OUT OF MY MIND

No Touching Please! On Social Distancing

Six feet, one meter, two meters –whatever the new required distance is to be safe and not contract or spread COVID-19 social distancing asks us to stay away from each other the required distance. To not touch each other.  To choreograph our movements within a certain distance.

To be aware that any of us could make the other sick.

As a way to keep us safe, social distancing is putting a stop to touching, to being close. 

In the interest of stopping a world epidemic, we are being asked to be mindful about where we move, how we move and what and whom we touch. How is all this distance affecting us?

Touch is the first of our senses to introduce another person to us. Our physical sense of ourselves comes alive through the touch of another. Through the way they touch us – handle us, hold us and take care of us. From the very beginning of our lives.

Touch is essential to all of us as human beings.

We touch to comfort and soothe each other

To greet each other

To love each other

Even, to hurt each other.

Needless to say, we do not do well without it. We are not wired to be alone. We are relational beings and need to be in relation to one another. The envelope of our skin, while holding us together and allowing us to feel the way people and objects feel – their particular smoothness, firmness, shape – also transmits tactile information to us about us, and our response to the touch of another. Social distancing has inadvertently interrupted this loop of essential information in order to protect us.

Lest you think that this is only true for those who live alone or find themselves that way during this pandemic, think again. The notion that this virus is very contagious and can be transmitted easily and to the power of 4 has infiltrated our psyche. We now have to consider who we spend our time with, and for many, the question of whether to be with parents, children, friends and lovers involves considering the fact that our contact with them might put them at risk. That being healthy and asymptomatic does not necessarily mean we are not carrying the virus. To be afraid to touch someone we love or care for because we might infect them and bring a potentially deadly virus to their body is not something any of us have ever had to contend with or think about. This is where social distancing and social isolation hook up, and in so doing highlight the link between our body and our psyche. 

Being mindful about how we move and physically negotiate in the world does indeed have psychic consequences – for now, those involve developing a sense of connection through virtual means, and this in turn heightens the importance of our other senses. This is a time when our relationships and our need to stay connected is of utmost importance.

Be well.

Mindfulness in Difficult Times

It has been quite some time since I wrote a post, but given what is going on in the world at the moment, it seems like a good time for a comeback. So, Hello dear readers near and far, this is perhaps the first time that many of us will be homebound: doing our work, minding children, caring for partners and elders. In different parts of the world, the response to Covid-19 is starting to be the same: uncertainty, fear, panic buying, and a need to know as much as we can about what this virus is like, what we can and must do about it, how to help ourselves, our families and our communities. All of us are experiencing the impact of this pandemic. We are, all of us, in the proverbial same boat – afloat an uncertain ocean. And furthermore we are, each of us, captain’s of our own ship – we are in charge of taking responsibility. Covid-19 has united us in the way that major calamities and catastrophes do – reminding us that we are one human race, with the same basic needs and wants , and that it is only by coming together, mindfully, that we can survive.

I want to share some thoughts from the book: Consolations – The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by poet David Whyte. This particular essay looks at the crisis all of us face when our internal worlds collide with the outside world.

Crisis is unavoidable . Every human life seems to be drawn, eventually, as if by some unspoken parallel, some tidal flow or underground magnetic field, toward the raw, dynamic essentials of its existence, as if everything up to that point had been a preparation for a meeting, for a confrontation in an elemental form with our essential flaw, and with what an individual could until then, only receive stepped down, interpreted or diluted.

This experience of absolute contact with an essential hidden dynamic, now understood to be essential to our lives, often ignored but now making itself felt, where the touchable rawness of life becomes part of the fabric of the everyday, and a robust luminous vulnerability, becomes shot through with the necessary, imminent and inevitable prospect of loss, has been described for centuries as the dark night of the soul: La note oscura del alma. But perhaps this dark night could be more accurately described as the meeting of two immense storm fronts, the squally vulnerable edge between what overwhelms human beings from the inside and what overpowers them from the outside.

The waveform that overwhelms a maturing human being from the inside is the inescapable nature of their own flaws and weaknesses, their self deceptions and their attempts to create false names and stories to place themselves in the world; the felt need to control the narrative of the story around them with no regard to outside revelation. The immense wave on the outside is the invitation to give that self up, to be borne off by the wave and renamed, revealed and re-ordered by the powerful flow.

