The middle phase of healing from trauma: Sorting

“Instead she came to look for a parent, and sought to initiate what I suggest is the hardest kind of conversation, because rather than meeting the first requirement of human interaction—the presentation of a coherent self—her conversation is about the very inability to be any longer coherent; she is presenting instead two selves, not because she is crazy, but because she is evolving. ”
— Robert Kegan, Evolving Self

A big piece of the work of healing from trauma, or healing from anything, really, is sorting. It’s not the first piece of work. It’s not even the second. It’s dead center. In the beginning you prepare, you gather your resources. You plan. You chicken out. You get distracted. You rationalize. You work really hard to do anything else. And then you gather your courage. You set out. You head in.

In the second phase you take things apart. You pull all the stuff out of the closets and drawers. You pull down the broken pieces and the pieces that were screwed willy-nilly into the walls. You pull the furniture away from the walls and look to see what’s behind them. You take things apart and things come apart. And often you can feel like all that is there is a big mess. Or you just feel like a big mess. In this phase you are looking at your story. Looking at your loss. Looking at what happened. But you are also looking at all the ways you patched things back together. Covered over the holes. With plastic, with plywood, with a picture frame.

You are looking at all of it—and really, you never have, really looked at it. Looked at that corner. Looked at how things were nailed together, glued together. Looked at the mess behind the mess, and all the ways you lived around it,

And then comes the third phase –where there is a lot of sorting. You take things out of the big mess you made---out of the stuff that had been stored for years in the back of the closets: ideas, beliefs, sorrows, hopes, stuff. You take it and look at it. You look at it each thing as if it were old clothes and ask yourself, “Does that fit me now?” “Have I outgrown it?” Is it me?”

And you can go further with your questions “Does it make me my best self?” “Does it strengthen who I want to be?” “Why am I still carrying that around?”

Sorting takes time. And it doesn’t always feel satisfying. Or even look like work. For a lot of the work of sorting you are still sitting in a big mess. It takes time to hold each of your pieces carefully. It takes time to not know. To not want to part with it. To put it back in the pile again hoping you know the next time that you pull it out.

And sorting doesn’t always feel good. Sorting through trauma and loss in real life is not what you watch in the movies—where they leave behind a house or relationship or some object or possession—and music starts to play, and the hero of the story immediately starts a new life. In the movies, the person sorting always seems to ‘know’ exactly what to do and why they are doing it. This is because they have a writer. In real life there is trial and error. In real life there is uncertainty.

When you let go of some things, it can be hugely painful, even if you know it's time to let go. And sometimes it can be hugely painful to see the things that you must keep, that are a part of your story, your history. The things that make you who you are, even as you would rather toss them. It can be so hard to know because sorting is really an act of growth. Growth through awareness. Growth through feeling. Growth through curiosity.

Sorting is an act of growth because in the process of sorting you are holding different parts of yourself as you ask yourself the questions. You are holding the you that you were. The you that experienced the loss. The you that survived it all. And you are holding the you that you are now. The you that sees a new future. The you that can see the past differently.

It is not easy to hold both parts of yourself equally and not play favorites. It’s not easy to not collude with old habits or ignore hard learned lessons. To see either only loss and sorrow, or only light and possibility. Sorting requires that you hold it all—so that you can keep the work you have done and honor it. And so sorting is best done with help. No one heals alone and sorting is well served by another brain and another heart and a careful non-judgmental eye.

A helping brain, a helping heart, a helping hand, another eye—it does more than you can imagine. You can only feel the loss—they see the possibility. They hold your other side. You can only see the mess—they see all the treasure you have. You think you are all done: they pull open another drawer, filled with things you tossed inside. You are exhausted and sad. They are determined and feel helpful.

For people who have experienced trauma or massive loss—who have spent years throwing things into the back of their emotional closets (or actual closets, garages, basements,..)—it can seem like an impossibility to even imagine letting anyone see or help you with the big mess that you are sorting through. The shame of the mess. The shame of not knowing. The shame of needing help. Of being seen in the light of day with all of your ‘stuff.’ But sorting is just too hard to do alone.

Sorting happens on all sorts of planes. Some of the sorting you need to do for healing happens in the emotional realm. I have found it so helpful when my therapist was able to hold the present for me while I sorted the past. It was like having a rope that would keep me tethered to myself—and the world I was living in and creating. Or she could also hold the mistakes that I can make without judgment—as something I do—and need to figure out how to live with. When you have another brain and another heart you can have the ability to really look at something because you aren’t as afraid. And you can’t really sort if you can’t really look.

