from adversity came innovation: the origins of focus directed writing.™
Focus-Directed Writing™ is a highly-specialized non-creative writing technique developed by American memoirist Augusten Burroughs, Hon.D.Litt, that is based on directing the focus of one’s writing on specific and often problematic psychological issues, past traumatic experiences, undesirable behavioral patterns, and issues relating to low self-esteem. The technique can also be used to make more honest and therefore more successful life choices. Focus-directed Writing™ requires the highest degree of honesty and accuracy in all aspects - from the detailing of the issue to the feelings surrounding it. The purpose of this high-intensity focused writing is to reveal the deepest truths about one’s circumstances and experience the revelatory insights that ignite acceptance and personal transformation.
BEFORE WE CAN HEAL WE MUST SEE
Sometimes our bodies heal automatically from injuries, whether physical or emotional. I must have stubbed my little toe at least a dozen times and surely I’ve broken it at least once. But it’s healed itself.
I’ve also had my feelings hurt or felt neglected but recuperated just fine on my own without any therapeutic intervention. But other injuries do not heal automatically. Other injuries require a great deal of careful attention.
But before treatment can even begin, there must be illumination and scrutiny.
Somebody who has been injured -let's say thrown from a horse- will eventually land on a stainless steel table with a very bright light shining down upon them from above. Before a caregiver can begin the process of repairing an injury, the caregiver must actually grasp the injury in its entirety, and not all damage is visible from one perspective.
Sometimes, additional tools are required to see inside the body in order to gain a more complete picture of the injury that has been sustained. In the example above, the person who took a tumble from a horse may next be taken for additional tests: an MRI, a CAT scan. In this way, the caregiver can locate internal injuries that are invisible on the exterior. Now, the caregiver has a complete picture of the damage or injury, and a treatment plan can be devised and the injuries sustained in the fall can begin to heal.
Unlike with physical injury, there is no CAT scan or MRI that can assist us in locating the breadth of emotional trauma. This unique and highly specific writing technique can illuminate concealed emotional traumas, and draw attention to unproductive behavioral patterns. When one is engaged in a program of Focus-Directed Writing™, patterns emerge in the writing. "Doorways" appear thar lead to deeper personal truths. All of which helps us see ourselves with finer clarity and view our challenges with a measure of distance and perspective. And this can lead to personal transformation.
Acceptance has become such a ubiquitous word in the healing and recovery community that I believe the meaning has been, if not lost, perhaps misplaced.
To “accept” something in the context of wellness and recovery is to see fully and without distortion exactly what happened to us. This means, not minimizing or dismissing our experience or altering the details to make them less unbearable. Acceptance is not to be confused with forgiveness and neither does acceptance imply approval. Acceptance is simply the process of seeing and acknowledging the full scope of what we experienced, and recognizing the fact that what happened can never “unhappen.” Full acceptance is recognizing that in this and every future moment, we are the sum total of all we have ever experienced. Because the past cannot be altered, to accept is also to embrace.
Personally speaking, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I now accept and highly value those terrible years because of the knowledge, wisdom, and inner strength I discovered within myself. There is real power to be gained from acceptance.
For one thing, the process of acceptance automatically defines us as a survivor.
When the trauma we experienced in the past is left unexamined or minimized into something smaller and less impactful, it is quite easy to remain in a state of victimhood. Where the unexamined -and thus un-embraced past- continues to disrupt our lives. Many people intentionally avoid exploring the trauma they experienced in the past because they are fearful of being “re-traumatized” by the process of examination. In this way, a person can remain in a victimized state, where they are unable to experience full freedom, as certain aspects of their lives and their past are “off limits” or “dangerous” in some way.
In my experience as a multiple-trauma survivor, I have discovered that “thinking” about exploring the past is always far more distressing than actually doing the work of exploration itself.
Because the very process of accepting -and embracing- what we have gone through serves as proof that although we may not feel like “a survivor,” that is, in fact, precisely what we are.
It is essential to grasp the profundity of this realization: instead of being a rape victim, I am a survivor of rape. Instead of being a victim of child abuse, I am a survivor of child abuse.
The rape happened. The abuse happened. And I am alive. Therefore, I did survive these attacks. And I am, thus, a survivor.
In the moment my rape was happening, I was being victimized and I was a victim. The moment the rape ended, I became a survivor.
This insight changed the way I thought about myself.
I was transformed from being somebody who felt like, “my past totally destroyed me,” into someone who thought of himself as having, “a core of strength.”
The journey from victim to survivor is a journey taken not one step at a time, but one word at a time. Focus-Directed Writing™ is the tool I created to heal myself and then build a magnificent life for myself.
I’ve also had my feelings hurt or felt neglected but recuperated just fine on my own without any therapeutic intervention. But other injuries do not heal automatically. Other injuries require a great deal of careful attention.
But before treatment can even begin, there must be illumination and scrutiny.
Somebody who has been injured -let's say thrown from a horse- will eventually land on a stainless steel table with a very bright light shining down upon them from above. Before a caregiver can begin the process of repairing an injury, the caregiver must actually grasp the injury in its entirety, and not all damage is visible from one perspective.
Sometimes, additional tools are required to see inside the body in order to gain a more complete picture of the injury that has been sustained. In the example above, the person who took a tumble from a horse may next be taken for additional tests: an MRI, a CAT scan. In this way, the caregiver can locate internal injuries that are invisible on the exterior. Now, the caregiver has a complete picture of the damage or injury, and a treatment plan can be devised and the injuries sustained in the fall can begin to heal.
