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 FOOD NARRATIVES

“If food is treated as a code, the messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed both within and outside a community. The decoded message is about hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries, and transactions across the boundaries” Mary Douglas

“Since we must eat to live, let’s learn to do it intelligently and gracefully, and let’s try to understand its relationship to the other hungers of the world”   M. F. K. Fisher

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet at last, ‘what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’ / ‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Pooh. / ‘What do you say, Piglet?’  / ‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’ said Piglet.  / Pooh nodded thoughtfully.  / ‘It’s the same thing,’ he said.”  A. A. Milne

“A wise bear always keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat in case of emergency”   Michael Bond

We all have a food story. It has come about through our experiences across time with food and eating and our sense of self and identity. The elemental nature of food and its connection with the our body, health and belonging create a relationship between food, eating and identity that is deep and often entangled with rules and control, fear, shame, guilt and trauma. Our food narrative is construed from childhood memories of meals and foods, and also, messages and stories about food and eating that permeate our environment and culture. When looking at our food narratives we might realise that they are complex and multi-layered. We might come to see that the creation and maintenance of these stories are found in the intersection of beliefs, feelings, emotions, personality, childhood, family, national identity, religion, health, economics, and so on. Therefore, shedding light on or changing our food narrative will most likely require sifting through some of these areas.

A food narrative might include or focus on questions like:

What is your food story? / What role does food play in your family and friends gatherings? What is your relationship with food preparation and eating? / What are the dynamics around the table? / How much do your particular culture and the media more broadly influence what you eat? / Are there recipes that are particularly significant to you and why? / How does food affect other aspects of your life? / What are some early and later significant memories involving food and / or mealtimes? / Are there any traumatic incidents related to food or eating? Do you regularly use food as a coping mechanism?

Our very personal food narrative is embedded within broader discourse and narratives related to food. At the moment there’s also a narrative being told about the world’s food system, and it varies according to the source or context it emanates from. There is a lot of talk around the topic of the sustainability of our current food systems. It concerns the anticipated growth of the world’s population in the near future, which will put substantial demands on the planet’s food supply. Inevitably, once we become aware of this global issue it too enters our food narrative either explicitly or implicitly, depending on our circumstances, sensitivity to global issues and other factors.

Food practices and narratives also connect people psychologically, socially, emotionally, historically. Family food stories repeated over time become long lasting food narratives and more collective food narratives repeated become cultural myths. Both need to be re-examined because they don’t necessarily reflect current truths or historical realities.  Also, when we are more mindful and reflective of food and eating we may discover that we also carry a different implicit food narrative, and also, assign meaning to particular foods, mealtime rituals and cooking that we may not have been aware of previously. It is also interesting to explore the different food stories with people in our close relationships or the people we often eat with. For instance, my husband and I relate differently to food and our narratives around it have at times differed significantly, and this has become more explicit as I have embraced a more mindful and meditative approach to life. Food has widely been used as signs and social codes because it is a major part of our daily lives, not only for our survival, but also because it plays a great social role, is relevant to group membership and can be used as an identity marker.

Actually, there may be no area in our human life that is not influenced by food. Roland Barthes suggests that through food we understand our relationship to culture and that food informs our cultural identity, enables participation in a (regional or national) collective, informs gendered behaviour, and much more. The stories we associate with food and eating are also converted through behaviour and discourse into our cultural myths around food. These narratives also function as a rhetoric force used to persuade or influence others, which often occurs below conscious awareness. Because food narratives are woven into our daily practices they can easily become mechanisms that both inform and control our behaviours and choices. The rhetorical manipulation of food narratives occurs in many contexts and can serve as a device to influence people’s behaviour, consumption trends and choices.

In an essay I was reading about food and related narratives in the public space the writer proposes some basic questions that we can ask to discern messages communicated through food narratives.

What are the messages? / Who sends them? / Who is the recipient of these narratives? / What might the unstated agenda be?

Some additional questions we could ask might be:

What are the implicit messages? / What are the consequences of these messages in particular life arenas? or How might they be influencing our behaviours?

Once we engage more mindfully with food and eating and start to recognise our own personal food narratives, but also, those circulating in the broader societal environment, then as individuals we can become more aware of our implicit material to heal or change what is not serving us optimally at the moment, but also as consumers and citizens to increase our awareness of the politics of food narratives. It makes sense that since food occupies a large part of our existence it might be useful to reflect on it more critically. After all, food implies individual and cultural values, and food narratives are highly persuasive; therefore, not being reflective about this makes us vulnerable to manipulation. In the public domain food narratives work ideologically to maintain social structures and cultural systems. In a dissertation paper I was reading recently it is argued that food narratives are part of the cultural regimens that train citizens, nurture a sense of belonging and reinforce national concepts of identity and citizenry. For instance, when groups of people make similar connections to the same foods, they then have a shared food narrative. But when this is accomplished without the conscious participation of the citizens themselves, which practically means that consumers are not reflective about this process of persuasion then they are vulnerable to being manipulated. And we are all more susceptible to the covert persuasive potential of food narratives because generally food is a participatory, pleasurable, and mostly non-reflective practice. Food narratives can establish meaningful connections between voters and their regional or national identity. A certain cuisine or certain foods and dishes can help people define themselves, but this self-definition can also lead to the creation of insiders and outsiders.

