Poetic therapy and the impact of poetic dialogue
From the very beginning, poetry was a means for people to express their deepest emotions and create healing in ritual and ceremony. In Greek mythology, we know that Asclepius, the God of healing, was the son of Apollo, the god of poetry. Hermes served as a messenger between the two worlds to communicate between the gods and humanity. He wore a caduceus, "a winged rod with two snakes intertwining, which became a symbol of the medical profession" (Poplawski, 75). Poems were also viewed as carriers of messages from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Wherever people gather to celebrate the moment, they speak from heart to heart, with poetry.
At a consulting bureau, although you read a poem for a client who seems to have taken the problem he / she was struggling with, offering not only understanding, but also hope. After the September 11 tragedy, verses of consolation were heard on the air and on the Internet. When the war in Iraq began, a website appeared where people could send poems expressing their feelings: poets against war. Within a few days, thousands of poems were published.
Mary Oliver, in her poem Wild Geese, says: "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you my own." (Oliver, 110) Harjo's Joy, in Fire. "Look at me / I am not an individual woman / I am a continuation of the blue sky / I am the throat of mountains. (Harjo, 25) The fourteenth-century Persian poet Lala speaks of poetry:
I didn't trust him for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my poetry.
Let me venture grab
darkness and tear it off
and cut it into small pieces. (Barks, 11)
These are the lines that carry in our hearts, because they reveal to us the beauty, the sense of self, the healing, the truth and the human connection, and all this is just in a few words!
At conception, we are born in the rhythm of the heart, growing in liquid darkness, until one day we break into the light. With our first cry, we make our first poem, a sound that is reflected in our mother's heart, and when she cries back, we hear our first poem. And so it goes on, the voices of those who care for us convey all the emotions that we learn, like our own words, which, if written down, will be poetry. It's simple. Poetry gives the sound and rhythm of silence, darkness, giving it shape, turning it into light. When we read a poem that speaks of our experience, there is a shift, a click inside. Someone understood our darkness by calling themselves. We feel less alone. Therapeutically, the “I” gathers energy and understanding. Our world is being spent.
The following poem illustrates the concept of writing a poem to give darkness and suffer from voice. It was written by a Phyllis member. poetic therapy group, part of an intensive day program for treating women addicted to alcohol and drugs. This poem speaks of the credibility of the author’s experience in a haunting and excellent way, giving the reader the opportunity to refer to what it means to “break.”
I didn't care today
regardless of whether they looked or not
I did not have time to speak on the air.
Yesterday was another story
wanted to look like morning glory
fresh and bright could not tell
I was all evening.
Sometimes i can hide
my colored lines at another time
I feel like a stained glass window
window that has just been destroyed
pretty pieces all over the world. (Klein, 16)
Instead of reducing the superiority of the poet's art, the poetic therapist promotes it. Poet Gregory Orr, in his book Poetry and Survival, says: "... illustrative and intense poetry poems can ... make people feel safe ... the terrible traumatic power of injury or require equally powerful order to keep her, and poetry suggests such an order ”(Orr, 92). The poetry of the structures of chaos.
Dr. James W. Pennebaker, one of the most widely published researchers about the benefits of writing, says in his book “Opening Up: The Power to Heal Expressions of Emotions” that writing about emotional issues improves the immune system, reducing “stress, anxiety” and depression, improves grades in college (s) it helps people to provide new jobs ”(Pennebaker, 40). "Disclosing secrets favorably reduces blood pressure, heart rate and skin conductivity." (Pennebaker, 52). Gregory Orr says that when we share secrets, "we take a small step from survival to healing, a step similar to the one the poet takes when he or she shares poetry with another reader or audience." (Orr, 88)
In the therapeutic environment, a trained facilitator addresses the healing elements of poetry: form and form, metaphor, metasymmetry, selected words and sounds of these words (alliteration and association). These elements, connected with each other, transfer the mass of many feelings and messages at once, creating a connection from the secret inner world to external reality, from the unconscious to the conscious.
Since the poem has a border, frame or structure, unlike prose, the form itself is a defensive network. Strong emotions will not escape from the page. A poetic therapist may ask his clients to draw a box in the center of the paper and write the words inside. Metamessage illustrates the ability to carry multiple messages on one line that “strike at deeper levels of awareness than open messages” (Murphy, 69). With the ability to transmit multimedia messages, customers can experience reintegration as well as individualization / separation. The poem allows for trial separation, and then return to the therapist for treatment and "refueling" through the understanding of the therapist. If the therapist says that he appreciates a certain metaphor and how words flow, the client feels loved and heard. Reading the poem out loud, the client can get into their rhythms and feel touched.