Unlike with physical injury, there is no CAT scan or MRI that can assist us in locating the breadth of emotional trauma. This unique and highly specific writing technique can illuminate concealed emotional traumas, and draw attention to unproductive behavioral patterns. When one is engaged in a program of Focus-Directed Writing™, patterns emerge in the writing. "Doorways" appear thar lead to deeper personal truths. All of which helps us see ourselves with finer clarity and view our challenges with a measure of distance and perspective. And this can lead to personal transformation.
Acceptance has become such a ubiquitous word in the healing and recovery community that I believe the meaning has been, if not lost, perhaps misplaced.
To “accept” something in the context of wellness and recovery is to see fully and without distortion exactly what happened to us. This means, not minimizing or dismissing our experience or altering the details to make them less unbearable. Acceptance is not to be confused with forgiveness and neither does acceptance imply approval. Acceptance is simply the process of seeing and acknowledging the full scope of what we experienced, and recognizing the fact that what happened can never “unhappen.” Full acceptance is recognizing that in this and every future moment, we are the sum total of all we have ever experienced. Because the past cannot be altered, to accept is also to embrace.
Personally speaking, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I now accept and highly value those terrible years because of the knowledge, wisdom, and inner strength I discovered within myself. There is real power to be gained from acceptance.
For one thing, the process of acceptance automatically defines us as a survivor.
When the trauma we experienced in the past is left unexamined or minimized into something smaller and less impactful, it is quite easy to remain in a state of victimhood. Where the unexamined -and thus un-embraced past- continues to disrupt our lives. Many people intentionally avoid exploring the trauma they experienced in the past because they are fearful of being “re-traumatized” by the process of examination. In this way, a person can remain in a victimized state, where they are unable to experience full freedom, as certain aspects of their lives and their past are “off limits” or “dangerous” in some way.
In my experience as a multiple-trauma survivor, I have discovered that “thinking” about exploring the past is always far more distressing than actually doing the work of exploration itself.
Because the very process of accepting -and embracing- what we have gone through serves as proof that although we may not feel like “a survivor,” that is, in fact, precisely what we are.
It is essential to grasp the profundity of this realization: instead of being a rape victim, I am a survivor of rape. Instead of being a victim of child abuse, I am a survivor of child abuse.
The rape happened. The abuse happened. And I am alive. Therefore, I did survive these attacks. And I am, thus, a survivor.
In the moment my rape was happening, I was being victimized and I was a victim. The moment the rape ended, I became a survivor.
This insight changed the way I thought about myself.
I was transformed from being somebody who felt like, “my past totally destroyed me,” into someone who thought of himself as having, “a core of strength.”
The journey from victim to survivor is a journey taken not one step at a time, but one word at a time. Focus-Directed Writing™ is the tool I created to heal myself and then build a magnificent life for myself.
"...WRITING WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE."
“No matter what happens to you, just remember that writing about it will save your life.”
I was ten or eleven when my mother spoke these words to me. She was a writer herself; a poet working in the “confessional” genre, made famous by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton.
My father was a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts; a department he would one day be appointed to lead. But throughout my childhood he consumed vast qualities of alcohol and exhibited personality features and behaviors today we associate with a variety of Antisocial personality Disorder; my father did not experience emotions in the way the vast majority of people do. While he laughed, smiled, displayed empathy when somebody around him was hurt and expressed concern, these displays of emotional response had painstakingly crafted over many years. My father earned his Ph.D from Emory University and his field of expertise was the study of ethics. I believe he studied ethics because he contained no concept of ethics himself. But he did understand that certain behaviors and acts were expected of members in society; he just was unclear of the geography, the landscape. My father did experience physical pain from the autoimmune disorder that made his life difficult, but he did not experience emotions as we know them. My father became uninhibited when he drank and his behavior could be sadistic, cruel, or worse.
I had feared him since my earliest childhood. My parents, each living with their own unbridled mental illness, created a home environment where I was always on alert, ready to protect myself from harm. I slept with sharp rocks under my pillow; I barricaded my door at night.
My parents frequently engaged in explosive and occasionally violent confrontations. I spent as much time as I could alone in my bedroom. School was certainly no sanctuary; I was bullied relentlessly, daily.
Like Anne Sexton, my mother suffered from severe bipolar disorder. But unlike Sexton, my mother sought treatment with an unorthodox psychiatrist who himself suffered from delusions of grandeur, seeing himself as “a father figure” to all and a kind of gatekeeper to the “Kingdom of heaven.” He maintained numerous “spiritual wives,” most of whom were his patients. He administered his own form of bizarre psychotherapy –loosely based on Sigmund Freud’s own homemade fanciful ideologies— from the top-floor offices of his “Institute for the Advancement of Maturation,” in Western Massachusetts, just down the street from Smith College.
As I entered adolescence, my mother assigned this flamboyantly "eccentric" and wholly unethical Yale-trained psychiatrist legal custody of me and I would spend my adolescence living in the insane asylum that was his private home.
Mine was a childhood of food insecurity, neglect, abandonment, continuous sexual abuse, social isolation, suicidal ideation, and indoctrination in the philosophical and more pragmatic daily ideologies of this firebrand psychiatrist who maintained his own micro-cult.
After elementary school I was “home schooled” before homeschooling was widespread in the United States like it is today. I may not have been able to solve an algebraic equation, but I could identify where, on Freud’s spectrum of psychosexual developmental stages, any given person occupied. For my fifteenth birthday, the doctor gave me my own private copy of the brand new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-III for short. I was so excited that I barricaded myself in the storage room I occupied as a bedroom and devoured the multi-pound frequently arbitrary and occasionally preposterous volume that defined modern psychiatry.
