Yesterday, Jenny Finn dropped in to share her thoughts on Jenny Glick’s guest post on Ordinary Choices Rarely Produce Extraordinary Outcomes. When I checked out her website, I realized that I had just seen her Ted Talk and had intended to share it with you. It dovetails nicely into yesterday’s post so, here it is. Check out Befriending the Darkness below . . . .[youtube]http://youtu.be/onzmxo1stJ8[/youtube]
Thank you so much for sharing this Tedx talk with your audience, Tamara. It was such an incredible experience to speak about facing difficulty with courage and creativity. I have been working in this field for nearly 20 years now and through my work and research I have found that learning and teaching others the skills needed to navigate bumpier territory within effects not only the health of the individual, but the affect that the person has on the world around them. The more we learn to turn towards the darkness within, and dance with whatever we find, the more resiliently and wholeheartedly we live in the world. Thank you again, it is lovely to be connected here!
Jenny, it was / is my pleasure! It’s such an important message for all of us to hear . . . and especially for mental health professionals to get and apply to our own lives. It’s so easy to see how the “dance” can / should / ought to apply to others – and way too easy to overlook the importance of applying it to ourselves. You have presented the message in such an engaging way that it’s a no-brainer to share it with our community here at Private Practice from the Inside Out.
I’m only sorry that you’ve left Colorado Springs and are now in Virginia (since i’m just up the road in Castle Rock). It would have been lovely to meet face to face. So . . . where is it you are at in Virginia? (I used to live in Bristol, Virginia and before that in western North Carolina.) Perhaps we’ll have an opportunity to connect when I’m back that way doing some work with therapists!
Hi Tamara! I know- it would be lovely to meet face-to-face. I get the chills when I read your words here about therapists themselves doing their own work and facing what is difficult and going into the darkness of their own inner experience. I am realizing more and more that transformation is possible when I cultivate my presence and offer to the world as a gift. This takes great care and practice. In fact, I have a great story that I could write about at some point about doing exactly this when I worked some time ago in the trauma department in spiritual care.
We live in Floyd, VA now. It is an amazing community rooted in agriculture, music, and art. It is right up our alley and the land, the Blue Ridge is just a slice of heaven. We love it so much. You can see more about it here- http://www.sustainfloyd.org. And yes, please let me know when you are passing through, I would love to meet you! Keep up the good work, Tamara!
It took me years to understand that the best way to change the world is by me doing work on me. It seemed so counter-intuitive when I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s. I always marvel at those who get it so much earlier than I did . . . . Surely that speaks to the cocoon I was raised in! But, of course, as we learn to do better, we do better. These days when I get stuck . . . in helping a counseling client move through a problem or in helping a therapist see and work differently with money or in my personal life when I get crossways with my partner . . . inevitably it’s because I forgot (again) to step back and step up to do my own “dance with the dark.”
You, Jenny, are a lovely and gentle reminder to do just that and I look forward to learning from you and following your work.
I know exactly where Floyd is! It’s really quite lovely there – especially in the Fall!
Oh, Jenny, I forgot to say – If that great story in some way supports / informs therapists in building their practices, consider this your invitation to share it here in a guest post! Here’s a link to my Guest Posting Guidelines.
Wow! This talk is really awe-inspiring. So much of what we do as therapists is confronting and living in the darkness that it’s so important to remember that it’s not bad, it just is. Thanks for sharing this, I will definitely be passing it along to some of my sandtray colleagues who struggle with allowing clients to just express feelings in the sand and through their bodies. Love her and will be reading the book she mentioned.
Amy! Welcome back! I’ve missed your voice around here! Thanks for dropping in to share your thoughts tonight!
Thank you for watching Amy and thank you for your work in the world! You are absolutely right- the darkness just is, just as the light. It is when we privilege one over the other within ourselves that we can get into trouble. I now live out in the country where it gets very, very dark, and I thought last night as I navigated my way through that external darkness that many of the tools I use externally (like my breath, felt body sense, intuition) are the tools I need to navigate the darkness within me. Pretty cool! Thanks again for watching and you can learn more about my work in the world at http://www.jennyfinn.com. Peace to you.
