Letter from the President

Joanne Twombly, LICSW

Excerpted from the September, 2002 NESTTD Newsletter

Dear NESTTD Members and Supporters:

The reality is this presidential letter is being written on a hot brilliant summer day in between gardening and packing for vacation. So, in spite of the fact that it’s for the fall when things get back to being serious, it can’t be about anything more than the current summertime stream-of-consciousness style musings running through my brain as I puzzle about just how to work through some difficult situations with clients.

The inspiration for these musings is a joke Rick Kluft told years ago at a training in Cambridge, about a policeman who came across a man on a dark night searching for his car keys under the light of a street lamp.  The policeman helped him look for a while then asked, “Where did you drop them?”  The man pointed to the darkness outside the light and said, “Over there!”  The policeman asked, “Then why are you looking here?”  The man, looking somewhat surprised at being questioned, said, “Because there’s light here!” 

The joke was told to illustrate why he doesn’t spend much time trying to reason with clinicians locked in paradigms, which don’t allow for the reality of Dissociative Disorders.   He said paradigms are rigid and fixed, and if there’s no willingness on their part to explore the darkness and/or to expand the light, it’s largely a waste of time.  It started me thinking about paradigms that clinicians, clients, and I have at times fallen into or live within.  This thought process has had several results along with finding that I spend much less time trying to convince nonbelievers, thus decreasing my energy output. 

As I began identifying some of my own paradigms and those of my clients, I began strategizing about how to recognize and free clients and myself from ones which have, at best, blocked healing, and at worst, brought our work to what has felt like a grinding halt. 

A list of paradigms I try keep in mind especially when things get tough are:

• Being stuck in what one client calls “The Great God Therapist Mode”, or being on Autotherapist
• Countertransference and Transference
• Pierre Janet’s concept (via Ellert Nijenhuis) that alters live within a restricted field of awareness, either living in trauma, or being phobic and avoidant of it 
• Therapists becoming wedded to a particular treatment mode or agenda, and trying to make a client fit into it  (This could be reworded as:  therapists living within a restricted field of awareness…)
• The general evils of unresolved personal issues, lack of knowledge, lack of openness to learning, and tiredness…

There are a number of ways I try to keep myself and clients from being eternally or excessively lost in whatever might be the paradigms.  They aren’t particularly profound, but are things I return to when times get difficult, treatment gets stalled out, or I’m missing something that feels important.

·         Be a “person person” as one client would say, i.e. not just a therapist. Be present, and bring a truly open mind to sessions.

·          And while doing that, remember the client is also a person.  Don’t try and fit a client into a treatment mode or agenda, without realizing who that person is and whether it will fit for them or not.

·         Don’t fall into what Janet called “Mental Laziness.”  As alters need to expand their awarenesses, therapists also need to be mindful and seeking.

·         Read or reread Constance Dalenberg’s book, “Countertransference and the Treatment of Trauma” (definitely on my current top 10 list).

·         Remember the definition of insanity, i.e. doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

·         Cartoons also (see above) can be very useful.

·         “ ‘I can’t,’ said the Ant” who at first tried to lift a fallen teapot all by himself.  After a process, he got the message, “ ‘Form a battalion,’ said the Scallion.”   (From a book by Polly Cameron to be reviewed perhaps in our next newsletter.) This sequence was said to me by a child alter whom after being frightened by the notion of integration, suddenly got it. It reminds me to make use of my own battalion by calling on peers and consultants, reading books, looking inside myself, being open to all resources and new possibilities, and of course going to NESTTD meetings!

So, I offer a challenge to all of us coming into this 2002-2003 year at NESTTD, to examine our own paradigms, to have the courage to explore out into the darkness, to wire in and turn on new lights, and to increase the wattage of our existing bulbs.

Cameron, Polly, “I can’t” said the ant. Scholastic Inc. New York, NY.  1961.

Dalenberg, Constance, Countertransference and the Treatment of Trauma.  American        Psychological Association, Washington, DC. 2000.

Ungerer, Tomi, The Underground Sketchbook of Tomi Ungerer.  Dover Publications, Inc.  New York, NY.  1964.            

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