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

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 20, 2006 in Uncategorized

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....

On Reading “Four Chambers for Tyler David Tandeski”

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 29, 2006 in Uncategorized

Thank you again to Danielle Crawford for her poem, “Four Chambers for Tyler David Tandeski,” which I posted earlier this week, on Monday. I was moved by the poem when I first read it—and continue to be. And I thought I would offer a few reflections here—not analysis so much, but, simply, one reader reading—a snippet of my own reading and reflection. The poem got my attention with the first line: It stinks like cotton swabs. Oh, I thought, I’m in some kind of clinical setting—cotton swabs—a strong smell—and someone is going to say something honest about it—a visceral sensory impression. And then the next image that got through to me: that inhospitable bed. A play on hospital bed? But it’s inhospitable—–yes—-(I’ve seen this bed. I’ve been in rooms like this.) And then the images accumulating: the October sky. . . the peppered linoleum. . . naked. . . Pain given concrete detail. (The kind of concrete detail that’s essential both to poetry and to the process of mourning. Thinking of what Chekhov’s cab-driver needs to say: the details of his son’s death, the trip to the hospital to fetch his clothes.) The details then, in this particular poem: the starchy parchment paper And those words—-It’s done. (I can see that. I can hear those words.) And then—Part II— A sense of the child that would have been— A sense of strong feeling trying to find language And then the name—there near the end—Tyler—–the importance of remembering the name—making memorial. Peter Elbow, in Writing Without Teachers, says, that when it comes to writing, our biggest fear is not rejection—but its absence—the absence of acceptance and rejection. Our biggest fear is that no one has heard at all. He writes: I’ve often had a kind of surreal, underwater vision of social reality. . . Everyone walks around mostly out of communication with everyone else. Someone has turned off the sound, cut the wires. It’s all fog and silence. I think one of the things poetry can do—and other kinds of writing can do—and reflection on writing can do—is cut through the fog a bit. I’ve tried to offer, here, a few snippets of how this occurred for me—a cutting through my own ordinary layer of fog as I read Danielle’s poem. A sense that I could hear and see something of those images she offered. To put this another way, I had a writing teacher who used to say that we all walk around half-asleep and writing has the potential to wake us up. Yes, it’s rather like that. Sometimes it’s like that. We come across an image—fresh language—and we stop in our tracks. We see something—something perhaps familiar—but in a new...

About Grief: What Chekhov’s Cab-Driver Needs to Say

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 17, 2006 in Uncategorized

There’s a story by Anton Chekhov entitled, simply, “Grief”. I first learned about the story from Mary Swander’s essay, “The Fifth Chair,” in the anthology, Healing Circle. The story itself can be found in The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. It speaks particularly well, I think, to what it is that grief may require. When the story begins a cab-driver waits at twilight in the snow for a fare. His son has died the previous week. He waits a long time in the snow, and then finally—a passenger. As the evening wears on, the cab-driver attempts conversation with three different passengers. Three different times he attempts to tell his story—what has happened with his son. Each of the three interrupts him. One closes his eyes to stop the story. One informs him that we all must die. One simply gets out of the sleigh. Still later, the cab-driver attempts to stop and speak with a house-porter, but the house-porter tells him to drive on. There’s so much that the cab-driver needs to tell. Chekhov writes: One must tell it slowly and carefully; how his son fell ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died. One must describe every detail of the funeral, and the journey to the hospital to fetch the defunct’s clothes. His daughter Anissia remained in the village—one must talk about her too. Was it nothing he had to tell? Surely the listener would gasp and sigh, and sympathize with him? The details must be told. And then—that gasp—that sigh—from the listener. At the end of the day the cab-driver returns to the stables. He begins to speak to his horse: Now let’s say you had a foal, you were that foal’s mother, and suddenly, let’s say, that foal went and left you to live after him. It would be sad, wouldn’t it? The horse munches his hay and breathes his warm breath—and does not interrupt him. And that is how the story ends—with the cab-driver telling his story, finally, to his horse. Perhaps what grief requires, as much as anything, is that the process not be interrupted. That it find a time and a place in which to unfold–with a companion (when possible) and without (too much) interruption. And, perhaps, at least for some of us, writing can play a role in this process. Writing as a companion that does not interrupt? Writing as a prelude to telling the story to a companion? See also: Month 8: Making a Place for...