Walking the pilgrim edge between the two, holding them together, is the hardest place to stay, to breathe of both and make a world of both and to be active in their exchange: aware of our need to be needed, our wish to be seen, our constant need for help and succor, but inhabiting a world of luminosity and intensity, subject to the wind and the weather, surrounded by the music of existence, able to be found by the living world and with a wild self-forgetful ability to respond to its call when needed; a rehearsal in fact for the act of dying, a place where inside and outside can reverse and flow with no fixed form.

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Be well. Be mindful. And pay attention to the details they have always mattered.

The Tale  by Jennifer Fox

 

The Tale – Film by Jennifer Fox

In The Tale, Jennifer Fox captures all of the above and goes further. Here we have her personal story: a story she wrote about when she was 13 years old for her English class essay, and then dissociated and rewrote in her memory. What was in effect a betrayal of both the woman she loved as a glamorous version of a mother, Mrs. G, and her running coach Bill, who sexually abuses her, turns into a story of Bill as an older boyfriend, whom she does not talk about in order not to freak people out. Memory provides a translation of lived experience that allows Jennifer to move on, not as anyone’s victim but as the hero of her own story.And a hero she is.

It is Jenny that tells both Mrs. G and Bill she will no longer continue a relationship with either of them, after finding out that they have been planning a foursome involving her and another young woman.

It is Jenny who writes her story as an essay and turns it in to her English teacher.

It is Jennifer who dialogues with her young self (Jenny) in order to find out the truth and reconnect with her memories and her experience.

It is Jennifer who confronts Bill when she is an adult.

And it is Jennifer Fox who brings us this moving and difficult tale of survival, disturbingly shot with sexual scenes (we are advised that all sexual scenes were filmed using an adult stand in). Incredibly difficult to watch and upsetting in its sexual and emotional exploits – it is Jennifer Fox’s courage to film it in this way which finally communicates the truth about sexual abuse in all of its painful, unnerving, ominous and alarming detail.

One of the hallmarks of sexual abuse is that speaking of it disturbs everyone and that many not only do not want to hear about it, and want it not to be true, even when confronted with evidence of its truth, people also often “forget” about it. It is as if a cultural dissociation descends over many, working its powerful mix of narcotic anesthesia over the horror and reality of sexual abuse.

Fox begins her Tale by telling us that it is “true as far as I know”, and so, we are immediately brought into the land of memory, that personal area of our brain that records everything that happens to us- sometimes revealing it to us with clarity, other times through a haze, sometimes hiding it from our conscious knowing, sometimes ushering in unexpected flashbacks brought on by a song, a smell, a summer day. Memory is the repository of all of our experience and yet, it changes with the coloratura of emotions, feelings, sensations, and time. Memory is also subject to dissociative waves that isolate knowledge because of its traumatic impact on the psyche. Memory is individual, and not based solely on language but on our experience of events and of the impact of those events on our psyche. In this sense, memory shapes our nervous system and the neurons in our brain, thus the power of physical memories – the body never forgets, it remembers everything. It is the mind that alters experience and blurs memory in an effort to survive.

“Funny how you live with people in your mind” a young Jennifer tells us. Indeed, what we do with people and things is turn them into our personal, internal individuals imbued with the attributes we want or need them to have. Thus, Mrs. G, Jenny’s British horseback riding teacher, appears to her beautiful and dazzling, disciplined to a fault and a person to emulate, to be like. For Jenny, Mrs. G becomes the model for femaleness and provides the focused attention her own overburdened mother is unable to give. Jenny falls in love with Mrs. G the way a young girl falls in love with an ideal self. She wants to please Mrs. G by becoming a version of her, a version that Mrs. G can love and approve of. And it is Mrs. G that introduces Jenny to Bill, the running coach who is also Mrs. G’s lover. Together, Mrs. G and Bill begin to groom Jenny for their sexual exploits, under the cover of being the only ones who understand and love her, “we will form our own family” they tell her. Young Jennifer might think it is “funny” how she lived with this duo in her mind, but in telling us her story we understand immediately that it is Mrs. G and Bill that purposefully shape how Jenny lives with them in her mind. The adult Ms. Fox depicts these grooming behaviors with precision, young Jenny is only aware of her idealization of Mrs. G and Bill retrospectively, as is always the case.