And sometimes the sorting we do is of the ordinary, or everyday world—but can be equally life changing. This week I had the heart and helping hand of my sister-in-law Lucy while I sorted through things in my house—and her ability to care, and yet not be attached to my things—meant there was a new freedom to appreciate things or question their use. Her ability to keep pulling things around, and keep going back into different corners meant I couldn’t use my old habits—or my old ways of seeing, I had to look again. The other day I talked about containers and healing environments and they are relevant here—because it’s not the what that my therapist or Lucy did—though the what was fine. It’s the how. It’s the ability to be held without judgment—which is not the same not getting feedback. They both had opinions—but their opinions were in the service of my healing, my growth, my becoming who I want to be. And both were able to hold my struggle, my disappointments, my sadness and my shame –without getting tangled in it.

And this kind of environment—the ability to be held as the you that you were, and the you that you are now, and even the you that you might be—this is hands down the most healing and growth –producing environment there is. When people allow us our messes—our ability, as Robert Kegan says, to show up without having to be a coherent self—when we don’t have to hold it all together—which you absolutely cannot do if you want to sort then we have the gift and grace of healing.  

© 2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Man, that's amazing work--You are badass...

When you hear friends and family talk about having to go to physical therapy after an injury or a surgery—they talk about it in groans and laughs. They talk about how tough their particular physical therapist is —how hard they made them work, how sore they are—in a way that sounds macho, or badass. 

This is not the conversation that people typically have about psychological therapy. There is some mistaken notion, especially the worse someone feels, that after a session of psychological therapy you will not be sore, but instead will ‘feel better.’ As if you were sitting down to talk with an old kindly grandmother or a hallmark card—and not someone trained to help you heal and stretch and grow. 

Psychological therapy is exactly like physical therapy —except it is done though words instead of those colored rubber bands. Old tight habitual muscles are forced to stretch and find new ways of moving. Psychological bones that were broken and healed over are re-broken and reset and then slowly put into use for you to use again. All of this work makes you sore. All of this work requires stretching.

This is where the platitudes from other people become especially annoying because they ask you, “Are you feeling better?” and you want to shout “No!— I am sore, I feel raw, I’am anxious, I’m trying new things!” The problem is that just like physical therapy, terms like  ‘feeling good” and “feeling bad” don’t really tell you anything: you will always feel more sore on your way to feeling functional. We judge physical health by flexibility, strength and range of motion. Shouldn’t we assess psychological health the same way? It’s my dream that someday we view psychological strengthening just as ‘badass’ as we view physical training. So help me make this happen. When you hear of someone working hard on their issues say, “Man, that’s amazing work—you are badass!” Watch them smile. Change the conversation about healing.

This blog originally ran Oct 9, 2014

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2015

For more on healing from trauma you can read my new book: Journey Through Trauma;

The Frame as Art

In one of my very first blog posts here I talked about an art class I took in college—called Methods and Materials. For my final project I ended up doing giant watercolors of old family pictures—and our class got to have a show of our work in the art building. I had two whole walls.

Over the course of the class I became enamored with Chinese hanging scrolls—not so much what was on the inside of the scrolls, but with the outside—the patterns and color block that made the framework for the picture. I thought the frames were as beautiful, sometimes more beautiful than the picture. I made collages of the frames with nothing in the center. And when it came time to hang my show, I created giant hanging scroll frames made of newsprint and maps and sheet music and put my watercolors in the center. I wanted my family pictures to have a framework. Something to hold them tight.

I had no idea then that I would end up traveling to China and Southeast Asia and I now have all kinds of hanging scrolls hanging in my house. Some of them Cambodian, made of fabrics, patterns of silk—hanging from old loom pieces. And some are traditional Chinese scrolls with paintings of bamboo or tigers. They have replaced the paper ones I created in art class.

As a consultant and therapist I often talk about containers or frameworks. These things are the invisible structure that allows change to happen. Not unlike art—we don’t always notice the frame—we take it for granted—the framing of the canvas, and then the frame of the painting—two frames providing structure and support and protection.

And in many ways the container should be invisible and taken for granted. It should be so interconnected that you think it is part of the art.

What do I mean by container or framework? When I teach people about containers and helping I go back to being a lifeguard. When I worked as a lifeguard I had a rule that there should be a lifeguard for every 10 people. At this ratio, it was a safe situation. A lifeguard can watch 10 people and interact with 10 people. Interestingly there is a magic number for human memory which is 7 plus or minus 2. It is what the human mind can easily hold in memory, and I have found that human beings somehow know if there are enough lifeguards or group therapists or consultants of groups to keep them in memory. When we unconsciously know that we are held in memory, we have the experience of knowing there is an emotional lifeguard. And so I have found the lifeguarding ratio to be the best container for work to get done by groups. When you have enough staff, or therapists or consultants—the group does its work and takes risks. When the ratio goes down, the work shifts back to being more superficial.

