Trauma & Attachment Therapy

Differentiation and Integration in The Big Sick, Fun Home, and Trumpet

    In the last three days I've had the pleasure of watching the fabulous movie, The Big Sick, the incredible musical Fun Home, and reading Trumpet, A Novel. All three are great art. The first two are based on the writers' lives. All are about "coming out", or not, to one's self and one's family and culture. All show how how when people hide who they are, they are separated from the people around them and have internal parts that are dissociated from each other.

    In Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani (who plays himself) is a Pakistani-American in love with a white, non-Muslim woman, who cannot show his parents who he is and who he loves. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel does come out to herself and her parents. Her father, a closeted gay man, commits suicide rather than being fully known in his small town. Jackie Kay's Trumpet, is a novel about the fallout surrounding a married transgender man's outing upon death and it's effects on a variety of characters, in and outside the family. 

We all have ego states. We may have a different persona in a work situation, at home, hanging with our best friend, or dealing with an emergency.  Unless we are highly dissociated, we can move smoothly between "parts" and roles, bringing up the most germane set of skills for each situation. When we are not "acceptable" as we are, we may hide that part, even from ourself. We may repress it, or simply develop a separate persona in a separate arena--the secretive gay bars and "tea rooms" of the past, the hidden online communities for any "kink" you can imagine, of the present.  

When we accept who we are and what we are, and can be that person, we can be whole, but the process is not easy. Telling the family that we are not practicing the religion, the gender role, the choice of partner, the expected occupation can bring us disapproval (at the least), ostracism, and in some cultures, death. Even if it's "mere" disapproval, it's difficult. We are wired to please those people, to belong, and to be protected by the family. We define ourselves by how we are seen and treated. Going against that by choosing differentiation (being who and what you are even if people don't agree or approve) is scary and can bring up big shame. Not doing that, kills the possibility of true intimacy: being known. And it may separate us from ourselves.

In Big Sick, we get to see Kumail, after being accepted by another family, be able to "come out" as secular and in love with a blonde. In Fun Home, Alison goes to college, falls in love, and is able to accept herself and tell her family. Later in life, she creates a (wonderful) graphic novel about her coming out, and the tragic end of her father, who never could. In the musical, Alison as a child, a college student, and an adult sing together, bringing all parts together for a perfect integration, that brought down the house.

After 25 years of marriage and 36 years of doing therapy, I can speak to the importance of self-acceptance and true intimacy to my life and my relationship. As a bisexual person, a Jew in a Christian country, and not-very-gender conforming person, I can speak to the importance of being out and known, even when I'm not accepted. I am known by the people who want to know me. I am self-accepting (knowing that I can always improve). My husband and I strive for openness, even when the other one doesn't adore or agree with an opinion or aspect of us. 

As a therapist, it's my job to help people accept all of themselves, heal what can be healed, and bring all parts to eventual integration or integrity.

 

 

    

The Names of Love

The Names of Love is a hilarious, serious, heart-breaking, heart-warming French movie that I recommend to everyone. It deals with generational PTSD, Holocaust survivors, war survivors, culture, temperament, politics, art, political correctness, and sex as a positive political tool. (Did I say that it was French?) Here's a website: http://www.namesoflovemovie.com/

One plot line shows a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, treating her body as a tool for her political ends, until she meets a man who truly sees and accepts her while adoring her. (I've heard many survivors who were prostitutes or used sex as a means to other ends who said, "But that is what I'm for."  

Another character, who saw her parents dragged away to a concentration camp, brought her fearful silence into her marriage, infecting her non-Jewish husband and her child. That child, the male lead, is able to open up and speak the truth when he is finally seen, reflected, loved, and well laid. 

And it's a romantic comedy, so you know how it ends. This is my favorite movie since UP! It's lovely. And you must stay through most of the credits.

The King's Speech

Some of the best therapy I've seen on screen is in a great new movie, The King's Speech. Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist who tackles the debilitating anxiety-driven stammer of Colin Firth's, "Bertie", who become the king of England on the eve of World War II. 

The film shows the stifling lives and roles of the Royals, and the intense pressure on them from their subjects, the Anglican Church, their governments, and each other. It shows how a therapist to the King has to tear down the class barriers in order to make a strong, attached therapeutic relationship. Logue creates the frame be insisting that "Bertie" come to his office ("My castle, my rules."), be on time, and be addressed by his family name, rather than "Your Royal Highness". He sits close, and mixes standard speech therapy with elements of somatic and expressive therapies (some of which are riotously funny) and holds the therapeutic relationship above all. He watches his client carefully, and crafts his client-centered therapy and the environment in which the King must give his speeches to his client's needs. Logue leads his client to uncover the childhood traumas that precipitated the stammer, and the family dynamics that kept it going. And he uses brilliant and funny strategic therapy to hook his recalcitrant client into therapy, and keep him there.