The Research on Expressive Writing: Writing about Trauma

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 9, 2006 in Uncategorized

In 1983, James Pennebaker, a psychologist, then at Southern Methodist University, conducted, along with one of his graduate students, Sandra Beall, a study of forty-six college students. Students in one group—the experimental group—were instructed to write continuously for fifteen minutes about the most upsetting or traumatic experience of their lives. Their instructions included the following: In your writing, I want you to discuss your deepest thoughts and feelings about the experience. You can write about anything you want. But whatever you choose, it should be something that has affected you very deeply. Ideally, it should be something you have not talked [about] with others in detail. It is critical, however, that you let yourself go and touch those deepest emotions and thoughts that you have. In other words, write about what happened and how you felt about it, and how you feel about it now. In essence, these students were being invited to write about a time when something had fallen apart. Students wrote sitting alone in a small cubicle in the psychology building. They wrote on four consecutive days and did not sign their names to their pieces. These were not students who had been recruited because they were experiencing emotional or physical problems. These were ordinary college students recruited from introductory psychology classes. They wrote about the divorce of parents, about loss and abuse, about alcoholism and suicide attempts. They wrote about secrets. And in interviews conducted after finishing the four writing sessions, students actually reported feeling worse than they had before the writing. But four months later, these same students, compared to students who had written about trivial topics, reported improvements in mood and in outlook on life, and, perhaps most surprisingly, improvements in their physical health. When data came in from the student health center, it revealed that this same group of students had in fact visited the student health center for illness, on average, only half as often as their peers. This particular kind of writing—writing one’s deepest thoughts and feelings about trouble—is sometimes called expressive writing. And it’s the kind of writing about which much of the research on writing and health has been conducted. Since that early study in 1983, expressive writing has been tested in a wide range of settings. It’s been shown to improve self-reported health, psychological well-being, grade point average, and re-employment after lay-off. It’s been shown to benefit women with breast cancer, to decrease blood pressure in people with hypertension, to mitigate pain and fatigue in those with fibromyalgia, and to improve markers of immune function for those with AIDS. In an afterward to The Writing Cure, a compilation of research and theory published nearly twenty years after Pennebaker’s first study on expressive writing and health, he reflects on some of the implications of the body of research in the field. He writes: All of the evidence would suggest that writing brings about a general reduction in biological stress. That is, when an individual has come to terms with an upsetting experience, he or she is less vigilant about the world and potential threats. This results in an overall lowering of defenses. . . . Given the broad range of improvements in health outcomes, it would be prudent to conclude that writing provokes a rather broad and nonspecific...

A Healing Resource Center: Food for Thought (and Writing)

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 22, 2006 in Uncategorized

I’m imagining, this morning, a place. Perhaps in the mountains of North Carolina, a place like Wildacres Retreat Center. Or on the Pacific Coast, a place like Asilomar. I’m imagining an old summer camp, but one that’s been refurbished—with modern buildings, and amenities. A fireplace in each of the guest rooms. Decks. Wide porches. A juice bar in the lobby. Perhaps an espresso bar. And then, on the grounds, a short walk from the lodgings—five centers: • A Nutrition Center • A Fitness Center • A Center for Addiction Recovery • A Center for Creativity • A Center for Meditation and Rest Say it’s early afternoon when you arrive at the center. Plenty of time to unpack, take a shower, settle in, rest for a while in your room. When you’re ready you can wander down to the lobby and request a tour. You have, let’s say, two weeks to spend at the Healing Resource Center. And you’ll be informed upon your arrival that you can spend these two weeks however you like. But first–a tour. The tour begins at the Nutrition Center—a low sprawling building of stone and glass. You follow the guide into a large room, find a long buffet table arranged with platters. Blueberries and orange sections. Slices of watermelon. Slices of whole-grain bread. An array of cheeses. Also peaches. Plums. Tiny carrots. Bowls of walnuts and almonds and sunflower seeds. Several pitchers of clear water with slices of lemon. It’s late afternoon and, before you go back to tour the kitchens, the guide invites you to take a plate and help yourself to a snack, pour yourself a tall glass of water if you’d like. As you walk down the length of the table and begin selecting your food, the guide explains: “The goal here at this center is to provide a kind of immersion experience with healthy food. The goal is to engage your senses. Colors. Touch. Smell. Taste. And, eventually, if you wish, you can work with one of the chefs back in the kitchens. . .” As he’s talking you pick up a plum. You bite into the plum. . . And then what happens? What happens next? You could, if you wanted, write about it. Like one of those choose-your-own-adventure stories where you get to choose the ending. (Okay, maybe it’s not a big adventure. But it could be a little adventure–or it could turn into an...

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