Finding Light Inside Your Darkness

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work.”

— Wendell Berry

Have you ever been knocked down by something in your life? Completely and utterly brought low to a place you hadn’t known? Vulnerable in a way that you never had been before? If so, you will know where I am coming from. And if not, you may understand someone else in your life better. Or someone in your community better.

I am getting over a bad bout of illness. The details are unimportant. There are always people who are more sick or less sick than you. Not unlike grief or trauma where somebody has always had it much worse or much easier than you did. Comparisons are really pointless. What matters is the impact. It doesn’t matter if it was a small tornado or a large tornado that tore down your house. What matters most in that moment is that you lost your house. What matters is how you feel looking at the wreckage. What matters is how you can come back from it.

The nature of this particular bout of illness shattered my illusion of resilience. I lost the innocence of believing I could gut through anything. It’s not that I have never been sick, in fact, I have been sicker. But this small tornado of illness tore down my house –the house I had built, had worked so hard to rebuild, the house I thought I belonged to. A house of energy and can-do-it-ness. A house with rose colored windows that determined how I saw the world. A house that never thought it could get knocked down.

I have tried to explain this new place, post-sickness, and the first description would would be ‘not-me.’ But that’s not accurate. It is me. It’s just a side of me that I have never gotten to know. It’s just a side of me that I have been terrified of, have denied was there, even when it was there. Other times of being hit by life I was able to dodge this side, I had enough energy or something, to slip through some door and leave this darker, slower side behind. But not this time. This time, slow and dark  was all I had.

This period of time is marked by absence—and not surprisingly, feels negative; the very definition of something that is marked by absence rather than presence. But it is really both. It is the absence of the familiar side of the self; and the presence of the unfamiliar. With the slow, dark side of myself that has every right to feel and act negatively—at best, I have flat out ignored this side, and at worst I have been mean and disdainful. And now, after all these years—this dark side and I are roommates.

As Wendell Berry said, when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And that’s exactly where I am. In this unfamiliar place, I don’t know where I am, and I don’t have my familiar ways of marshaling myself and the world. I no longer know what to do, and I find myself in my real work: learning to belong to this side too. Learning that belonging to our dark side, or our slow side, or our exhausted side means that we belong to something bigger, not smaller.  I had no idea that I would learn this: there is an odd reassurance in sitting so close to the thing that used to scare you away. I wouldn’t say that my slow, dark roommate and I are best friends, but I wouldn’t say we are enemies any longer. She, the slow, darker side, is now a part of the mix; will be a part of the familiar, will be built in to the new house as it is built again. I know this is true, and I have no real idea of what it means. But not knowing, yes, that is where the work is.

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

A little help from our friends

Some days the best cure for anything is friendship. It can show up in all sorts of forms. A text. A phone call. An invitation to dinner. It can be fleeting, light-hearted or thoughtful. It can help with a huge problem, or never even get close to it. But friendship is always healing—it is one of the wonderful strands that connects us safely to this spinning planet and keeps you from falling off the edge.

And the amazing part is that it doesn’t have to be a big thing for it to really get in deep and help you out. We humans are pack animals and almost anything that helps us feel part of the pack—that reminds us of our very ‘pack-ness’ can be enough to bring us back in balance—bring back our spring or resilience.

I had the great good fortune of working at the Stone Center at Wellesley College as a graduate student job. I worked the mail order business. It’s true. I am one of the few psychologists who can say that they worked their way up from the mail room. My job was to take in the orders for the Stone Center’s Working Papers and mail them out. It was a good job because I also got read them all. But it was a great job because I got to occasionally talk with Jean Baker Miller, a psychiatrist who championed the notion that relationships make us more whole—they make both people in the relationship more whole—and relationships are a source of healing.

Jean Baker Miller said that healthy relationships bring a sense of zest or energy to our lives. I loved that phrase—partly because it said so much and completely dispensed with the psychobabble. But I also loved it because I could completely identify the feeling. I could feel that zest. And I am continually struck how contact, relationship, makes us more than who we are—helps us be our best self.