Thank you, Tamara, for putting this TED talk into your blog. The world around us is so focused on presenting a good face to the world that even those of us who know better–I’m speaking primarily of therapists–can be tempted to want to brush past the dark parts our clients expose to us very quickly and come up with the fast affirmation or immediate positive-sounding reframe that quiets the person’s distressed voice, but does nothing to share and lighten the darkness within. As she pointed out, darkness and light are both part of life and of our experience and our emotions. Trying to silence the dark (rather than, say, hear it and heal it) can be as devastating in some cases as depression which, almost by definition, tries to deny the light.
Hi Susan! Beautifully said. It is so inspiring to hear your words and those of Amy and Tamara above. Just knowing that there are healers out there in the world that honor the darkness brings me great joy. As I write my dissertation (after interviewing leaders in the field of creative and courageous shadow exploration and from my own personal experience) I am finding that a very deep knowing comes from turning towards the darkness within- a knowing that honors the uniqueness of the individual and at the same time, magnificently honors the context that individual is in. Amazing. Feelings that are difficult definitely live within our inner darkness, and so do our greatest treasures. That’s why as you said, it can be devastating to avoid the darkness. Thanks for listening, Susan and blessings to you and on your work in the world!
You’re so welcome, Susan! It’s so obvious to me in my consulting / coaching work that as we are building our businesses, it’s often so much easier to focus on the busyness of attracting clients and the overculture’s myths of “too many therapists.” I get it. I’ve so been there! But often, the things that are holding us back really have much more to do with our unwillingness to explore our own dark places . . . those fears of failure, those pockets of self-doubt, those familial legacies of not being enough, never having enough, and what all of that means about us. “Trying to silence the dark” rather than naming it and choosing to dance with it can be as devastating to our businesses as it can be our souls.
What I know is that you cannot share sparks of joy if you have none.
This is so profoundly true Tamara: “What I know is that you cannot share sparks of joy if you have none.” I have found no greater joy than the joy that lives within the darkness of my own experience.
Hi Jenny, Jenny and Tamara,
Thank you for sharing this Tedx Talk.
Several years ago, a colleague and I co-created a workshop called, “The Transformational Journey of Life Transitions: Opening to the Dark Emotions”. Some of it was based on Miriam Greenspan’s book, “Healing Through the Dark Emotions: the wisdom of grief, fear, and despair”, the book that Jenny mentions (LOvE this book!). We also used the myth of Innana and the Internal Family Systems model of “parts” to help the participants move inside to experience those darker voices/parts in a safe space. Speaking on a personal and professional level, there is nothing like the shift that happens internally when we can compassionately face the scarier, darker feelings and thoughts and release some or all of the burdens they’ve been carrying!!
In the book, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Hermann, M.D.’s seminal text, she addresses how imperative it is for the therapist to look at the parts that arise when their clients talks about trauma/torture/psychological pain and then WORK with them! AND, help one another with the feelings/thoughts that arise when treating traumatized clients (all of our clients?).
Great conversation! THANK YOU!
Julie
Hi, Julie! Thanks for dropping back in! Between yours and Jenny’s vote of confidence for Greenspan’s book, I’ll definitely be checking it out!
Wow! When I think of those 10 little sobbing children in that Colorado school, I know my heart would have been pounding, but I would probably have burst into tears with them (for different reasons obviously). Just recently a friend and colleague of mine, Catherine Wilson, LPC, NCC, gave me reference to a series of books by Richard and Linda Eyre. They are titled: “Teaching Your Children Responsibility”, “Teaching Your Children Values”, & last, but most certainly not least, “Teaching Your Children Joy”.
Well, I was stunned by the title of this last one. What?! Somebody is supposed to teach you this (or at least not be the cause of not having any)? I certainly got plenty of the other two (Responsibility and Values), but Joy simply had very little presence in my growing up years, and is difficult for me to find even now. Just the title of that one book has led me to so much thought about this and the ingrained part of the other two usually lead me to remain silent about the missing third.
