Ring the bells that you can ring

Ring the bells that you can ring, forget your perfect offering. I could recite this hourly, when clock bells are set to ring, and I would still forget and need the reminder an hour later. Ring the bells that you can ring. I am always reaching for some other bell. It kills me. I am always looking for the other thing, the next thing, the thing I can’t do. Forget your perfect offering. And just offer.

In college I took a great art class, or really it was just an art class with a great teacher. We did a lot of drawing and a lot of figure drawings and she quite rightly read the group early on and recognized that we weren’t ringing our bells, we were desperately looking for the perfect offering, frozen in place with our charcoal crayons.  So she created assignment after assignment to dispel us of our fear. For weeks we did our figure drawings on top of previous sketches. You can't ‘mess up’ a drawing that is, by design, already messed up. We did hours of sketches in public places in phone books. And really, there is no perfect way to sketch in a phone book, even I could admit that. We cut up our old drawings and paintings to create collages. So all our art became new art—so there were no mistakes - only future art. 

Imagine. Imagine if you thought of all your mistakes as future art? What a different experience of a day or of learning! Any bell, any ring will do because it will eventually become a song, some song, your song. Ring the bells that you can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

With thanks and credit to Leonard Cohen: Anthem, and to Colleen Hayward for a lifetime of learning. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2023/2014

The Tyranny of Good

“In feigned completeness I would walk the lonely/ longest distance between all points and all others/ because in their connection my geometry will have/ been faithful to its own imagined laws.”

— Barbara Kingsolver, American Biographies

Trauma survivors don’t own the territory of good, but we are some of its most loyal subjects.

Good might make you feel good when you are a little kid. It might make you feel safe if you grow up in a crazy household. It might help you imagine that love is possible.  It might give you hope that your boss will promote you.  Good can motivate you to persevere, it can help you survive, it can endear you to others, sometimes.

But there is something about good that goes beyond rational judgment. Good can become a religion. Good can feel like it is one of the natural laws—break it and you die.

The commandments of good are that if I can just be good enough, perfectly good, if I can just get it right, then somehow in a feat of backwards time travel, everything bad that ever happened would undo itself. If you can just be good enough, no one will ever see your worst moments or know your shame, including you. The problem with good is that there is no middle ground. If you are not good, then you are bad, or horrible, or unlovable. You have to desperately cling to good in order not to fall into the abyss of bad. I’m not even sure that I can even do this dichotomy justice but I will try: Good is staying on that flimsy ladder over the crevasse on Mount Everest. Bad is falling off of the ladder.

I can get exhausted simply thinking about the many, many years of trying to get it all right. Living by so many rules always trying to be good. It was an endless and impossible task. And even now when I am tired or feeling lost or something triggers an old fear, I can find myself back in the fight to be good. Back in the place where that is all I want—to be good, to get it right.

The good news is (and it won’t feel like good news at first): At some point, if you let yourself begin to grow, good begins to crack. Growth is just too big for good. 

When good begins to crack --what protected you—the illusion of safety that good provides—is no longer there. There can be shame, because all of what you have tried to hide in the cupboards and drawers of good starts to come out in to the open. Sometimes it can crack all at once in a crisis and you can go from good to a disaster in one move which can oddly feel like a relief. But more often than not it happens in increments, in jerks and starts, and it mostly feels anything but good.

Good is an internal tornado and an external affair—you are working off an imagined external judge and jury, or as Anne Lamott once described—you are treating everyone in your life like a flight attendant trying to make all of the passengers happy.  But if you can tolerate this messiness. If you can tolerate the terror of being what you have been calling ‘bad.’ You can come to understand something crucial: good is a very, very small world.

It's an astonishing realization—when you come to see your world of ‘good’ is actually quite small. It makes you sit kind of blinking and squinting suddenly at your life—with the clarity of a new set of glasses, or a really bright light shining on the landscape ahead of you.

I had a dream not long ago that I was living in a house that I had lived in for years and I pushed open a door in a back room and found that there was actually an entire house that had been there all along. I had been living in this tiny space, and all along there had been this huge, expansive space to live in. In the dream, I stood in this doorway and stared into the space with both disbelief and sadness. It had been there all this time.

And that’s where you build the muscles to live without the old protections of good. You stay right there on that threshold—between the rooms of good that you used to inhabit--- the old, small, safe space—with your feet on the threshold of looking out into the new, unknown, expansive space that can hold it all. It’s been there all this time—waiting for you.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Drownproofing for Despair

Gatot Adri/Scopio

The subject of suicide reappeared in the news again and I found myself wondering what we can offer people to keep them from drowning from despair. Something they could use before the despair or pain gets so big and suicide seems to be the only way out.

One of the most difficult things about deaths of despair or impulsivity is that the ability to predict suicide is really poor and the research shows that it is incredibly difficult to assess who will make an attempt. When people endorse suicidal thinking in mental health intake information—less than 10% engaged in suicidal behavior in the following year[1]. And more than half the people who died by suicide denied suicidal thinking beforehand[2].