I was thus removed from “normal” society and, like members of any cult, and existed within an artificial world created by a charismatic leader. My late childhood and adolescence was a period of great anxiety and a powerful feeling of hopelessness about my future. For as much “Kool Aid” as I had consumed, I still maintained —secretly— a belief that my current life situation was unnatural and unhealthy. I likewise harbored a fear: even if I could ever escape, what possible hope could I ever have of fitting in to the "normal" world?
“No matter what happens to you, just remember that writing about it will save your life.”
And so I wrote.
I began writing in a notebook the day I moved into the psychiatrist’s house. The notebook acted as a physical shield behind which I could hide from others in the room. While at the same time, I could sooth myself by the repetitive process of writing. At first, I simply described what was happening in the room. But soon, I was writing about how I felt about what was happening in the room. I quickly began to gain a sense of control over my life. Because the more I wrote, the deeper my self-knowledge became. The more I wrote, the less fear I felt about being abandoned to this house of strangers. When I wrote specifically about abuses shortly after experiencing them, I was able to accept them as “unfair, horrible things that happened and that cannot be made to unhappen.”
I had greater self-awareness at the age of 13 than many of the adults I encountered in my strange new world. Because I wasn’t just existing; I was scrutinizing my existence on the page; I was questioning everything and everyone. I was, although I didn’t know it at the time, creating a new way of dealing with trauma.
I was ten or eleven when my mother spoke these words to me. She was a writer herself; a poet working in the “confessional” genre, made famous by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton.
My father was a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts; a department he would one day be appointed to lead. But throughout my childhood he consumed vast qualities of alcohol and exhibited personality features and behaviors today we associate with a variety of Antisocial personality Disorder; my father did not experience emotions in the way the vast majority of people do. While he laughed, smiled, displayed empathy when somebody around him was hurt and expressed concern, these displays of emotional response had painstakingly crafted over many years. My father earned his Ph.D from Emory University and his field of expertise was the study of ethics. I believe he studied ethics because he contained no concept of ethics himself. But he did understand that certain behaviors and acts were expected of members in society; he just was unclear of the geography, the landscape. My father did experience physical pain from the autoimmune disorder that made his life difficult, but he did not experience emotions as we know them. My father became uninhibited when he drank and his behavior could be sadistic, cruel, or worse.
I had feared him since my earliest childhood. My parents, each living with their own unbridled mental illness, created a home environment where I was always on alert, ready to protect myself from harm. I slept with sharp rocks under my pillow; I barricaded my door at night.
My parents frequently engaged in explosive and occasionally violent confrontations. I spent as much time as I could alone in my bedroom. School was certainly no sanctuary; I was bullied relentlessly, daily.
Like Anne Sexton, my mother suffered from severe bipolar disorder. But unlike Sexton, my mother sought treatment with an unorthodox psychiatrist who himself suffered from delusions of grandeur, seeing himself as “a father figure” to all and a kind of gatekeeper to the “Kingdom of heaven.” He maintained numerous “spiritual wives,” most of whom were his patients. He administered his own form of bizarre psychotherapy –loosely based on Sigmund Freud’s own homemade fanciful ideologies— from the top-floor offices of his “Institute for the Advancement of Maturation,” in Western Massachusetts, just down the street from Smith College.
As I entered adolescence, my mother assigned this flamboyantly "eccentric" and wholly unethical Yale-trained psychiatrist legal custody of me and I would spend my adolescence living in the insane asylum that was his private home.
Mine was a childhood of food insecurity, neglect, abandonment, continuous sexual abuse, social isolation, suicidal ideation, and indoctrination in the philosophical and more pragmatic daily ideologies of this firebrand psychiatrist who maintained his own micro-cult.
After elementary school I was “home schooled” before homeschooling was widespread in the United States like it is today. I may not have been able to solve an algebraic equation, but I could identify where, on Freud’s spectrum of psychosexual developmental stages, any given person occupied. For my fifteenth birthday, the doctor gave me my own private copy of the brand new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-III for short. I was so excited that I barricaded myself in the storage room I occupied as a bedroom and devoured the multi-pound frequently arbitrary and occasionally preposterous volume that defined modern psychiatry.
I was thus removed from “normal” society and, like members of any cult, and existed within an artificial world created by a charismatic leader. My late childhood and adolescence was a period of great anxiety and a powerful feeling of hopelessness about my future. For as much “Kool Aid” as I had consumed, I still maintained —secretly— a belief that my current life situation was unnatural and unhealthy. I likewise harbored a fear: even if I could ever escape, what possible hope could I ever have of fitting in to the "normal" world?
“No matter what happens to you, just remember that writing about it will save your life.”
And so I wrote.
I began writing in a notebook the day I moved into the psychiatrist’s house. The notebook acted as a physical shield behind which I could hide from others in the room. While at the same time, I could sooth myself by the repetitive process of writing. At first, I simply described what was happening in the room. But soon, I was writing about how I felt about what was happening in the room. I quickly began to gain a sense of control over my life. Because the more I wrote, the deeper my self-knowledge became. The more I wrote, the less fear I felt about being abandoned to this house of strangers. When I wrote specifically about abuses shortly after experiencing them, I was able to accept them as “unfair, horrible things that happened and that cannot be made to unhappen.”
I had greater self-awareness at the age of 13 than many of the adults I encountered in my strange new world. Because I wasn’t just existing; I was scrutinizing my existence on the page; I was questioning everything and everyone. I was, although I didn’t know it at the time, creating a new way of dealing with trauma.
THE POWER OF FOCUS
There is a saying in the recovery community, “What you focus on grows.” And when you think about it, this seems to be a fundamental truth.
