"Grief" - 25th and 26th July 2021.
25th July 2021.
Notes
A day full of physical panic, my body full of crawling spinning electricity.
Not a nice feeling, not nice at all.
Then suddenly I was washed through and through.
And the weaving, spinning, churn stopped.
I stood for a precious moment in the still point at the centre of the Sun - and I felt love once more.
Mostly the laughing, that we laugh together...
And that I am culpable.
It stops the panic.
Stops me waiting for the hammer to fall
Stills my expectation of a coming time, my trial by language.
What is my worst fear?
More hours, weeks, months of blaming myself for feeling anxiety.
So, more of the same then!
I could tell - when my husband was lying.
My anxiety was well founded.
Just no information...
What do I want to know?
Only good and positive things.
I'm beaten up.
The greater my need for positive,
the harder it is to accept there can be negative consequences
for honesty...
There is that cough - he tells me not to worry, it isn't Covid.
He -"Do you want to start with grief"?
I say - "Games - what I think - from putting things together - the way that you describe games -as if a person is trying to create their home-system, with disallowed emotion. A feeling they don't like, but if they can get you to have it there is something familiar about it. So there is the con and the gimmick - it's projective identification, really. Person A, will be the gamer - and person B is unsuspecting, has favoured and non favoured feelings. A starts off saying something that sounds reasonable, and person B picks up an implication from this first line of the conversation - if it has for B an emotional 'fizz' to it, and so they respond, they are hooked in because they will respond in an emotional way and Person A is evoking an emotion in B that I want to say, is 'behind the screen' for both of them, and I think this is at the heart of it - you described it as trying to get back to home"
He -"Yes..it isn't...emotions are involved of course, emotions are part of the payoff. And it may be about banned or allowed emotions but I think that's not the heart of it. Depending on what perspective you are reading, it is a way of reinforcing the phantasy (with a PH), or the RIGS (Stern) representation of interactions that have been generalised (the concept of how things should go). So a game is a way of reinforcing your phantasy or your RIGs, or in TA your script which is always running in the background, so in a way a game is an extreme version of something which is happening all the time but with a game it is far more noticeable and I'm trying to be ever so careful with my words. Because it is obvious. It's obvious that there has been a relational rupture, but it's not noticeable in the sense that the person who is playing the game, will have no idea that they are doing it, They just think 'I feel awful, why do I feel like this', or very often and this is the easy way to tell a game, people will say things like why does this always happen to me, why are people always like this, um...why can't I ever get what I want. Universal statements - and that makes it the game, if you like, it's the mountain peak of something that is happening all the time
I found it weirdly enticing to feel the undertow of my past creating coils and loops of disaster as I feel the shattered edges of my life; my son's psychosis, an errant husband. And I'm in improbability drive at the still centre of a chaos star, looking at all options, all possibilities available to me in this very restrictive, restricting and restricted space. I don't need this to be easy, though that would be nice. I just want it to be open and playful.
I feel like I'm in a field with a bull!I say something in reply about being in sync and out of sync, but I don't know where I'm going there is no rope for me to fix to this cliff; in sync means to use words as in jazz, to play, to follow the rabbit down multiple holes, and let the mind associate and create something new and of this moment - to turn towards knowledge - to turn around within one's own ignorance, to turn away from appearances. I'm trying to describe epistrophe...
"Epistrophē implies return to multiple possibilities, correspondences with images that can not be encompassed within any systematic account. The particular virtue of the psychological mind is its twisting of the given; seeing through, hearing echo and implication, turning back or upside down. The psychological mind makes the given imagistic, fantastic. Hence its affinity with both the pathological and the poetic, and hence, also, its distance from the programmatic of action and the formulations of the sciences. Where scientific abstractions seek to posit what is really there in the given, substitutive for it and constitutive of it, our abstractions seek to drop the bottom out of the given."
James Hillman.I fail to say this in any recognizable way...
He continues -"we are back to the filter again, because this is the filter, this is everything. What I mean by the filter is really what in TA is called the Script, it's not quite the same but there's not much difference.
I say (optimistically) - "The organizing principle"?