An important question asked by students of poetic therapy is how to find the right poem for a group or individual. The best poems for starters are those that are understandable, with understandable language and a strong topic, as well as emotions that reflect some hope. Another essential element is that the poem must resonate with the mood and / or situation of the group or person. This is called the principle of isotropics, which is also used in music therapy for the same purpose. Dr. Jack Lydie says that “the poem becomes a symbolic understanding - someone / something so that he / she can share her despair” (Leedy, 82)
Recently, a book from her poems and writings entitled “I Can Do It: Live with Cancer - Track a Year of Hope” was published in Peri’s Cancer / Poetry Support Group. This title contains the hope of a critical word, because this is what we need in our lives to support and heal us. In her poem. "Uninvited guest", Beverly Hyman-Fed writes:
I was lucky that my tumors came to me
in the fall of my life ...
I am grateful for this uninvited wake-up call, ...
I would appreciate a beautiful
images that the moon creates in the night?
No, I have a tumor to thank for it. [54]
She was able to write this poem in response to a poem by Rumi called “Guest House”. This poem, written so long ago, redefines the meaning of suffering by saying:
This person is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.
Joy, Depression, meanness ....
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they face sadness ...
Be thankful for everyone
because everyone sent
as a guide from outside. (Barks, 1995, 109)
Perry chose this poem to attract a cancer support group, because he could get the attention of the group members, perhaps think about how their illness was a “guide” and what they learned about themselves in the fight. Another important answer might be: “It makes me so angry! Whatever the emotional response, the poem is a catalyst to help the reader access and express feelings in a supportive, secure environment. Reading the poem a second time helps the client to feel even more deeply the content and emotions. In addition, lines pronounced spontaneously often form the first lines of verses.
After the poem has been read, the therapist may ask participants to indicate the lines in the poem that speak to them, or which lines they are most drawn on. This may be followed by questions for discussion of an emotional nature. Considering Rumi’s poem, the therapist may invite them to discuss: what should I experience in this life? What am I not inviting? How can my place of work or home be a guest house? As a guest house, how is your heart? Comments center around what the poem emotionally means to the reader, and not what the poem means intellectually. Through a group discussion, time to write and read what was written in the group, and participants, and the facilitator can learn to think differently, perhaps applying newly formed concepts to existing behavior and relationships.
For example, if someone felt that he / she was a victim of an illness, by discussing and writing this or another suitable poem, he / she could begin to think about how to move towards acceptance. Even writing about the rage of the disease is an important step. In the poem there is the beginning of some resolution. Rumi says he is grateful, and in his poem Beverly, who is far advanced in his process of emotional healing, can thank her illness, which gives her hope.
Another type of healing that verses can provide is illustrated by verses written in response to another. Here are excerpts from poems that Peri and Phyllis wrote:
Maybe angels
mistakes
corrected,
old days are resurrected wrong love
back to the course to raise the inner flute ...
The moon is ripe with hope
but don't look there, the angels hover
on the elbow bend between the toes
their rows, the wings of the leaves, or the breeze ...
Notice when they arrive
how their wings change,
some traditionally fully feathered ...
others bloomed like heather ...
There are those who have only goosebumps
not always on the back,
and some have no wings at all,
just scratched my knees, trying to get off the ground.
- Peri Longo
Phyllis answered:
Maybe angels
were with me day
my sister and husband were shot down
on the road in new york guided my
thoughts that I would like to get
when i crossed the street in san francisco.
Undoubtedly, angels familiar with misfortune
and emergency departments,
like my sister and her husband,
almost as big as small
bear, retreated from the curve, its size that saved them.
Emergency angels soared, caressed, killed them
survive. Saw the ambulance.
Friendship angels, familiar with compassion and coincidence,
You know, I would not be told for a week?
They led me to the sangha * and the teacher who spoke
about carrying unbearable pain?
Maybe they remember what it looks like,
have shoulders without wings.
Do they know when people will enter the next life
and when unsolved tulips
on my desk will blossom, die, resurrect?
