The Scarlett Letters
Scarlett had gone through a lot in her life, and sometimes that happens just by being born in the wrong family. The utter nonsense that is spread in the personal development field, that we create our own destiny is more hurtful for people like Scarlett than it is for others. Yet like everything, utter nonsense might trigger negative emotions in us, like the guilt of not doing enough which leads us to do something and look for answers. That’s what happened with Scarlett.
After being mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually, and spiritually abused by people as close as the first-degree family, and as far as a taxi driver she met for the first time, or maybe by life just being mean because that is life sometimes, shit just plain happens. You can call it bad luck, and you can add to that the lack of opportunity to access a good support system that helps her create boundaries to protect herself.
We met for a couple of sessions, and her main answers to most of my questions were the following two answers:
· “I don’t know “
· “I am not able to”
So, I looked at her and asked the ever-annoying question: “ what's stopping you from knowing and doing whatever the hell you want to do?”
“Well, most of those who traumatized me are either dead, abroad, and in jail. Those who I still have access to trigger me so much I cannot even talk to them. And I have so much to say…”
“Alright then, you got to say them, Scarlett.”
“But how?”
“Well, you open Microsoft word, write a letter to each one of them. Then you open your email and send them to attached me. After you do that you delete the mail from your sent and trash folder. I read them and analyze them to know what we need to work on for you to start feeling better. When we start getting results, I will resend them to you so that you can read them from another perspective”
“But…. I can’t…”
“Why?”
“I harbor so many negative emotions, I might say a lot of mean and destructive things.”
“You do realize that you and I are the only ones that will read them, right?”
“That’s what I am worried about, you changing your mind and not helping me because of what I might say.”
“Yes, my feelings will be hurt when you express yours towards strangers, I never met that hurt you in ways beyond imagination.”
She cracked a smirk, and said: “Ok, I will try…. How much time do I have?”
“Can you send them tonight?” I said in a serious tone
“No way, I can’t, I need at least 10 days, I don’t know what to say, this is the hardest thing anyone ever asked of me…”
Interruptingly “10 days it is, to the hour, I have set a reminder to keep you committed to the second.”
She paid the coaching fee and left. She texted me a lot of questions and objections during the next few days, I did not respond. ( I later discovered from Andrew T. Austin’s work on the patterns of Chronicity, that this correlates to the first pattern that he calls “The 3 stage Ab-reaction”, and the best way to respond to a client’s negative emotion is not to allow them to bend your will with and stay on track you had in mind.)
One minute after the deadline, I receive the email from Scarlett with 15 attachments.
Without opening any of them, I delete the email from my inbox and trash, because that’s between Scarlett and them, and is of no business to me. From the following session, we started to get some improvement and result as she stopped carrying the unwanted weight of all the unsaid conversations to these 15 people.
Oh — I told her that I deleted the emails a year down the line, and she said laughingly “You asshole, but I wanted to see my drama, I was so looking forward to it, but I guess what’s in the past is in the past…”
NB: The stories I am sharing here are not prescriptions or advice in any way, they are just stories of what worked and did not work for me in specific contexts with specific people.