Pedophiles and their child victims are involved in what psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi termed a “confusion of tongues”: where the adult seeks sex and the child seeks affection. These two remain intertwined for the survivor of abuse, who must then do difficult psychic work in order to untangle sex as the means of gaining affection. Jenny the child was seeking attention, affection and to be special to Mrs. G. Since Mrs. G loved Bill, Jenny began to trust and depend on him too. The attention and specialness was the key, and Jenny thrived on it. Yet, sex is a different story. And Jennifer (the child and the adult) know this. The physicality of sex involves bodies that are tangled up in a transgressive act, no matter how consensual and pleasurable it is for the adults involved. The child seeks affection: cuddling, hugging, playing, and most importantly, a safe space to experiment with coming of age and adult attention. Sex, and the physical demands it entails push through a boundary that moves affection and even love, into something else, something not entirely known or safe, a mixture of aggression, lust, passion and even surprise. Children cannot manage the ‘something’ that sex entails, either physically or emotionally, because they are unprepared for it. It constitutes an assault on their body as well as their psyche. There is a whole lot of flirtation, play, dating and experimentation with peers that must come beforehand. Thus, young Jenny’s body revolts, it makes her physically sick and helps her step away from Mrs. G and Bill forever. “My body told me what my mind refused to accept,” she tells us, as she saves herself.

In The Tale we live through Jennifer’s experience: as a child and as an adult. We see her struggle with her partner. We hear of her promiscuity. She tells us of her shame at her excitement, physical and emotional. What is it like to get turned on when you do not want to? Well, it divides the psyche from the body. So that physical experience remains dissociated from what it feels like emotionally. The mind then has to work hard to narrate a different  “tale”: “he loved me” Jennifer tells herself, “so did Mrs. G”, “she was probably abused herself”. All of this so she can survive on her own.

“I failed you” Jennifer’s mother tells her adult daughter while she is in search of her memories. “I failed to do the one thing that a parent should do: protect you.” None of us want to KNOW about sexual abuse. Jennifer Fox has given us The Taleso that none of us can ever doubt its continued existence. She is in fact not a victim, she is a survivor, and she is also a Hero, and her film a courageous narrative.

 

* Tune in and watch THE TALE on HBO May 26th and host your own discussion circle with free materials by signing up here: bit.ly/TheTaleDiscussionCircle. The film will also be available on HBO GO and NOW and other HBO channels following the premiere. Follow the conversation online by using #TheTale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ON GUILT- and getting down with our bad selves.

maruccia/conzoGuilt is one of those emotions that has been shortchanged in psychology, except to be understood as a sign that an individual has internalized societal and cultural norms and developed a sense of empathy for others. Freud saw guilt as one of the hallmarks of civilized humanity, an important emotion which signaled an internal conflict between our ego (our observing self) and our superego (our conscience). Often such conflict came about due to a clash between our wishes and desires and societal norms and rules. When seen in these terms, guilt and our ability to feel it, reflects an internalization of cultural and societal attitudes and the awareness that we live in community and must moderate our personal gratification for the good of all. Melanie Klein, a British psychoanalyst and Freud’s contemporary, viewed guilt as central to emotional development and to the infants’ realization of feelings of love and hate for its parents, which when internalized, led to a desire for reparation and the ability to see the other (mom and dad) as  separate people. As such, guilt is  a sign of emotional maturity and a feeling that signals awareness that one’s actions have an impact on others. Guilt is also associated with moral development, and has long been the emotion that many religions capitalize on. Yet the experience of guilt has many potential dynamic meanings. This post is about our experience of guilt, and the many things that it is about.

Many of my patients talk about their guilt regarding one thing or another – a lie, an affair, a meanness, an aggressive or hostile act- and while they all report feeling badly, even terrible about it, many of them do not really want to discuss it or have me position their guilt response within the context of their particular situation or history. My patients seem to feel that in attempting to do so, I am trying to rationalize their guilt away, or somehow relieve them of responsibility for their actions. Not so say I.

Responsibility is often associated with guilt. In fact it is inherent in the experience of guilt. When one takes responsibility for one’s actions, particularly if those actions have impacted negatively on another, one experiences guilt: The kind of feeling that starts in the pit of your stomach and gnaws away at you. Then perhaps an internal voice begins to say “that was not right” or “that was wrong” or “why did I do that?” Guilt has an audible voice that reverberates and is heard only by the guilty party. That voice is very likely an internalized chorus of parental and other authority voices, along with ours and the particular way that  we manage and talk to ourselves. While this is not a pleasant sensation, most of us can deal with it, particularly if it leads us to do something that allows us to acknowledge our actions and do something to right them. In fact, guilt often involves a desire to make amends and undo the offense.