As with all things engaging with food, cooking and eating in a more reflective or mindful manner can reveal a lot to us about our past, preferences, traumas, outdated or false beliefs, coping strategies, health, relationships, mealtime dynamics, the needs of our bodies for nourishment and self care, influences and messages we might not be aware of, the broader politics of food and how food narratives are used to persuade us in the public sphere. Our choice of food [when we actually have choice, because for millions of people access to any kind of food is the only priority] and ways we eat reveals a lot about us from our early years, background and culture to our social status and values. When food is shared with others it reveals qualities of the relationship we have with them. Edward Espe Brown says: “Over many years, I found that if I could relate with food with warmhearted compassion, eventually I could learn to treat people with love and respect, and I could touch my own wounds with tenderness.” More generally, leading a reflective life and seeking knowledge is important and it allows for more agency, self determination and freedom. Engaging with food more mindfully can nudge us towards healthier choices. It can additionally bring forward a sense of gratitude and a heightened awareness of the need to alleviate hunger for everyone on this planet.

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Jane Goodall

“Is this how it happens? We do what our friends do in order to be one of the group, to be accepted? Of course there are always some strong-minded individuals who have the courage of their convictions, who stand out against the group’s accepted norms of behavior. But it is probably the case that inappropriate or morally wrong behaviors are more often changed by the influence of outsiders, looking with different eyes, from different backgrounds.”  Jane Goodall

“It’s not real connection. All it is – I call it common enemy intimacy, the only thing we have in common is we hate the same people….” Brene Brown

Today’s post has come about by my watching and reading things about and by British primatologist, anthropologist, ethologist, conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace, Jane Goodall. While engaging with the material I made some ink drawings using photos I found on the net.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll mostly be referring to her book: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999), which I chose to read because of its memoir aspect and exploration of hope simultaneously,  even though it’s not her most recent one. This book takes us through the different phases of her personal and professional life and helps us understand how she has combined her spirituality and religious beliefs with science. I am aware that Goodall was 65 when she wrote this book twenty years ago and that environmental issues have deepened and increased, and technology and knowledge on evolution and other scientific matters have expanded greatly, and yet this book seems very relevant at the moment with so much going on in terms of the environment and loss of habitat for so many species. In her chapter Hope after referring to all the heart-wrenching global strife and conflict of that time she states her reasons for hope. She writes: “Yet despite this, I do have hope for the future… But only if changes are made in the way we live— and made quickly. We do not, I think, have much time. And these changes must be made by us, you and me. If we go on leaving it to others, shipwreck is inevitable. My reasons for hope are fourfold: (1) the human brain; (2) the resilience of nature; (3) the energy and enthusiasm that is found or can be kindled among young people worldwide; and (4) the indomitable human spirit.

She begins her book by wondering on whether to start her memoir at the point where she exited her mother’s womb and let out her first cry as oxygen entered her lungs or go back to her ancestors responsible for her genes or maybe with the historical and social events that shaped Europe in the 1930s and molded Hitler, Churchill and Stalin or maybe further back to the first truly human creature that was born of ape-men parentage and even further back to the first little warm-blooded mammal or to the first speck of life on planet earth, as a result of some divine purpose or cosmic accident. During the war she lived at her maternal grandmother’s house with her mother, sister, grandmother, aunts and people that the war had left homeless by the chaos and destruction in Europe. She writes that “all households were asked to find space for such unfortunates. And so the Birches, at that time, was an active place, filled with people of all sorts.” This took me back to war stories told to me when I was young by my mother. Her family lived in a village that served as the seaside resort for people from the nearby city and during the war some city dwellers were taken in by the people in the village. The war was what first brought home to Goodall that although her life was still filled with love and basic security, there was also another kind of world, “a harsh and bitter world of pain and death and human cruelty.” The Holocaust unsettled her even more deeply and inevitably questions arose. How could people behave that way? How could anyone endure and survive such torture?

Later on in the book when she talks about her upbringing Goodall writes “If only everyone could be blessed with such a childhood, such a family. How different, I believe, the world would be. As I look back over the sixty-five years of my life to date it seems that things just fell into place. I had a mother who not only tolerated but also encouraged my passion for nature and animals and who, even more important, taught me to believe in myself.” She writes she was provided with a mother wise enough to nurture and encourage her love of living things and her passion for knowledge: “I dreamed about nature, animals, and the magic of far-off wild and remote places. Our house was filled with bookshelves and the books spilled out onto the floor. When it was wet and cold, I would curl up in a chair by the fire and lose myself in other worlds.” Her love of primates might also have been sparked by a gift from her father when she was a toddler. Jubilee, a stuffed chimpanzee toy created to celebrate the birth of the first chimpanzee infant born at the London Zoo, became her most cherished possession. Looking back at her first voyage to Africa in her twenties she says: “Now the Kenya Castle [the ship] was carrying me forward into a new world, where the lessons would be taught by life itself in all its wonderful, sometimes tragic, often harsh, inconsistencies and surprises. And I could move into this new era without fear, for I was equipped, by my family and by my education, with sound moral values and an independent, free-thinking mind.”

