of self-knowledge. Although my field was not the same as his, Behrooz found interest in the self-exploratory nature of my process, which illustrated how I had come to investigate my own areas of stuckness while developing an experiential model in which others could safely face the sources of their learned limitations, and he invited me to write a piece for his journal. He could not have known how appreciative I would be of such a lovely gesture, particularly because I have never even attempted to publish a piece of writing, despite the fact that writing has been such a cherished part of my life for over twenty years, since I wrote my first poem at the age of fifteen. And so, I come full circle to the deep-seated block that informs this article: a fear of voicing my own voice, of being a fully expressed person in the world, of making contact with other people who are just as deeply scarred, mystified, intrigued, bored, humbled, and ecstatic as I have been. I began to consider working specifically with blocked energy during a frustrating time in my life when I was kicking around the idea of starting my own private practice as an art therapist. …