The power of a little kindness

“My religion is kindness”
— The Dalai Lama

We tend to think of kindness as being nice, but it is so much bigger than that. Kindness is being what it is needed. Sometimes nice is needed and sometimes firmness is needed—and being firm or holding a hard line can actually be the kindest thing. Kindness can just come in all sorts of shapes and sizes—and it’s one of those things—you often know it when you feel it—not because it always feels comfortable, but because it feels like something you can lean on, like you are being held.

Last summer I visited my German Host Parents. I was an exchange student in high school and it was wonderful to go back and visit my German Host Family and experience a range of kindnesses in the present—from being picked up at the airport with warm hellos to wonderful meals, beds made up for you, and train tickets gotten ahead of time, early in the morning. And it was also wonderful to remember the kindness I had experienced as a high school student. I am sure there are things they would remember as kind: the actions they intended as kind—the help with my homework, the vase of sweet peas by my bed, the snacks brought to me as I studied or worked.

On this trip I was also remembering something I felt as such a strong kindness that they might not remember. In April of that year I had a hard time—and had neither the language nor the skill to talk about it, nor did I really believe in asking for help. I’m pretty sure they knew that I was struggling, but it's also likely that they didn't have the language or the skill to go directly at it either. Instead, I came home from school every day and picked up my paper and watercolors and headed into their garden. They had a beautiful garden and were often in there working, but they left me in peace—neither fussing over my paintings or trying to jolly me out of it. They gave me the space to do what I needed and that was the kindest thing they could do.

We often think of kindness as something that we do for other people or other people do for us, but it is also essential to healing and growing to be able to be kind to yourself. And once again, its not so much about being nice—it’s not retail therapy (though I am not opposed to that)—it’s being what you need—it’s giving yourself what you need. Do you need to go to bed early because you are tired? Do you need to order take-out because you just can’t manage cooking dinner AND everything else? Do you need to take time away from your family to re-group and get your brain back—run errands? Play golf? Or do you need to cancel a meeting so that you can spend time with your family?

Kindness creates an environment for mending and growing. The things that were broken can come together and mend. The parts that are tired can let go and relax. The parts that need nourishment can breathe and look for what they need. That April in the garden had a timing of its own. I don’t remember how I started and I don’t remember how I knew I was finished—but I left the time in the garden more whole. Never underestimate the power of a little kindness—intended or unintended. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2016/2023

I rest in love

I Rest in Love

I come here today to talk about the things I know and

the things I struggle with and the things I don’t know

I have seen sorrow and loss and violence and destruction

I have seen fear and terror and hate and much sadness

And despair with its ability to silence hope

I have seen these things at home and I have seen them very far away

And every morning in the paper there is more

war and poverty and rape and assault

And greed and indifference and neglect

 

I have worked in the many corners where people come to heal

and grow and be known for themselves and their sorrows

And I have worked in the halls of the giants and outlaws and kings

Where men and women hide their souls in trade for their lives

Or fortunes or status or what they perceive as safety

These places that seem so different are not so different

the longings are the same

everyone wants to be understood

everyone wants to make a difference

everyone wants love

everyone seeks some form of repair

 

I stand here before you exhausted from trying to explain

That it is possible to heal wounds and mend hearts

But it takes a long time and a lot of effort and it takes

The help and support of other people who care

That no one and no family and no country heals alone

That there is a sacredness and honor in the act of healing

and that your healing creates the possibility of healing others

 

There are so many things I can’t say about healing

Because the world is cruel to people who share their tender places

And I only have so much courage

We believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to

Hold our feelings and comfort ourselves and each other

We want people to share their stories or

Maybe we just want some people to share their stories

And only the stories of how they were hurt

And not the stories of what it took to heal

 

I am tired of fighting the propaganda and advertising of a fast fix

Slogans and diets and platitudes that can be sold but don’t help

The three easy steps that are never easy and don’t really exist

I am sad that what actually helps people heal and grow is a hard sell

That the answer is always there in plain sight but ignored

and overlooked because if it’s hard I must be doing it wrong

I am sad that there is no money in the truth and that

The only things that seem to matter are things that make money

Until of course you lose the things that actually matter

Like your health or safety or your loved one or your hope

 

