I’ve posted links to the presentation materials and video from my talk/workshop at the Creativity & Madness Conference in Santa Fe two weeks ago:

Video of talk: http://www.davidbookbinder.com/media/2011/Bookbinder-Heros_Journey.mp4
PowerPoint presentation: http://www.davidbookbinder.com/media/2011/Bookbinder-Heros_Journey.ppt
Workshop handouts: http://www.d…avidbookbinder.com/media/2011/Bookbinder-Heros_Journey_Handouts.zip

Both the presentation and the workshop were well received and I am interested in doing them again. If you or someone you know might be interested in my teaching these methods, please email me or call.

Best,
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC
transformations@davidbookbinder.com
978-395-1292

Although it’s been months since I have published anything on this blog, I have not forgotten. I’m working on a presentation on ways to develop resilience that I will be publishing here soon. Meanwhile, I have also resumed my early morning meditation of walking to Independence Park near my house in Beverly, MA, and photographing the islands off Beverly Harbor. (Independence Park is so named because it was the first place north of Boston that the Declaration of Independence was read.)

I recommend something like this exercise to many of my clients — a regular activity that helps to counteract, in a predictable way, a tendency they want to change. In my case, I’m prone to depression, and there is a feedback loop for me between depression, staying inside, and doing photography: When I am moving in the direction of depression, I tend to stay inside in the morning and do not take pictures. The antidote is to do the opposite of what depression tells me to do: go outside as early as possible and take pictures. Then this early warning sign of depression, like the early morning clouds and mist, lifts.

This image was shot on the morning of November 14, 2009.

More anon,
David
© 2009-2010, David J. Bookbinder
davidbookbinder.com

Here’s a summary of some of the ways I use creativity in counseling:

Writing Techniques

Memoirs of Addiction and Recovery (working with addicts, writing, and the Hero’s Journey)

I often find that addicts are creative and sensitive people who grew up in the wrong place. Addiction is often a way of coping for them, one that leads, generally, to further trauma. Art, had they grown up in a different environment, might have been a way they had instead chosen to deal with their more sensitive take on the world.

I can help bring them back to the art and the energy that has been sidetracked into addiction: to redirect this energy into something that feeds rather than depletes them, heals rather than retraumatizes. A future they might not have had opens up because they learn to re-channel this energy. I see them as people who were, or could have been, on a creative or spiritual path who got diverted because of trauma, and I see addiction as the “spell” that held them there. I help them get back on their main path through letting them experience highs from being creative instead of from addictive, self-destructive behaviors.

One way I combine creativity and addiction is in writing groups I call “Memoirs of Addiction and Recovery.” I create a temporary writing community that helps addicts feel accompanied on their recovery and broadens their ability to overcome discouragement and shame and to recover their true selves. I also sometimes work with clients individually, using writing in a similar way. The framework I often use is Joseph Campbell’s monomyth of the Hero’s Journey, which not only rescues from shame the dark period of the clients’ lives, but gives them a path to go forward on where they will eventually obtain a true boon to themselves, others, or both.

Wounded Child/Inner Healer two-hands writing technique

Imagine yourself walking in a familiar place. In the distance you see someone walking toward you. When the person gets closer, you see it’s a child. When still closer, you see that it is your younger self. Imagine that this child is feeling a confusing or disturbing feeling that you, yourself, are feeling. Notice how old the child is, how the child looks and acts. Imagine, as well, that you are feeling at your most compassionate and empathic. With your dominant hand, write what you would say to this child. With your non-dominant hand, imagining yourself to be this child, feeling what is bothering him or her, respond. Continue to go back and forth between dominant and non-dominant hands until you come to some resolution.

Visualization techniques

Breaking the Trauma Re-enactment Triangle

Imagine three parts of yourself: the injured child (victim of abuse), the abuser, and a non-protecting bystander. Re-enact the trauma re-enactment triangle of abuser, victim, non-protecting bystander. Now, imagine a true protector who intervenes on your behalf, defending you against the internalized abuser. Work through this re-enactment, calling on whatever forces are needed to render the abuser harmless and the injured child self safe.

Psychodrama techniques

Sometimes I work with client to develop a “character” that is able to do or be or feel something that the client, in his or her everyday life, cannot. I work with the client to create the background, the voice, the mannerisms, the style of dress. We may even do a therapy session or part of a session with the client acting as that character. The goal is for the client to be that character in his or her life, allowing the client to do what, inside, he or she actually wants to do.