He talks over me - "Because it tells us who the world is, and who am I in relation to the world so it's really basic stuff. The thing about the script is it's easy to miss, because we can get caught up in trying to be too complicated and the script is always very, very simple because it has been decided by a child. I will give you an example. So little Carol comes home from school and says "mommy, look what I made" and mother says "Do you never shut up!" oh god, ok so she goes to daddy "Daddy look what I made" " Not now love I'm too busy, go and ask your mom". Now this becomes a daily reality, so she is very hurt, very missed. These are, a mother who is labelling the child as someone who never shuts up and all she's got are the normal needs of a child so this is a mother giving her stuff to the child, of course she doesn't think that she is doing this, she just thinks that it is an annoying child. Dad doesn't understand the needs of a child because for whatever reason, he thinks oh this is more important than attending to my child wanting a bit of attention, a bit of love. This is a child who is really really missed and this becomes a chronic thing. So from her experience she understands the world's a pretty hostile place. Not in a big dramatic way, in an ordinary, everyday…
Me - "Her fundamental needs will not be met"
He - “So what she learns is 'I can't be noticed' 'my emotional needs can't be met' and 'I'm not allowed to talk' that becomes the script."
At this point I'm under his spell. I have 'a thing' about having to keep quiet which relates to blacking out when I was attacked, and the impossibility at the age of 14 and in 1970's Britain, of telling anyone what happened to me. And then later, in my 20's once again I had to repeat my personal gagging order this time to save others. Ultimately the first experience strengthened my resolve and ability to cope, and so I didn't black out. But the memory of both incidents is heavy. And I'm identifying with Carol...But even if I'd had the perfect childhood! We are hard-wired to freeze in relation to overwhelming threat, and that's what I did. But I learnt from my experience and when I was in a far more terrifying situation years later, this time I remained aware of exactly what was happening. In fact the first experience empowered me for the second - and so no one died. I like to believe my ability to stay calm made that critical difference.
He - "And then what she does, and this becomes the precursor of the game, she'll 'collect stamps'".
Me -"So each time it happens…
He cuts me off.
He -"You can't have a game without stamps - it goes back to the days of Green shield stamps."
Me -"A lot of TA I see as a map, this is like learning the rules of ...ok yeah."
He - “No, no I'm just giving you an illustration of how it works…"
Me - “Sure”
He - “In Games people Play...it's not a case that there are a fixed number of games. You know what game someone is playing by sitting and listening to them because the game is according to their biography. So if you and I played a game, well no one has ever written a book about me, and I guess no one has written a book about you. So if I play a game or you play a game it will be peculiar to your biography. So I think having a book of games is all very well and helps us understand how the mechanism of a game works, but it's not a handbook that I can flip through the pages and find your game, it doesn't work like that.
I try to explain how my husband would repeat the same emotive situation; one which he could be sure would lead to me feeling bereft and hurt simply because it always did. My husband would then become angry, or as I came to see it, he believed that he had a legitimate right to be angry with me. I couldn't understand that he didn't love me on any level any more, because it didn't make any sense, because he said that he did! But the what I now see as goading (bullying) was truly, truly awful, my heart was shattered again and again and I thought it was all my fault - until I listened to the recordings I'd made.
As I remember, as I describe trying to fathom that memory I am feeling echoes of the pain of those days and evenings and...he ignores this.
He - “So little Carol, she’s had this really terrible experience with her parents - not anything you would call social services over. Just ordinary everyday emotional neglect really . So she goes back to her relationships and what she is going to do is collect stamps - like you know, you collect stamps, put them in a book and when it’s full you cash it in, and in this case..<He and I are of a similar age - Green Shield stamps, and the blue Co-op ones. Evidence!>…you cash it in for a game. So her particular stamps would be little everyday occurrences which she can store up one by one, of not feeling listened to, of feeling emotionally neglected, of feeling dismissed and they are more likely to be connected with the people who mean most to her. So it will be her relationship with her family, if she’s got one at this point , and when she’s got enough stamps she can play the game - of course this is all unconscious, but what she will do is, pick someone she can play the game with, because otherwise there won't be a gimmick to pull the person in."
Me -"A belief a person has about themselves that’s precious to them and it is being confronted at his moment."
He - "“Yes, the best person to play a game with in this instant is somebody who is like a parent, somebody who isn’t a very good listener, somebody who just talks about themselves. So this person anybody else could recognise as you don’t have a conversation with this person because they can’t do it - but she will pick this person and try to do it - and then she can get the pay off. Let’s say she is with a group of friends and they are all talking about X, and she says well I’m going to talk about Y, and they are all talking about X so they aren't listening because they have already been talking about Y for ten minutes. So she deliberately, though unconsciously talks about Y, and so she can then go ‘‘Nobody listened to me, I’m sick of this’ and storms out. Leaving her friends going ‘ What? What just happened? Now I don’t remember Berne or anyone writing this - but the next bit that happens, when you have emotions which are disproportionate, partly that’s a judgement call - but I’m talking about something that is really obvious like this event with her friends, you know for sure the person is in the Child ego state, and almost certainly they are playing a game."