And the container can also be too tight. If a painting were all frame and crowded out the painting—that wouldn’t be right either. If there are too many helpers, therapists, consultants—people don’t feel safer, they feel scrutinized. In this scenario, they are held too much in memory and they get self-conscious and they don’t do as much work either. So in creating containers there is a balance.

And it is a balance that we participate in whether we are the helper or the one being helped. The helper provides the container in the beginning so healing can happen—it is the cast or splint that you can’t see, but which has to be thoughtfully put into place and adjusted as needed. Tighter when we are in crisis, looser as we heal. As the person helping you have to deeply understand that the container is as much of the work as anything else. And, like the frame of the canvas--it is the prerequisite for any work to happen. As the person getting help you have to learn to lean on it, lean in to it, and let it become something you trust. You come to depend on it, and then you learn to create it for yourself. Healing is so much like the hanging scrolls that I love so much: it requires that you become the beautiful frame and the artwork inside. You are both: the container and the art.

© 2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Healing as Mapping: Mapping the Self

“Cartographers call blank spaces on a map “sleeping beauties.”
— Annie Dillard

Healing from trauma is an expedition. It is a task of preparing for the expedition, the unraveling of the trail and the story, and slowly and painstakingly mapping the terrain.

You take a map with you of where you think are headed and where you think you need to go. But maps are always a mix of accurate truth and misinformation. Indeed what makes maps readable and usable is their loyalty to understanding and guidance, and not necessarily to accuracy.

All maps suffer from a problem of distortion—and all distortions on a map are there to serve some purpose, to create  order out of chaos. One of the most famous distortions was created by Mercator. In 1569 he created a map to help sailors. The map was a radical departure from other maps, but he wanted to make it easier for them to plan a straight course towards their destination. With his map, drawn with new meridians and parallels, all the sailors needed to do was to place a ruler on the map so they could plot a straight course. The map was never intended to depict the world as it was, just a journey that was as simple as it could be.

On this now familiar map, as you move away from the equator, the sizes of the continents become more distorted. Greenland and Africa seem to appear to be the same size, when in fact Africa is fourteen times the size of Greenland. We don’t see the distortions because this is the map we know. We grew up with this version of the world; pulled down by a string in front of the blackboards of our elementary schools.

Sometimes it what isn’t there that makes a map useful. The famous motto of the London Underground, “Mind the Gap” actually describes well the London Underground map—in that what was missing made it more understandable. Henry Beck’s 1930 map was a new map altogether—it dispensed with accuracy of exact locations and focused on the easy understanding of the interconnections between subway lines. It allowed people to understand how to simply get from station to station. In both Beck’s and Mercator’s work there was an important focus: how to order the world so that people could easily navigate.

I have a friend David Lindroth who is a mapmaker. He often tells about how when you are drawing a map of the coastline, you can’t draw it perfectly, the way you would see it in a photograph. If you drew the coastline the way you see it in a photograph, you would draw all of the inlets and edges of the coastlines which would actually make the coastlines of a country look porous and unfamiliar. In order for a coastline to look and feel familiar you need to leave out details. A general coastline feels more accurate than a real coastline.

Mapping the self is no less fraught with complexity. You need to begin the journey with some rudimentary map to make the trip—to know where to head. But you must remember that you are both using the map and creating the map. And trauma changes maps. If you are traveling in a war torn country—the maps made before the war will help you some, but not entirely. You need them all, you see. The maps before the war, and maps during war, and the maps of what exists now, the maps you are creating. They are different maps of a territory or place, but they don’t describe the same thing.

Putting names to things, locating the experience in time and place, understanding the closeness-distance of things. These are the actions of mapping. And when you head in to unknown territory it can be terrifying. Sometimes you are trying to talk about information you know, the experience you remember,--but even in the known there can be unknown.  The unknown can be the feelings that went with the experience or how the story will impact another. Whether you will be able to tolerate telling the story, tolerate the feelings, the shame.

 Sometimes the unknown is experiencing something you never let yourself experience before—it is truly unknown territory for you—perhaps trusting or depending on someone for the first time, or trying something brand new.

Sometimes the unknown is creating new structures altogether—building new bridges, planting new forests, destroying old fortresses.

But know this: creating maps is a brave endeavor. It takes courage to map your territory and account for what is there and not there. It takes courage to create a map that lets you be found—by you, by others, by the world. But the beauty is that the hard won courage you used to heal and create your maps stays with you. The bravery of the expedition stays with you. You get to use it to grow and learn for yourself. And you get to use it to help others. This courage is perhaps one of the many gifts of healing from trauma. It is one of the places on the map you can’t see before you start. It is one of the ‘sleeping beauties’ the cartographers speak of, and that your bravery allowed you to find. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2015