So, perhaps by trying to target specific people about specific problems we have it all wrong. We need less of a mental health stance about suicide and more of a lifeguard stance. In thinking about the recent suicide I’d heard about, I began thinking about my summers working as a waterfront director. All of the kids at the waterfront of this camp were learning to swim at different ability levels—so not all kids could swim well. But all of the kids, regardless of ability level, were taught how to survival float or what’s now known as drownproofing.

The basics of survival float is to take a deep breath and put your face in the water, your body vertical, and your arms hanging down. The principle is that you are using the least amount of energy possible. When you need to breathe again, you push down with your hands gently, lift your head, breathe and put your head back down. No big motions, no big use of energy. This relaxed movement can be sustained for a really long time. The goal of drownproofing isn’t to make you able to swim. The goal is to keep you alive if you find yourself in danger in the water. It is just meant to keep you afloat, alive, and as safe as possible until help can arrive. You don’t need to know how to swim well, but you need to be familiar with the motions and familiar enough with water (and not fear water) that you can do the survival float. It’s the fact that you practiced it, and that you know what it feels like to be in the water—to feel the water on your face. It’s something you should know before you need it.

We need to think of suicide prevention less like mental health treatment and more like drownproofing. Yes, I am all for mental health. But when we put suicide prevention in the mental health category lots of people think “I don’t need that kind of help “ or they think, “I can’t get that kind of help.” Despair, pain and the things that trigger suicide aren’t mental health issues per se: they are human issues. We need everyone to understand that the undertow or riptide of life can happen to anyone—painful emotions of grief, loss, disappointment, shame, rage, hurt. These feelings don’t just happen if you have a mental health diagnosis—they happen to everyone at some time. And because it’s hard to predict how big the tidal wave of feelings will be---and how different people will experience these emotions at different points in their life—everyone has to learn how to survival float in these emotions. We need everyone to know how to ride out the feeling of drowning in despair--just the way everyone needs to know how to do the survival float because if your boat capsizes far from shore, even excellent swimmers are at risk of drowning.

The principles of drownproofing for despair aren’t that different than drownproofing in water: you need activities or actions that keep you alive, require as little effort as possible, and that are sustainable long enough to get help. And you need to know what the actions are, have the information easily available and practice them if you can. Here are 3 C’s of drownproofing for despair everyone should learn beginning in middle school and update as you get older or circumstances change. The three C’s of drownproofing for despair are: Comfort/Distract, Connect, and Counsel.

Comfort or distract:

When massive despair hits, comfort the pain. Wrap yourself in a blanket, nap, watch your favorite movie or TV show, read your favorite book, sit on your porch. Fill your birdfeeder and watch them. People watch. Eat your favorite snack. Drink something soothing. Listen to something soothing. Take a hot shower or bath. Sometimes distracting yourself with tasks works, or helping others. Do any or all of these as often as you need to. [Make your own list of what works to help you feel soothed or comforted, and what distractions are good ones for you.]

Connect:

Find other people who you feel safe around. You can tell them your level of despair if you are up to it, or you can just lean into the connection. You can hang out and be with them, or you can tell them you need someone to be with you—even if you can’t tell them why. But give it a shot if you can. Find the words if you can. Or just ask for company while you get comfort or distract yourself.

You can also connect with something bigger than yourself. In Buddhist teachings they talk about how a tablespoon of salt in glass of water makes it undrinkable, but a tablespoon of salt  in vast lake dissipates and is unnoticeable. This is where mindfulness training, values, purpose, or faith may come in. Why it’s important to have routines and practices in your life that can hold you when you need it.

Counsel:

Know of some places to go if despair hits. Have those places identified.  Is there a clinic, school or hospital? Counseling Center? A house of worship that you can walk into and sit down and seek counsel? A sacred space that you feel connected to and brings out the best in you? Are there people who you can identify who can be of good counsel when things get bad. Have a list of at least 5 people or places. Have the list somewhere you can find it. This list is like a life preserver—you don’t want to be hunting for it when you really need it. The national suicide helpline in the US is 988.

And there’s probably a 4th C that is ongoing which is to Cultivate a relationship with emotion. Get to know your emotions. Get to know the names of them. Get to know their impact on you and what works to help you feel better when you experience them. Cultivate the ability to communicate them as best you can. Normalize emotions, difficult emotions and the practice of sharing them.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

[1] Simon, G., et al., Psychiatric Services, Vol. 64, No. 12, 2013

[2] McHugh, C. M., et al., BJPsych Open, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2019

Finding a Way Forward When the Path isn’t Clear

“It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.”

— Bessel van der Kolk

When I first started in therapy, my therapist had a flat basket of small rocks and stones in her waiting room. I thought this was awesome because I was a therapist (in training) who also had a flat basket of small rocks and stones in MY waiting room. I took this as a sign of validation (Look! I am a cool therapist too!) And the similarity and familiarity gave me the hope that I could feel ‘at home’ there. The rocks in the flat basket in my office were stones I had picked up from the coast of Maine—all different shapes and colors—most were different colors of granite and many with a big stripe of white in the middle—rocks that were called ‘lucky rocks’ by my nieces and nephews. The rocks were something that the teenagers who came to see me could take with them if they wished—reminders of the work that they were doing or talismans to give them strength. The stones in the flat basket in my therapist’s office were more polished but there was one larger flat rock which I quickly decided use as the base of a small cairn.

