raggletagglegypsy wrote:
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.
