Transmission Linkage issue

Not long ago I was leaving a gas station and when I shifted into gear I thought (that shift felt different - it was missing the stops). I was stopping off at a gas station across the street before taking my son camping and when I went to put in park, It did not go and there was no feel to the selector. I ended up having to crawl under it and manually push the selector on the transmission into park to get it started.
It will shift from park into all the gears normally - the motion being clockwise, it will not however do the opposite - shift from 1 --> 2 --> D --> N --> R --> P, I have to crawl under it and do that myself. I notice it simply has a cable (a thin one at that )to move it into gear, my guess is there is a spring somewhere that provides force necessary to move it counter-clockwise. I hoping that spring is in the linkage assembly vs. Being inside the transmission? Does anyone know?