I am tired of the polarity of art and science in the healing of human lives

As if we don’t know that more poetry and song have cured broken hearts

Than all of the medicines that have been invented

As if we don’t know that without stories we wouldn’t know

How to grieve or love or begin again when our lives have been shattered

As if we don’t know that it is the beauty and the bigness of art that show us

What the insides of our hearts and minds hold

That shows us that we are connected to each other and

We are connected to something bigger than ourselves

 

I know what it is to stand before a painting

And say this is what I have been trying to tell you

See that red line swirling over those things that look like maps

Over those things that look like buildings

That is what it feels like to do this work

Finally a picture to give me words I have yet to find

 

I sit with a sorrow that I cannot find the words that would inspire people

To own the long history of exploitation and greed and pillage

For so many people of the earth and so many animals of the earth

And for the earth itself

Words that would help people understand the difference between

Ownership and blame and responsibility and shame

That would stir in hearts not just a desire but a commitment

To do what they know is right to make it right

For the people and the animals and the earth

 

Yet for all of the despair and pain

each morning comes and

nature and people don’t give up

and this may be the most beautiful form of art

that the moon rises and a finch grips my sunflower

eating his breakfast while a hummingbird chooses

one of my zinnias that I planted from seed

and my neighbor greets another neighbor

bringing a smile to her tired face

tired from teaching and loving children all day

And for one brief moment

I rest in love

© 2023/2021 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

*This poem is written with a nod to Guillaume Apollianire, and his poem “The Pretty Redhead.” I am reading Edward Hirsh’s 100 Poems to Break Your Heart and am using the book as a way to practice writing as well as way to practice connecting my heart to my head—in a world that constantly wants to separate the two. Each morning I read one of the chapters and use the poem as an inspiration, jumping off point or a way to learn a way in to both the art and craft of writing. Visual art is so good at teaching sketching—it is assumed that that it can take 100’s of sketches to build the foundation of what might become a painting and with this practice I am seeking a parallel in writing—the 100’s of sketches that it might take to find the right words.  

The Blessings of Obstacles and Diversions

“Nature is messy, and allowing streams to meander, beavers to work, and log jams to form on a large scale can help keep our water clean, provide more dependable late season stream-flow, and improve habitat for wildlife and fish. ”
— Connor Parish
“What made me withdraw and go to the bridge was how I felt about my own playing—I knew I was dissatisfied.”
— Sonny Rollins

I was reading a local Montana newspaper this week about task force that has been rewilding streams with what they call ‘low-tech process-based restoration’ (LTPBR). This group, The Gallatin River Task Force, has taken to re-introducing the technology of beavers to bring health back to watershed ecosystems. As it turns out, beavers create the ideal conditions for healthy wetlands by doing their usual work of creating obstacles and diversions—which allow more surface water to reach aquifers—and helps the water remain in the ecosystem which sustains it. Without the diversions and obstacles created by the beavers, the water accumulates too quickly, creating deep channels causing soil erosion of the banks. In this case, LTPBR means creating ‘beaver dam analog structures’ (fake beaver dams) and ‘post-assisted log structures’ --structures that mimic the beavers’ actual structures -- obstacles that helps divert the water so that the wetland holds the water longer, and captures the sediment.

I don’t know about you, but I had never really considered how obstacles and diversions were crucial to the health of something. I had learned about how beavers’ work helped meadows to form but hadn’t learned about their effect on watersheds and aquifers—especially the subtlety of water remaining long enough to nourish the system. I hadn’t considered that slowing down a river allows for something else: something that can’t happen any other way.  And I began to wonder about the obstacles and diversions in my own life—and about how much I discount them or am annoyed by them—thinking it would be better if the path was straighter or more linear. There’s so much written about goal directed life, and productivity—about how to ensure that you get there (wherever there is) faster and more efficiently. And not enough about the need, benefit or blessing of the things that block our paths or shift our course.

Much of my training as a psychologist was shaped by changes in the healthcare system. I trained in Boston which at the time was on the fast track of managed care. The regulations and contracts of managed care impacted both the reimbursement for mental health and reimbursement for student or trainee providers. My internship began at one hospital which went bankrupt and closed its doors during my training year, forcing me to move to another hospital system mid-year. Psychology training at the time had a lot of 1:1 supervision and a lot of seminars—7-10 hours of supervision and 4-6 hours of seminar a week. It was a deep immersion. At the first hospital I had seven fabulous teachers, and at the next hospital I was gifted the exposure and knowledge of seven more teachers—so that in my one training year, splintered into pieces, I got in-depth learning from over 14 teachers—who had different perspectives, styles, strengths and ways of working with clients. It's not a year I would recommend but it's a year I am grateful for. Like the stream diverted because of the dams, I had to expand my learning into new contexts, new situations, new communities and new teachers. I had to sort what was standard, what was particular to a worldview, and what worked with what clients. It is more than twenty years later, and I am still absorbing my learning from those years. The diversions and obstacles creating a lifetime of learning to absorb.

It's hard to appreciate obstacles in real time. It is much easier to see the benefit of obstacles from a distance. This is as true of a watershed, as it is in our lives. You have to pan out and see all of the small ways that the diversion shifted one thing so that something else would be nourished in a way that it would not have, save for the diversion. I can see it with my training, in part, because over the years I have gotten to see so many ways the many diversions have allowed me to help people in ways that might have been impossible otherwise—I was privileged with so many more perspectives from so many teachers—and not just my supervisors. When you work in different places you learn from everyone. At the hospitals and clinics I worked in there were nurses, and occupational therapists, social workers and psychiatrists. There were fellow students –and of course, of course, clients. And the diversions allowed me to be in these different worlds fully immersed and nourished—in the same way that a diverted stream will feed a different stand of trees, which in turn allows birds to flourish, which changes the ecosystem around it.

I’m not sure how to appreciate the diversions and obstacles when they show up, but maybe it’s more of a form of practice. Taking a page from the Gallatin River Task Force, it might be necessary (instead of waiting for them to show up) to introduce your own form of ‘low-tech process-based restoration’ into your routines. This might be the ability to name or identify an obstacle as useful: the trip that was canceled, the project that was rejected, the sudden need to attend to a family member. The ability to say in the moment: this isn’t what I wanted, but it may offer a gift I need. Or, it may be a practice or action that you need to introduce, like the beaver dam analog structure, which forces you to slow down, rather than speed up. This might be as simple as taking a break from a project or a piece of writing and reading something from a completely different topic area—or trying something new.

I am reminded of the famous jazz musician Sonny Rollins who after becoming a huge success, pulled out of performing for two years, and instead, between 1959 and 1961, he headed to the  Williamsburg Bridge, climbing up into the walkways,  where he would practice for up to 15 hours a day. He noted that it was a space that allowed him to play everything he knew and everything he’d heard—and let himself hear and feel the music in a new way.  He chose to let his music meander—which is exactly what the technology of beavers allows a stream to do.

And maybe meandering is about relationship—because meandering allows for contact. When beavers create obstacles and diversions—more water comes into contact with the whole ecosystem. And when Sonny Rollins played for two years under the Williamsburg Bridge he came into contact with his music in a new way—he left after two years with a different relationship to his music, and himself. And while we can’t all take two years off to play our music under a bridge, we can look at obstacles and diversions as a chance to come into contact with something new—in our work and ourselves. Or we can find ways of slowing ourselves down, so that we can find a new relationship to what we are doing.

© 2023 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Hayes, M. (2023). Every Drop Counts: Low Tech Process-Based Restoration. Sept 21 -Oct 4 2023 Explore Big Sky, p. 33.

For more on Sonny Rollins

Healing from Trauma Step by Step

Teaching Dragons to Cartwheel

Teaching Dragons to Cartwheel GLS

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Learning happens when things are just outside of our reach. Out ahead of us where we need to stretch to get to it, but not too far.

Many years ago I read a story called Jeannie about a speech therapist who had been called in to work with a young woman named Jeannie who was mute. She was mute for psychological reasons, rather than physical ones and she was living on a psychiatric ward. She hadn’t spoken for six years and Jeannie’s mother was desperate.  She begged the speech therapist to work with her daughter.

Initially the speech therapist said, “No,” because she only knew physiological exercises to improve speech—and physiology wasn’t the issue. But despite there being no need for the speech exercises from a physiological point of view, the speech therapist decided to start there anyway. The exercises were the increments that the therapist knew and by starting with smallest increments—she was able to keep Jeannie’s psychological fears at bay. The speech therapist had the girl make simple phonetic sounds. Sounds coming out of her mouth without the pressure to ‘communicate something in particular.’ This slow pace allowed Jeannie to make sounds, to ‘be in an interaction with someone’ without feeling pressured to communicate and without feeling pressured to ‘be cured’—both of which terrified Jeannie.

The ability to reach to the next step, the step I can take, the step within my reach is not only fundamental to healing—it seems to be built in to how we grow and learn from infancy.

It was a lesson I learned again when my great niece Lyla was 6 months old and was on the verge of crawling. If you put a toy out of her reach, she stretched herself to get it, and even tried to figure out, if it was just a little too far, how to get herself in to position to crawl. She was figuring out how to bring her knees up underneath her, get up on her hands, and start to rock herself into a crawl. But at the time, the skill of crawling still eluded her –when she pushed too hard with her hands and she just slid backwards, away from what she wanted, looking confused at why she wass further away, rather than closer to, her goal.

The most striking thing watching her was what appeared to be an inner sense of what was ‘within reach’—what was a ‘doable challenge.’ If I put her favorite toy too close to her she grabbed it and it was done.  She dropped the toy and looked around—bored.  If I put the toy too far out of her reach she seemed to somehow know that it was just too big of a challenge—she didn’t even try. She looked annoyed and looked around for something else to pay attention to. But if it was out of her reach, requiring effort, but not in some category that she rated as too difficult, she took on the challenge and tried to get the toy—sticking with the challenge for a long time, even though she often didn’t get there. This magic space, “just out of reach” is clearly where we learn best.

I think so many of the problems of healing and growth come from disrespecting this fine tuned inner sense of what the next step or “just out of reach” is for each of us. I think we are all like Lyla—we know when it’s too easy and we know when it’s too difficult. And knowing this helps us know what the next step could be—what “just out of reach” is for us.  

I think we know it the same way Lyla knows it, but our judgments and “shoulds” and inner critics interfere in our ability to hear that inner sense of the next step that is just outside of our reach and respect its wisdom. We judge that step as too small and we put our version of the toy too far out of our reach, and we freeze or give up on the changes we need to make and the healing we need to do.

Lyla doesn’t have anything interfering with this inner sense. She was able to train me to support her staying right in her learning and growth zone. When I placed the toy too far out she looked at me and scowled. And when I moved it in, she went after it. She didn’t yet have some inner narrative of ‘should.’ She’s didn’t have some inner narrative about “I should really be able to already crawl to that toy and I should be able to do it from much farther away, I mean all the other babies can.”

But most of us –rather than listen to the inner sense of what the next step ‘just out of our reach’ is-- believes that we should already be able to do it, already make that step . Whatever that step is—whether or not we are capable of doing it.

When I began trying to talk about my own trauma I found, actually, that I really couldn’t talk at all. I had no language for my own emotions or feelings. And I really couldn’t tell a coherent story –with a beginning, middle and an end-- about anything. I found that when I tried to talk I either became overwhelmed and disorganized—or I shut down and became numb. Trying to tell my story was too hard. It was out of my reach. And instead of being able to ‘just do it’ – I was stuck. 

But I was lucky because at that time I was training to become a child psychologist and because of my work with children I understood through years of practice the crucial need for small steps. With every child I worked with I tried to figure out where they were, where they needed to get to, and what was the smallest challenge I could create that would have them stretch towards it with confidence and curiosity, rather than fear or mutiny.

The treatment for phobias is built on this principle of progression. If you are terrified of dogs, you don’t start by buying a dog. You start with the ability to say the word ‘dog’, or a look at a photo of a dog, or pat a stuffed animal or toy dog. You start with the smallest contact with ‘dog’ that you can—without feeling overwhelmed. And this was true for all of my clients—the smallest steps made for some of the biggest changes.

All learning is this way—and healing is really learning—only some of the most difficult learning—because it is both an unlearning and learning. You have to unlearn all of the protections and defenses you used to survive that no longer serve you, and you have to learn new thoughts, behaviors and attitudes that can help you grow again.

In order for me to learn to talk about my emotions and tell a coherent story I started where I often have children start—with drawing a picture and telling a story about it. With children –especially if they are self conscious about drawing—I will play the squiggle game with them. I will draw a squiggle on a piece of paper and they will look at the squiggle and see what it looks like to them and make it in to a picture. Maybe it looks like a lion, or a snake or a flower. The squiggle takes the pressure off of ‘what to draw’ and whether it has to be perfect because they are only choosing what they see and in many ways the picture can’t be perfect because I already ruined the pristine white piece of paper with a scribble.  Once they finished the drawing I would get them to tell me a story about it: “Tell me the story of the picture. What is the main character thinking and feeling and doing? What’s going to happen to the character?”

So I decided to start there with myself. I would paint a squiggle in watercolor with my eyes closed. And then open my eyes, decide what the squiggle looked like, and then I would paint whatever I saw in the squiggle. And then I would do one more. And then as the watercolors were drying, I would take out a legal pad and write the story of each of the pictures. I did this almost every day for two years. The stories weren’t earth shattering or important in and of themselves. The stories were practice. They were the practice of a narrative. They were the practice of talking about emotion. The watercolors and the stories allowed me to come in to contact with my own thoughts and feelings and put them into language. This practice stretched me, but it didn’t overwhelm me.

So how do we find the next step we need to take—the one that is ‘just out of our reach?’ As a therapist I think it its hard to assign the next step for two reasons. The first reason is that the next step is a felt sense, and I can’t really know what that is for each person because I can’t feel it. And the second is that if I do have a sense of it, the next step is usually quite small and it can feel to clients like I am suggesting something that is childish or might feel insulting. But as a client I know firsthand that finding the next step is what allowed me to keep moving, to learn what I needed to learn, no matter how small, or ridiculous or childish that next step seemed. So I think it is really important to listen to your inner sense of the next step, and if you can, talk about it with your therapist so that you both can understand where you are—and how far out or close in the next step needs to be.

When I first started teaching mindfulness meditation on an adolescent psychiatric unit , I actually started with a stopwatch. We did breathing exercises for increments of 10 seconds, then 20, and then 30. We built patience muscles in the smallest possible amounts.

Kids aren’t as bothered by increments—and the increments can get wrapped or hidden in play—so they can’t see them for what they are. My child clients didn’t know that they were practicing the necessary skills of patience and anger management as we played the game Sorry  - a game where disappointment and loss are built right in to every possible move, requiring you to manage your emotions almost every time you or someone else picks a card. Finding the increments for learning is so much harder for adults and teenagers. 

Which is why I think that the smartwatches and FitBits have been so successful. For people who may be unfamiliar, digital trackers allow you to track the amount of steps you do in a day. You can get a goal of steps or distance and know when you meet it each day.  Digital trackers aren’t great because they creates a goal of 10,000 steps. They’re great because they make that goal achievable in the smallest possible increments. Increments that are available to you all day long.  Your goal can’t disappear and your ability to work at it any time doesn’t disappear. You always have a chance to get to your goal, in the smallest possible increment.

If I had a wish for you, or the organizations I work with it would be to have you feel good—indeed proud—of the small incremental change that real shifts require. I wish I could rig every goal for healing and growth with its own version of the Fitbit—so you could experience your steps and feel proud of them. I want to have your wristband buzz with colorful stars every time you say something brave, or act more assertively or engage in an act of self-care. I want you to feel good about your small steps instead of feeling like the step you need to take is too small. Or childish. Or embarrassing. Instead, I want us all to be looking for that magic space, that space of growth--just out of reach—and embracing whatever step that is, because that simple step is our best chance for healing and growth.

© 2023/2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

The story of Jeannie by Miriam Mandel Levi is in the book Same Time Next Week