Me “- Seems so cruel to call all this ‘games’ it brings me a feeling that ‘People should know better’. Berne speaks from…it’s almost as if he is on a pinnacle (looking down). The word ‘game’ feels unfair. The person isn’t aware that they - in Berne’s terms - are playing a game …the scientist part of me asks, is this true."
He - “Absolutely, I see it again and again. Especially if you ever see couples, they are all collecting stamps from each other. But you see it with individuals . See I’m very firmly of the opinion that theories are great because they are limited, and not about you or me, and the thing to do is to wear theory lightly. The person who is sat in front of you will always tell you what they need if you know how to listen to them. That’s not about theory, that’s about the relationship . And if you miss it they will keep telling you until you listen. Every time, every time! And I think, any therapist who says to a client ‘This is what is happening to you, I’m the expert on this, listen to me!’ is being borderline, not even borderline, abusive. Therapy is about empowering the client. So when I talk about games with a client…I’m never sitting there going ‘This is a game, you don’t get it! Let me tell you about it’ And sometimes you see the magic happen when you offer a framework, or occasionally a client will go ‘no’ and I might have got it wrong, or I might have got it right but the client isn’t ready to hear it yet. But either way - maybe they will pick it up later. But it’s always important to give the power to the client, that’s what it is all about."
Me - “To go back to what we said before; people don’t necessarily know…to take the hypothetical example of the woman who marries a man like her dad because she needs to change her past in the present. It doesn’t feel true to her, to believe that she cannot make him change. And in TA I get the feeling that there is a belief that everyone knows ‘the truth’ really - that you can't change others - and this may well be true (!?) I don’t know (I think the whole point of therapy is to help people change themselves, I don't see why that enabling capacity is restricted to a 'therapy relationships'). But I also think people can be completely deluded and go to their graves completely deluded. A person’s belief that they can change someone; there are a lot of stories, be they simply fiction or fantasy, narratives that give the impression that this is possible. So I don’t put so much responsibility on the person, they may be making a mistake, but I can understand that a person can have a really strong and solid belief that conflicts with mine."
He - “But I think it is important to understand from the client, where that comes from - I mean we did some of this work"
Me - “And I thought…you do not understand where I am coming from. You were assuming that I can’t let go of my fantasy. But it wasn’t a fantasy, I was fighting for a real person - the person I am married to. I saw my husband’s actions as like a massive tantrum, understandable in the light of what we had been through, and people do things they will regret later. Also it is better to negotiate, so I was holding the door open for that. After twenty-five years of marriage, it isn’t black and white. I was saying that our relationship is at it's worst, is at least 60 - 70% good, we are friends, we get along and so I believed there was something we could reclaim. At the time I thought you (Kit) don’t get where I’m coming from. I give people chances, until I know from them what’s happening, and when I know, then I make a decision. "
Me - “To go back to what we said before; people don’t necessarily know…to take the hypothetical example of the woman who marries a man like her dad because she needs to change her past in the present. It doesn’t feel true to her, to believe that she cannot make him change. And in TA I get the feeling that there is a belief that everyone knows ‘the truth’ really - that you can't change others - and this may well be true (!?) I don’t know (I think the whole point of therapy is to help people change themselves, I don't see why that enabling capacity is restricted to a 'therapy relationships'). But I also think people can be completely deluded and go to their graves completely deluded. A person’s belief that they can change someone; there are a lot of stories, be they simply fiction or fantasy, narratives that give the impression that this is possible. So I don’t put so much responsibility on the person, they may be making a mistake, but I can understand that a person can have a really strong and solid belief that conflicts with mine."
He - “But I think it is important to understand from the client, where that comes from - I mean we did some of this work"
Me - “And I thought…you do not understand where I am coming from. You were assuming that I can’t let go of my fantasy. But it wasn’t a fantasy, I was fighting for a real person - the person I am married to. I saw my husband’s actions as like a massive tantrum, understandable in the light of what we had been through, and people do things they will regret later. Also it is better to negotiate, so I was holding the door open for that. After twenty-five years of marriage, it isn’t black and white. I was saying that our relationship is at it's worst, is at least 60 - 70% good, we are friends, we get along and so I believed there was something we could reclaim. At the time I thought you (Kit) don’t get where I’m coming from. I give people chances, until I know from them what’s happening, and when I know, then I make a decision. "
And that statement - that I only make decisions when I have all the facts, or enough of them to assess and to judge, is integral to my identity. It is integral to what is happening here in this session, and it integral to why I am opening up the black box, it is why I'm writing this blog.