From tending seedlings in a garden to learning to play piano, focus is a constructive force that results in creation. When many people are focused on the same outcome, profound achievements are possible, such as traveling to the moon and beyond.
When sunlight passes through an opening in the canopy of trees to land on a patch of forest floor, it is here within this anomalous bright spot of the sun’s focus that something new will grow.
Focus is also a destructive force that can be corrective. It is through focus that artifice is removed from the craft of acting; focus is how the screech is removed when the bow slides across the strings of a cello.
Focus is specificity: for those who require glasses or contact lenses to achieve 20/20 vision, the eye chart on the optometrist’s wall is something of a Rorschach test: that blurry form could be a “Z” but it also resembles a “B,” though maybe it’s just a “C.”
As human beings, we are brilliant, mysterious creatures woven together from unimaginable complexity. We must —and do— millions of tiny things at a time. From the cellular activity beyond our control to the countless micro-decisions we make each day, it’s no surprise at all that we tend to be generalists, especially where psychological issues are concerned.
“I keep dating exactly the wrong people.”
“Bad stuff happened to me when I was a kid. Really bad stuff. I don’t like talking about it.”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“My life feels meaningless.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself now that I no longer have that job.”
“She was my entire world. Now she’s gone.”
These generalizations approximate the level of self-reflection I engaged in throughout my twenties. I knew I had “problems.” I knew the “sexual stuff” I experienced as a child was still “messing me up” because my romantic relationships were always “a disaster.”
When I began writing after my release from treatment, I tackled what I felt to be my most harmful psychological issues, one at a time. I drilled deep into murky areas like “problems” and “messing me up” and “a disaster,” in search of crystal-clear truths: what specifically did I mean by these words and phrases?
I made a list defining problematic areas of my life: I still wanted my father’s approval; I resented that my mother handed me off to her maniac of a psychiatrist, she knew I was being sexually abused and did nothing to stop it; she liked the man.
I began writing deep into each topic. I had a realization about love: “it is a plentiful resource, like water. Dogs are lakes of love. My father is rare in that love seems absent from his interior. I seek out those who do not or could not love or even like me, then alter my behavior in order to please them and reverse their perception of me, causing them to “love me.”
I was shocked by the truth of these words when I saw them on the computer screen before me. They were the truest words I had ever written. It was as if I could feel, in my chest, the truth of this revelation.
I was also attracted to “exciting” people who always ultimately betrayed me.
I had begun dating somebody wildly charming and funny and exciting who happened to be in my group therapy and was therefore off-limits; a person exactly and quite perfectly wrong for me, which I at least recognized. I wrote, “He has psoriasis, like my father, and speaks with a Georgian drawl like my mother. He is a fusion of my parents, the perfect singular being to mistreat me and make me feel constantly on edge. Because “on edge” is all I know. And when I am not “on edge,” I am uncomfortable.” Through this highly focused, single-subject Focus-Directed Writing I was able to see that I was attracted to people who were chaotic specifically because they created an environment of unpredictability, instability: the only state of being I had known from the earliest childhood on into adulthood. I did this even though these relationships inevitably failed and caused me tremendous distress and pain. Because the periods of my adult life when I was not involved with a chaotic person were unsettling to me, they were unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
I continued writing, drilling deeper and deeper until I reached a diamond of truth, a revelation that changed my life: the discomfort I feel when there is a lack of chaos in my life may be transient. I may need to learn to live with the discomfort in order to adjust to a different and more positive reality that was not based on chaos.
Instability and chaos were deeply familiar and therefore more comfortable than periods lacking instability and chaos; a state of being which was so foreign that I felt adrift and threatened.
Gradually, tenderly, I began to actively seek out people and situations that were non-chaotic. I quit my hig-stress advertising job and went freelance, working from home where I was shielded from the inherent drama of the advertising industry.
Instead of swinging like a monkey in the jungle from one chaotic romantic partner to another, I chose to alter my behavior. Which meant when I experienced a powerful attraction to somebody, I now took this as a warning, and I did not pursue them. If I met somebody I immediately judged as “boring,” I continued to get to know this person.
I began reading novels for the first time in my life. I also began studying theoretical physics, reading the books by the leaders of the field, both past and present.
My life may have looked smaller from the outside, but I felt a sense of expansion on the inside.
From tending seedlings in a garden to learning to play piano, focus is a constructive force that results in creation. When many people are focused on the same outcome, profound achievements are possible, such as traveling to the moon and beyond.
When sunlight passes through an opening in the canopy of trees to land on a patch of forest floor, it is here within this anomalous bright spot of the sun’s focus that something new will grow.
Focus is also a destructive force that can be corrective. It is through focus that artifice is removed from the craft of acting; focus is how the screech is removed when the bow slides across the strings of a cello.
Focus is specificity: for those who require glasses or contact lenses to achieve 20/20 vision, the eye chart on the optometrist’s wall is something of a Rorschach test: that blurry form could be a “Z” but it also resembles a “B,” though maybe it’s just a “C.”
As human beings, we are brilliant, mysterious creatures woven together from unimaginable complexity. We must —and do— millions of tiny things at a time. From the cellular activity beyond our control to the countless micro-decisions we make each day, it’s no surprise at all that we tend to be generalists, especially where psychological issues are concerned.
“I keep dating exactly the wrong people.”
“Bad stuff happened to me when I was a kid. Really bad stuff. I don’t like talking about it.”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“My life feels meaningless.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself now that I no longer have that job.”
“She was my entire world. Now she’s gone.”
These generalizations approximate the level of self-reflection I engaged in throughout my twenties. I knew I had “problems.” I knew the “sexual stuff” I experienced as a child was still “messing me up” because my romantic relationships were always “a disaster.”
