You've Given Yourself Permission To Modify The Tools, But Where Do You Start?
I previously wrote about a client who had trouble seeing his shadow, but I didn’t explain exactly what happened. So here it is:
I sat in my home office, struggling to make eye contact over zoom. I was in a bit of a panic. One of my first ever coaching clients had just told me he had “no mind’s eye” meaning he could not visualize any nurturing being when he used the mother tool, or see his shadow during shadow work. Or anything else for that matter. He explained his inability to visualize these things in his mind was called ‘aphantasia.’ To be honest, this was the last client I expected to hear that from. He was extremely creative, a screenwriter. How could he map out scenes between characters without a mind’s eye? How could he picture the setting they’re in? Of course when I looked up aphantasia, I learned a lot of creatives have this issue.
The Tools tend to be described visually due to sources they draw from and the fact that that’s the easiest way to describe them in book form, but your tools practice does not have to involve visualization. This client and I ended up shifting our focus to the auditory & narrative aspects of each tool (to the point where his shadow and part x had distinctive voices. The Mother became a feeling of serenity and a sense of warmth within his chest.) I made an audio recording of myself guiding him through different tools with more focus on the narratives, emotions, and auditory input of each tool so he could use these recordings at will. But since then, I’ve met clients with all sorts of different sensory struggles. Some can’t conjure up auditory cues or remember voices, some can’t tie an emotion to a physical feeling or figure out where that emotion is held in their bodies.
I feel like in that previous blog entry, I just said “Play with the tools! Modify them!” without providing any prompts to get that process going. There are important things to learn when some aspect of your imagination fails you. Which of the five senses are impossible to conjure up or imagine at will? Which are easy? When you think, how do those thoughts represent themselves? Sounds? Physical feelings or impulses? Emotional association? Do you tend to tie past memories to new narratives and thoughts? Does your mind draw associations between two seemingly unrelated concepts automatically, or tie past memories to new thoughts? And speaking of memories, how do yours present themselves? Literal stories? Images? Emotional arcs? I apologize for bombarding you with rapidfire questions like a toddler does the second you become busy. But these questions are just meant to help prompt you to learn how the tools could best fit your brain. In fact, please use these questions as a jumping off point to come up with some of your own! The important thing is to figure out how your mind takes in new information and how that information resonates or gets recalled. If something you try brings up a strong response or feelings, you’re getting close.
If the strongest aspects of your imagination and recall don’t turn out to be related to the five senses, see if you can tie them to anything sensory. Can you conjure the feeling of floating upwards when you use The Tower? Can you smell the sand and sea when using the Islands tool? If not, that’s ok too- just intensify and explore the emotional or cognitive experience you already have! Experiment as much as you can! I suggest playing around with this even if you don’t struggle to use the tools as they’re written. There may be something that works better for you or helps you recall a specific tool when you need it most. As long as the overall narrative and intention of the tool remain the same, they are yours to play with. After all, the tools will only work if they resonate so much you are able to use them consistently and recall them when needed. (By the way, another great way to start recalling tools when they’re needed is to do them as soon as you go “Ah, Shit! I could have used a tool just then!!”)
This isn’t to say you won’t have days when you struggle to tap into the sensory, narrative or emotional cues that work. Every Tools practitioner has moments where we feel like we’re just going through the motions. But going through the motions will help ingrain the habits. And someday, when you’re going through those motions, you’ll probably receive a sensory message or feeling from the universe you never thought you’d have.
By Hana Michels