Splitting Ambivalence (a variation of Gestalt)

With a client ambivalent about something, I will often effectively divide the client into two parts (or more) and have the client move around the room, from chair to chair, speaking as first one part then the other. We treat this as a debate and it continues until all sides have fully had their say. Then, we imagine another part of has been watching this debate. That part reflects on the points each side has made, then sees if it can help the “others” come to a resolution that satisfies all sides.

Splitting Ambivalence (a variation of Focusing)

Here, the client divides into two parts, each of which has two halves — one half that wants something for the client, the other half that doesn’t want the client to have to experience something. We use Focusing to work each half of each part, until they come to a potential resolution.

When I work with artists I pay attention to the ways they use art to deal with their issues. I harness the skills they already have in dredging from their depths something unclear but important and creating from it something meaningful to help them re-imagine and recreate their lives. I point out that they, too, are on a hero’s path; that simply by choosing to be artists they have already veered out of safe territory and into the unknown or uncreated. As with addicts, I help them find models for moving forward, help them find their place in the monomyth, and then invent the steps they need in order to move forward. I often use the Miracle Question, borrowed from brief, solution-focused therapy, as a way to put them temporarily into this more full life and more realized version of themselves.

One way I work with artists or with people who are hoping to develop more creative lives is with groups I call “Cultivating Your Creative Self.” I create a temporary, supportive co mmunity in which people envision the lives they want to live and use the power and imagination of the group to get there. See the “Groups” page of my website for more information on “Cultivating Your Creative Self” groups and related workshops.

I have been interested in becoming a psychotherapist since I was 20 and did volunteer work in a state mental hospital, but it took me until I was 51 to take concrete steps in that direction. Though something in me felt it was my calling, I avoided that path because I was not sure I could handle the impact of the emotions of 20 or 30 people a week. Carrying people’s feelings with me has always been an issue, and it was only after sufficient difficulties had occurred in my own life that I felt I could handle whatever storms found their way into my therapist’s office.

Even in my 50s, though, I have often found myself emotionally exhausted by the end of the week, and it has been a project of mine to find a way to stay balanced and centered in the midst of my work. Photography has helped, as has meditation, and so has processing my own responses. But I have felt that I was missing a critical ingredient. For years I have been using the image of the rocks by the seashore as a metaphor for how I want to be in a therapy session — feeling the water wash over me, but not dislodged by the endless current. However, rocks are (as far as I know) inert, and so this metaphor never quite worked for me. Now, I think I’ve a metaphor that does what I need.

In a recent Focusing session (more on this later, but for a quick introduction to Focusing go to YouTube.com and search for “gendlin focusing”), I tried to find out what the part of me that grows tired when I do counseling needs. I found myself thinking of gyroscopes.

As a child, I was fascinated by these amazing devices, which can be pushed in any direction but, as long as they keep spinning, always right themselves. In the Focusing session, I found myself imaging a gyroscope made of light, a tiny spiral galaxy spinning inside my belly, supplying me both with energy and eternal balance. I soon realized that my own belly, though larger than I might like it to be, could never contain such an object, and so I called on an image of the big-bellied Buddhas one sees smiling in Chinatowns. I imagined my own belly to be of this more substantial size.

The image of the big-bellied Buddha with a spiral galaxy gyroscope spinning inside comes to me often during the day, and each time I recall it, it becomes more real, and more stabilizing. Now, more often than not, I am energized by the end of a work day, and I have this image to thank.

I think we can all use a Spiral Galaxy Buddha Belly Gyroscope, or something very much like it, to stabilize us as we go through life’s ups and downs. We need to move in life’s direction, but we need to find our way back to center, too.

This post is about the transformative power of the spiritual imagination.

A couple of years ago, I was stricken with a gastrointestinal bleed. By the time it was identified, I had already lost about two pints of blood, and I was also rapidly losing weight. Fourteen years before, a similar scenario had brought me within minutes of death. The present situation seemed serious to my physician and gastroenterologist and frightening to me. I underwent a battery of tests, beginning with simple ones — testing for occult blood, measuring hemoglobin and hematocrit counts — and, as the bleeding continued, endoscopy, colonoscopy, and an abdominal ultrasound.

