Incremental is Transformational for Healing

“Because no one ever learned to walk by walking.”
— Moshe Feldenkrais

No one ever learned to walk by walking. It’s hundreds and hundreds of attempts and so many different motions and muscles and movements that come together that allows us to learn to walk. And healing is a lot like that too. It’s hundreds and hundreds of attempts and different motions and muscles and movement that come together to allow us to heal—to do something new, do something again. To reach forward. To move again in our lives, in our hearts, in our relationships.

I am talking about healing from trauma, but I could just as easily be talking about grieving the loss of a spouse or child, or the loss of a job, or the loss of a marriage. I could be talking about the physical healing from hip surgery or knee surgery or stroke or heart surgery. All of these things have their own trajectory. All of these things heal in pieces, in increments over time.

I think one of the most helpful things you can learn while you are healing from trauma is that you heal in steps. You loosen things up, you untangle them, you increase your range of motion, you expand your capacity to hold things. It’s the coming together of all of the pieces that allow you to move freely again. It’s not one set of moves and it’s not the same set of moves for each person.

But here’s the thing. You can’t just learn to tolerate the small steps of healing. You have to find a way to get excited about them, love them, be curious about them, celebrate them.

I’ve written about how healing was developmental, but it is also incremental. It is made up of these small steps which are building blocks. But incremental leads to something bigger.  In the world of writing about change there has been this weird false dichotomy created about ‘incremental’ change versus ‘transformational’ change—as if they weren’t interrelated. As if you could actually get transformational change without incremental change. We don’t pay attention to the incremental. We don’t pay attention to each muscle capacity a baby learns: the arched back, the lift of the head, stretch of the shoulders. We don’t celebrate each small move, we celebrate sitting, standing, walking. But these huge transformations are built on increments. Incremental leads to development, to transformation—to the big shifts that we want. You can’t always see how the small steps are coming together until they do.

I had a child client many years ago who created a game we played together. He would draw a picture using as few lines as possible, and I had to guess what the picture would be. If I couldn’t guess, he would add a line. And then another, and then another until it became a picture. And even then there would be surprises. On one particular occasion, he finished the picture and said, “Do you know what it is now?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “It’s a portrait of you, if you were a duck.” So as you are putting pieces together, you have to be ready for surprises. You have to be willing to see yourself in a whole new light.

When I say that healing is incremental, what do I even mean? What I mean is that you have to work on the pieces in increments that can feel solid and doable. When I had kids who couldn’t make eye contact we worked on talking from behind a chair, and then from under a blanket, and then just wearing sunglasses, and then moments of eye contact. We built it up in increments until it was solid enough that we weren’t even paying attention to it anymore. With each of those increments we got to stretch and grow some new muscles. The problem with any trauma, physical, mental, emotional, relational—is that you can’t always know what got damaged—you don’t always know what the trauma shattered. It is often in the healing process that you come to understand what was hurt, and what needs to be healed.

And incremental is also what allows healing to be healing and not re-traumatizing. If you work in increments, you are responsibly paying attention to dosage—how much someone can manage and take in without it overwhelming their system. If it is incremental then it isn’t ‘happening’ to the person—they aren’t being put in a position where they feel out of control again.

Healing from anything big takes an incredible patience. A mighty patience. And more compassion and self-compassion than you imagined possible. For all the people involved—for the trauma survivor, for the people who are working with the survivor and the people who love the survivor. It takes a lot of patience to create your new picture one line at a time, not sure what will come of it. You may not want to see yourself as a duck. You didn’t want to end up with a beak. But, hey, those are also wings you are growing.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2023/2015

The thoughts from Moshe Feldenkrais in this article were inspired by Norman Doidge's book below.


Half Magic: The Power Of Half-Way and The Power of Help

“No matter what accomplishments you make,
somebody helped you.”
— Althea Gibson

It's hard to imagine that sometimes a half can be more powerful than a whole.

When I was young, one of my favorite books was called Half Magic . One of the kids finds a coin that grants the finder magic wishes—with a twist. When you wish on this coin you only get half of the wish. If you wish to be by the ocean, you end up in the desert, with only the sand, and no sea. So getting your wish took some thinking—how do I wish for twice what I want in such a way as to get my wish? What do I need to bring to my wish to get what I want?

