LIFE THROUGH A STORY LENS

Chauvet Cave, Southwest France. It is thought that thhese drawings represent
a creation taleand were part of a shamanic initiation.

"Once there was..." 

With these words we step into the larger life of the imagination, where what seem to be miracles in ordinary reaity are everyday occurrences in this greater, truer reality. I call it The Story Zone. 

I tend to be claustrophic, and I avoid situations that might trigger feelings of being trapped. So you can imagine how challenging lockdown since the beginning of March has been for me. Like you perhaps, I've been through the gamut of emotions, including waves of fear, followed by focused breathing and free-writing that has induced calm, only to be overtaken by despair, and then again, creative and spiritual practices to center myself.

About two weeks in, I had a panic attack at having no way out, unless I wanted to venture into a dangerous world where the virus circulated freely, invisibly, possibly fatally. No way out and no end date. (Even as I write these words, I can feel rumbles of anxiety!) 

Now that the world is opening up again, that same conflict looms between staying safe in what often feels like a prison and risking my health (I'm in a vulnerable group) out in the world. To get to my usual places of work, I have to take the subway, which has been determined to be the main channel of transmission in my city. I'm not ready to chance it!

When I feel stuck and without words to express the feelings that are paralyzing me, I go to storyboards -- scribbled cartoons that capture my situation in a lighthearted way. 

In early March, the first case of Covid-19 had shown up in New York City. It was a woman who had just returned from Iran. From that one unsuspecting woman, the virus exploded in my city. At the same time, my income and financial security was tanking. To save myself financially, I felt, I had to get "out there." That meant taking the subway. I was frozen. 

In my time of fear, I quickly sketched this storyboard. It contains my several "selves" -- the fearful me as well as my higher intuitive and imaginative self, along with the scary context I was trying to navigate. 

Playfulness was the key to calm! The lightheartedness, and even the laughter I felt on compassionately drawing this bewildered, frightened woman helped me transcend my immediate situation and I was able to come to a place of trust again. Trust not that I had an answer. Trust that there was an All is Well reality embracing all of epochal event, of which I was an infinitesimal part.

Feeling just a bit better, I remembered Story. Specifically, the "five elements" of story: Time, Setting and Mood; Character; Situation; and Plot. I looked around at my small room, which was sometimes sanctuary and at others a prison 

"What does this feel like?" I asked myelf.

A cave.

Traditionally, caves are archetypal places of initiation. I could now view my situation as an initiatory experience. I was about to be transformed, if I would allow the process to unfold naturally. I began to write....

The scribbles on my page held the energy of ancient creation tales drawn on the rock walls of a cave 36,000 years ago by forever unknown artists, as in the photograph of Chauvet Cave above.

As I wrote, I recreated my reality. In a moment of transformative insight, I realized that something unknown yet expansive could happen for me in this physical and emotional space. 

The result? Life opened again. And now I was ready for it. Over and over I have done this simple drawing and writing practice to sustain myself during the time of Covid. 

The lockdown continues. But so do I. And not just continue. As I play with my circumstances on the page, I rise up and out from the ashes of this devastated world and I create a new and healthier world in my imagination, on the page, and soon in outside life as well. 

So can you. 

If you would like to schedule private storymaking sessions with me to transform your reality from the inside out, I'm offering a 3-session online package for $300 total. You can find a description of how to work with me on my trusty old website: julietbruce.com, click on Ways to Work with Me. Times are tough, and if you really want to do this, but can't swing the fee right now, let me know and we'll try to work something out that is mutually beneficial. I too have to generate income to pay my expenses. Contact me here or via my website to set up a complimentary half hour exploratory session. 

"URGENT CARE" STORY SANCTUARY TO MAINTAIN EQUANIMITY IN CRISIS TIMES

Sunday, June 24,
Noon -1 eastern
Free and online

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I calm my mind.
May I be balanced.
May I be at peace.