Kit ignores what I've said and offers me his misinterpretation...
He - “In my mind it goes back to that image of you as a girl, pouring your dad’s drinks down the sink. The original relationships in our lives, the family, the setting, the blueprint for how life is - because it is important. So when you are not giving up on your dad, you are making sure that you are not going to let him pour himself into oblivion. So you are pouring his drink down the sink instead. That’s setting up a pattern".
Me - “Yes, I’m not powerless. I will do what I can, until I know that this is their choice" .
He - “Because it raises some very important questions for your future self, because there are going to be times when you can’t help a client. There are times when the paradox is they have come to you for help that they don’t want - and it usually comes out in the first session - they have been sent, or they sent themselves in order to convince somebody else. And the convincing is appearing in front of you. Or, in the choice between the known ways of dealing with emotions such as alcohol, cocaine or promiscuity, or actually having a look at themselves, finding out what’s there. Don’t want to know - cocaine it is then. There will be clients like that and you won't be able to save them <expectant pause>
He - “In my mind it goes back to that image of you as a girl, pouring your dad’s drinks down the sink. The original relationships in our lives, the family, the setting, the blueprint for how life is - because it is important. So when you are not giving up on your dad, you are making sure that you are not going to let him pour himself into oblivion. So you are pouring his drink down the sink instead. That’s setting up a pattern".
Me - “Yes, I’m not powerless. I will do what I can, until I know that this is their choice" .
He - “Because it raises some very important questions for your future self, because there are going to be times when you can’t help a client. There are times when the paradox is they have come to you for help that they don’t want - and it usually comes out in the first session - they have been sent, or they sent themselves in order to convince somebody else. And the convincing is appearing in front of you. Or, in the choice between the known ways of dealing with emotions such as alcohol, cocaine or promiscuity, or actually having a look at themselves, finding out what’s there. Don’t want to know - cocaine it is then. There will be clients like that and you won't be able to save them <expectant pause>
So why is he dumping this on to me? Whose concern is it that there are 'clients who don't want to know'? This certainly isn't my concern. I generally ask, 'Seriously, what is so good for you about cocaine/sex/alcohol - because we are hard-wired to want more of those things for sure, so it makes total sense to me that you would want more. But cocaine and alcohol in particular will have negative consequences, so I'm just wondering - what is it that they are helping you to feel'? And then we talk about the good feelings and how to get more, and from that place of safety the conversation can go into the sadness, or anger or wherever! Kit has missed that for me all that matters is that I do something, that I engage, that I don't look away or walk away until I know that the other person doesn't want me to intervene.
And in the room now with Kit, I just hold the silence.
He - ….I’m aware that we started off with games and we’ve been all over the place"
Me - “That’s fine, that’s the way it should be”.
He - “So do you want me to put it back to games”?
Me - “Do you want to put it back to games”? Erm…I’m here and I’m paying. The meander around subjects is fruitful …
He -”There is a wonderful cartoon I meant to print out - it shows ‘the switch’ in the Game beautifully, it’s a beautiful illustration of it. A couple who clearly have just moved house and they are getting stuff out of boxes into the kitchen. And the first panel ‘Darling would you come into the kitchen and help me unpack’ and the second panel, he’s getting something out and he’s putting it somewhere and ‘No! Not there!’ And the third panel, ‘No! Not there darling’ and the next panel ‘No!!! Not there!’ you know in increasingly big letters and so on. Of course, in the end what she does is explode on him ‘Don’t you know anything! Don’t you know where anything is supposed to go!?’ while he’s got a picture out that he is ripping apart…and there's the original invitation ‘Darling come into the kitchen and help me unpack’.
Me - ‘‘So I can discharge my frustration on to you and shout at you"
He - “It has nothing to do with the present tense, it is clearly a game. He was invited in with the ulterior motive. That’s how it always starts. There's a cover story that somebody always tells themself. I mean in the cartoon this is a new kitchen, there is no right or wrong place. There can’t possibly be a right place”
Me - “But why isn’t he saying, ‘where would you like it to be’?
He - “Oh, I thought they were a couple, her being in charge and him being the servant!”