Much to my surprise, the gastroenterologist had never mentioned the relatively benign explanations my physician had offered for my still-undiagnosed problem (bleeding polyp, anal fissure, hemorrhoids), and instead cited more serious conditions, a set of “C’s” including Celiac disease, colitis, Crohn’s disease, and the Big C, cancer. As each round of tests ruled out one set of damaged organs and by implication ruled in the remaining set, the problem area eventually narrowed to my small intestine, which could only be imaged, without surgery, by my swallowing a small camera known as a PillCam. The PillCam procedure required insurance company approval, and that took ten days.

Ten days is a long time to wait when you are bleeding internally.

In the interim, I found myself feverishly scanning the Internet for information on all the illnesses my gastroenterologist had mentioned, and for any other maladies that could explain my symptoms. Nothing I found was simple or likely to get better by itself. I fantasized about a repeat of the botched surgery I had undergone following my 1993 bleeding incident, imagined fatal outcomes, feared the unknown.

And then, with the help of a Buddhist friend’s intervention and an act of Imagination, I stopped fretting.

My friend e-mailed me a Buddhist verse on using wisdom and courage to deal with acceptance of sickness. It’s intention is to help us regard sickness, health, long life or early death as, equally, gifts from the Universe, all to be welcomed equally, all to be transmuted into service to other sentient beings. It is described as a way to transform suffering into enlightenment. Here it is:

I rely on you, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
Until I achieve enlightenment.
Please grant me enough wisdom and courage to be free from delusion.

If I am supposed to get sick, let me get sick,
And I’ll be happy.
May this sickness purify my negative karma
And the sickness of all sentient beings.

If I am supposed to be healed, let all my sickness and confusion be healed,
And I’ll be happy.
May all sentient beings be healed
And filled with happiness.

If I am supposed to die, let me die,
and I’ll be happy.
May all the delusion
And the causes of suffering beings die.

If I am supposed to live a long life, let me live a long life,
And I’ll be happy.
May my life be meaningful
In service to sentient beings.

If my life is to be cut short, let it be cut short,
And I’ll be happy.
May I and all others be free
From attachment and aversion.</quote>
 
The exhortation that introduced this verse instructed me to read it many times a day. I did so, and each time its effect was calming. The continued readings also had a cumulative effect. I stopped looking things up on the Internet. I returned to my work as a therapist. I began to make art again, a practice that has, for years, been soothing and healing. And I began to have a different relationship with time. “Whatever it is,” I found myself thinking about the damaged parts of my innards, “it’s already there.”

Whether I would live or die; whether I would get better by myself, with dramatic interventions, or not at all, was already out there in my future. Just as my diagnosis was out there, waiting for me to arrive, so was the impact of whatever they would find. I didn’t have to fret. I didn’t have to plan. I just had to move forward in time, until I arrived at the moment when my course of action was clear, and then move forward from there.

The idea that “it’s already there” has, since, become more general. When I think about relationships, the fates of people I love, the trajectory of my career as an artist or therapist, I am relaxed by the thought that it, too, is already there — that the seeds have been planted, the tendrils that will become the plants that will become the fields of flowers are already sprouting somewhere in the future, and that in that future they have already either found the nourishment they need, or the have not, and that in either case we will all arrive at our future and continue from there.

This is not pre-destination. This is not resignation to my fate. This is not just “que sera, sera.” This is something that, while I can’t fully explain it, feels like the most liberating realization I have ever had. It’s already there. I don’t need to fret about it. I don’t need to fuss and plan and push. I just need to live my life to the best of my ability, and, of the infinite possible futures, I will inevitably arrive at the one that is mine.

I can handle that.

Anxiety has, for me, always been about fearing what will be. Or, more precisely, it’s about the fear that I won’t be able to handle what is around the next bend. And I still get anxious about this kind of thing. But since this “already there” realization, I often catch myself fretting and, instead, give myself a kind of grace. The grace that whatever situation I will encounter, I will handle. That I do not need to prepare for it. That I need, instead, to trust that when the moment arrives, I will be ready, as, by virtue of the fact that I am still standing, I must have been ready for everything that has come before. It’s already there. It really is. All I have to do is keep putting one virtual foot in front of the other and I will arrive.

I already have.