When I began writing after my release from treatment, I tackled what I felt to be my most harmful psychological issues, one at a time. I drilled deep into murky areas like “problems” and “messing me up” and “a disaster,” in search of crystal-clear truths: what specifically did I mean by these words and phrases?
I made a list defining problematic areas of my life: I still wanted my father’s approval; I resented that my mother handed me off to her maniac of a psychiatrist, she knew I was being sexually abused and did nothing to stop it; she liked the man.
I began writing deep into each topic. I had a realization about love: “it is a plentiful resource, like water. Dogs are lakes of love. My father is rare in that love seems absent from his interior. I seek out those who do not or could not love or even like me, then alter my behavior in order to please them and reverse their perception of me, causing them to “love me.”
I was shocked by the truth of these words when I saw them on the computer screen before me. They were the truest words I had ever written. It was as if I could feel, in my chest, the truth of this revelation.
I was also attracted to “exciting” people who always ultimately betrayed me.
I had begun dating somebody wildly charming and funny and exciting who happened to be in my group therapy and was therefore off-limits; a person exactly and quite perfectly wrong for me, which I at least recognized. I wrote, “He has psoriasis, like my father, and speaks with a Georgian drawl like my mother. He is a fusion of my parents, the perfect singular being to mistreat me and make me feel constantly on edge. Because “on edge” is all I know. And when I am not “on edge,” I am uncomfortable.” Through this highly focused, single-subject Focus-Directed Writing I was able to see that I was attracted to people who were chaotic specifically because they created an environment of unpredictability, instability: the only state of being I had known from the earliest childhood on into adulthood. I did this even though these relationships inevitably failed and caused me tremendous distress and pain. Because the periods of my adult life when I was not involved with a chaotic person were unsettling to me, they were unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
I continued writing, drilling deeper and deeper until I reached a diamond of truth, a revelation that changed my life: the discomfort I feel when there is a lack of chaos in my life may be transient. I may need to learn to live with the discomfort in order to adjust to a different and more positive reality that was not based on chaos.
Instability and chaos were deeply familiar and therefore more comfortable than periods lacking instability and chaos; a state of being which was so foreign that I felt adrift and threatened.
Gradually, tenderly, I began to actively seek out people and situations that were non-chaotic. I quit my hig-stress advertising job and went freelance, working from home where I was shielded from the inherent drama of the advertising industry.
Instead of swinging like a monkey in the jungle from one chaotic romantic partner to another, I chose to alter my behavior. Which meant when I experienced a powerful attraction to somebody, I now took this as a warning, and I did not pursue them. If I met somebody I immediately judged as “boring,” I continued to get to know this person.
I began reading novels for the first time in my life. I also began studying theoretical physics, reading the books by the leaders of the field, both past and present.
My life may have looked smaller from the outside, but I felt a sense of expansion on the inside.
In Focus-Directed Writing,™ Patches of Ambiguity Serve as Flags:
Dig Deeper Here:
With Focus-Directed Writing™, an issue is first identified such as, “I feel hollow inside,” or "Why do I keep meeting “the wrong” romantic partners?”
After the issue is identified, it is scrutinized through the process of writing. Here, specificity is the key. If “I feel hollow inside,” is my issue, what, then does the ambiguous hollow really mean?
Define "hollow."
Is hollow the correct label for the feeling?
If so, is hollow a bad thing?
At what age did I first identify the feeling of hollowness inside?
Have I ever not felt hollow? If so, when? And what variable was different?
In the made-up scenario above, a person who feels "hollow" inside is "directed" to write about hollowness. They are encouraged to define it. To elaborate on what it means. And to investigate further, deeper into their past in order to locate a period during which they perhaps did not feel hollow. And if they can identify this point, they are further directed to look around and observe: what was different then?
Focus-Directed Writing™ is a relentless pursuit of the deepest truth. Which is a great deal more elusive than one might imagine it to be. Because often, the rock-bottom, elemental, indivisible truth is hidden behind the thing we think is true, assume is true, have been told us true or need to believe is true.
After the issue is identified, it is scrutinized through the process of writing. Here, specificity is the key. If “I feel hollow inside,” is my issue, what, then does the ambiguous hollow really mean?
Define "hollow."
Is hollow the correct label for the feeling?
If so, is hollow a bad thing?
At what age did I first identify the feeling of hollowness inside?
Have I ever not felt hollow? If so, when? And what variable was different?
In the made-up scenario above, a person who feels "hollow" inside is "directed" to write about hollowness. They are encouraged to define it. To elaborate on what it means. And to investigate further, deeper into their past in order to locate a period during which they perhaps did not feel hollow. And if they can identify this point, they are further directed to look around and observe: what was different then?
Focus-Directed Writing™ is a relentless pursuit of the deepest truth. Which is a great deal more elusive than one might imagine it to be. Because often, the rock-bottom, elemental, indivisible truth is hidden behind the thing we think is true, assume is true, have been told us true or need to believe is true.
Focus-Directed Writing™ is a Process of Excavation, Removing the Layers of Debris to Reveal Your Deepest and Most Authentic Self.
The most profound truth a person can encounter is to see the truth of who they are for the first time, as opposed to who they think they are or have been programmed from an early age to believe they are. Through my own journey of Focus-Directed Writing,™ I have learned that I am not the person other people told me I was.
I thought chaotic people were exciting. But through highly-Focus-Directed Writing, I was able to see the truth: I wasn’t choosing people because they were exciting but because they were deeply familiar and perpetuated the instability, I had known all my life.
Truth is the source of revelation.
Revelation is the spark that ignites profound change.
I continue to make mistakes in my life, and I still make poor choices now and then. However, I do not make the same mistakes and poor choices I eradicated through my writing process.