Me - “So if he said, ‘where would you like it to be then he would be a servant’?
He - “Well it’s their kitchen isn’t it, surely they are a couple"?
Me - “Ah, but she is clearly emotionally invested in the position of this object - clearly she must have somewhere in mind to perceive that it is being placed wrongly. Or he could say, ‘No, I really like it here’ and then they could have an argument. ”
He - “The point is there will be a story here, it’s part of her script, it’s replaying - probably - a parental relationship”.
Me - “But is he not also stuck in a parental relationship…”
He - “No, he just thinks it is an innocent request. But his gimmick is…
Me - “I’m a kind and loving man…”
He - “Of course, of course.
Me - “So, he’s being a servant. But it matters to him to make her happy. But as to why he doesn’t say ‘OK, where do you want it…puts it there, and then does something else!
He - “Well possibly the parental relationship that built up to the RIGs is that “Nobody can meet my needs”
Me - “So if he said to her, ‘where would you like it, wouldn’t that just drain the energy”?
He - “When somebody is playing a Game, if somebody crosses the game, the person plays the Game harder. So if he said. ‘Where shall I put it’ she would say ‘over there’ - and then, ‘No, not there. I meant there!!!’ and so on”. And somebody in this cartoon script might turn up in therapy, ‘Why is my marriage so bad - why does my husband never listen to me’? And the best thing to do is to look at her part in it, he’s not here - she is, And that’s how we are going to discover Games in therapy, generalities are never going to get there. And what I do is, I slow it right down, second by second. And I want to know three things really - physically what was happening, cognitively what were you thinking, emotionally what were you feeling. Because the power for the game is usually physical, cognitive and emotional. So for example, this little girl whose ‘stupid parents never listen to her’ and that will have been real - then storms off to her bedroom, shouts at her parents and has a good cry, in all likelihood the power for the game will be precisely that, cognitively, emotionally and physically in the place of trauma which gave rise to the game in the first place. So it just repeats on a loop. And then she will have dispensed all of that, by storming off, or not talking for three days, or whatever she is going to do - and then she will start collecting more stamps. That’s how it works …And the thing I love about it, anybody can understand Parent, Adult and Child. And the other thing is, if you read the DSM and some psychodynamic writers, who will give you a label, you will have this sort of disorder and that sort of disorder - it’s bullshit really. What that is doing, it’s saying look I’ve got this person in front of me, what category do they fit, so what you are doing is trying to ram a client - but the thing about Game theory and ego states is the opposite of that, you are saying I have an empty framework, what material can the client give me, which is entirely personal to this person ”
Me - “So it gives a structure to describe a person’s reality, and this allows a person to have power over it - there is no such thing as ‘ego states’ but it is useful and it works. It gives a name for ‘it’ as a handle to shift the problem”
He - “Berne said that we are always interacting with people in a way that measures the minutiae of people’s responses to us. Even the word ‘hallo’, so a person can feel aggrieved when another responds with less than a hello, than they gave to them - even that is a transaction, or it could be a stamp!”
A sore point for me...he would start a session with 'how are you?' and I'd be stuck, wanting a deep conversation! [+]
Me - “That’s fine, that’s the way it should be”.
He - “So do you want me to put it back to games”?
Me - “Do you want to put it back to games”? Erm…I’m here and I’m paying. The meander around subjects is fruitful …
He -”There is a wonderful cartoon I meant to print out - it shows ‘the switch’ in the Game beautifully, it’s a beautiful illustration of it. A couple who clearly have just moved house and they are getting stuff out of boxes into the kitchen. And the first panel ‘Darling would you come into the kitchen and help me unpack’ and the second panel, he’s getting something out and he’s putting it somewhere and ‘No! Not there!’ And the third panel, ‘No! Not there darling’ and the next panel ‘No!!! Not there!’ you know in increasingly big letters and so on. Of course, in the end what she does is explode on him ‘Don’t you know anything! Don’t you know where anything is supposed to go!?’ while he’s got a picture out that he is ripping apart…and there's the original invitation ‘Darling come into the kitchen and help me unpack’.
Me - ‘‘So I can discharge my frustration on to you and shout at you"
He - “It has nothing to do with the present tense, it is clearly a game. He was invited in with the ulterior motive. That’s how it always starts. There's a cover story that somebody always tells themself. I mean in the cartoon this is a new kitchen, there is no right or wrong place. There can’t possibly be a right place”
Me - “But why isn’t he saying, ‘where would you like it to be’?
