In my last post I wrote about how Jung’s active imagination, paired with a framework from the Western Esoteric Tree of Life, can offer a way to work with the gap between an idea and actually following through on it. I want to walk through how this would unfold in a session, using an example from my own clinical work with a client working with ADHD fueled procrastination
Learning to Listen to the Block
The client was struggling to begin filling out an application. What they reported feeling was dread before beginning the task, and then frustration and confusion when they began and encountered unforeseen obstacles.
Rather than pushing past the dread, we sat with each piece of what they were feeling separately, without judgement, listening for what the fear underneath each block was trying to tell the client and a pattern began to emerge.
This client had a very critical and strict inner voice, something they described like a slave driver. They believed they needed to be this hard on themselves in order to push through and get things done. As we stayed with the image of this longer, a split became clear: one part of their mind driving forward by force and another part responding to that force with resentment. Neither part trusted the other and neither one was listening to what the other had to say. This lack of trust between the two is the actual problem with drive by un-empathetic force. Mental fascism (much like the political kind) always breeds this kind of split and resentment. It does not build trust or cooperation, it builds internal conflict.
When the client stayed with the idea of the block itself, rather than trying to push through it, they realized the block was not a personal failure. It was trying to protect them from the same forceful pattern repeating again. We talked about the fact that trust needed to be built between the part that wanted the task done and the part that was no longer willing to be forced into uncomfortable conditions that did not match with how their brain worked (square peg into round hole) and that would bring on more internal criticism and shame for failing.
Building a More Merciful Plan
We approached this as kind of a bargain with the block itself, entering into a conversation with it rather than trying to override it by force. We agreed that we would move slowly, checking in along the way for when overwhelm was reached, rather than pushing straight through regardless of how the client felt.
When the client actually sat down to try the application they were working on, they realized they needed additional information that would take some time to track down. They had come into the task without enough emotional reserve to handle any further obstacles, and the part of them that feared internal criticism was afraid that hitting an obstacle would mean being forced through it anyway, which would likely bring more shame from the critical voice.
So we agreed to work in small passes, and whenever an obstacle came up that offered a natural stopping point, we would treat that as exactly that, not a failure. We would note what information was missing and make finding it the next concrete step making sure to detach from any self judgement that might come about during the process. We made a point to label this self judgement as a “distortion”.
On the tree of life, this repeated cycle can be described in plain terms as force, settling, and form, moving in small iterations rather than one long push. Force is the raw drive to act. Settling is the pause where the material of the moment, What is happening, missing, felt, is allowed to become clear before anything more is asked of it. Form is the concrete next step that comes once some clarity is found.
Before this, the client’s only working process was to get things done as quickly as possible, driven entirely by discomfort, fear, and shame. When we built a plan around iterations of force, settling, and form, stopping without judgement whenever overwhelm was reached, The client began to see something different: They were no longer forcing themself into a pattern that ended in judgement and shame every time they hit a snag. They were learning to work with their mind’s natural cadence.
That shift was the beginning of trust. Once the client’s mind began to recognize that every part of their process, including the obstacles and overwhelm, was being listened to and supported rather than overridden, trust started to form internally. Learning the patience to move more mercifully in line with one’s own actual needs, rather than by some general standard of how other minds are supposed to work, takes time. It is a practice that brings a person into alignment with their own natural processes rather than a process built for other minds.