I thought chaotic people were exciting. But through highly-Focus-Directed Writing, I was able to see the truth: I wasn’t choosing people because they were exciting but because they were deeply familiar and perpetuated the instability, I had known all my life.
Truth is the source of revelation.
Revelation is the spark that ignites profound change.
I continue to make mistakes in my life, and I still make poor choices now and then. However, I do not make the same mistakes and poor choices I eradicated through my writing process.
Focus-Directed Writing Vs. Creative Writing
Creative writing is an artform. Focus-Directed Writing is a utilitarian act of inner-directed exploration and inventorymanagement. The point of Focus-Directed Writing is not to be entertaining, interesting, funny, dramatic, or even read by anyone, ever. However, in my opinion this tool is most effective when an objective and professional third party is involved: your trusted therapist or mental health professional.
For Focus-Directed Writing to result in profound change, no interest in writing is required, no talent for word-crafting is necessary, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax are entirely beside the point and do not matter at all.
In fact, making even the slightest effort to render a piece of Focus-Directed Writing engaging is an act of defocus. Literary doesn’t matter. True matters. Funny does not matter. Bald honesty does.
For Focus-Directed Writing to result in profound change, no interest in writing is required, no talent for word-crafting is necessary, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax are entirely beside the point and do not matter at all.
In fact, making even the slightest effort to render a piece of Focus-Directed Writing engaging is an act of defocus. Literary doesn’t matter. True matters. Funny does not matter. Bald honesty does.
Is Focus-Directed Writing the Same as Journaling?
Journaling is improvisational; like jazz. Focus-Directed Writing is highly structured, like a concerto. In journaling, you are writing free-form; anything that pops into your head can go right on the page. Journaling can be highly-effective at providing anxiety relief and gaining insights, however it is also easier to “write around” unpleasant subjects because there is inherently no direction in journal writing. The act of writing itself can be soothing: something to do with the hands that is repetitive, like knitting. Because of this, one can write about the weather, upcoming plans, and create a sort of log of what happened during the day and altogether avoid mentioning, let alone examining one’s feelings, while still nonetheless experience the soothing relief resulting from the physical writing act itself. After learning the process of Focus-Directed Writing, these skills can be incorporated into journaling, making the act of journaling richer and more emotionally rewarding.
Will Focus-Directed Writing™ Re-Traumatize me?
Possibly. Possibly not. I don't mean to be coy: I mean to be truthful. Some people may experience distress as they drill deep into their past through writing. Other people have a different emotional/psychological constitution and will not experience trauma.
I worried I would be deeply traumatized about when I began to split my past open using words as my chisel. I was afraid, for example, that by writing about the sexual abuse I experienced as a little boy, I would re-experience the terrible emotions that abuse had generated. And later when I began to write about some of the terrible things my father did to me in my memoir, A Wolf at the Table, I was afraid that writing about what happened would make it real. But the truth was, it was already real. Writing about it only enabled me to accept this fact. And the result was a feeling of relief.
What I discovered was that writing about the worst things that had ever happened to me was not a re-traumatizing experience; it was a liberating one.
Focus-Directed Writing brings many emotions to the surface, but you are always in control. It’s important to face unpleasant truths, but pacing is important, too. So if during the writing process you feel overwhelmed or distressed -simply step away; take a break and go for a walk or engage in a soothing activity.
When I wrote about the torture and then death my father inflicted upon my childhood pets, I took many breaks. I stopped writing, I ate a brownie or brewed a mug of tea. Then I returned to my laptop and continued writing. It was not fun. It was important.
My father had been a neurologically defective human being who was capable and willing to cause great emotional and perhaps physical harm to others. And I needed to truly and fully see this truth to accept it and free myself from the man and his acts.
I feared writing about the horror of my childhood would destroy me. I did it anyway. And it freed me.
I worried I would be deeply traumatized about when I began to split my past open using words as my chisel. I was afraid, for example, that by writing about the sexual abuse I experienced as a little boy, I would re-experience the terrible emotions that abuse had generated. And later when I began to write about some of the terrible things my father did to me in my memoir, A Wolf at the Table, I was afraid that writing about what happened would make it real. But the truth was, it was already real. Writing about it only enabled me to accept this fact. And the result was a feeling of relief.
What I discovered was that writing about the worst things that had ever happened to me was not a re-traumatizing experience; it was a liberating one.
Focus-Directed Writing brings many emotions to the surface, but you are always in control. It’s important to face unpleasant truths, but pacing is important, too. So if during the writing process you feel overwhelmed or distressed -simply step away; take a break and go for a walk or engage in a soothing activity.
When I wrote about the torture and then death my father inflicted upon my childhood pets, I took many breaks. I stopped writing, I ate a brownie or brewed a mug of tea. Then I returned to my laptop and continued writing. It was not fun. It was important.
My father had been a neurologically defective human being who was capable and willing to cause great emotional and perhaps physical harm to others. And I needed to truly and fully see this truth to accept it and free myself from the man and his acts.
I feared writing about the horror of my childhood would destroy me. I did it anyway. And it freed me.
The Safest Space in the World
When you first begin to practice Focus-Directed Writing, it is important for you to feel safe. If you write longhand in a journal, you might even choose to keep it in a locked safe. If you write on a computer, you can password-protect the folder where you keep your writing.
Once you have made the medium of your choice physically safe, you can then begin the process of feeling safe enough to say anything.
In my own life, there were things I did not want to write about because to me, writing about these traumatic events would make them real.
The trouble with this reasoning was, declining to write about the trauma I experienced did not make it un-real. I could not erase the abuse I experienced by refusing to write about it.