He - “Oh, I thought they were a couple, her being in charge and him being the servant!”
Me - “So if he said, ‘where would you like it to be then he would be a servant’?
He - “Well it’s their kitchen isn’t it, surely they are a couple"?
Me - “Ah, but she is clearly emotionally invested in the position of this object - clearly she must have somewhere in mind to perceive that it is being placed wrongly. Or he could say, ‘No, I really like it here’ and then they could have an argument. ”
He - “The point is there will be a story here, it’s part of her script, it’s replaying - probably - a parental relationship”.
Me - “But is he not also stuck in a parental relationship…”
He - “No, he just thinks it is an innocent request. But his gimmick is…
Me - “I’m a kind and loving man…”
He - “Of course, of course.
Me - “So, he’s being a servant. But it matters to him to make her happy. But as to why he doesn’t say ‘OK, where do you want it…puts it there, and then does something else!
He - “Well possibly the parental relationship that built up to the RIGs is that “Nobody can meet my needs”
Me - “So if he said to her, ‘where would you like it, wouldn’t that just drain the energy”?
He - “When somebody is playing a Game, if somebody crosses the game, the person plays the Game harder. So if he said. ‘Where shall I put it’ she would say ‘over there’ - and then, ‘No, not there. I meant there!!!’ and so on”. And somebody in this cartoon script might turn up in therapy, ‘Why is my marriage so bad - why does my husband never listen to me’? And the best thing to do is to look at her part in it, he’s not here - she is, And that’s how we are going to discover Games in therapy, generalities are never going to get there. And what I do is, I slow it right down, second by second. And I want to know three things really - physically what was happening, cognitively what were you thinking, emotionally what were you feeling. Because the power for the game is usually physical, cognitive and emotional. So for example, this little girl whose ‘stupid parents never listen to her’ and that will have been real - then storms off to her bedroom, shouts at her parents and has a good cry, in all likelihood the power for the game will be precisely that, cognitively, emotionally and physically in the place of trauma which gave rise to the game in the first place. So it just repeats on a loop. And then she will have dispensed all of that, by storming off, or not talking for three days, or whatever she is going to do - and then she will start collecting more stamps. That’s how it works …And the thing I love about it, anybody can understand Parent, Adult and Child. And the other thing is, if you read the DSM and some psychodynamic writers, who will give you a label, you will have this sort of disorder and that sort of disorder - it’s bullshit really. What that is doing, it’s saying look I’ve got this person in front of me, what category do they fit, so what you are doing is trying to ram a client - but the thing about Game theory and ego states is the opposite of that, you are saying I have an empty framework, what material can the client give me, which is entirely personal to this person ”
Me - “So it gives a structure to describe a person’s reality, and this allows a person to have power over it - there is no such thing as ‘ego states’ but it is useful and it works. It gives a name for ‘it’ as a handle to shift the problem”
He - “Berne said that we are always interacting with people in a way that measures the minutiae of people’s responses to us. Even the word ‘hallo’, so a person can feel aggrieved when another responds with less than a hello, than they gave to them - even that is a transaction, or it could be a stamp!”
A sore point for me...he would start a session with 'how are you?' and I'd be stuck, wanting a deep conversation! [+]
Me - “but with me, I’m usually perfectly fine in this situation - and I’m different in different situations. So the question “How are you” is a request for a status report. And how I am is different in different environments. So moving on from that, to ‘Family Systems’ - we choose partners and friends who could be a member of our family. Is that true?
He - “ it was first done in the 1970’s and done many times since with the same result. And I think it explains a lot, because all that’s happening is we are picking up signals from people without knowing we are doing it. And in early years it is a matter of personal survival, because if a child feels safe in their parents company, they will watch in a particular way that says ‘I feel safe, I don’t have any ongoing concerns’ a child who is scared of their parents will be observing in a very different way. I find that people with traumatic backgrounds tend to be much more aware, of their own observing, but not always where it comes from but very aware of their observing. And often picking up signals in an exaggerated way, because if you are used to loud noises meaning that you are about to be attacked, or sudden movements" which mean I’m about to be attacked…sudden movements. And really the family systems experiment is just an experiment that asks, what do we think of people when we can’t talk, what do we think of them"
Me -” it just seems unscientific, let’s start with that".
He - “Why is it unscientific”?