And as much as we decry social media as ‘less than’ contact, or complain about the falsenessof FaceBook, I actually believe that there are opportunities for contact, for healing, for zest in small wonderful doses. I can shift my mood just by seeing someone’s pictures of their kid’s dance recital or school play. I can feel their joy and smile for them. Social media is about small doses of zest, but they can add up. They can be a huge help on a bad day.

I think that sometimes we put too much pressure on relationships and communication to ‘get something done’ or ‘to be helpful’ when some of the biggest healing of all is so much more mundane. It mostly comes down to being there—somewhere holding the other end of the rope. That’s what you need. Most of us grown ups know we have to climb our own mountains. But we just want to know that when it feels steep or lonely or tiring, that there is someone holding the rope. That someone has also climbed the mountain. That even if we stumble, fall, make dumb decisions, that we are still part of the team, part of the climbing party, part of the pack.

Sometimes when you have been hurt badly, you stop noticing small things because you are waiting for the one big thing that will help, will make up for the wrongs. And I think that this is one of those things that can really get in the way of healing. The little things get in and heal better. The little things are a relational dosage we were meant to absorb and tolerate. The little things help us build muscles of care and trust and belief that relationships are safe.

Some days you can give your efforts to the pack and some days you need the care of the pack. That’s just the way the pack works, the way friendship works. The only thing you will never know, is how much impact you really have. You have to just give and create more zest out there for your pack—and it will come back to you. Maybe not directly, but it will because love regenerates, zest and energy multiplies.

So what can you do? Keep reaching out to share your life. Share your joy. Share your struggles. Because both help everyone feel like they are part of the pack. Even on days, or especially on days, when you least feel like it. When you feel like you are the worst person in the world. Reach out. And on days when you are full of energy, reach out. Let it be simple. Let it be small. One text. One call. One silly photo of your daughter singing into to a wooden spoon. Those moments are some of the best medicine of all. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2016

The Stone Center became part of the Wellesley Centers for Women you can read more about them with the link.

Toward a New Psychology of Women

By Jean Baker Miller

Buy on Amazon

How to begin. Again. Or, how to handle any setback.

“Beginning,” He Answered.

The blank look on their faces let
Sisyphus know
they didn’t understand
the hard part wasn’t
the work of pushing the rock uphill.

He almost enjoyed
the heaviness of the rock,
and the honest, exhausting labor
of those long days.

They couldn’t know
that momentum started,
even uphill,
carries its own weight.

They only saw the size of the rock,
and the angle of the hill,
and naturally assumed
the work they could witness
was the hard part.

No one was there
in the cool mornings
as he stared at his rock
in silence,
his feet still,
his hands gently resting
on its curved sides.

No one was there
to hear the unspoken words
shouted to the Gods, pleading
for the strength to bear,
not the rock,
but the desperate weight of wondering,
how to begin,
again.”

— Gretchen Schmelzer

Yesterday when I met with my trainer I asked her to focus on two things: I said I needed it to be fun and I needed encouragement. Or, frankly, I was going to quit. She looked puzzled. I was dead serious. I had spent the car ride there in tears, and I had managed to pull it together as I went inside, but I was wobbly. I wanted to be there, but I also didn’t. I am pretty sure that I used up an entire week’s worth of self-control to walk through the door.

I was in a place of total frustration. Or, as I had told her, “This is a serious low self-esteem day.” I had started this project of regaining fitness in the late fall, but then over the holidays I got pneumonia and in that chutes and ladders game of behavior change, I had climbed a ladder only to get sick and slide all the way back to start. Then I traveled for work. And here I was, months later, at the beginning again. Maybe even a few yards back from it.

How do you start again? How do you find the motivation you had to begin a project in the first place? When I started this fitness goal in the fall I had such a strong vision for what I wanted to do, and why I was doing it. I was a rower when I was young, and I really want to get back in a boat. But I have had two back surgeries and I am out of shape, so it is a long project to get strong enough to do it safely. I was so excited about it in the fall. I could see the goal and I could feel it. And after a long winter of illness and recovery, I can’t feel it anymore. I can’t see it anymore. All I can see is that months later I am sitting at the bottom of the hill staring at my rock.

