I feel the prohibition to manifest itself as my main antagonist in writing training. I get into a fight with him. I work mainly with people who need to write articles for websites, diplomas, dissertations, memoirs, and sometimes books. They really want to write but cannot. The word "Manifest!" I was told by one of my first “written” clients. He heard a message from someone who could overcome the internal “destroying critic”, or internal prohibition. Participants draw this prohibition, or barrier, it looks different. Sometimes it’s like an ax flying after you. Sometimes it’s like a band-aid stuck on a girl’s mouth. Sometimes like the sharp corners of the sun's rays. Of course, working with this ban is working with trauma. I think in first place, statistically, approximately, is working with the fear of annihilation (internalized anger of annihilation). It is expressed in the order “Be silent!”, “Don’t speak out, otherwise you will die!”, associated with family messages, most often from the third – fourth generation. I usually hear stories about dispossession, when a family’s home was taken away, and they were left to live in dugouts, starving, getting sick and dying at a young age; stories of wartime killings. Next comes the trauma associated with the feeling of shame. And then the trauma of rejection, stories of abandonment. All these experiences turn out to be associated with the processes of recording and remembering, and are expressed in the presence of the introject of a “destroying critic” (or other destroying character), which fetters the imagination and “blows out” thoughts the moment a person sits down to work. The message usually sounds like this: “Everything you write is banal, it was written a long time ago, you won’t be able to say a new word, you won’t be able to say anything significant, otherwise why write at all!” After this, the person is unable to act. For two years now I have been conducting these trainings, where I combine psychodrama and gestalt therapy with writing techniques. To date, there are about 160 participants. I'm pleased with the results. For example, a woman who could not write a dissertation at a European business school for two years has just sent me the text to read. It is already known that she was accepted for the job, and she is going to go get a certificate. Or a colleague whose everything prevented her from starting to write her thesis, she even got hit by a car after another motivating conversation with her supervisor - she said that, finally, her misfortunes had stopped, she “signed” and was writing. But what didn’t make me happy was my own “plug” with a book about working techniques. What slowed me down the most was that I couldn’t figure out how to create an individual work plan for the reader. All ways of coping, in one way or another, involve contact. How can a reader find supportive contact if, for example, he is accustomed to the fear of annihilation, and therefore can habitually see a “destroyer” in any, even the most angelic person? And then suddenly I receive an excellent text from a man with whom I worked individually only twice, and who then disappeared from my field of vision. Wonderful text, easy and understandable. What did he do that helped him? Two things. First: he had a strong motive. He wanted to write observation letters, story letters to a child who was taken to live on the other side of the world several years ago. Second: he honestly wrote a diary for ten minutes a day. That's all. Simply amazing. There is no “psychology” in this. A journal is the best exercise in sincerity that exists in the world. At the same time, this is, of course, contact with your “inner writer” subpersonality. So now I have a starting point. There is a beginning. ☆☆☆ Friends and colleagues, I invite you to the weekly gestalt therapy group “Freedom to Manifest” on Wednesdays from October 9, 2019 to March 4, 2020 in Moscow. https://www.b17.ru/trainings/svoboda_proyavlatsa/I will glad to see you) Note×The client’s consent to publish the story has been received, anonymity has been maintained.