Me -”I’d need to see the results - the papers - myself. I’m not disagreeing as such. I believe in a concept of 'kin’ , that people chose someone as a partner who feels like kin, there is kinship there. That can be the main part of it, but it could be that you have decided to be someone else, different to who you were. But thinking of my sons, both have fallen in love during recent weeks with very different, really different girls - but each fits who my son would say he is - both sons had a similar upbringing, so it’s sort of strange if you see what I mean.”
He -” Family systems is exactly as scientific in the way black holes are”
Me - “ They are explanatory…”
He - “We do the same experiment and get the same result and we don’t know why, so from all the information we have what is the theory that would explain why we always end up with the same result”
Me - “My partners always seem to reflect who I am at that time, there may be a core in me that is the same, but I’m not the same - but let’s take the screen idea - I don’t disagree that families have preferred names for responses to an event. So one family behaves to an event and they run around like chickens, while the same thing happens to another family and they get really angry perhaps. So there are preferred reactions and emotions, emotional tone.”
He - “ In families people are assigned different roles”
Me - “Bowen family systems, where the family dump all their anxiety on the ‘preferred / identified patient’ and blame ‘the black sheep’ if they worry about me it solves this crisis. 'Identified patient' is an interesting one. I've thought about that a lot in terms of my husband’s family. It provided a workable model for his family, explaining what I was seeing - which was unbelievable…
He -” There is a lot of magical thinking, I think there is nothing in there, or useful that isn’t better written in other places…."
Me - “was it Jodorowsky, he was talking about - when you ask a group of people to play the part of your family, but you ask them to stand in a position that feels appropriate to the closeness you feel to them..." [+]
He -”it really doesn’t matter that you have never met these people and will never meet them or what your impression would be if you did meet them because what matters is who are they to the client, and you will know that because the client tells you. And again it’s getting inside the client’s filter, knowing how the client sees the world, because there is no real world just the way the client experiences the situation. And if ever you are going to do something, and therapeutically you need to do this sometimes to undo the way the client sees the world because it is keeping them stuck. You don’t impose, you offer the client tools, you ask ‘how does it look when you use this framework’ and then the client will do all the work themselves"
Me -” they want to be out of their pain, and as soon as you have heard (your self say) an idea it becomes a part of you"
He -” because you can’t do it for the client anyway, and that’s <laughing> I wonder why this always springs to mind in some point of our conversations, that’s why I’m not Gestalt because there's no manipulating. And that’s a word Perls used, manipulating the patient".
Me -”Well Perls is Perls but underneath, I will put him on to that chair - ‘Perls, you and I get on fine because you remind me of many consultants - NHS - I have worked with who were complete bullies, really….but I could cope with them. Perls was like a lot of consultants. He took knowledge from other people and put it together. Was he doing therapy or not? Possibly abusing, possibly manipulating but me I’d just laugh and say ‘ yeah Perls, that’s an interesting idea’ . But there is important stuff in there, so instead of the PHantasy and filter, there is the Ground and ideas arise from Ground and the clearer the figure formation the more awareness of the whole the person has - then the person can move on and experience in a new way. Then it’s back down to the fertile void, the Dharmakaya level and then ideally new concepts will arise in association with actual need. So in awareness of one’s reality, one’s needs, actions and ideas will arise to create a really clear figure. So the figure arises from the ground and it becomes clear. When people are stressed and their emotional state is chaotic because of the adrenaline, then the figures.<interrupt>."
He-”Absolutely”
Me-” are all over the place, they are not clear and they are competing. The point of Gestalt is to allow the person to get in touch with the primal feeling, or whatever is unfinished - and from there questions arise about how to move, through play, through feeling, through recognising the edge of awareness feelings into completion. I love the openness of that. But Perls to Gloria ‘Are you a little girl’? He wanted her to say back to him ‘so what if I am trying to manipulate you too!’ The argument is fine with him."
He -”if the client in front of you is a little girl, what a therapist who is actually compassionate will do is look after the little girl.
26th July 2021.
Notes:
He - “ it was first done in the 1970’s and done many times since with the same result. And I think it explains a lot, because all that’s happening is we are picking up signals from people without knowing we are doing it. And in early years it is a matter of personal survival, because if a child feels safe in their parents company, they will watch in a particular way that says ‘I feel safe, I don’t have any ongoing concerns’ a child who is scared of their parents will be observing in a very different way. I find that people with traumatic backgrounds tend to be much more aware, of their own observing, but not always where it comes from but very aware of their observing. And often picking up signals in an exaggerated way, because if you are used to loud noises meaning that you are about to be attacked, or sudden movements" which mean I’m about to be attacked…sudden movements. And really the family systems experiment is just an experiment that asks, what do we think of people when we can’t talk, what do we think of them"
Me -” it just seems unscientific, let’s start with that".
