Stop. Breathe. Reflect. Resolve.

On this morning’s run I got a wonderful sighting of a hawk, high up on a telephone pole. I am on an island and over the dunes I can see out to the water. This morning the water was calm—almost lake-like. The air was heavy waiting for rain. High up on a telephone pole, the hawk was looking out to sea: looking for fish, pondering, scanning the horizon in the distance. He sat solid—still. I followed his gaze as best I could. I looked out at the horizon line. It looked endless-and impossible to fully take in.

Perhaps I was struck by the hawk more this morning than most because today is the day for looking out—or looking ahead. Everyone is asking about your plans for 2023—what do you want? What resolutions do you have? I envied the hawk his keen sight—wishing for a clarity of view that I imagined he had. But as I watched him longer (and got a bit of a respite from my run) maybe what I envied even more than his sight was his stillness. His ability to stop long enough to slow down and really see.

If you can take anything from the wisdom of hawks—this is probably one of the best. How to stop and be still. How to reflect and see. Here’s the thing: I have found that in most cases it isn’t that you don’t know what to do in difficult situations or in planning next steps. It is that you almost never slow down enough to know what you know. Most adults have accumulated a lot of experience – in their work, their lives, their healing. But you are always moving forward to the next thing—always looking for the next problem to solve. And often, looking for the answer outside of yourself—looking for an easier answer, or the right answer, or what other people think is ‘the best practice.’ Forgetting that you often have decades of experience to bring to the issue you are grappling with. Ignoring the vast horizon of information that you carry with you.

So, as you prepare for the year ahead, I want to stop you.  I want to slow you down. I want you to sit still. Sit hawk-still and look out on the horizon of your last year. I want to nudge you to take some time to look back and reflect before you begin to plan for what you want to do next.

If slowing down and reflecting isn’t your thing—you aren’t alone. In her article on why we should make more time for reflection (even though we may hate doing it)-- Jennifer Porter notes that the most common reasons that we don’t like reflection:  we don’t understand the process of reflection, we don’t like the process of reflection, we don’t like what we see when we do it, and we have a bias toward action[1]. But here’s something you may not know: research shows that reflection was more effective in supporting future action than additional experience was[2]. And while we often have a bias in our reflection on what went wrong—we learn important things when we reflect on both our successes and our failures[3].

Reflection is the act of slowing down to know what you know—to observe what you have done, what worked, what didn’t, and what you have come to understand about how to do what you do, and how to understand the meaning of what you do. Reflection supports both your ability to do the things that are important to you—and reflection supports the way you feel about yourself and your effectiveness.

So before you plan the year ahead—please take time to reflect. You could start by going through your dayplanner or calendar and even seeing what you did and who you did it with this last year. You could do it alone. You could do it in conversation. Make a list. Or write it on flip chart paper. Or make a slide show. You will be surprised by some of it—you will be surprised by what you have already forgotten.

Or if you are seeking even more structure you could use the framework offered by Burnett and Evans in their book Designing a Life. They use a dashboard of four categories: Health, Work, Play and Love. And I encourage you to reflect on the categories fully over the past year. What did you do? Highs and Lows? Surprises?  What worked and didn’t? What you learned? What you lost and gained? What you would have done differently and why?

In my 5-phase model of healing from repeated trauma I strongly encourage everyone to start with preparation: gather your resources and build a foundation for the important work of healing. This foundation helps you sort through what did happen and what didn’t happen and helps you untangle the ways you protect yourself and can often get in your own way. And this transition into a new year is no different. You need to build a strong foundation from which to spring into what you want and need next. And this is as true for teams and organizations as it is for individuals.

Perhaps, because it is winter and most of the world is fallow, we forget the wisdom of nature and growth and planting new things. We aren’t reminded through our current actions how to support growth. You don’t just leap in to action. You reflect on what you grew and what helped. But most importantly you turn over your compost and add it to your beds—and then you till that compost into the soil so new things can grow. This is the invisible work of gardening—of taking the what is old and digested to support new growth. And this is the invisible, but crucial work you need to do: to turn over your learning and digest it enough to take forward.

 © 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD


[1] Porter, J. (2017). Why you should make time for reflection (even if you hate doing it). HBR March 21, 2017. 

[2] Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G., and Staats, B. (2014). Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning. HBS Working Paper 14-093.

[3] Cannon MD, Edmonson AE. 2001. Confronting failure: Antecedents and consequences of shared beliefs about failure in organizational work groups. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22: 161–177.  Edmondson AE. 2011. Strategies for learning from failure. Harvard Business Review, July-August: 48– 56.


Trauma and Holidays: On Giving and Receiving

When I was a psychology intern, one of the psychiatrists on the unit used to describe the problems of most of the inpatients as a “closesness-distance” problem. They couldn’t find the right distance from people—people were either too close or they were too far away. This dilemma always reminded me of animals who had been treated badly—the cat wanted to get close to you, but when you tried to pat it,  it would run away.

Trauma almost always creates a closeness-distance problem, especially repeated trauma. Surviving trauma requires creating protections—and many of these protections are about keeping others out. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t the longing for closeness—or the longing for connection. But the protections that were in place for so long meant that you lost the practice of connecting. Lost the practice of letting people close—letting in the love from others.

I am thinking about this because the holidays are upon us. We are in the midst of Hanukah and Christmas is approaching. It is the season of giving. And it is also the season of receiving. And where trauma creates a closeness-distance problem, it also usually creates a giving-receiving problem.

