In her book ‘Still Writing – The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life’, Dani Shapiro writes about her overuse of the word ‘muffled’ in one of her novels. She realises that in unconsciously repeating the word, she is not close enough to the interior life of her main character.

None of us are close enough to the interior life of the main character in our lives – ourselves. Socialisation, early attachment, temperament, and life experiences all play a significant part in creating psychological obstacles to that realm. We develop habits in keeping ourselves distant from it and we learn ways of communicating and relating that come from thoughts filed away in heads guillotined from what we know in our being.

Earlier last week I was interviewed for a counselling position servicing people with extensive needs. I was asked if I had worked with people who lived with Disassociative Identity Disorder or PTSD. Instead of talking about my lived experience of working with these clients, I spoke from the head, and as I spoke I could feel the energy of genuine conversation depart.

Why did I not talk about my experience with listening? About my experience with hearing each person’s story and validating their hero’s journey with survival? With the difficulties in countering the medical model’s interpretation and the sense of hopelessness it brings? With listening for small ‘windows’ in which to open up different ways of understanding? Of the challenges in creating a safe space and of the stretch I must make if I am to grow enough for them? And all this before embarking on the tools and techniques psychologists are trained in.

Because I forgot to get close to my interior life, the repository of what I know from lived experience. I had forgotten to have a conversation with myself in my journal about what I know about my work with this client group. I had forgotten to harvest my experience; my knowing; my wisdom.

Whether we are writing a book, or being interviewed, or parenting children, or talking with our loved one, none of us escape the potential to fall into the trap of evading the depth and breadth of our own interior life. And when we do, we don’t ‘ring true’. Our words don’t resonate, not with ourselves, nor with others.

Journal writing has been my portal for getting closer to and clearer from my interior life. That job interview reveals I have further to go. How can we talk about what WE consciously know if we don’t turn to the vast amount of unconscious material within and ask? A job interview is not the place to explore what I know. There isn’t the time – to develop rapport or to follow trains of thought until wisdom is revealed. The stakes are too high. And not enough inner exploration has been done to truly ascertain ‘fit’.

Whenever we need to relate to another about something important, it’s important to distill our inner reality about the situation before we embark upon an exchange of feelings, needs, and wants. What is your truth about your relationship with a job? Another person? A responsibility? What needs and wants are tangled up with that ‘other’? Should they be met in that relationship or elsewhere? What might the ‘other’ want from you? What do you want to give?

If we don’t take time to explore our interior lives we can present as ‘muffled’ or at the other extreme ‘rigid’. Familiarising ourselves with our interior realities provides a starting point, one that feels ‘real’, and one from which an exchange, an openness to altering, can occur. Get closer to the interior repository of your lived experience. Write about it, explore how the threads come together and reap the insights that land – before sharing it with another.