The process of Focus-Directed Writing requires that we indeed “make real” the traumatic experiences we have endured. By doing this, it is we who are in control and not the reverberation of the experience itself.
The past cannot haunt us if we strip the mystery from it.
Everything that happened to us, happened to us and we survived it. This fact is unalterable.
The impact of the events we experienced is something we can manage through various psychological tools and, I believe, through Focus-Directed Writing.
And to do this, we need to feel safe enough that we will tell “the page” anything at all; even that which we might not be able to speak out loud.
To me, now, today, inside the process of Focus-Directed Writing is the safest place in the world. It is the one place I can say what I feel and know I will not be judged.
Your headspace, when you are engaged in Focus-Directed Writing, is the safest place in the world.
Once you have made the medium of your choice physically safe, you can then begin the process of feeling safe enough to say anything.
In my own life, there were things I did not want to write about because to me, writing about these traumatic events would make them real.
The trouble with this reasoning was, declining to write about the trauma I experienced did not make it un-real. I could not erase the abuse I experienced by refusing to write about it.
The process of Focus-Directed Writing requires that we indeed “make real” the traumatic experiences we have endured. By doing this, it is we who are in control and not the reverberation of the experience itself.
The past cannot haunt us if we strip the mystery from it.
Everything that happened to us, happened to us and we survived it. This fact is unalterable.
The impact of the events we experienced is something we can manage through various psychological tools and, I believe, through Focus-Directed Writing.
And to do this, we need to feel safe enough that we will tell “the page” anything at all; even that which we might not be able to speak out loud.
To me, now, today, inside the process of Focus-Directed Writing is the safest place in the world. It is the one place I can say what I feel and know I will not be judged.
Your headspace, when you are engaged in Focus-Directed Writing, is the safest place in the world.
The Instant Gratification of Focus-Directed Writing
Many individuals who have engaged in a program of Focus-Directed Writing have reported that the technique has been beneficial.
in the midst of conflict -during an anxiety attack, experiencing pain from loss or rejection, etc.-one can feel near instantaneous relief. In my own experience, writing about what you are feeling when you are feeling it reduces the emotional impact of these feelings.
This is not something I alone have experienced; numerous clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of more generalized writing —or journaling— as being of therapeutic value in the reduction of stress, and anxiety as well as improving overall functioning.
It’s not magic; writing will not make the anxiety, pain, or whatever emotion(s) you are feeling evaporate. Writing will turn down the volume of intensity of the emotions and allow you to travel through the uncomfortable feelings to move through them. The relief you feel begins as soon as you start to write, and expands as you continue.
Many of us who have experienced severe trauma have emotional “blank” areas where we are unable to put into words what we are feeling at a given moment. By deploying Focus-Directed Writing to target the blankness -to describe what blankness feels like, to recall what event triggered the feeling, to continue boring into “blankness” until we reach the feelings that do reside below it, we are able to gain insight into ourselves and at the same time experience a sense of both power and control. Focus-Directed Writing becomes our super-power. It gives us a feeling of control because we choose to deploy it. And it gives us a feeling of power because we experience the relief it provides in the short-term, and the profound change that results from writing deeper and deeper until we reach the elemental truth.
in the midst of conflict -during an anxiety attack, experiencing pain from loss or rejection, etc.-one can feel near instantaneous relief. In my own experience, writing about what you are feeling when you are feeling it reduces the emotional impact of these feelings.
This is not something I alone have experienced; numerous clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of more generalized writing —or journaling— as being of therapeutic value in the reduction of stress, and anxiety as well as improving overall functioning.
It’s not magic; writing will not make the anxiety, pain, or whatever emotion(s) you are feeling evaporate. Writing will turn down the volume of intensity of the emotions and allow you to travel through the uncomfortable feelings to move through them. The relief you feel begins as soon as you start to write, and expands as you continue.
Many of us who have experienced severe trauma have emotional “blank” areas where we are unable to put into words what we are feeling at a given moment. By deploying Focus-Directed Writing to target the blankness -to describe what blankness feels like, to recall what event triggered the feeling, to continue boring into “blankness” until we reach the feelings that do reside below it, we are able to gain insight into ourselves and at the same time experience a sense of both power and control. Focus-Directed Writing becomes our super-power. It gives us a feeling of control because we choose to deploy it. And it gives us a feeling of power because we experience the relief it provides in the short-term, and the profound change that results from writing deeper and deeper until we reach the elemental truth.
Focus-Directed Writing™ & Trauma: Fully See, Fully Accept, Fully Heal
In writing about perpetrators of abuse, Focus-Directed Witting eschews defining the perpetrator as “a monster.” Dehumanizing the perpetrator is to mythologize them and this elaboration is counter to the principles of Focus-Directed Writing: bald honesty. Those who harmed us, no matter how savagely, cruelly, inhumanely, were decidedly human. In my own personal journey, it was important for me to never describe my father as soulless or in-human. He was a man. In High School he was a high Jumper; I had seen pictures. He spoke five languages and was exceedingly charming to strangers. But his behavior toward me was terrifyingly cruel and bizarre. My father lacked the ability to imagine how others felt. So when I wrote about him, I was careful to be precise because I needed to see him for who he truly was, not as a larger-than-life beast.
The reason that detailed, focused writing is so important is because for every trauma that was inflicted, for each instance of abuse, for every moment of a catastrophe that occurred, there is an equal and opposite moment of personal triumph that must be recognized. As a survivor of abuse, you may not think of yourself as having "inner strength," but through Focus-Directed Writing, you will see for yourself that as a survivor, you by default contain a core of inner strength.
