It was a family tradition to sing O Tannenbaum in the original German even though no one, except for some of the elders, could speak German any longer. The great-grandparents had emigrated from Germany bearing a St. Nikolaus outfit. This was Christmas eve: a Santa Suit and O Tannenbaum.

So, O Tannenbaum was written out in English phonetics instead of German. Something akin to “Oh Tannin bowm Oh Tannin bowm, Vee Groon zint die-nay bleh-ter.” It was literally spelled out so we could sing along, maybe not understand it, but we could be a part of it. It was such a simple way to keep a tradition going without requiring everyone to speak German. Spelling it out so we could sing along. Singing along meant that for a brief wonderful moment four generations were working together and were literally speaking the same language—whether we could understand it or not. Singing connected us to each other and to a past –whether we were connected by birthright, love, adoption, or marriage. Simply because the song was broken down in readable bite size pieces—translated into simplicity from complexity.  

One of my passions in the world of psychology is to act as a translator: to bring research into applications, and complex theory into understandable practice. I have found that the language of healing can be complicated. Part of the reason for this complexity is the history of translation of psychology. Freud, whatever may you think about him or his theories, was actually a plain-spoken guy. He used everyday words to describe the psychological world he was mapping--words that every German would have known—and been able to understand. But when it came time to translate Freud and the emergent study of psychology into English, the translators decided that the field of Psychology should belong to the elite, and they chose to be gatekeepers with their translation—opting for Latin words rather than common everyday words. They chose to make the language of psychology foreign and complex, rather than familiar and more user friendly. From its creation, psychology, at least in English, has been burdened by complicated language—which resulted in the experience of exclusion rather than belonging.

Don’t get me wrong. Healing repeated trauma can be complex, and I don’t want to confuse simplifying the language for the idea that you can make this an easy three-step-process. But that doesn’t mean that you have do everything at once. Or make everything so big or so hard that you want to give up.

In fact, some of the most powerful moments in healing are small, bite-sized moments. They are single steps: they are single steps repeated over and over. They are the daily journal entries, mindfulness meditation, and gratitude practices. They are the simple discussions of how you are feeling and giving the feeling a name.  It’s time to find ways to make healing easier to begin, and easier to understand—while honoring the difficult and complex task that it is.

And I encourage anyone who has made it through the healing process or those of you who work in the field to think about ways to describe aspects of it so that people just starting out could ‘sing along.’ I encourage people to talk about their experience of healing in language that others can understand, and I encourage healers of all sorts to also use language that clients can understand.

And this isn’t easy either. What can make sense to you, or your worldview may not make sense to others. In the act of translation—in the act of trying to communicate something you will get it wrong. This past week working with Alaska Native leaders we were working to find a better word for the word ‘catalyst’—because the word wasn’t common enough in the group to make sense or be helpful.  And in one-on-one meetings with clients, I have often offered a word where the client shook their head and said, “No-that’s not it.”

But getting it wrong is a clue—it’s a sign you need the phonetics. Healing is a relational act—in the way that singing the Christmas Carol was a relational act. Healing is co-created—so now when I get it wrong, I am usually heartened because getting it wrong allows the group or the individual client an opportunity to correct you and correct the translation. It allows them to get even clearer about what they understand and the ability to create and hear their own narrative in a different way. Often in the correction, they come to understand something for the first time.

So whether you are the therapist or the client, or the facilitator or group member—it’s time to embrace the small acts of healing and the need to build language and connection with the smallest increments.  Co-creation is harmony. You need the experience of connection first. And sometimes, in order to feel connection, you need, the way our family did, to be able to sing the phonetics first, without completely understanding the words. Sometimes it’s okay to just sing along so that you can feel your place in the long arc of the history of something. The language can come later. The rules of grammar can come later. You can revise and correct as much as you need to. Help others join the chorus, let yourself sing along.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2023