The situation is quite different when the possibility for reparation does not exist. Then guilt becomes persecutory, haunting the person at every turn. This is because without the possibility of doing something that allows us to amend or atone for  the situation that was caused by our behavior we have to manage our feeling about it on our own, and come to terms with parts of ourselves that are not necessarily likeable but are nonetheless ours. When reparation is not possible we must deal with the part of ourselves that acts out of its own need, the self that wants, as well as the part of ourselves that can destroy another. Where reparation is not possible we are faced with our own destructive potential and must deal with it on our  own. This can be very difficult and often, very painful, particularly if it activates early, internalized interactions that remain laden with shame (which is often the case). At such times guilt partners up with shame in a deadly combination.

While guilt mobilizes us toward a reparative action, when that possibility is closed to us we are face to face with those behaviors or parts of ourselves that we most loathe, self states that have been banished over and over precisely because they could not be acknowledged and processed in our early relationships with our parents, leaving a residue of shame which is activated in other relationships. Because shame is implicitly a relational experience, it brings about a self-in-the eyes-of-the-other awareness, which becomes the focus for scorn and self-hate. A powerful one-two punch erupts from the shame/guilt combo, which calls forth experiences of deep shame around feelings of being bad/terrible/unlovable/despicable, etc., and makes it impossible to connect to other parts of the self which could help negotiate those feelings. In those moments of self-in-the-eyes-of-the-other awareness there is only badness and self-loathing, nothing positive can come of these feelings. In fact, they shut us down and isolate us from others.

So how do we get down with our bad selves?

How indeed.

Those of you that are readers of my post already know the answer. We need an other. Or many others. We need the potential emotional regulation that relationships to others offer us to help mediate the “badness” and remind us that we are much more than that.

Much more.

ON RECOGNITION – And the feeling of being known.

photo by T. coburnWhat does it mean to be known by another? To be recognized for who one is, warts and all?  The good with the bad and everything in between? I think we might be talking about the precondition for love, and about what it means to love another person, about the way we negotiate and make meaning with another, possibly forging a connection that can be deeply stabilizing to our sense of self.

Recognition is one of those ideas that captures something simple about what all of us need, yet much more difficult to find and experience. I am referring to a feeling that is universally sought by all, that feeling that another has seen you, really seen you, and understood the most basic parts of who you are. That person gets you, and you are left with a feeling of being known, a feeling so powerful that it translates into a sense that all is right with the world, and further, that all will be all right. Yes –recognition is what its all about, and we are all in search of it, sometimes, without knowing that we are. It may even trump love or be the actual definition and/or pre-condition for true love.

Really?

Uh huh. I think so.

In psychoanalysis, the notion of recognition came about during the feminist movement of the 1960’s and was coined as a term and elaborated by the psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin. Recognition involves a particular kind of identification with the other; I say a particular kind, because it is an identification that is based on one’s ability to identify with another while retaining our individuality and subjectivity and allowing them theirs. And this is not an easy thing to do when one is in a relationship of any kind. Most of us relate to others based on our particular needs and desires- the other(s) appeals to us because we think alike, like the same things, agree on important issues, look the way we like to look, etc. We identify with others narcissistically and this then becomes the basis for our relationship to them. But with recognition, something quite different is going on, something that many are unable to arrive at or sustain because it involves using their aggression to destroy the very thing that is wanted.  This is an idea that the great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott articulated as a necessary process in our psychological development. He spoke about our ability to destroy the other in fantasy, ruthlessly and based on our own needs, wants and aggression, as a necessary developmental skill that led us to the ability to form intimate relationships in mature life.   If the other actually survives our destruction of them- meaning that they continue to be who they have always been with us- it leads us to understand and recognize that the other is not subject to our (mental) control, but rather, a person in their own right. Benjamin takes up this idea and articulates it further: our destruction of the other establishes their subjectivity and helps to manifest ours. In this way destruction leads to a deeper connection because the other now becomes known as a subject with his or her own desires and autonomy, rather than our object. Thus recognition of the other brings us closer to knowing them for who they truly are, allowing us the possibility of being who we are on the way to intimacy.

Benjamin –who studied philosophy prior to training as a psychoanalyst- offers a solution to Hegel’s paradox by reformulating the relationship between destruction and survival,wherein destruction is a necessary part of becoming an autonomous being and leads to being seen and recognized as such. In the struggle for recognition all of us must take the risk of obliterating the other, of  being alone with our destructiveness, and of denying that the other is a subject with all our might, so that we can experience the realness of the others’ subjectivity and difference as well as our own. There is no hope for recognition without such destruction and survival. This dyadic tension between destruction and survival is at the heart of being known by another, and I would say, is at the heart of “true” love.

There is something about the feeling of being known that changes everything experientially. This is because recognition has a regulating effect: the fact that we feel understood and seen by another helps us to feel secure, safe, and emotionally balanced. All is well with us and all is well with the world. Recognition goes beyond verbal speech and actions and begins with early (think mother infant), non-verbal experiences in which something is shared with another person – some understanding of a feeling, a sense, a movement. Such implicit knowing that the mind of another is in sync with ours while remaining other constitutes the very magic of the connection that intersubectivity relies on. It is also the reason that we continue to search for it in our lives, and immediately respond and connect with it when we experience it with another.

So is it the basis for true love?

To the degree that recognition involves our ability to deal with our aggression and destructiveness in a way that allows the other, outside and  different to come into being as a subject instead of a preconceived other that we might require, perhaps it is the foundation for true love, in that it demands that we ongoingly negotiate differences and meaning in what Benjamin calls a space of “thirdness”, which necessarily involves mutual recognition. Where this ability is lacking, the space for negotiation  of  otherness collapses, along with the ability to see the other for who she or he is, destroying the possibility for intimate contact. Thus, many relationships are based on an idea of the other and of love, rather than the grounding that can come from the mutual recognition of difference and otherness.
All of us have a need to be recognized and have the capacity to recognize others, uneven as it may be. Such inconsistencies in our ability to recognize others, and the exploration of what keeps us from being able to do so, can be said to be one of the areas that psychoanalytic psychotherapy considers.

 

ON RESOLUTIONS – and the will to change.

v.ceccoli This is that time of year when everyone thinks about change and about the things in one’s life that need changing. The end of the year provides a time to take inventory of our lives, take stock of what we have done and what we have not. Resolutions abound, ranging from – losing weight, starting an exercise program, saving money, buying a house, reading more, going to church, quitting smoking, being kinder- you name it. Resolutions usually involve change, and change is usually associated with will power and the ability to do something differently.

As a noun, resolution has a number of meanings, and all of them are relevant to the process of change. Resolution as an intention involves resolve, the act of deciding to do something and doing it, as well as an aim, a plan and a commitment that is set forth with purpose and determination. Resolution as a motion involves a proposal or proposition that is then resolved through acceptance and implementation. Resolution as a behavioral attribute such as determination (resoluteness) has to do with firmness of purpose, steadfastness, staunchness, persistence, tenacity, and dedication. And finally, there is resolution as a solution, as an answer, an end, a settlement or a conclusion. Whew! No wonder so many struggle with resolutions at this time of year, they consist of complex interactions between a wish or goal (intention), the ability to make a decision and plan (motion), a stick-to-it-ness (behavior) and a solution (completion). To this complex mix I would add fantasy, and the particular coloration that it lends to what we believe will happen once we instituted our resolution.

And here is where the rub is.

Enveloped in our resolutions lie many of our wishes and fantasies, in the shape of our best selves. So if we read more, or exercise more, or (fill in your own blank here), we will become some much better version of who we are, perhaps an idealized version of who we are, and as such we will finally have what we want (again fill in your own blank here)- a better life, partnership, etc. You can see why resolutions are complicated things and also, why people often fail at them. While willpower is involved, it only gets one so far, and thereafter, it is our knowledge of our internal workings that determines our approach to change. Much of this has to do with self-acceptance, and our ability to get to know those parts of us that we least like and spend much of our time avoiding. After all, those are the ones that require changing right? The ones that resolutions try to reshape or altogether CHANGE so that our better self can live, if not happily ever after, then at least, less encumbered and content.

On this new years eve, full of promise and hope for what can be changed in our lives, I wish all of my readers the resolve to be all of themselves and to live as fully as possible.

Thank you for reading on….

ON MINDFULNESS – and minding your p’s and q’s.

Mindfulness is a term that gets used a lot these days, despite the fact that it has been around for centuries. Eastern thought, primarily Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, and meditative disciplines have always had the concept of mindfulness at their core. The idea of mindfulness has entered western ideas through the world of spirituality and meditation, as well as through disciplines like yoga. In psychology, the meaning of mindfulness has been equated with being conscious and thoughtful about one’s experience and actions, having nothing to do with spirituality. In the realm of the behavioral sciences, mindfulness has always had to do with mind, and the process of our subjective experience. Interestingly, when we take both Eastern and Western notions of the idea of mindfulnesss, they provide a bridge between our internal world and the external realities of the world, and as such,  a way to connect emotions, thoughts and actions.

Put simply, mindfulness is about living thoughtfully. But what goes into being thoughtful? In psychoanalysis we are fond of using the term consciousness, by which we mean our experience of being aware. And what about awareness? Where does that fit in the sphere of mindfulness?  So many words to describe one experience.   Awareness is part of being mindful, in the same way that being conscious is. Both words describe a process of bringing one’s attention inward, of looking at our feelings and thoughts and how they affect our behavior and actions. Awareness allows us to have a subjective sense of something that leads to knowing what it is. Being conscious and aware lead us to being mindful, to being able to think and consider options and choices, to being able to alter our behavior and thoughts- and here is the cherry- to being able to change our very neural structure. Yes really.

Eastern disciplines arrived at mindfulness through various philosophical teachings and meditative practices which continue to be valued because their practice changes the self at its core. In western thought we have moved closer to these practices and ideas not only through various forms of spirituality, but through the fields of psychology and neurobiology.  The relatively new science of interpersonal neurobiology has validated many psychoanalytic ideas, and tells us that nature and nurture are inevitably intertwined rather than independent from or merely interactive with each other. Intertwined. Woven into the very fabric of each other. Inseparable. We are what we experience because what we experience stimulates and shapes the development of our brain and nervous system. Our mind is both embodied and embedded in relationship. Our personal neurobiology is relationally determined. This not only means that our early interactions with primary caretakers are responsible for the shaping and development of our neuronal systems  and the way we respond to intimate relationships later in life, it also means that relationships (therapeutic or otherwise) are the primary crucible for development and potential change.

Think of it- we are born into a relational system made up of the mother/infant dyad and the interactions that take place between them. It is up to the primary caretaker to introduce the infant to the world and mediate their internal experience of it. It is the primary caretaker that “regulates” early experiences for the infant, and that regulation is based both on the caretakers own internal experience  and her interactions with the infant. It is this interpersonal attunement between mother and child that shapes the ability to self regulate, and in adulthood, it is the capacity to self regulate that leads to mindful living.

Remember the adage “mind your p’s and q’s”? It reminds one that we must pay attention. It reminds us that what we do, down to its most refined detail, has meaning, impact and consequences- not only for us, but very likely for others as well.  Mindfulness is about minding our p’s and q’s: It is about being able to look at what we do, think about what motivates our actions and consider how our behavior and actions impact others. It is a concept that incorporates both the “I” and the “us”, the individual and the community. Psychology and psychoanalysis have tended to use the terms mindfulness and consciousness to define the experience of self-observation, introspectiveness and self-awareness. But  mindfulness also includes an awareness of others as recipients of our actions and shapers of our experience.  Mindfulness is inherently a relational term because it speaks to the nature of inter-subjectivity.

 

ON MAKE-UP, MASKS AND KILLER SMILES.

Recently I posted a blog on the power of laughter and humor. I was writing about the  kind that makes your belly tremble and your chest heave. The kind that moves the neurobiology of your insides and translates into mood shifts on your outside. The REAL kind. Today’s post is about its opposite, what I call the killer smile, but not because of its potential beauty, or because of its ability to connect to joy, but because of its ability to hide all manner of emotional workings.  The killer smile pertains to a masked quality, something meant to hide and distract from the real. Think of the smile of the Joker in Batman, forever turned upward in a pantomime of joy and fun, while behind the mask nothing could be further from the truth.

Killer smiles are a problem, and not just to the people that wear them. While they are meant to protect the owner, they mess with  reality- for the self and for others. In their attempt to protect, killer smiles deceive. They contain a mixed signal (I am smiling but I am  upset) that makes the other’s intuition falter, essentially saying: What you feel and think about me is not what you see, are you sure that what you feel and think is right? Look again…and the smile gets wider. In its aim to protect the self, the killer smile disarms implicit knowing in others, and often in oneself. The repeated experience of masking emotional distress with its opposite- a joyful smile- unhinges internal experience from its relational context and isolates it into its own compartment, far away from the possibility of coming alive with another. Killer smiles wear the mask of dissociation.

People with killer smiles have had to learn to smile early in their life, usually in the face of severe adversity and emotional trauma. For them, smiling has become a way of protecting themselves and holding themselves together. It is almost as if the smile proclaims: “You can’t hurt me, what you do does not affect me in the least.” And for some time, this may even become true. Yet in my office, people with killer smiles often discover that to maintain that smile involves disconnecting from their own experience and feelings, relying instead on their social and interpersonal skills to navigate the world, like an actor on a stage. It is no surprise that often, people with killer smiles have very good social skills and can negotiate quite well interpersonally, yet they are at a loss when it comes to dealing with their feelings. They are well liked by others and seen as easygoing, yet they often feel “not known” and very lonely. Because killer smiles work so well socially, they are (unfortunately) continuously reinforced. But a killer smile is meant to “kill” the emotional experience and feelings that are attached to the relational situations that made it necessary to smile in order to survive and hold oneself together. The killer smile continues to act as a shield to feelings of connection, dependent, vulnerability, shame, and fear. It also kills the possibility of real relationships, which are based on mutual experience and emotional connection. The killer smile protects but isolates.

Smiling in the face of emotional pain, as in what I am calling a killer smile, becomes a mask over time. A mask that is so closely worn that it becomes a second skin, like an application of make up that rearranges the features so that they no longer represent one’s internal workings but instead act to create an impenetrable persona. Such make up becomes necessary on a daily basis, as a layer of protection. In my work as a psychoanalyst, I have found that the tighter the smile the more fragile the inside. Whereas real smiles are connected to the emotions that bring them about, usually a positive connection to another, safety, playfulness, joy, happiness and love, killer smiles are about maintaining internal balance by avoiding any emotion that might trigger a feeling of connection and bring about dependency, vulnerability and fear. In fact, while protecting their owner, killer smiles are inappropriate to many of the situations that they are used in. A patient of mine has called the killer smile “a mechanical muscle reflex that looks like a smile but it is not”.

Indeed.

When one begins to deconstruct the killer smile and work with what is behind it, the scaffolding that has been holding up the self falls away and fear sets in. The possibility of real connection begins at that moment, as well as the possibility of being met and recognized where one is most vulnerable. The place where reparation is most needed. If one is fortunate enough to be in a relationship that holds the self while allowing enough space to explore what is actually happening – as in what good therapy is all about, or what a good relationship can be about –  then the mask can be left behind and new ways of experiencing emotional connection can begin to emerge.  It takes time to retrain those facial muscles to respond to what is actually going on in the here and now,  and to feelings that elicit different outcomes. It takes time to develop connection to another and trust them to help navigate emotions that have held painful and even traumatic  histories.

But that is what it takes.

 

ON LAUGHTER : And the power of humor.

A good belly laugh can change the mood, tone and connection to an other in an instant. Teasing or joking with someone can invite them into a space to play with something in a different way. I have noticed that in my clinical practice, the ability to tease or joke with my patients about a topic which may bring up shame, anger, tension or an emotion which threatens to foreclose their ability to stay present, helps to open up a space in which we can both tackle something difficult differently. Of course,  this is dependent on many things that have become established in my relationship with them- we share a common language and an understanding and trust that has been built over time. It is the context of our relationship that allows room for spontaneity and the ability to play, tease and laugh about something that is also painful, shameful and filled with conflict. When both my patient and I can play and “joke” about difficult matters, a space opens up where it is possible to look and speak about something in a new way. It is almost as if fear, tension, and shame dissolve, and then we are two people laughing within human conflict, playing with possibilities together and experiencing emotions and meaning differently. So this post is about humor, and laughter, and their ability to disrupt negative states of mind and open up potential space.

There is not much in the psychoanalytic literature concerning laughter and humor. Freud wrote Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious early in his career, and although limited in its scope, it remains a favorite of mine. His theory was that jokes bore a resemblance to dreams in that they both operate by condensing meaning and substituting signs. For him, a seemingly trivial event like a joke gave voice to repressed meanings, usually aggressive and sexual in content. Social psychology has added a view of humor as an incongruent social concept that violates an accepted norm in society. In order for something to be humorous it must violate the cultural moral order, it must be transgressive in some way. Ever wondered what’s behind the remark “Only joking!” ?  At the very least it allows someone to say something under the guise of it not being true. Hmmm. Yes, Freud was onto something. So was J.K. Rowling when she made laughter the means to dissolve paralyzing fear through the spell Ridikulous in the Harry Potter books. She too, knew that laughter and humor run counter to tension and fear. Laughter is a powerful spell indeed.

Current research on laughter and humor tells us that they are separate things neurologically speaking -related but not synonymous. Humor is a cognitively driven process that may or may not lead to laughter, and laughter is a seizure like activity (!) that can come about through humor but also through something like tickling. What they do share is the ability to disrupt negative states of mind, at a neuro-biological level. Humor and laughter activate meso-limbic brain systems that are dopamine receptive – they activate the reward system in our brain that generates the chemicals responsible for wellbeing (natural opiates). Aha. You probably already knew that because you felt it the last time you had a good laugh. But there is more.

