When I suddenly found myself with both time and money enough to be able to relax and indulge a lifelong fantasy – to write The GAN (Great American Novel) – I enrolled in a writing workshop at the Green Gulch Zen Center offered by Natalie Goldberg. She’d just hit it big with her book on a Zen approach to writing called Writing Down the Bones, and I thought it would be a good idea to get some of her juju in person (recall The Golden Rule of Social Neuroscience?).
I took two things away from that week with Natalie: 1. It’s important to give myself permission to write the worst crap in the world. This, I have come to find out in my subsequent studies of the brain is a really important directive for writers. Without that genuine, authoritative permission to write crap, the Bully Language Brain will constantly be delivering the message both loudly and softly that my work sucks, in an unrelenting stream of sneaky, dispiriting invective. If I have permission to write crap, then my Bully Language Brain really has little lethal ammunition to fire at me. “Your writing’s crap.” “Yeah. I know. And? Your point?” Inevitably though, interwoven through the crap I will find shiny golden nuggets to extract and polish (through cognitive-circuitry editing) for possible joyous weaving into a larger, integrated whole.
Writing Wisdom Two
The second nugget I took away from my Zen week with Natalie is the Enantiodromic Directive (look it up) of “writing about what disturbs me.” The things that disturb me, move me emotionally. When I’m emotionally upset, most often what I’m activating are neural tendrils connected to traumatic memories buried in the unconscious root cellars of my brain. By allowing the “still small voice” of these tiny disturbances to kindle other neurons in the neighborhood, soon I will find myself fanning the flames of a full-blown emotional conflagration. Such conflagrations, polished and edited in accord with the learnable skills of dramatic structure, are what hold great promise for memorable, engaging writing. Simultaneously, they also hold great potential to make me sick and crazy.
My first effort following that week with Natalie – The Icing of the Shooter – took two years to complete and ended up winning me The Jack London Award for new fiction that year. It also took five therapist friends to rally around me for support during the writing. The emotional drain involved with that effort brought me to the full realization that my Great American Novel needs were not at all well-matched with the narrow limits of my emotional bandwidth (nor were they well-matched with me becoming a competent clinical psychologist, I later discovered). An observation attributed alternately to the great sportswriter, Red Smith and to Ernest Hemingway is that great writing is easy, “All you need do is sit down at your typewriter (computer) and open a vein.” This was clearly true in my experience, and … not something I had the emotional constitution nor the requisite strength of heart to be unwaveringly true to.
Healing Failing to Happen
Digging up buried traumatic memories of loss and betrayal and not bringing them to healing, embodied resolution is a dicey proposition. Several years after he published the novel, Sophie’s Choice, the writer William Styron found himself in a suicidal depression which he was unable to shake off. He finally sought psychiatric help, receiving mostly medications for his trust. Here’s an excerpt from the “memoir of madness” he later published detailing the experience as Darkness Visible:
One psychological element (concerning depression) has been established beyond reasonable doubt … loss in all its manifestations is the touchstone of depression – in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin. At a later date I would gradually be persuaded that devastating loss in childhood figured as a probable genesis of my own disorder; meanwhile, as I monitored my retrograde condition, I felt loss at every hand. The loss of self-esteem is a celebrated symptom, and my own sense of self had all but disappeared, along with any self-reliance. This loss can quickly degenerate into dependence, and from dependence into infantile dread. One dreads the loss of all things, all people close and dear. There is an acute fear of abandonment. Being alone in the house, even for a moment, caused me exquisite panic and trepidation.
Trauma is Embodied
Here’s my take on Styron’s account: healing was trying to happen over and over again, reenacted through his creative writing; and over and over again, it failed to come to full healing fruition. His novels, Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner (recounted by a slave in jail just before he’s about to be executed), Set This House on Fire and The Clap Shack (about life on a VD ward) all present attempts at healing redemption that failed to redeem Styron. The main reason for that repeated failure, in my estimation: only his head and not his body was engaged in the creative, healing integration process.
Loss and trauma are almost always embodied experiences. My own adventures in creative writing (in addition to 25+ years as a volunteer grief counselor) have convinced me that loss and trauma need to be physically worked out of the body. If I were Styron writing his novels, I would have padded a room in my house with a heavy punching bag suspended from the ceiling. I would have painted the faces of my novel’s antagonists on that bag as each appeared in the story (and presumably in neurons propagating action potentials in my brain). As each appeared, I would have proceeded to beat the crap out of that bag/image with every means at my disposal. My suspicion is that each novel would have seen me go through several heavy Everlast bags – a small cost for doing the business of writing-healing. I would have eventually emerged, through “triumphant action” – as the happy hero of my own life story. Fuck depression.
Thanks so much for this post.
You make such an important point here that extends way beyond only depression and into evolutionary consciousness … I do take issue with your conclusion though … which was resolved by reading “Can You Trust Your Own Unconscious”.
I find it interesting that you start with Goldberg, a Buddhist, who I would presume promotes equanimity … which was a quality I had to know IN MY BODY … before I could move forward more mental well-being.
While I agree it’s essential to fully acknowledge and process our experience, I know what I had to go through to rebuild my ego so I could feel psychically safe enough to tolerate my denied experiences and trauma. Most of the professionals I had seen were so ‘normal’ they could not resonate, know or understand that depth of dis-ease. Personally, I believe fear and denial were a part of that picture while I was in search of resonance and connection that we are built for survival.