Every day a new crisis, a new outrage. Many of us feel distraught and distracted in the face of terrible events.This nightmare will eventually end one way or another, but we have a hard struggle ahead, as things will likely get worse in the coming weeks and months. We're in this for the long haul, yes?
This weekend, I am offering an "Urgent Care" Story Sanctuary. My intention is to help all of us stay balanced through wise community so that we can continue to meet our own responsibilities without denying reality, and to take action, if moved to do so, from a place of calm abiding.

Please feel welcome to join, to listen, to share, to come sleepy-eyed. Bring your coffee, your cat. Wear your jammies.

Just sign up. julietbrucephd at gmail dot com.


Photo: lotus field.via FB/Just Lovely

When a Healing Story Arrives...

You can feel it, as if another, deeper presence has entered your space. In fact, a story often begins to tell itself. As a teller, something stronger than intellect is directing your words. As a listener, you might understand intuitively that someone is sharing something important-- a moment that may have shifted the arc of their life.

 

When a story arrives, we stop speaking in concepts (“I habitually lie to my wife for no reason because I learned as a child that lying saved me from my father’s rage.”) These concepts are important in understanding intellectually the path to self-sabotaging behaviors. But they’re not experiential, therefore not transformational.

When story takes over, we slow down, begin to speak from our senses, within a concrete setting and time, communicating an emotional quality, repeating significant dialogue, possibly surprised by forgotten details, in which we feel the emotions we weren’t able to feel when the event happened, but now buffered and released, as in what happens when we watch a good film or read an engaging novel. 

For example, here’s the story that might arise- in fact, has arisen:

“One time, I was about nine, I opened a bottle of Dewar’s that my father kept in the bar in the den, and I took a sip. It was awful! Bitter. Why did anyone drink this stuff? I remember the TV was turned on to some after-school program. I hated the program and the Scotch and decided never to do either again. When my father got home from work and saw the torn label, he yelled, “Who did this?” I knew he would beat up the guilty party because he always did. So I lied and said it was my older brother and his friends. It was easy to blame Eddie because he was always getting into trouble and our father didn’t believe his denials. He was the one who got beat that time.”

Untold, the adult may reenact that lie that saved him over and over in a misguided attempt to free himself, as if re-listening to a garbled voice mail to understand the message. Fully told, he is invariably released from that freeze frame that has blocked the flow our life force around the issue of truth for decades. There’s no longer a need for him to reenact it.

            

Our listener feels the shift in energy as well, and inevitably resonates with their own emotional associations. Story enables catharsis, emotional detox, and liberation for everyone.

            

Give yourself permission to play with memory. We might create a “What if?” tale to give that little boy in the story what he really needed: a sense of safety around his father. What if a dad swims out to rescue his son who has paddled too far into the lake, wraps one strong arm around his precious child, and swims with the other arm back to shallow water? Not only does this tale inject parental safety into that painful memory, changing the neural pathway that held it; it triggers a new emotional state and launches the limitless possibilities of a new story.

             

If you feel caught in old behavior or relationship patterns, it’s likely that you’re stuck in such a story. You will likely find, as a female client of mind did after telling a similar story, that the compulsive need to lie has dissolved. That story is over.

Try This

Reporting facts in a monotone as they happened chronologically (“He said, then I said, so he said…”) is not a story. In fact, it shuts down your listener’s receptivity and your own emotional engagement in what you’re saying.

Teller: Tell the concept. In three minutes, describe a problematic situation with a trusted friend, therapist, or life coach. Think: context or problem, your usual response, the usual outcome. Compressing time this way forces you to get to the “bones” or essentials of your story.

Listener(s): Listen! The greatest gift you can give someone is to hold space for them while they process for themselves what they said out loud. Thich Nhat Hanh once said in a retreat that the most healing thing we can say to someone grappling with a problem or strong emotion is, “Friend, I hear you.” (This also holds true for listening to our inner voices of anguish. Respond with empathy and the strong emotion will soften and become quieter.)