Giving and receiving are really the actions of closeness-distance. In mundane terms, giving and receiving can be merely acts of communication or acts of everyday care. And for people who have experienced trauma I have noticed something important: they often can give, but they can’t receive. They can reach beyond their walls, but their walls don’t let anything in. It’s not plain stubbornness, or even deliberate protection: it is a sheer lack of practice. It is a lack of neural pathways. It is a lack of brain receptors for the good, for the positive, for the kind.

It is why if you love someone who has experienced trauma, they never seem to hold on to the good things that you say or do. You tell them you love them, you tell them the good you see in them, you do kind things for them. And when they are upset they say that no one loves them. It is as if they don’t remember anything you said or did. And this can be horribly frustrating for everyone.

It’s not that they didn’t hear you when you said it. It is that it didn’t stick. They couldn’t feel it, and it couldn’t register as a real memory. This is why the work of healing from trauma is so important—so you can get to a place of taking things in. And it is why it takes a long time. Because you are, literally, rebuilding a brain.

So I think it is really important at the holidays to acknowledge how hard it can be to receive. Because receiving a gift is risking closeness. It is the hurt cat risking being patted. But if receiving is to be healing then you have to slow down and breathe and take in the kindness as much as you can. And you don’t have to start with gifts. Start with anything people give you: a smile—breathe, take in the smile and smile back. Or hello, or Happy Holidays, or Merry Christmas! Each time someone gives you the gift of any kindness—acknowledge the gift, breathe and take it in like a long drink of water. Drink it way, way into your roots like a tree that has lived through a drought. Because it has. The thing about healing is there isn’t a state of hurt and then a state of healed. Healing is about creating a constant state of mending.

And if you are someone for whom the whole receiving thing is too scary or too overwhelming—then practice with giving. Giving can begin to help you build your closeness-distance muscles. But you need to work on feeling the feelings that go with giving for you. Say something kind—breathe and feel the kindness you are giving. Do something kind and take in the feelings of the action. The practice of giving can prepare you to eventually work on the  practice of receiving.

Understanding the impact of trauma on giving and receiving can give you a way to understand some of the stress that can come up at the holidays. It can help you be more compassionate with yourself or your loved one who has experienced trauma. it can help you slow down and actually begin to heal through the holidays, rather than protect yourself from them. You can use the moments that the stress flare up as a way to help yourself check in and say, “What’s happening right now for me? Too Close? Too Far Away? Difficulty Giving? Difficulty Receiving?” These questions can give you a way to talk with yourself differently and ways to coach yourself differently. The questions, and the answers to them may also give you language to talk with your loved ones about the holidays and the more mundane days of giving and receiving.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2022/2015

 

 

Be the light you wish to see...

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it ”
— Edith Wharton

The season of lights. The festival of light. How light gives us hope in darkness! All it takes is one lit candle to change the feel of loss into hope, of dark into light. Just one candle can make all the difference.

As someone who was not raised Jewish, I have often wished that the Hanukkah story had become more secularized—so that we all could have borrowed the faith and devotion and hope from the story of the oil and light lasting the eight days. There is such power in them: faith and devotion and hope.

And somehow no matter how big the occasion or small the occasion, candlelight transforms it into something more powerful, more hopeful, more connected to the history of all people who have had faith and hope. This fall I watched a young friend turn 8 and blow out candles on her cake and you would all recognize the look of anticipation and joy before she blew them out—that look is universal. Her face lit with candlelight.

And here at the holidays—shrouded in lights, after an autumn filled with so much darkness, the question is: can we bring our own light? Can we spark the light in others? Can we connect to the light that inspires us? If we are feeling dark, we can light one, simple, single candle within us?

I think that we always think too big when it comes to faith and devotion and hope. I think we think grand, and we need to think in terms of one single candle. One light that can, and often does, like the oil, last much longer than you can imagine.

You can use any light within you to light the candles around you. You can use the love of anything that brings you joy: your relationships, your work, your pets—whatever warms your heart. And then you can bring that light to another and warm their heart. I have so many memories of people who I didn’t know, who smiled at me as I came out of a building, or into work, and they changed my day. They made me feel seen, and loved, and “okay” on days that I didn’t feel that way. They took their light, and lit my candle. In such small increments you can bring light: to the people near you, to the person waiting in line with you, to the cashier, to the toll taker on the Jersey turnpike. Wherever. Light a candle. Bring your warmth.

Edith Wharton said that there are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it—so if this is a year that you can’t seem to light your own candles or anyone else’s—then do what you can to reflect any light you see. Just take in what you can, reflect what you can and reconnect with your light. We all have those years—when the best we can do is reflect.

This time of year can be so busy, and come with so much expectation. There can be moments of such longing, for people, for times past, for expectation unfulfilled—as well as real feelings of sacrifice and hardship and loss. You can’t fix it or fill it or change it—not all at once, if at all. But you can bring some light to it. You can bring your light to it. And the world will be warmer. And more hopeful. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2022/2016

The Healing Power of the Container: The Frame as Art

In one of my very first blog posts I wrote 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 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, a container— 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 scrolls hanging in my house. Some of them are Cambodian, made of fabrics, patterns of silk—hanging from old cross pieces of looms. 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 one lifeguard for every ten people. At this ratio, there was safety. A lifeguard can watch ten people and interact with ten 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 group members 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 you have to strike 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. And if you are the person who is helping you have to deeply understand that the container is as much of the work as anything else. This allows you to honor this work. And, like the frame of the canvas--it is the prerequisite for any work to happen. As the person who is 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.

© 2022/2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD