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Whatever Leads to Joy

Posted by on December 22, 2006 in Healing Language and Healing Images, Healing Poetry, Recommended Books

The book, What the Living Do, was written by Marie Howe in the wake of her brother’s death from AIDS. It’s a book that, perhaps better than any other book I know, walks that delicate balance between making memorial—remembering who and what has been lost—and choosing life in the wake of such loss—figuring out, day by day, what it is that the living do (after). There’s joy in the book—and in the poem—but it’s that bittersweet kind of joy— The poem, “My Dead Friends,” can be found here. The poem consists of only thirteen lines. Here are six of them: I have begun, when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question to ask my dead friends for their opinion and the answer is often immediate and clear. . . They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads to joy, they always answer. ....

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Is the Struggle to Make Meaning Good for Your Health? (part 2)

Posted by on December 20, 2006 in Uncategorized

Is the Struggle to Make Meaning Good for Your Health? (part 2)

Here’s a second study relevant to struggling, this one conducted by psychologist Eugene Gendlin in the early sixties, and discussed in the first chapter of Ann Weiser Cornell’s book, The Power of Focusing. Apparently, Gendlin, then at the University of Chicago, was interested in the question: “Why is psychotherapy helpful for some people and not others?” What he did, first, was to tape hundreds of therapy sessions, gathered from many different therapists and clients. Then he asked therapists and clients to rate whether the psychotherapy had been successful. If both agreed, and if psychological testing supported this finding, the therapy was deemed successful. This successful therapy was then compared to therapy that was considered by the participants to be a failure. When researchers listened to the tapes of successful therapy vs. unsuccessful therapy they noted one key difference. Clients in successful therapy struggled more. Ann Weiser Cornell writes: . . . at some point in the session, the successful therapy clients would slow down their talk, become less articulate, and begin to grope for words to describe something that they were feeling at the moment. If you listened to the tapes, you would hear something like this: ‘Hmmmm. How would I describe this? It’s right here. It’s . . . uh . . . it’s . . . it’s not exactly anger . . . hmmmm.’ Often the clients would mention that they experienced this feeling in their bodies, saying things like, ‘It’s right here in my chest,’ or ‘I have this funny feeling in my stomach.’ In contrast, clients who felt like the therapy was a failure didn’t struggle in this way. They were actually more articulate—or more apparently articulate—in the sense that they spoke in smooth, less interrupted ways. (They were, it would seem, more glib. They had things figured out–but nothing changed.) I find this comparison fascinating, and not inconsistent with what I often see with patients. This week, for instance, it often seemed like we were all struggling to make meaning–patients as well as myself. And I love how this study offers a rationale for not only tolerating such struggle for meaning but in fact encouraging it and perhaps celebrating it. I find myself wondering about this question: Why is writing more healing for some people than it is for others? Could it have something to do with how much a person is willing to struggle on the page? A kind of willingness, perhaps, to be initially inarticulate—and halting—and groping—in the service of eventually coming to a new understanding—perhaps a new story—or a new form for one’s story. The Power of Focusing can be found here....

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Is the Struggle to Make Meaning Good for Your Health?

Posted by on December 18, 2006 in Research

Is the Struggle to Make Meaning Good for Your Health?

There are two pieces of research I’ve been thinking about this month. Both are about the struggle to make meaning through language and both, I think, are relevant to this whole question of what writing and rewriting our stories. The first study, conducted by James Pennebaker and colleagues in 1997, shows that when people used increasing numbers of insight words or causal words in their writing they showed improvements in health. Examples of insight words are realize, understand, think, and consider. Examples of causal words are such words as cause, effect, reason, and because. In a discussion of this study, Pennebaker writes: “The present analyses indicated that changes in thinking patterns—as opposed to static thinking patterns, which do not change over time—predict improved health.” I find this study terribly interesting. The researchers weren’t trying to measure how insightful these narratives people wrote were, or whether or not they were “good” narratives. What they were measuring—and what seemed to matter—was this process of finding meaning—this indication that, over time, thinking patterns changed. And this process of finding meaning is suggested by sentences that included cognitive words and that might look something like this: I’m beginning to realize . . . I think perhaps . . . I thought I understood what had happened, but now I’m considering . . . Changes in thinking patterns—as opposed to static thinking patterns, which do not change over time—predict improved health. It’s the kind of statement that’s worth considering, I think, and coming back to. It’s the kind of finding that has implications not just for writing and healing, but for healing itself—–   Part 2 of this article–an article about the struggle to make meaning in psychotherapy–can be found...

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Writing and Healing Idea # 18: The Things We Carry

Posted by on December 17, 2006 in Writing Ideas

A list can be a kind of form. A list can be a way at getting at something that might be hard to get at in another way. Consider this list from Tim O’Brien’s story about Vietnam, “The Things They Carried,” from his incomparable collection by the same name. Perhaps you are already familiar with the story. Here’s the second paragraph. A list of the tangible things that the men carried: The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending on a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney. Here’s a paragraph from later in the story (20). They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. You can make a list of the things you carry or that you have carried. You can write about the balance and posture required to carry...

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Notes in Bathrobe Pockets

Posted by on December 15, 2006 in Forms for Writing and Healing, Healing Poetry

Foggy this morning. I’m thinking (again) about those pieces and images that can pierce through fog. For a writer. Or for a reader. The kinds of things that Janet Desaulniers is talking about, I think, when she talks about collecting. In his book, A New Path to the Waterfall, a book about, among other things, navigating loss, and navigating the approach of death, Raymond Carver includes an apparently simple poem: “His Bathrobe Pockets Stuffed with Notes”. The poem is made up of of thirteen fragments. Here are three: Those dead birds on the porch when I opened up the house after being away for three months. “We’ve sustained damage, but we’re still able to maneuver.” Spock to Captain Kirk. The rabbi I met on the plane that time who gave me comfort just after my marriage had broken up for...

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