Panic!!! Painting and Peace...

So, the other night I was in the ER doing a psych assessment and I thought for sure there must have been cameras in the room.  No, I was not hallucinating, but I was completely mesmerized by what was happening.  This night I walked into room 6 and much to my surprise there was a woman there whom I had seen just a month before for suicidal ideations.  As soon as she saw me she ran up and hugged my neck in a fit of tears, "I was hoping it would be you!"  As she talked to me about what brought her to the ER  (OCD, panic, depression, etc), she pulls out a picture she drew and started reading from her journal to me as if she were delivering a monologue (facial expressions and all)!!!!  I had to force my mouth closed because it wanted to drop to the floor!!!!!  This has NEVER happened to me in the ER before and I have been doing psych assessments for over two years.  My patient had no idea that I am an expressive therapist.  She still doesn't know.  Actually she gives all the glory to Risperdal for "bringing back my art".  But it dawned on me that the vast majority of my thought energy/emotional energy and time have been almost exclusively devoted to expressive therapy lately, and that what you give your attention to tends to grow (for better or for worse).  I felt such a connection to the Universe in that moment.  And so grateful to my patient for sharing her story and her art with me.

Angry birds and nice things

I truly am fortunate to have drama therapy as an anchor.  It is the one thing I do as a therapist that truly feels effortless.  It keeps me grounded and at the same time it lifts me to incredible heights! I get so excited when I see it in action as a very organic act of emergence.  I had one such experience just yesterday.

I was running a group and one of my patients has recently experienced the loss of his mother.  As a result, he has regressed to infancy quite a bit as he slowly passes through the stages of grief.   Until recently his energy was pretty low - sad affect, poor appetite, etc.  But yesterday we were in the middle of an improv when suddenly he began to howl and whince in this very primal act of seeking.  Suddenly he identified me as a mother figure and instead of seeking me out for comfort he began to growl and claw at me - essentially pushing me out of the nest.  My frist thought was "AHA!  He is finally moving to the anger stage of grief.  Woohoo!  And then I considered the very real possibility that he may have never had words for the feelings that were bubbling up for him.  But he was able to take on the role of the angry bird - no pun intended - and transfer that feeling onto me.  And I held it for him as I considered my own angry, lonely bird that sometimes still seeks her mother in the faces and places of my life.  After successfully forcing me out of the nest he smiled at his own sheer will  and might.  Afterwards, during the same improv, I was invited on a date on top of a bridge by another patient who said the date would consist of us saying really nice things about each other.  So we did.

The dreamer and the dream

I was listening to NPR's "Fresh Air" this afternoon while driving into Atlanta, and they told a really compelling story about terrorists in love.  The story was examining obsessive love in jihadi radicals and I was expecting to hear sad stories about dissilusioned terrorists, fear, god, etc.  But what I was not expecting to hear was a commentary on dreams.  As I prepare for my dream healing intensive I am increasingly aware of how dreams show up in my everyday encounters with others.  I am always interested in hearing my friends tell me of their dreams which are always incredibly fascinating and thought provoking.  But in this particular story, they interviewed Ken Ballen, former federal prosecutor, who interviewed over 100 men who all talked about their experiences as terrorists, and he told the story of one Al Qaida operative who was waiting for a dream to give him information on whether he should move in a particular direction or not.  He employed a "Seer" to interpret his dreams or dream on his behalf and they rejoiced when the dream message indicated that he was the operative who would be chosen to cleanse the world of infidels.  This took me back to the days when the practice of dream incubation was the order of the day.  Back in Egypt they incubated dreams as a matter of course.  As I was getting out of the car I heard the interviewer ask a question about how one knows to make distinctions between dreams that are specifically for the goodness of humanity and dreams that are not. Unfortunately I was not able to hear his answer, but I imagine that is a question people ask all the time.  How do I know whether this dream is good, bad, significant... I wondered aloud whether or not using the creative arts to uncover dream messages rather than cultural mores might have made the difference between life and death for thousands of people.  But then again I know that dreams and their images are projections of our individual realities and we are constantly influenced by the collective unconscious energy that surrounds us.  And still I wonder...

I feel a gentle hum - the underbelly of excitement - the rush of new beginnings... spring green - growth and change as I seek to spread the good news of expressive therapy.  I am a drama therapist and have been doing this work since 2002.  Being a drama therapist has given meaning to my very existence in a way I never thought possible.  In many respects it has become the temple at which I worship and now I have an opportunity to share it with the world.  I will be sharing my experiences as a clinician who uses the creative arts to help facilitate healing in transformation.  As I reflect on the last 10 years I can only imagine that the depth and breath of this offering will be blessed with many highs and - well, let's call them transitional points... lots of laughter and some tears.  I hope that you will join me on this adventure and possibly experience the healing power of the arts yourself.