So, my journey toward heath and my Self, has been a long, drawn out patchwork business until the last two years, when my own ego-body was strong enough to take over and I stopped relying on ‘experts’ and trusted my own experience rather than attempting to fit their square peg into my round w-hole. And, I seemed ‘ok’ to others or they were living so much in their own head or subconscious, they couldn’t understand what I was after consciously … an embodied presence of mind and body. Gratefully, meditation was one practice that was very helpful.
I see and accept around me that most people don’t go looking beneath the surface for “trouble”, if there lives work for them … that’s enough … even if it costs them intimacy with knowing their feeling life, what they truly believe and want from life, their authentic self and even if all that repression or suppression causes their physical death.
This is an exciting time for me with recent discoveries in science and spirituality … it confirms a lot of what I have believed intuitively … all things are connected … including our brains and bodies … and too many of us are suffering from and surrendering to disconnection.
I recently was with a woman talking about her feelings with a great deal of confusion and frustration, I knew her experience from my own … her formidable intelligence was limited to her circuitous intellect because of trauma, her body of wisdom that would have come from an embodied experience was cut off at her throat, she couldn’t speak because she was denying, out of a learned fear, an essential part of how we all process our experience … through our entire body. I know now, disembodied thoughts distort reality, no matter how seemingly logical or eloquently they are expressed. For me, finding the open gateway between a traumatized head and abandoned heart is the quintessential lifelong heroic journey of our time.
This reply was much longer than intended … and I’m curious to know how what I’ve written sits with you.
Loss as the root of depression yes indeed….traumatic loss undoes us and if we are at all whole “enough” then we build ourselves back piece by piece and neuron by neuron over a long period of time. To say I am grateful to my losses sounds silly and simplistic but I can sit in a place now where I hold them and they no longer hold me..and while I would trade them if given a choice, none of us generally has that choice so my only choice becomes not allowing them to take me down…now I know that when I experience loss again, which we all invariably do, I will allow myself the darkness and despair and claw my way to the sports store and buy a punching bag! I loved that Mark! Can’t get the image out of my head..
Thanks Mark-
What troubles me repeatedly and sadly is notion that depression is caused by ‘loss’ and I say no- depression is not caused by Loss – loss is embedded in life’s experience what causes loss is the pain of loss in the absence of a relational home – no amount of creativity writing painting etc will address /treat depression suicidality or a host of other ailments without the dyad of another person who provides not only empathy but also contextual meaning and understanding to the losses experienced – here is where we must dwell – who knows how many suicides may not have occurred had a relational home been present and not absent – creative writing shared and dwelled within with another can be immensely healing – I think Hemingway could not acknowledge what a master he truly was for these reasons – not that there is wiggle room for improvement with Masters of course – -! Humbly appreciate you Mark Brady –
Hi Kate,
Thanks for posting. Much of what you’ve written seems borne out in my own experience. I have always thought that the best thing that could have happened to me, is my father abandoning the family. Had he stayed, the violence and physical abuse he was already perpetrating upon my mother would have transferred over to me. Loss, plus violence, turns out to often be a deadly combination. It either gets turned inward or outward, rarely with anything beneficial resulting. So, I’ve been blessing-counting for many years now.
Warm regards,
Mark
On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 10:25 AM, The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Hi Kate, I love your concept of depression being ‘loss in the absence of a relational home’. That hit the mark for me. Thanks Mark for another stimulating post. Liz
As a participant in last weekend’s Narrative Medicine workshop, I came away with a new set of skills, understanding, and healing. Over the last 45 years I have been involved in every healing process under the sun in an attempt to discover how I might become a happy person. As a health care practitioner, I had access to many cutting edge technologies and processes and utilized many in my search for a better life. Through these various techniques, too many to list, I ended up having a life changing experience through mindfulness meditation. Different things work for different people. Through studying NeuroLinguistic Programming for seven years, I learned about the value of not re-experiencing traumatic events, but holding space while the trauma was released and integrated. I became an observer of my own healing process. I began to find ease and gentleness in the process of self recovery. That said, I was in for a pleasant surprise from attending your class. First, I would recommend it to anyone. You and Liz were outstanding in presenting your selves and your content in a deep and meaningful way. When I wrote my healing experience, i was surprised to find myself recounting an event that I thought was finished. For whatever the reason, the reading of my story took me into a new level of vulnerability that I had not experienced before. Out of your class, I found myself writing every day. I appreciate your warning, yet as a seasoned veteran of years of mind body healing, I had the wherewithal to remain as an observer while all heck broke loose. It is day seven following the class. i am writing like a madman, posting many of the healing narratives on my facebook, and finding whole new levels of relationship forming from my openness and vulnerability. I am so glad that I took the class with you and Liz. It was a life changer. And BTW your words above were beautifully written and very clear. My gratitude to you and Liz and the participants. It was a very fine experience.
Stephen McLean, chiropractor and energetic healing observer
Mark, I began writing near the end of our social neuroscience sessions. The two main characters are telling me their story of how each helped the other to deeply heal. And the antagonist is dead! 🙂 I haven’t decided whether they are strangers to me or intimate neural lovers that have finally found a healthy way to share their experience with me. Or for all I know it could be a true story from the collective conscious that found a receptive heart and brain …
What is clear is that it is beautiful and deeply healing. Now to work on my contingent communication with them. 😉
Good for you, Cara. Thanks for letting me know. So, I’m hoping you’ve included some kind of “Triumphant Action” into your creative explorations. Your body and brain will love you for it.
XOXOX Mark
“Learn to see that it is not people, places or things that bother us, that we go out and bother them. It is all a reflection of mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and understanding.” ~ Ajahn Chah * Food for the Heart*
On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 11:01 AM, The Flowering Brain wrote:
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