He - “Why is it unscientific”?
Me -”I’d need to see the results - the papers - myself. I’m not disagreeing as such. I believe in a concept of 'kin’ , that people chose someone as a partner who feels like kin, there is kinship there. That can be the main part of it, but it could be that you have decided to be someone else, different to who you were. But thinking of my sons, both have fallen in love during recent weeks with very different, really different girls - but each fits who my son would say he is - both sons had a similar upbringing, so it’s sort of strange if you see what I mean.”
He -” Family systems is exactly as scientific in the way black holes are”
Me - “ They are explanatory…”
He - “We do the same experiment and get the same result and we don’t know why, so from all the information we have what is the theory that would explain why we always end up with the same result”
Me - “My partners always seem to reflect who I am at that time, there may be a core in me that is the same, but I’m not the same - but let’s take the screen idea - I don’t disagree that families have preferred names for responses to an event. So one family behaves to an event and they run around like chickens, while the same thing happens to another family and they get really angry perhaps. So there are preferred reactions and emotions, emotional tone.”
He - “ In families people are assigned different roles”
Me - “Bowen family systems, where the family dump all their anxiety on the ‘preferred / identified patient’ and blame ‘the black sheep’ if they worry about me it solves this crisis. 'Identified patient' is an interesting one. I've thought about that a lot in terms of my husband’s family. It provided a workable model for his family, explaining what I was seeing - which was unbelievable…
He -” There is a lot of magical thinking, I think there is nothing in there, or useful that isn’t better written in other places…."
Me - “was it Jodorowsky, he was talking about - when you ask a group of people to play the part of your family, but you ask them to stand in a position that feels appropriate to the closeness you feel to them..." [+]
He -”it really doesn’t matter that you have never met these people and will never meet them or what your impression would be if you did meet them because what matters is who are they to the client, and you will know that because the client tells you. And again it’s getting inside the client’s filter, knowing how the client sees the world, because there is no real world just the way the client experiences the situation. And if ever you are going to do something, and therapeutically you need to do this sometimes to undo the way the client sees the world because it is keeping them stuck. You don’t impose, you offer the client tools, you ask ‘how does it look when you use this framework’ and then the client will do all the work themselves"
Me -” they want to be out of their pain, and as soon as you have heard (your self say) an idea it becomes a part of you"
He -” because you can’t do it for the client anyway, and that’s <laughing> I wonder why this always springs to mind in some point of our conversations, that’s why I’m not Gestalt because there's no manipulating. And that’s a word Perls used, manipulating the patient".
Me -”Well Perls is Perls but underneath, I will put him on to that chair - ‘Perls, you and I get on fine because you remind me of many consultants - NHS - I have worked with who were complete bullies, really….but I could cope with them. Perls was like a lot of consultants. He took knowledge from other people and put it together. Was he doing therapy or not? Possibly abusing, possibly manipulating but me I’d just laugh and say ‘ yeah Perls, that’s an interesting idea’ . But there is important stuff in there, so instead of the PHantasy and filter, there is the Ground and ideas arise from Ground and the clearer the figure formation the more awareness of the whole the person has - then the person can move on and experience in a new way. Then it’s back down to the fertile void, the Dharmakaya level and then ideally new concepts will arise in association with actual need. So in awareness of one’s reality, one’s needs, actions and ideas will arise to create a really clear figure. So the figure arises from the ground and it becomes clear. When people are stressed and their emotional state is chaotic because of the adrenaline, then the figures.<interrupt>."
He-”Absolutely”
Me-” are all over the place, they are not clear and they are competing. The point of Gestalt is to allow the person to get in touch with the primal feeling, or whatever is unfinished - and from there questions arise about how to move, through play, through feeling, through recognising the edge of awareness feelings into completion. I love the openness of that. But Perls to Gloria ‘Are you a little girl’? He wanted her to say back to him ‘so what if I am trying to manipulate you too!’ The argument is fine with him."
He -”if the client in front of you is a little girl, what a therapist who is actually compassionate will do is look after the little girl.
26th July 2021.
Notes:
He didn't come out to wait for me.
Mostly I remember his green socks, and feeling lost and hopeless.
But I am really tired.
Nightmare last night.
So glad I have a week to process all this.
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