This is the part of change people don’t talk about because there really aren’t any pithy sayings that you can print on motivational pictures. This is the part of the change process that is messy and ugly and whiny. This is what my therapist called the ‘misunderstanding of commitment.’ I seemed to think that if I chose to do something there was no good reason to not want to do it. But it turns out that committing to change isn’t always fun. That it is perfectly normal for motivation to flag. Even if it is what you want. Even if it is something you love. Sometimes it is just a pain in the ass and you have to do it anyway. There are parts of change that you have to just slog through even if you love the things you are doing, or love the place you are headed.

The key to beginning again when you must, or struggling through the middle of change is this: you can’t abandon yourself. Here are the ways I typically abandon myself: either I just totally let go of the fight entirely and behave like some overly sweet babysitter who is going to let me eat all of the popcorn and candy if I want to so I will like her, or, I am so mean to myself about what I have to do, that at best I sometimes get short-lived fearful compliance, but more typically, I find ways to hide out from my mean self, the moral equivalent of pretending to clean your room, but instead, spending hours reading old Oprah magazines. I’ll save you the trial and error. Neither one of these strategies leads to real change.

So what does not abandoning yourself look like? It looks like good parenting, only in the case of adulthood, the conversation is between both sides of yourself: the side of yourself that doesn’t want to do it (or wants to do too much of it) and the part of yourself that THIS TIME isn’t going to leave, is going to stay and help you through it, even if it is a struggle. It is the part of you that is now going to say, “Honey, stop. What’s going on? What do you need in order to do this differently? I know it’s hard, but you need to do it anyway. I’m right here and I am not going anywhere.”

This self-parenting or compassionate, yet firm self talk is best learned from the outside-in. We learn this best from real people who talk to us like this. All language is receptive first—we take it in, and then expressive, then we can speak. Some people were lucky to get this as children and learned it a long time ago, and some people weren’t so lucky. If you didn’t get it as a kid, it is really, really helpful to find ways to learn it as an adult—and we learn it best through relationships: helping relationships. People who had no parenting or harsh parenting are always shocked in therapy by the simple phrase: let’s figure this out. This is what good parents do. They don’t have all the answers, they have the ability to stay in the conversation and help kids figure it out. They have the ability to say, yes, this kind of sucks, but you and I will get through this. One step at a time.

So, that day that I cried all the way to the gym, instead of turning the car around and quitting, I treated myself just like a kid who didn’t want to go to dance class, but had signed up and really needed to go. I said cry all you want to, but you still are going in. I didn’t abandon myself: I went in and acted like my own good parent: tell the trainer that I am having a bad day and ask for help. Ask for some fun to support my motivation. Yes, I made myself show up. But I did it with help, compassion and humor. And guess what? It worked. She did make it more fun. She was encouraging. And I got through the day. Was it perfect? No. But it was enough to get me to the next day. And that is what beginning again looks like. One step, then the next. Maybe a step back. Then another step forward. Until you are on your way again.

© 2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For further reading and practices on Self-Talk;

How to Talk to Yourself So You Will Listen Part I

How to Talk to Yourself So You Will Listen Part II: Practice for Self Talk

Healing Bad Dog: Understanding Traumatic Self Talk

The sounds of silence: Some thoughts on healing and silence

“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves”

— Rumi

Not long ago I talked about a young client of mine who spent six weeks with me and spoke only one word. Just the word, “Word.” And I worked with other children who never spoke, or took a year to speak. They used actual silence to be quiet.

Some clients need silence and they bring it with them. But silence, like wind, comes in all forms. Silence can look like so many things. I have had other child clients who were noisy and chatty and yet they too, really, said nothing. Their families lived with the rule of the ‘code of silence’ typical of the neighborhoods I worked in, and their talk, their conversation was a fluent art of conversational silence. It was as if you had a conversation, but you didn’t. Teenagers are often good at this conversational silence. They are good at answering questions with descriptions like: fine, good, not much, weird, maybe, yeah, and most telling--- nothing.

My child clients who lived with the ‘code of silence’ rule needed some chatter to feel at rest in my presence. They needed to not feel so much under a spotlight. I think silence was long taught and understood as a means of not being obtrusive—not interfering in someone’s ability to talk. But silence isn’t always quiet. It can be blaringly loud if you aren’t used to it, or if it feels too dangerous. People who have stayed away from their fears for years need to gradually approach them—and silence can be like being in a locked cage with their worst fears.

In the field of psychology there is often a lot of discussion of silence –what it means and when it should be used. But I think it is too literally discussed and too literally understood. I think it is important to understand the need for silence—what does it do? What is silence?—and how can it serve healing  and growth?--whether you are the client or the therapist.

As the client—silence offers you either protection or space. If you bring silence, you protect your truths—from others hearing and usually more importantly, from you having to hear it. Silence in any form means “I don’t have to deal with that yet.” And silence can offer you space. Space to ‘just be’ without having to ‘be’ anything in particular. It is the blank canvas—and you can stretch out in it—and figure things out.

But the first mistake is that we think of silence as sound. It is more useful to think of silence as rest. As a space that you can relax in to—hammock-like. Where you feel safe, or calm, or interested—the way babies look when they are happy in those little baby-backpack carriers.

I focus on this state of rest because a relaxed brain is a thinking brain and a learning brain. A relaxed brain has the ability to gain some perspective. A relaxed brain can heal. Sometimes it is actual silence which helps this, and sometimes it is something that looks the furthest from silence which helps this. I think of times I have had big writing projects and sought out coffee shops to write in so that my mind could rest on the background white noise of coffee shop chatter. Everyone needs a different way of finding where their brain can relax and be in the state it needs to for growth, for conversation, creation, or healing.

I have found that for people who have lived through trauma—this ability to modulate how they are heard and when they get to speak is not only important, but is a big piece of the healing. And sometimes it can be the context that helps you balance silence and speaking. From 2003 - 2007 I had the privilege of working on a project in Cambodia working with country leaders to help them strengthen their response to HIV/AIDS. It was a leaderhip intervention into a public health issue-- we worked with them on emotional intelligence, action learning and understanding people and systems. Our team of three faculty worked with a group of 100 leaders at a time and we were supported by 13 Cambodian Facilitators who led the small group work in Khmer. The program did not have an overt trauma agenda, but the entire group—facilitators and participants had lived through the Khmer Rouge genocide so we were mindful of pacing and the difficulty of emotions. We also worked to maintain a stance of wondering, rather than knowing-- which wasn't hard because between the language, culture and context--and a 12 hour time difference--  we often really had no idea what was happening a lot of the time.

One of the things that was immensely healing was that because of the language barrier—even though we were leading the program—we weren’t in charge of the language. We had a wonderfully skilled translator, and most of the program was translated—but there was often great debate about the language. And this debate about language meant that they could own the language and own their experience, they could own their words. 

There was one day, when I was working just with the facilitators before a program, when there was no translator. Truthfully, I liked it better- it felt less intrusive and more respectful somehow—and implied a trust in them seeking help when they needed it. When there was no translation I got to be the kind, but somewhat clueless mom—the mom in storybooks when the kids get to be smarter and yet when they really need her she actually does know something. There was something about listening to their conversation for the emotional language and not the actual words that felt more real than the translated words. I don’t know why.

My vocabulary in Khmer is probably about fifty words, though 12 of them are animals, which didn’t come up much…but I know the words for change, group, me, you, happy, girl, boy, aunt, uncle, younger, name, called, much, isn’t it, the numbers to 20, day, night, moon, morning, teacher, learn, excuse me, everyone, someone,  –I am seriously lacking verbs—which given my lack of action in Cambodia was not surprising. But that day I could be connected to them. Listening, for emotion, for interest, but not for content. On the one occasion when they were discussing the order of the day --which I could gather from the word for group-- I chimed in with my opinion--but they could take it or leave it. They got to have a leader—who was there for them, but in no way could accuse them of anything—who could literally never use what they just said against them. This was what the leaders of the Khmer Rouge did. They forced them to speak against their fellow community members and people died. In this program they got to have a different experience –they could be silent to me, and still speak their truth. Silence comes in so many different forms and shades and experiences. Sometimes there is magic built right in to experience if you slow down enough to appreciate it.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2015