And then magically a TED talk shows up in my inbox—about a Chilean architect named Alejandro Aravena, who was working to solve a tough problem of building affordable urban housing. And he solved the problem by just building half of the house. He spoke with and worked with the communities he was going to serve and decided that rather than trying to be frugal by building a whole smaller structure, he would use the resources to build half of a larger structure and let the families and communities themselves finish the other half. He could build more houses, involve the communities and the houses would be larger and would create more sustainable communities. The solution was in the collaboration. The solution was in knowing that half could be whole. Or that half could be even bigger than whole.

This radical notion of problem solving—the idea that you could just solve half seems to be just the reminder and medicine I need this week. I have always had trouble asking for help. For most of my life I believed that if I went to someone for help I needed to show up with the solution already formulated. I had no idea that you could show up with the problem. That showing up with the problem was the whole point of asking for help. I thought you had to have the answer. Which meant I didn’t go to people for help so much as I went for approval of my plan. And seeking approval is not the same thing as asking for help.

If you go with the solution—you don’t have the chance for another brain or another heart to contribute or edit. When you go with the solution you don’t get a chance to understand your problem in a new way or a different way. You don’t really get to learn. And you certainly don’t get to learn that relationships can make the solutions bigger than you imagined. That half can actually help you learn and grow.

In one of my art classes in middle school we were instructed to find magazine picture of faces and cut the pictures so that you had a half of a face. You would glue the picture into a sketch book and then draw the other half of the face: the exercise of finishing the second half helped you see. It helped you learn about proportion—it helped you start half-way to the end. You borrowed some momentum and lines from the actual picture. Half way was an instructor that was always available to you.

And sometimes I use half way as the solution when I can’t seem to rally my energy for the whole thing. For example, when I can’t seem to get motivated to exercise, I tell myself to just get dressed for a walk. I do the first half—getting ready—and often, once I am dressed, I can muster the energy to actually go for the walk. Or, as Tamar Adler in the Everlasting Meal recommends—when you are just too exhausted or frazzled to know exactly what to make for dinner, you fill a pot with water and  set it to boil, or you chop an onion and start it frying and the other part of the meal will start to build itself.

So sometimes I can do half-- but bringing my half—my problem—to someone else is right on my learning edge. Part of it, I think, is that half is kind of messy—if you have half of your house finished—then you can see all the wiring, all the plumbing and sawdust. When you have half of an essay finished—your lines of thinking—all of them are there for review.

But I forget, like everyone else, that half way can be a big deal. I mean, the peak of Mt. Everest is really only half of the climb. The summit is only half way— the bottom is the actual finish. So half way IS an accomplishment—and a place where you can look around and get perspective. And I forget that our relational limbic brains were designed to connect to other brains in order to solve problems—from information to relaxation. Our brains actually need other brains to be at their best. And mostly I forget that everything I have done that I am really proud of— was the result of me bringing—at the most—half to any piece of it. I ran meditation groups for my dissertation, but the programs and the boys had to show up and participate. I wrote my dissertation, but a friend did such a great job editing that not only did I get a dissertation out of it, but her editing and comments also taught me to write along the way. I wrote a book, but I got massive amounts of help and support editing it—and it’s really the readers who turn it in to a conversation—turn it into a book that is read.

The work I do with community leaders is only a methodology and some practices—the community leaders bring their wisdom and energy and create solutions. I only bring half. And really, as a wise person told me this week, in most of what we do, we can barely even claim half—there is so much effort brought to bear on any one moment. Tonight’s dinner of roasted squash was planted by people, and harvested by people and transported by people and stocked by people and sold by people. And I'm not even considering the pots and pans and the stove and the energy. I imagine making the squash alone and really it was a giant collective effort. And that’s only a fraction of the work and the dinner itself. It’s so easy to feel like I have to do everything myself, or I am actually doing everything myself and it is such an illusion. We don’t do everything ourselves—we live in an interconnected web—where as Althea Gibson reminds us, that no matter what accomplishments we make, somebody helped us. Half magic is always happening. Bring whatever you have and then go ahead. Wish twice. 

© 2023/2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer

 

 

 

An Open Thank You Note to My Neighbors and Their Gardens

Thank you. Every day I walk past your yards and gardens and homes and every day I am the grateful and fortunate recipient of beauty and surprise and love.

You have no idea how much your snowdrops and crocus and daffodils mean to me in early spring. How much I delight and say hello to each one like a long lost relative. How much I appreciate your hard work in autumn that allows for such a sweet surprise in the spring.

You couldn’t possibly know that your peonies would bloom on the day that I had gotten bad news and so desperately needed to see their full pink beauty, and put my face down into their blossoms to smell their sweet smell. How much those flowers remind me of someone dear, who passed away years ago, and whose words and counsel I desperately needed that day and found, once again, in the beauty of your flowers.

You may look out at your own gardens and see only the things that you haven’t done, or the weeds that are creeping in, but not me. I love the rag-tag orange daylilies and even the cornflower that you didn’t weed away—with that blue color you just want to swim in. I love the flowers when they are blooming and even when they aren’t—I love the giant false indigo plants after it has bloomed with its gorgeous black pods laced within their leaves.

I am grateful to the neighbor whose garden contains one of my favorite plants ---an old fashioned pale yellow foxglove—a plant I used to have in my old garden, brought home from an old garden in Maine. Seeing those foxgloves is like a visit from an old friend and an old self when I get to pass by it. A chance to hold my history with one flower.

Some of you would  (and do) swat away compliments of your gardens—saying that they are nothing special. But there is one simple truth about gardens. There are no ordinary gardens. Because, there are no ordinary flowers. They are all extraordinary. They are a miracle of color and delicate sculpture. Whether it is a sophisticated delphinium or a common marigold—your flowers knock me over. They cheer me on my worst days and they feel like a festive surprise party on my best days.

And it’s not just your flowers, but also your trees. You have beeches that make me want to read old fairy tales and pines that have, sometimes, not one, but two cardinals sitting in the branches. You have weeping willows and sugar maples. You have a cherry tree I walk an extra block to see.

And when you planted the stand of bright red bee balm, did you know I would walk past as five hummingbirds sipped from the blossoms at an all-you-can-eat nectar buffet? That I would stand for nearly five minutes not seven feet away from this amazing sight witnessing some of the best moments that nature can offer? That you created? Where can I even begin to express my gratitude for such beauty, so freely given?

And you, neighbor, who thinks because you only have two flowerpots of bright pink geraniums, that you aren’t a gardener. You couldn’t know that my grandmother had two big pots of geraniums that she put on her front steps every summer, just like you, and brought inside, into her hallway in the winter. That every morning I pass your house, I get a visit with my grandmother, get to hear her encouragement one more time. Your two flowerpots of geraniums make my day. They make me a better person.

You see, you think you are just gardening. Putting your hands in dirt and putting out a beautiful flower or two. But you are doing so much more. You are creating a place for people to heal—to grow—to tap back in to their relationships and memories and become the best of themselves that day. Your generosity is immense—you create all of this beauty and you ask nothing in return. It is an amazing, radical, and world-changing act—and I thank you with all of my heart.

© 2023/2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

*Please feel free to print out and give to any neighbors and gardeners you know as your own. 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding Rigidity, Elasticity and Trauma

“A capacity to accommodate fragility, he says, is a fundament of vital, evolving systems, whether geological or human. At the right temperatures, geologic faults allow for movement, ductility, flow. Earthquakes happen when weaknesses cannot be expressed. “And communities which are rigid, which do not take into account the weak points of the community— people who are in difficulty — tend to be communities who do not evolve.””
— Xavier Le Pichon

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the polarity of rigidity and flexibility. And I have been actively living the question of this polarity in my body. Which is allowing me to experience rigidity and flexibility in a tangible moment-by-moment way. I get to kind of be an explorer of it—or an observer of it—which is different than my usual stance of frustration or disdain. For six weeks I couldn’t put any real weight on my legs, and now for the last 10 days I have begun the process of exercises and walking. Familiar actions I have done all of my life –like walking or stepping to the side—or balancing on a leg—all are now an active challenge with muscles that have completely forgotten how to talk to each other and my brain.

When I begin to walk there are brief moments of flexibility and fluidity—and then within minutes of walking, moving becomes something I have to actively concentrate on. My feet feel far away, and my muscles don’t bend or flow—they kind of stick, and stutter—they stiffen. The muscles tighten around what was hurt. They seem to think I still need the protection—and they go to the default that they know of as safety—tightly bracing what was broken-- and I finish my walk with legs that feel heavy and wooden.

While it isn’t easy to learn to walk again, I am appreciating this lesson about rigidity and fluidity in a domain where I can see it and feel it in real time. Where I don’t have even more protections and narratives to distract me. Where I can work with it in small, manageable increments that are easy to sort out. Where they make aides for the problem: crutches, braces, ice packs. Where I can easily see the fix: lean on something, stretch, rest, take a break for now.

Psychological healing is really no different than physical healing—you begin to use something that you haven’t used, or haven’t used in a long time—and in short order—you can feel yourself tighten up. You share your feelings. You let your guard down. You ask for help. You say no, or you say yes. Your chest tightens. It’s hard to breathe. Or your heart tightens—and you want to pull away. Or you can feel your whole self move behind a wall—where it feels like you are watching yourself from outside. You’ve lost any flexibility. You can feel like you just can’t bend—on that request, or on the change of plans, or on a different point of view.

Rigidity is defense, and it is also almost always protection. When my legs get rigid I lfeel like I lose my my way of moving and my feeling of being connected—interconnected with myself. And when I get rigid because of fear, anxiety or anger—I lose connection to the part of myself that trusts and knows what enough is. That part of myself that knows that everything will likely be ok, and that I have the ability to work through whatever is hard for me right then.

And rigidity makes it hard for me to feel connected to others. When I feel rigid, when I harden against what I don’t want to feel or don’t want to be happening—I lose the ability to feel connected. Relationships feel breakable, because hard things, rigid things can shatter. And because I feel less connected and the relationship feels fragile, I can feel myself tighten even more.

The hardest thing about healing in the psychological domain is that our rigidity often feels more normal—it feels familiar and safe—and it can be hard to see it for what it is. It can be hard to catch yourself in the act of pulling away, shutting down, putting up the wall. When you are finally able to feel it-- when rigidity feels uncomfortable —it’s actually a sign of healing—it means you know what some fluidity feels like. It means that you are longing for movement and the feeling of being connected. It means the old protections are probably no longer needed –and it’s time to work with them so they can loosen and you can move in the world differently.

It's harder to work on rigidity and elasticity with our emotions and relationships than it is for me to work on the flexibility with my legs. But it’s not impossible. And it requires a lot of the same elements. First, start small—stretching in the smallest way possible. Maybe writing your feelings down for yourself first, before you share them with someone else. Second, do it in short sessions so you build up the strength, tolerance and confidence in your emotional and relational muscles to hold you up. And last, figure out what you can use to support you—what you can lean on—and what you can use to soothe yourself afterwards—as you use these new muscles.

It’s obvious as I learn to walk again—that elasticity is the state of health for my muscles. But in healing from trauma, the feeling of elasticity came as a big surprise to me. I thought that feeling connected would feel like a taut rope that was always there—something that was tight—that had tension. Perhaps tension is all I knew, and I while I didn’t like ‘bad’ tension, I supposed I thought health was something more akin to ‘good’ tension. What I couldn’t anticipate was that the experience of healing my connection to myself, and my relationships to other felt like something that was a mix of space and elasticity.

There was room to move. And what took a really long time was understanding that healing was ‘the capacity to accommodate fragility’—not by protecting myself—or allowing myself to return to rigidity—but rather by staying right on the edge of that rigidity and allowing myself to stretch in the smallest possible way towards the new thing—letting myself ‘express my weakness’ and not protect myself from it.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Xavier Le Pichon in Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise: An inquiry into the mystery and art of living