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| Image credit: wikipedia |
Rae Rivers signed a contract with Harper Collins, a 4 book deal to be
carried out over a 3 year period – a formidable task for any writer. She suffered severe anxiety and fear of
failing, of letting herself down and failing her editor and her readers. The intense anxiety led her to suffer from
the dread disease of writer’s block which served to intensify an already
negative situation.
She asked the question: “How
do we combat fear?” And promptly
answered it by stating that we should never INVALIDATE or DISMISS our
fears. Rather EMBRACE them and NAME
them. Rather than fall into self pity
and despise herself, she started to define her fears. In this way she came to create a character
called Gru, an old grey man with a sad and lugubrious expression on his face,
wearing an old- fashioned grey large-checked suit. He was the embodiment of her fears – a kind
of comic character she showed in her video presentation, shaped like an
inverted triangle with broad shoulders narrowing down to the tip of ‘V’ of his
small shoes.
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| Image credit: raerivers.com |
Gru represented her fears but also helped and advised her how to
come to terms with them. She could
discuss her problems with him without pretence since he knew her
weaknesses. He became a kind a sounding
board for all fears and anxieties in her life, not only those relating to her
writing and she could discuss these with him as he accompanied her in the car where
she knew they were safe with safety belts and air bags (as she pointed out to
Gru).
As a ‘hands on’ student of Jung psychology, I could identify with
the character of Gru who was really a creation of “Active Imagination”, namely
a spontaneous image of Rae’s fears which she created to help her in a dialogue of
discussion and resolution. Significantly
he was male, an embodiment of Jung’s concept of the animus as the masculine
element in feminine psychology, just as the anima is the feminine aspect of the
male psyche and leads him to creativity.
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| Rae Rivers |
ACCEPT, IDENTIFY and ACKNOWLEDGE!
Those were the keynote words of Rae’s address with regard to “Facing the
Fear”.
Feel free to take a look at Susan Dennard’s website www.susandennard.com
Words by Dr Pamela Heller-Stern who attended ROSACon16
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