We may not at first acknowledge this because “triumph” is rarely a word anyone would use after being sexually assaulted or physically attacked. But if we have survived the violence, we have indeed, triumphed over it. And this must be acknowledged. To survive trauma requires personal strength.
Every single punch we endured is proof that we were victimized but we were never victims. We fought back, even silently, by surviving.
The point of writing about any past suffering you endured is not to gain a deeper understanding of “why” the abuse or events happened. There is no rational, acceptable explanation for abuse; there is no “reason” for a natural disaster; one cannot make peace with war. So in documenting the traumatic events of the past, it is not to arrive at a moment where we say, “Ah, I understand now.”
One may never understand "why" abuse happened. I personally believe "why" is unknowable. And I believe it doesn't matter. Because "why" alters nothing.
The reason for dissecting the past, for taking such an exacting inventory of the events that harmed us is so that we can finally see ourselves for who we actually are.
I experienced many terrible things as a child and young man—going through puberty hungry and malnourished in a wealthy New England community, relentless bullying in school; being violently sexually assaulted as a young boy, being abandoned by my parents and failed by the Amherst public school system, losing my first boyfriend to AIDS, losing my twenties to alcohol use disorder.
I am made out of these terrible things. I am also made out of all the dreams and goals that I had, some of which I achieved, some I did not. I am made out of every experience: when I made a right turn instead of a left. I am composed of the great joy I have known, and the wreckingball heartbreak as well.
I embrace it all. Because if one, just one, terrible thing hadn’t happened to me, I would not be the person I am right now. And I’m good with who I am.
There’s something else. I discovered through writing, as I became a more open and honest person living a life of transparency, that hidden inside each terrible experience was a gift.
Not a gift I asked for. But a gift nonetheless.
It is how we heal. And by heal, I mean not that we are returned to who we were “before,” because that person is gone. By “heal,” I mean fully accept and claim as one aspect of who we are, something we can choose to share with others in order to help them on their own journey.
The reason that detailed, focused writing is so important is because for every trauma that was inflicted, for each instance of abuse, for every moment of a catastrophe that occurred, there is an equal and opposite moment of personal triumph that must be recognized. As a survivor of abuse, you may not think of yourself as having "inner strength," but through Focus-Directed Writing, you will see for yourself that as a survivor, you by default contain a core of inner strength.
We may not at first acknowledge this because “triumph” is rarely a word anyone would use after being sexually assaulted or physically attacked. But if we have survived the violence, we have indeed, triumphed over it. And this must be acknowledged. To survive trauma requires personal strength.
Every single punch we endured is proof that we were victimized but we were never victims. We fought back, even silently, by surviving.
The point of writing about any past suffering you endured is not to gain a deeper understanding of “why” the abuse or events happened. There is no rational, acceptable explanation for abuse; there is no “reason” for a natural disaster; one cannot make peace with war. So in documenting the traumatic events of the past, it is not to arrive at a moment where we say, “Ah, I understand now.”
One may never understand "why" abuse happened. I personally believe "why" is unknowable. And I believe it doesn't matter. Because "why" alters nothing.
The reason for dissecting the past, for taking such an exacting inventory of the events that harmed us is so that we can finally see ourselves for who we actually are.
I experienced many terrible things as a child and young man—going through puberty hungry and malnourished in a wealthy New England community, relentless bullying in school; being violently sexually assaulted as a young boy, being abandoned by my parents and failed by the Amherst public school system, losing my first boyfriend to AIDS, losing my twenties to alcohol use disorder.
I am made out of these terrible things. I am also made out of all the dreams and goals that I had, some of which I achieved, some I did not. I am made out of every experience: when I made a right turn instead of a left. I am composed of the great joy I have known, and the wreckingball heartbreak as well.
I embrace it all. Because if one, just one, terrible thing hadn’t happened to me, I would not be the person I am right now. And I’m good with who I am.
There’s something else. I discovered through writing, as I became a more open and honest person living a life of transparency, that hidden inside each terrible experience was a gift.
Not a gift I asked for. But a gift nonetheless.
It is how we heal. And by heal, I mean not that we are returned to who we were “before,” because that person is gone. By “heal,” I mean fully accept and claim as one aspect of who we are, something we can choose to share with others in order to help them on their own journey.
You, New
Exploring yourself through Focus-Directed Writing can show you who you really are, how you truly feel, what you actually experienced and how you truly felt about it. You can learn things about yourself you did not know.
Because when you hide aspects of yourself either from yourself or others, you are not fully authentic. You are not fully you. Only when you release your burden onto the page and process what it means in our discussions, only when you did so deep you hit the bedrock of yourself do you finally reach yourself. You may be quite surprised by the person you discover. It is exciting, not traumatizing, to learn who you actually are. You stop caring about what people think about you, if they are thinking about you; your focus is inward, mindful, focused. Power based on fear isn’t real power at all. Real power is born from freedom. The freedom to be who you really are on the deepest level. And it’s not pills that will take you to this place. It’s words.
You: the truest, most pure you: That's the highest goal of Focus-Directed Writing.
Because when you hide aspects of yourself either from yourself or others, you are not fully authentic. You are not fully you. Only when you release your burden onto the page and process what it means in our discussions, only when you did so deep you hit the bedrock of yourself do you finally reach yourself. You may be quite surprised by the person you discover. It is exciting, not traumatizing, to learn who you actually are. You stop caring about what people think about you, if they are thinking about you; your focus is inward, mindful, focused. Power based on fear isn’t real power at all. Real power is born from freedom. The freedom to be who you really are on the deepest level. And it’s not pills that will take you to this place. It’s words.
You: the truest, most pure you: That's the highest goal of Focus-Directed Writing.