* Sangha - Buddhist Congregation
Gregory Orr speaks of "Two Survival" - the poet's survival, in which the poet fights to engage in disorder, to write a poem and in a letter "to bring order to the disorder." Another survival is that the reader, who connects with the verses that “penetrate deeply” into it, leads to a “sympathetic identification of the reader with the writer”. (Orr, 83-84). Such a connection can be enhanced by direct dialogue, because the reader and the writer are moving from one role to another, deepening the possibility of sympathy and sympathetic identification.
To illustrate this concept, we will return to two verses that we wrote about angels. Peri wrote her poem when her daughter was going through a very difficult period. For Peri, the whole poem is for her daughter, whose nickname was “Angel Pie”. The last three lines of the poem, as well as some wings in general / just scratched knees / attempts to get off the ground - is a message to encourage and empower her daughter, and more generally for anyone who feels discouraged, injured or concerned, When Phillis received a poem Peri, she took the subject of angels and wrote her own family story about terrible pain and hope. Poems are superior to the theme of angels, because there is even deeper content here - the theme of ordinary people becoming heroes, and revival and reconciliation, which can come from tragedy. Also, as often happens with poetry, there is an unconscious connection, as both authors write about the family.
Speaking of poetry, it is also important to recognize that this can be a frightening form of expression that carries with it the need for perfection or the feeling “I can never write a poem - my letter is not good enough.” In poetic therapy with groups or people, poems are never edited. Editing belongs to the poem. The goal of poetic therapy is to use the poem as a starting point for a writer, and this is a useful way to work with the transcendence of the internal editor that is in all of us. To consider a way to think about writing poetry, we turn to the words of our college, Robert Carroll, MD, who writes:
Read it out loud
pass it through your ears
enjoy
ride and
know
the difference between poetry and prose
this is what verses are violated
in line -
that's all.
(Carroll, 1)
Anyone can write poetry! This is our natural right and human instinct. All we have to do is make the words move and inspire us. The National Association for Poetic Therapy (NAPT): promoting growth and healing through language, symbol and history (http://www.poetrytherapy.org), has a lot of useful information on its website, including more examples of the use of poetic therapy with clients. We, in the Association, are like-minded psychiatrists, psychologists, college professors, social workers, marriage and family therapists and educators - all of us are also poets, writers and narrators who have experienced healing through written and spoken words, and would like to share it with others clinicians as a skill they would like to develop. Poetry for self-expression and healing is used with mothers, children, and adolescents; battered women, the elderly, depression, suicide; those who live with a terminal disease have passed away, those who have HIV, are mentally ill, and now have hurricane victims and soldiers returning from Iraq suffering from post-traumatic stress. We also exchange poems with each other throughout the country that effectively help others heal. This exchange continues the healing rhythm and heart of poetry.
As Elaaluddin Rumi says:
Out In addition to ideas about wrongdoing and the right actions there is a field. I will meet you there. (Barks, 1995, 36)
Let's meet each other along the way.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Barks, C. (tr.) (1992). Naked song. Books Maypopa.
Barks, C. (tr.) With John Moyne. (1995). Essential rumi. New York: books of castles.
Barks, C. (tr.) And Green, M. (1997). Illuminated Rumi. New York: Broadway Books.
Carroll, Robert, MD, (2005) “Searching for words to say this: The healing power of poetry” eCam 2005: 2 (2) 161-172.
Harjo, Joy, (2002), How We Became Man, New York: WW Norton and Company.
Hyman-Fead, B. (2004) I Can Do It / Living With Cancer: Tracking a Year of Hope. Santa Barbara Cancer Center: Wellness program.
Klein, Phyllis, ed. (2001). Our words are Women of the Lee Woodward Center, SF: Phyllis Klein and Women and Children.
Leedy, JJ (Ed.). (1985) Poetry as a Healer: Directing a Restless Mind. New York: Avant-garde. Orr, G. (2002) Poetry as a survival. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Murphy, JM (1979). Therapeutic use of poetry in Current Psychiatric Therapies, vol. 18. Jules Masserman, ed. NY: Grune & Stratton, Inc., pp. 65-72.
Oliver, M. (1993). Wild geese. New and selected poems. Boston: Lighthouse Press.
Pennebaker, J. (1990) Discovery: the healing power of expressing emotions. New York: Guilford Press.
Poplawski, T. (1994) Schizophrenia and the Soul in Search, August 74-77.
“This article appeared in the The Therapist issue of July / August 2006, in the publication of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) headquartered in San Diego, California. For more information about CAMFT, please log on to http://www.camft.org. "