Teller: Now describe the concept as a scene, as if you are watching a movie.  Giving yourself another three minutes, ground your story in a setting, with people, describe how the problem manifest in concrete terms, what you did, and the outcome. You’re improving here. Forget about doing it “right.” Just say what comes. When it gives you an ending—and it will—give it a title that captures the feeling you have about it. A title is like the ca-ching of a cash register; it concludes the transaction. In story terminology, it frames the experience and establishes your authorship, and thus your authority, over the circumstances. This is how you become the storyteller of your evolving life.

Listener(s): What stands out for you? Do not interpret, analyze, intellectualize, or give advice. All worthy responses, but a different kind of process from story. Above all, do not impose your own meanings and solutions, no matter how well-intended. Story medicine is based on the knowledge that each person intuitively knows what is right for them and your role as listener is to help them gain access to it. Respond with what you heard through your senses, and what had resonance for you.

Each of you: What do you each take from this exchange? You have engaged in dynamic, creative communication rather than a retelling of a problem.

            What do you now see that you didn’t see before? Do you have a new idea for what to do about the issue? Transformation doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. Life changes when we think or do one small thing differently.

In many years of facilitating story workshops and private sessions for every possible population, including people suffering extreme distress or who are in conflict, I have learned how to identify the exact moment when there's a palpable shift and softening in energy, a deepening quiet, a profound stillness. As well, I have learned how to hold this silence, for this is when the deep soul truth flows and some degree of healing takes place. I call it the Grail moment. It is the medicine of story.

         

All rights reserved, 2018, from my book in progress, "Write of Passage: For the Brokenhearted, a Story Path to Healing Change." Please do not use this text without my permission and crediting me.

EMOTIONAL RELIEF FOR STRESSED OUT CAREGIVERS

Online Story Sanctuaries for Caregivers 

Monday, December 19 - Family Caregivers 
8-10 pm EST
$25

Tuesday, December 20 - Professional Caregivers 8-10 pm EST
$25

Space is very limited for both of these sessions. Please register at julietbruce.com. If you're accessing my website from your phone, please scroll down to the announcement.

As a caregiver for many hundreds of suffering clients, a departed parent who suffered from Alzheimer's, and as a recent cancer survivor myself, I so understand the anxiety, exhaustion, and special kind of loneliness that afflicts everyone trying to cope with serious illness. The isolation imposed by illness is among the worst side effects of disease and treatment, while meditative writing within a supportive group, especially through the lens of dynamic story structure, is one of the most effective medicines for reducing stress. A former client who was just finishing up breast cancer treatment once told me that the support she had received from her peers in a 6-week oncology writing group was the best support she experienced during her cancer journey. Now that I'm three weeks beyond treatment myself, I'm pleased to offer two special Story Sanctuaries for family and professional caregivers. BEING HEARD IS THE BEGINNING OF HEALING. Through the creative and communal approach I offer in these sessions, you will: 1. Stabilize, connect with, and free yourself from the isolation imposed by the demands of caregiving; 2. Become both more attentive and more detached from the present moment; 3. Reconnect with yourself and your deepest passions, which may have been sacrificed; 4. Design a new vision for how you could live in the future; and 5. Rehearse generative actions on the page before you take them into life; 6. Help to weave a more deeply connected and conscious grid of people dedicated to a new story for family, community, and country. You'll experience story as not only about the past but also about your way into a new reality. In the timeless, limitless place that story holds in our psyches, we participate in this ancient ritual that has empowered, enlightened, and shaped civilized societies from the beginning of time. Space is very limited for both of these sessions. Please register at www.julietbruce.com. If you're accessing my web site on your phone, scroll down to workshop announcements. COMING IN JANUARY January 2, 8-10 - Free introductory online story sanctuary for those who have not joined one previously. January 3 - Ongoing online story group, 8-10 -- now $25 to help me cover my expenses. January 18 - In-person story sanctuary for New Yorkers suffering from pre-inaugural blues, 7-9, private home -- $30 January 19 -- Online pre-inaugural story sanctuary for anyone who feels depressed or anxious at this time, 8-10 -- $25 I hope to share the healing power of story with you soon, and I wish you a loving, healthy Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanza. For all of us a peaceful and happy new year. Juliet