Listening to your talk, and all of the following comments, suggests to me that BY REMAINING SILENT, I remain in the dark about how to get this third important piece (joy) because NOBODY REALLY KNOWS, and/or NOBODY ELSE IS COMFORTABLE with these revelations (even some therapists I’ve seen, if you can believe that)!
I’ve turned to humor for the most part to deal with it. One of my favorite sayings is: An Optimist is just and ill-informed Pessimist. I think you are absolutely right on with coming to terms with allowing ourselves and others to live fully present on both sides, dark and light, but I am afraid that technology and social media are actually hindering this in many ways (especially in our younger generations). But then again we have TED Talks like yours.
Thanks for sharing with us, Jenny Glick, Jenny Finn, and Tamara.
Lisa, I am so very glad to have your voice here speaking up here to talk about those parts of us that get cut off from us. What I know is that when a child is severely or repeatedly punished for expressing a certain part of herself or is shamed or is repetitively ignored when they express certain a certain part of herself, she learns to protect herself by cutting off access / expression of that part. For me it was anger. Perhaps for you it was it was joy. Pia Mellody, Debbie Ford (died in 2013, and each write about this cycle and ways to heal from it.
And, as for that little aside on technology and social media . . . . I would urge you to reconsider. If it weren’t for technology and social media, I wouldn’t know you or either of the Jennys. Nor would I know any one of the fabulous therapists in our Consultation Group or have a relationship with most of my counseling clients or any of my consulting / coaching clients or most of the therapists that I speak with on a daily basis. I understand that it isn’t your preferred tool for communication . . . and I get that. It’s like some people don’t like to write letters and I am not a fan of the telephone. But, for many people – and especially those of us that tend to work outside of agencies – connecting online provides a major source of support and information.
Lisa, it’s always good to hear from you here and I hope you’ll be back soon!
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and honest reflections here. It is always so enlivening to me to receive words that truly express the heart of another, so thank you.
Joy is very often shamed as much as grief is, and in addition I have noticed that the more I cut off from any emotion, the more cut off I am from the rest. If I am not home for the sorrow, I am not home for the joy either. And you are right, this is surprising and sad! But it is totally possible to learn the tools needed to “stay home” in our bodies to live the human experience! YAY!
As far as technology, I hear you Lisa and Tamara. If I am looking to social media or the internet to meet some immaterial (spiritual/emotional) need that hasn’t been met, I most likely will eventually be sorely disappointed. But if I am using it to connect, get my work out in the world, etc. it is likely that my use will be more balanced. And like with other things (alcohol, food, sex, work), I think it is all about how and why we are using it.
Thanks again for the stimulating conversation!
I wanted to clarify my comment about technology and the use of social media. I was referring to it’s detrimental effects on our society as a whole. There are many folks out there studying this and one of them, Dr. Clifford Nass, Sociology Professor at Stanford University, just passed away prematurely (@55). He wrote a book called “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop”.
He has stated that his studies have shown that the over-reliance we place on tech stuff and social media is taking the place of actual connections with other human beings. The sentence “Look at me when I talk to you” has almost disappeared from our lexicon.
Why is there a need for avatars in therapy? Part of the healing process is the human contact/the human relationship. I find it worrisome that people are having more trouble now processing complex ideas, that they have difficulty communicating face-to-face, and are over-scheduling themselves because they believe they can multi-task so well with all of our handy gadgets. We don’t SEE each other so much anymore. That’s all I meant.
Of course technology is a wonderful thing, but we can frequently get in our own way with too much reliance on it.
Thanks, Lisa, for staying engaged in this discussion. And, we can add one more point to the whole challenge of balancing technology . . . how easy it is to be misunderstood when we rely only on text to communicate!:)
I hadn’t thought about “Look at me when I talk to you” in forever! You’re right, of course. Our culture has been forever changed by the use /misuse of technology. (Which could result in more job security for all of US! 🙂
Yes..absolutely. Thank you for sharing this Lisa.