It turns out that humor might be a truly unique human function (unlike laughter). Humor involves a complex assembly of specific neural pathways, which activate brain regions associated with abstract thinking, social perception, symbol recognition, emotional attunement and language. Many of these involve right hemispheric functions, which interpret emotional material (both linguistic and implicit), and engage the comprehension and expression of emotion(s) that is instrumental in attending to environmental cues for survival. Humor seems to initiate an inter-hemispheric dialogue that involves procedural memory, implicit knowledge, attunement to social cues and context, and even implicates mirror neurons.  In fact, humor may turn out to be our most cognitive complex attribute, in that it utilizes multiple layers and levels of brain power and structure.

Laughter on the other hand, turns out to be what scientists call a fixed action pattern– a reflexive action that can occur without conscious appreciation of all the causal factors involved. Laughter and smiling occur within the first year of life and are triggered by physical sensations and stimuli unrelated to the cognitive intricacies of humor. There are those who consider the laughter involved in peek-a-boo games as an embryonic form of humor, involving a sense of mastery that continues to develop(in relationship)  as a child grows. By the time a child reaches school age, her/his sense of humor resembles that of an adult, albeit without the richness of experience or breath of linguistic ability.

The power of humor lies in its ability not only to use words as complex symbols of emotion and meaning, but in its re-contextualization of meaning through relational negotiations of intricate self-other impressions that help navigate difficult feelings and potentially contentious situations. Returning to Freud and to psychoanalytic notions of the unconscious, humor and laughter release psychic tension associated with negative feelings and emotions. Humor and laughter are pleasureable, healthy anxiety reducing behaviors. According to current research, laughter and humor also facilitate cooperation between people by providing information on the empathy and sympathy levels of both participants. Laughter is a response that signals that one is both ready and able to cooperate. Now we are talking!

Humor creates a social bond between people on the basis of mutual understanding of many complicated social and cultural and personal cues. Humor is contextual. It is relationally driven and elaborated. It is spontaneous and playful. It is the stuff of magic, which can shift the self from one state to another through play, creativity, spontaneity and relationship.

 

 

 

On Beginning Anew

photo F. SconocchiaIt is the end of another year and beyond the celebrations and hoopla of the holiday season, it is a time to take stock of our lives, and for many, a time to think of what needs changing. The New Year often brings resolutions, and those resolutions are based on a reckoning with ones desires and expectations, ones hopes and dreams.  The New Year brings the promise of possibility, of starting anew.

In my office, I see many patients struggle with what is to come, particularly around the holiday season. This end-of-the-year holiday has been imbued with such significance that it often forecloses the possibility of thinking of what has been in our lives and what is to be. Yet there is something important to ends and beginnings, and to the rhythm of time and its’ movement through our lives. Important enough to celebrate it, or at the very least take note of it. Important enough to invite us to consider our lives and the choices that have shaped it – at least for the past year. Taking stock of what we do is something that many of us do throughout the year, yet at this point in time we are collectively called to think about what has been and usher in new possibilities.

Times gone by, the meaning of the Scottish song Auld Lang Syne, asks us to “take a cup of kindness yet” to remember old friends and past times. It is a song that encompasses the sadness and joys of our lives, and that asks us to continue and renew. Renewal is at the center of the New Year, as well as the letting go of grudges, misunderstandings and problems. The end of the year and the tic-toc of the midnight clock offers us all a chance to reconsider and do differently.

Perhaps this is why this particular holiday is celebrated across the world. In Scotland, there is Hogmanay and the tradition of the “first foots” who, shortly after midnight bring along a gift of shortbread or coal. After the New Year is rung in, the Scots consider it fortunate if a tall, dark and handsome stranger enters yours house. In Japan, there is Oshogatsu, the most important holiday of the year because it is a feast of renewal. The gongs of Buddhist temples strike 108 times at midnight on December 31st, presumably to expel human weakness. The Spanish eat 12 grapes on New Years Eve to secure 12 happy months in the New Year. The Italians eat lentils and sausages on New Years Eve to insure happiness and good fortune. The Dutch make bonfires out of their Christmas trees to purge the old and welcome the new. In Greece, vassilopitta is served and whoever finds the coin baked inside the cake is assured ongoing luck in the New Year. And here, at home in New York City, thousands gather to watch the ball make its one minute descent in Times Square- a tradition that began in 1907.

We all celebrate beginnings and the possibility of renewal, it is the endings that are more difficult, and yet beginnings do not happen without them. Endings inevitably include loss, and loss involves letting go, and here is the rub: one must let go to move forward. Beginnings do not begin until something ends. Every year at this time one more year comes to pass and another begins.

So here’s to the New Year and all that it may hold for you, and to letting go so that you may start anew.