Methodology: Inner Work
My Take on Memoir: Inner Work
I had a dream about a month ago.
I was with a group of women, and we were to give each other items of clothing to make mix-and-match outfits. We all had the same bright colored blouse as the featured piece, and we were to select from the traded items – bottoms, shoes, accessories – to assemble an outfit.
I went to my dressing room to see my options. I put on some things, but they didn’t feel right. I was uncomfortable. I walked out to get others’ opinions, and they all agreed: it wasn’t working. (Among them, an old boyfriend who also disapproved. Thanks a lot, subconscious…🙄)
I went back to the dressing room to see what else I could find. I scoured the piles. I was supposed to stick with the theme, but other things were prettier – flowy skirts and embroidered dresses. I preferred them over what I was supposed to wear. Meanwhile, I began to realize I was holding up everyone else. Frustration, panic, overwhelm set in. I need more time, I thought. I need to think about everything.
I never solved the problem in my dream. I never came to a decision. Everything was nice, but it felt like other people’s stuff that didn’t suit me. I couldn’t just grab something and go with it. I needed to feel comfortable that my choices fit who I was.
What’s going on here? In my waking life, I’m not really into clothes. I’m not that good at fashion. I don’t consult anyone about clothing, much less coordinate outfits. If I were to do some dream analysis, I see this scenario as symbolic of some life patterns: discomfort with popular trends, resistance to expected norms and timelines, wanting to fully consider all options before making decisions.
This dream came to me in the middle of my deliberations about taking my memoir work public – worrying it wouldn’t make sense or strike a chord with others. What if people don’t get what I’m trying to do, think it’s silly, not interested…? Worrying about internet culture and how everything looks so polished, while I am always in a state of process, always imperfect. Could I be real? I knew I couldn’t pull off the ‘gram aesthetic. Was I ready? Would it work? Would I fail? Then what? Would I have to fold and adopt the “uniform of the group?”
If I were to sum it up in a sentence, I think the dream reflects an inner struggle for authenticity. Pausing to analyze it helps me to surface this inner concern, which I might go through my days not fully aware of. It helps me see more clearly some essential patterns, motivations, values. The more honest I am about them, the more I can really see and enlarge my consciousness.
Doing inner work, as in dream analysis or creating soul pages, deeply serves the memoir writing process.
Not only does it serve decision-making around where to focus your narrative thematically, but it can take you below surface level factual detail to taste its emotional significance for you. You become more sharply cognizant of recurring patterns and themes, abiding motivations and desires.
The best stuff lies in your inner contradictions. We may be loathe to acknowledge our inner conflicts or to deal with the complex creatures we are. But taking dreams, daydreams, intuitive artmaking, emotional reactions as part of our subject matter for personal narrative will offer up the inner tensions, motives, desires that drive us. This is the real stuff, where meaning is discovered, and where the best stories come from.
Especially intriguing – the shadow: the ‘unconscious counterpart’ to the cleaned up persona we present to the world, those darker impulses we like to ignore. Our shadows are often responsible for the internal conflicts that percolate in the background, and if we relent, acknowledging and integrating these aspects of us, not only do we get a fuller understanding of ourselves and grow as people, but we can create a more nuanced, honest memoir offering connection points for readers.
Inner Work Tools
There are lots of tools available for delving beneath the surface layer of experience in developing memoir:
Self-Observation
The first is simply pausing to observe. In the midst of the tickertape storytelling – the refrigerator hum of background worry, second-guessing, anticipatory fretting – just take a moment to stop and take a step back. Assume a position of observer, and ask what’s going on in your mind? Don’t judge, just watch. This can be done ‘in the moment’ as a helpful way to get your bearings and not get carried away in reaction. It can also be done in combing through memories. Take a moment of recollection and assume that witness position: what’s going on in you in that moment? What’s going on in you as you remember? Take note.
Remember, it’s not perfection we strive for in personal growth but full acceptance of our human complexity. Self-observation gives the stabilization we need to confront these interesting aspects of ourselves.
Three Centers of Knowing
This is probably obvious, but we have multiple sources of intelligence within. We have the thinking mind, emotional intelligence, and bodily or sensory knowing. We can easily forget to check in with our non-dominant centers. I often lead with my thinking mind, so I can forget to register bodily sensation, and yet the body is the most truthful part of us. It can’t hide or rationalize and is a good source of information for an honest accounting. The emotional center can respond very powerfully and quickly, adding depth, color, meaning and connection to things that the mind or body can’t quite produce. So, in writing memoir, it is good to check in with our multiple centers to get a fuller sense of your experience, testing each against the other to find contradictions or corrections to what you assumed you knew about life’s occasions, but another source of knowing might reveal something otherwise.
Active Engagement
Then there are all kinds of ways we can pull from the contents of the unconscious that surface in intuitive art-making, dreams, fantasies, emotion – going back and forth between the conscious and unconscious mind to become more aware of the activity of our inner worlds.
Active Imagination: Entering into a state of reverie to engage with symbols, images, figures, emotions, archetypes that arise in dreams, daydreams, or artistic creation can help you pull out additional substance.
Dialogue: Writing out a conversation with a figure in your dream or art – including archetypal symbols, a shadow figure, ‘inner child,’ or core essence – can provide further insight into otherwise hidden aspects of yourself
Dream Analysis: Writing out a dream and then inquiring how it represents life situations, patterns, or problems can be revelatory and provide interesting subtext and/or imagery for memoir narratives.
Journaling: Simply putting pen to paper, writing stream of consciousness, can also help externalize what’s going on with you, showing matters of import that otherwise might get ignored, overlooked or discounted.
Meditation: Slowing the mind, which can be so domineering in ordinary life, can help the quieter aspects of ourselves to get noticed. Releasing thoughts as they arise provides practice in holding life more loosely, supporting a more limber approach to life. This can really aid creativity and access to deeper sources within.
Using these tools help bridge conscious and unconscious aspects of our psyches, giving us leverage to deepen our accounting of ourselves and ultimately to produce more vivid, honest, layered, authentic narratives that hold deep significance for us and our readers.