Group Therapy

[lizzytysh]

Awww, c'mon, William... it'll be fun. It's only one line out of your life; well, added to your life, really. Live another line longer.

You're great, Manna... and William... and, returning to you, Gypsy. The ability to deal with conflict [real or imagined, serious or slight] and to apologize with grace and aplomb are traits I've always held in high esteem. It's not always easy; yet so worth the effort, if required.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

Do any of you feel that you benefited from non-medical third party intervention and can say why the intervention was useful and how it helped?

I like your question and would like to contribute in a twofold way. First with something I witnessed and then second with something I experienced.

I was visiting one time in what is known as a mental institution. I was watching someone who was firmly convinced that he was in hell. He was in a great deal of distress.
Then along came a fellow to visit his girlfriend and he had with him a guitar. He started playing the guitar for her and singing a song. The song was "Like a rolling stone" It described many situations and of the situations asked the question "How does it feel?" Though he was singing it to his girlfriend I could see that it was having a very profound effect on the guy who was convinced that he was in hell, it seemed to be taking away his distress.
I didn't talk to him and so can only imagine what was happening. Much of what causes us distress has to do with the thoughts about what we are experiencing rather than the experience itself. What I think was happening with the young man was that it allowed his to suspend, at least for a while, his thoughts about what was happening and to just feel it without the thoughts. Could be that things aren't necessarily the way it has been preached.
I don't like the title Group Therapy. Encounter group would be a better thing to call both the process and the poem. The thought behind that comes from your interest in what you refer to as
"non-medical third party intervention". When I saw that young man in the hospital I told myself that if I were ever in his situation that is the very last place that I would want to be. I have a lot of reasons for that.
One is that it is the business of the medical professions to think of certain conditions in terms of illnesses when in fact they might be something else. I'll give you an example.
They have found that sometimes large groups of people have a certain kind of brain chemistry that is very similar to each other but different to others and that sometimes a large amount of that group are having problems that are also similar. Like kids that have been labeled ADHD. They study these kids with problems and try to find ways within their means to help them. It is usually ways within their means and mostly ways that they can profit by. What they don't study are the people who have the same brain chemistry and are thrieving with it. I think it is these people who can probably offer the most help. How do you know that someone has similar brain chemistry to yours? You can probably tell by how closely you can relate to them. You have someone you admire and greatly respect then you probably have similar brain chemistry to them and it would be worthwhile trying to see what they have in their lives that helps them be the way they are.

The intervention that I experienced myself was a bit unusual but it has stayed with me for a long time. It was an intervention by a woman named Marion, who was a friend of Leonard's at the time. It might not seem like the kind of intervention that you are asking about but I think there is something important that is being pointed to.

It was during an "Encounter Group"
Under the auspice of the YMCA Marion organized a weekend retreat to a northern chalet for a group of teens from various clubs around the city to get together to talk in a weekend long encounter group. I was one of the teens. I had absolutely no idea of the place that talking can take you until that day I sat with some complete strangers and watched as Marion's warmth, honesty and yearning for true encounter worked it's magic and one by one we all dropped our usual defensive guards and we saw each other in a way that we would have never believed possible. Getting there was not very easy for some and many tears were shed on our way to release.
The talking became rich and it's own reward and maybe more than the others I soaked in and appreciated this new found freedom and as the night wore on and some had gone off to sleep and others had slipped into tired silence I remained deep in a very long conversation with Marion's husband or soon-to-be husband that went late into the night.
The others sat around listening.
I'm not sure what we were talking about but it is likely I was arguing against having religious principals guide behaviour and taking the position of the importance of people to think for themselves. It was a favorite subject of mine at the time. What I do remember was that I felt that something very important was being accomplished and that it seemed to involve Marion's man more than me. She sat beside him and gave him constant signs of support while at the same time her eyes were encouraging me to keep travelling the road that I was on.
This was all going very well until I did something that seemed to threaten to ruin everything. I told a lie. I looked at Marion and I could see that she knew it was a lie and I could also see that she knew that I knew that she knew it was a lie. She then did what might have been the only thing that she could do to save the situation and she did it immediately. She came across to where I was sitting and she slapped me across the face - hard. I don't think that anyone else knew why this was occuring and they watched as we both broke into tears and hugs and when she went back to her seat the conversation was once again on track. For a reason that I might never understand this served to greatly heighten what I was experiencing.
What I also came to think about was the fact that I might never know the part that I was playing with Marion's husband and that somehow that is the way it is meant to be. I think that the third party intervention does not require both parties to know that it is happening.

Jack

"By some miracle we wander into a place for healing. And though we do not notice anything out of the ordinary.... we come to discover that we are too crippled to leave. " Julie S.

[lazariuk]

How little we know of each other
or want each other to know.

The worst that can happen is that
I think you think about me
what I think about myself
when i am stuck in a chair
of me

[lazariuk]

Among these familiar faces
I know failure
because I cannot contribute.

How can you possibly
know that you don't contribute
if there is so little you know
about these familiar faces

[lazariuk]

I know hope
because someday I might.

I was driving through the Rocky Mountains one time with bad tires in a snowstorm. It was pretty scary. There is a town in British Columbia, Canada called Hope. I came across a sign that said that Hope was 100 miles away. That was a pretty silly thought to entertain.