Helena Bonham Carter plays Bertie's supportive wife, Elizabeth, and is excellent, as usual. Derek Jacobi is the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom Bertie finally shows his adult and kingly differentiation. Michael Gambon plays King George, Bertie's father, as a well-meaning, impatient, worst father a stammerer could have. (It's strange to see Dumbledore be jerk.) Guy Pearce plays Edward, Bertie's brother who abdicated the throne for a woman Mrs. Simpson (Eve Best).

I knew a lot of the history, and I painlessly learned more of the particulars in this wonderful movie. The King's Speech is suspenseful, beautifully acted, funny, sad, and hopeful. I hope you see it, too.

 

 

A Neuroscientist Explains Her Stroke

Check out this amazing 18 minute video suggested by Kelli Sherine:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/when-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-stroke/

Differentiation in a marriage

I posted this piece on my husband, Doug Plummer's blog last September. Re-reading it, I realized that it was all about differentiation. I'm a great fan of David Schnarch and of Ellyn Bader and Pete Pearson, therapists/trainers/writers who specialize in couple's therapy from a differentiation perspective. They all espouse developmental models for relationships and the concepts of "holding onto oneself" (Schnarch) and knowing "It's not about me."  (Bader/Pearson), useful things to know. I think we've internalized it, it's taken only 15 years. Know that Doug absolutely supports me and my work, too.

Advice to photographers' significant others:

• When on a shoot or on the road, always bring food, water, and a book. If the light becomes "perfect" (usually early or late in the day, or if it's overcast in just the right way), your photog will be captivated by it. Do insist on your right to go to the bathroom, be dropped at the hotel before the light comes in, or have your basic needs taken care of.
• Don't take it personally when he says, "The light is beautiful on you." You could be a rock, or a stump, or a wall. But he probably loves you anyway.
• Don't take it personally when you become the "foreground element". It's not about you. You're just the one that's there.
• Do take it personally, in the best way, if you become the object of many studies. Photographers connect with the world through their cameras. It is another way of being known.
• You don't have to like all of the work, if you like the photographer. Doug has one body of work that is too visually complex for my brain to process. None of this work is in the living room. If your person needs you to love every picture, send him to therapy. If you think you need to love every picture, go yourself.
• Get used to schedule changes. Your photog might find out on Tuesday that he's going to Ireland for two weeks on Thursday. Have friends to fill in the gap. Accommodations I figured out included putting in a watering system for the garden; hiring people to do some of his tasks; and letting myself be pissed about the changes, until I'm not.
• Keep in contact. In most places in the developed world, there are local cell phones for sale. Speak often. Email. Whine. Say endearments. Listen to whining. Support. Ask for support. It's good glue. We talk almost every day. I especially like to bask in Doug's excitement when he's on a shoot and it's going well. He does bliss well.
• It's okay to demand that the geek speak stops, when you've run out of patience for it. Especially if they're talking about digital workflows. It's rude for people to speak in a language not shared by others.
• When he comes back into town with 4,000 images to process, make some dates to connect, but don't expect that he'll be fully there until the images are on a disc and sent away. Then you can have the coming-back fight and really connect.
• It's OK to play the wife role, whatever your gender, on occasion. I do this at openings and print sales and during the big post-shoot image processing. Other times, be who you are, more than wife. Doug is the wife at my conferences and book signings and when I'm writing. It's OK to be flexible. Don't get caught up in the role. It's not a full enough identity for anyone.
• If you're traveling together, don't think you have to be joined at the hip. Pursue your own interests, then meet later. Do ask your person to leave the camera in the room or in the bag for a meal or an evening. Suggesting that making contact with you might allow your photog to "get lucky" can help this occur. It works for me.
• If he's been gone for a long time, and you've had the house to yourself, expect conflict on re-entry. It's normal. It's predictable. Just have it. He's invading your space, after all.
• Dont worry about the "Bridges of Madison County" scenario. You know how he really is.
• A story: Several years ago, outside of Banff, after a full day of shooting, the light changed and Doug became enchanted. I was really hungry. After 45 minutes, I demanded to be driven into town for food. Reluctantly, Doug packed up his gear, and we drove to a 2nd-floor sushi bar. I was facing the window. The light was magical. We ordered anyway. Before the fish came, I saw a rainbow over Mount Rundle. I said, "Doug, get your gear and get out there." He did. 20 minutes later he returned. Three minutes later, the second rainbow appeared, arcing over the other. "Get back out there, now!" The waiter didn't know what was going on. He kept asking if everything was alright. He didn't understand my explanation: "My husband is a photographer."