Now, cairns are traditionally piles of large rocks usually placed along trails as trail markers. I saw my first cairns hiking in the White Mountains when I was a teenager. On the first day, in the bright sunlight of a summer day the cairns looked totally unnecessary—the trail ahead was obvious; it looked like there was no need of a giant pile of stones every 20 yards to mark the way. But when I woke up the next day to fog and rain—and I couldn’t see more than 25 feet in front of me—then the purpose of the cairns shines bright and clear—they are beacons. The cairns were the only possible way forward. Our group traveled for two whole days above the tree line on that trip only ever seeing the way to the next cairn. And that summer I learned this amazing lesson that you don’t have to be able to see the whole trail ahead of you in order to keep going—you just need to be able to see to the next cairn.

In my therapist’s office in those early first few months I would pick up a rock and place it on the flat rock. Then I would put one more small rock on top, and would sit down in the waiting room chair, pleased with my effort and my miniature cairn. I never said anything to my therapist about them.

Actually, I barely said anything to my therapist about anything.  Because in the beginning, I found it really hard to talk. As someone who had failed ‘self-control’ in second grade because I couldn’t stop talking—I was stunned to find myself unable to find words—any words at all. As Bessel van der Kolk says, ‘it takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.’ And what I found was that it takes an enormous amount of bravery, effort and patience to find the words that may help you remember. In the beginning, I didn’t have words. But I had those stones. And with those stones I built cairns to find the path forward.

The cairns in the basket of rocks were a source of play—it gave me the feeling that I could move and not feel stuck-- the way I felt stuck with language. Sometimes I would come in to the waiting room and the stones would have been moved. It felt like a conversation—a back and forth— without any of the pressure to know words. It felt like the only conversation I could have at the time—a conversation in stones, a conversation in play. Over time, the play with the stones in the basket made its way from the waiting room to the office—with metaphor, with poetry, with art. And all of these cairns slowly helped me find my way forward, to words, and to myself.

I had mostly forgotten these small cairns, my training ground for words until a weekend away a few years ago when I came across a whole beach of little cairns on Peak’s Island in Maine. Maine has a rocky coast, and along one whole stretch of one of the beaches there were hundreds of little, one to two foot high, cairns made of beach rocks. Cairns as art, or practice, or devotion.

Looking out at them I remembered how powerful the cairns in the Whites and the cairns in the office had been. And before I left the island, I added my small cairn to the beach too, maybe as a way of saying thank you. I was so grateful for the reminder of cairns and how they make it possible to stay on a path when you can’t quite see where you are going. I needed this reminder so badly right now as I am working on two difficult projects—one in the outside world and one in my inner world—and both of them are going to take a while. They are long expeditions. And both of them, for better or worse, are currently shrouded in fog. The whole path isn’t visible, the way forward isn’t clear.

But the small cairns from that weekend were the perfect reminder that the whole way forward doesn’t have to be clear. You don’t have to see the whole path, you just have to be able to make it to the next cairn. And the cairns don’t have to be big! They can be little cairns! In my work of healing, in the beginning, the small stones, the cairns, were literally the trail markers until I found words. And now, in both projects I find that my cairn is simply one word—one word that I can get to until I can find the next one. Just like the stone cairns—each time I can find a word I look for one more word to place on top of it. Sometimes this goes more easily than others—like hiking in the sunshine and seeing the cairns stretched out ahead of you along the trail. And sometimes, I sit with that one word for a long time, and shout to myself, pleading, as the playwright Suzan-Lori Park’s says, “WHAT’S THE NEXT WORD?!”

These journeys can feel long and lonely, but it is important to remember that cairns aren’t an individual effort. Traditionally in Scotland, hikers carried small stones up the mountain and placed them on the cairn on top—collectively helping the markers become ever larger. On the famous pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrims carry stones from their homes to place on the cairn at Cruz de Fierro. This cairn marks the pilgrim’s way because of the thousands who have gone before.  And in a small way, the many cairns I saw all along the beach on Peak’s Island also marked a way forward. They were gifts left by others—tiny lights shining reminding me of what I once knew and needed to learn again. These small cairns came during a weekend retreat with old, dear friends who each shared their struggles and their stories, sharing that one small stone that helped each of us find our way forward. Cairns are made by all those who are making their way along the path—and are able to drop one small stone on the cairn to make the way more clear for the others who might follow. And it is one of the true gifts of healing and learning and growth—that each of us can, as we make our way forward on our own paths-- we can leave a stone, or a word, or a poem, or whatever we have on the cairns as we pass them.  The gift is, that in struggling along our own trail, we become the trail makers. Each of us makes it possible for the next person coming along, the next person who can’t see a way forward, to make it to the next cairn. And the next one. Making their journey forward possible.

© 2023/2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma

By Bessel van der Kolk

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And a special thank you to my salon sisters: Jane, Sarah, Alison, Cheryl and Laura.