[lazariuk]

I know I must come out and be here
when it feels safer to stay where I am.

I keep reading that over and over and the way it is worded seems to say that you are here and it is safe.
You are saying you are here
and where you are is safe

it is

[mat james]

Very interesting story Jack.
So you have always been a chatter-box for a long time!

[lazariuk]

So you have always been a chatter-box for a long time!

In case you are suggesting that I don't know what it is like to be silent for years and years frozen in fear and that the knowledge of that is not fresh in my thinking then you or anyone else are free to correct me in what I wrote:

The worst that can happen is that
I think you think about me
what I think about myself
when i am stuck in a chair
of me

Jack

[lizzytysh]

I understand, Jack. Boy, do I ever.

You couldn't describe it any better.

It's also good to know that you remember.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

It's also good to know that you remember.
Lizzy

Hardly a day goes by that I don't sit in that chair. it's easy to remember.

[mat james]

In case you are suggesting

I'll have to think about that Jack.
Suggesting.....?
No. I wasn't. You're off target Jack.

You display a delicate and fragile side of you're ever-unfolding lotus/character.
The sensitive Artist.
(I'm not implying that this is a good or a bad thing. You can decide that, as it is your character/life).
I will say that it is the stuff that poetry comes from. And maybe you used that sensitivity effectively in your previous incarnation; The Dancer. I'm sure that aesthetic, interpretive, empathetic ability made your work as an artist original and beautiful

and vulnerable

Now back to you being a pandora's box of chatter;
I always liked the inherent burst of creative energy big-banging from Pandora's "box" !!!
What an Anima !

Matj

[lazariuk]

No. I wasn't. You're off target Jack.

I was a little deceptive there. I wasn't all that concerned with what you were suggesting and I just found a way to use it to write again

The worst that can happen is that
I think you think about me
what I think about myself
when i am stuck in a chair
of me

I liked that I wrote it and wanted to write it again. I'll try to be more direct with you in the future.

[raggletagglegypsy]

Hi Lazariuk

Thanks for what you wrote. I have been thinking about it
You wrote I think that the third party intervention does not require both parties to know that it is happening.
Or indeed either party to know what or that it is happening. I agree. However if I cannot pinpoint where or when or the nature of the help then I can't hope to find it again, should I ever need it. Unless it's a case of useful intervention being random in place, time and bringer and so may be found at any time. That's a pleasant thought, and one which I will bear in mind.
The worst that can happen.......... no Lazariuk, the worst that can happen is that I don't give a shit about what you/anyone thinks because I am so deep within myself that everything outside is irrelevant.
Many thanks for your comments. They made me think.

[lazariuk]

However if I cannot pinpoint where or when or the nature of the help then I can't hope to find it again, should I ever need it

.
I am not so sure that you need to exactly pinpoint, but I do appreciate what you are pointing to. Myself when I am speaking or writing about something that I think was useful to me and might be to others it usually involves a story. The reason for that is for the very reason that you are suggesting. The realization or the truth will always be there and what I am more interested in is how I got to it and so I tell myself and others the tale of how I got there. The useful stuff seems, for me, to be in the context.

Unless it's a case of useful intervention being random in place, time and bringer and so may be found at any time. That's a pleasant thought, and one which I will bear in mind.

Events tend to repeat. The first time it is all just a surprise. The second time you think "hey this has happened before" and you start to take a closer look at what happened and maybe take a second look at what happened the first time. When it happens the third time you get the feeling that you are on to something here and maybe you find that with three times that you are now prepared to really handle well the "forth time around"

The worst that can happen.......... no Lazariuk, the worst that can happen is that I don't give a shit about what you/anyone thinks because I am so deep within myself that everything outside is irrelevant.

I see that you disagree with me, which is fine. I would like to make some comments on what you are disagreeing with. When i used the term "when i am stuck in a chair of me" it was after some thought which included "ocean of me" and some others. I guess that ocean of me would have captured better what you speak of as being so deep within yourself, but what made me use chair was that the situation being looked at was group therapy and there you are usually sitting in a chair. So what the other people have in front of them is a chair of you used in the way we would speak of a 'cup of tea' From your side it can feel like you are stuck in 'a chair of me''

The fact that it might seem to you that everything outside is irrelevant does not make it so.

I am curious about the term 'so deep within myself'. I did a little experiment one time that proved interesting to me. I laughed. On a suggestion, I laughed just for the sake of laughing. My intention was to laugh with all of my might and as genuinely as possible. With the full depth of me. It went a little ways towards getting a feel for how deep I am. It made me laugh.

The term 'so deep within myself' also brings to mind a Leonard Cohen song and a part of it that goes:

"there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in"

It can be taken a lot of different ways but one of the ways it can be taken is in how the light gets into the eye. There is a place in the eye where the light comes in, the result being that we can see. Another result is that there is one place where we have a blind spot. It has to be that way. In order to see there has to be a place where we can't see.

I got to thinking about that one time when I was trying to make sense of the fact that she seemed to know exactly what I needed in such a very deep way and it was something that I myself didn't have a clue that I needed untill she did what she did. To my surprise I wasn't as deep within myself as I thought I was. It just seemed that way.

Jack

"All real living is meeting" Martin Buber

[Manna]

sometimes I hear things like, "Sure, he does all these mean nasty things, but deep down, he's really a great guy!"

And I never know what to make of such things.