The book also traces her spiritual and philosophical influences and questions around sensationalism and other ideas like endurance and torture. Questions like: Would I have the strength of mind to endure what Jesus and the martyrs suffered? How would I have withstood torture in the war? Could I have kept quiet to protect those I loved, those in my group, if nails pierced my flesh, if I was beaten, if I was on the rack? She writes: “I didn’t think I could endure, and I spent hours agonizing about it. Would I sacrifice my life for what I believed? There was, of course, no way I could be sure. To paraphrase what Eleanor Roosevelt once said: people are like tea bags; you never know how strong they are until you dump them in boiling water.” This part of the book also took me back to my own questions about serious life issues as I was growing up questioning many ideas floating around in my broader environment. During adolescence I had also started reading about the more recent history of Greece, with its darker pages of civil war, exile, persecution and torture. I too wondered if I had it in me to withstand torture to remain true to what I believed and what the human limits were and what war, trauma, imprisonment, exile and other human cruelties did to people.

A topic Goodall analyzes more extensively in the book over several chapters is aggression. She focuses more on the evolutionary perspective. During the first ten years of her study she had believed, as mentioned previously that the Gombe chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather nicer than human beings. She had observed aggression sometimes for seemingly trivial reasons, but for the most part she had found that aggression within the community is more bluster and threat than fierce fighting. Her study of them had shown that mostly relationships between chimps of a community are relaxed and friendly with frequent expressions of caring, helping, compassion, altruism, and most definitely a form of love. Chimpanzees are also intensely physical. When friends meet they may embrace and kiss each other. When they are fearful they reach out to touch each other, they pat each other, hold hands and engage in social grooming, and ties between family members are strong and enduring, and not just between mothers and their offspring, but also between siblings. They also adopt orphaned youngsters, and this behaviour has not only been observed in females, but males, as well. Some of these heart-warming stories of the chimpanzees that Goodall studied are found in her illustrated book With Love.

Then suddenly they found that chimpanzees had a dark side to their nature and they could be brutal. Goodall writes that at the time part of the scientific world wanted to remain in denial of this unpleasant fact. It was also the time of the nature versus nurture debate. There were those who vehemently believed that aggression was innate, coded in our genes; and those who held that a human infant came into the world like a blank sheet of paper upon which the events that occurred during its life would be etched and that this would determine the child’s adult behavior. She claims that while warfare in its typical human form is a cultural development, certain pre-adaptations must have existed in our earliest ancestors to permit its emergence. The most crucial of these adaptations would have included cooperative group living, hunting skills, territoriality, and the use of weapons. There would also need to have been an inherent fear of strangers, expressed by aggressive attacks.

Also, chimps like humans have a strong predisposition to act aggressively in certain contexts— jealousy, competition for food or sex or territory, fear, revenge, and so on. Their study had shown that the Gombe chimpanzees possessed these qualities. They were territorial and not only did they defend their territory, they also sometimes enlarged it at the expense of a weaker neighbor. Moving on to humans she writes that one of the most significant facts established about human behavior, as it relates to warfare and other acts of violence against conspecifics, is that cultural evolution permits the development of pseudospeciation. Pseudospeciation or cultural speciation, which was a new word for me, which simply means the transmission of individually acquired behavior from one generation to the next within a particular group. Over time this leads to the collective culture (the customs and traditions) of that group. It also means that the members of one group (the in-group) may not only see themselves as different from members of another group (the out-group), but also behave in different ways to group and non-group individuals.  When this intensifies it leads to the dehumanizing of out-group members, so that they may come to be regarded almost as members of a different species. This frees group members from the inhibitions and social sanctions that operate within the group, and enables them to direct acts toward “those others” which would not be tolerated within the group. Slavery and torture at one end of the scale, ridicule and ostracism at the other. Something similar was observed among chimps.  For instance, the Kahama chimps were treated as though they were prey animals, in other words, they were thoroughly “de-chimpized.”

Unfortunately, cultural speciation has become highly developed in human societies around the world. Our tendency to form select in-groups from which we exclude those who do not share our ethnic background, socioeconomic position, political persuasions, religious beliefs, and so on, is one of the major causes of war, rioting, gang violence, and other kinds of conflict. Jane Goodall writes that “cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth…. Jesus of Nazareth had been very sensitive to the perils of in-grouping. Throughout his life he had attempted to expand the circle of his compassion to include people of all races, creeds, and social classes…..” She further emphasized how it had hindered freedom of thought and how it was a barrier to world peace.  She claims that although there’s no harm in being part of a group because it can give us comfort & provide us with an inner circle of friends, it becomes dangerous once “we draw a sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.”

In some respects, human aggressive behavior is unique because even though it seems that chimpanzees have some awareness of the pain they inflict on their victims, they are surely not capable of cruelty in the human sense. Only we humans inflict physical and mental pain on living creatures deliberately and even more because we are aware of the suffering involved. But, it is also true that more than any other creature we are able or can learn to control our darker instincts.  Goodall writes: “And are not the caring and altruistic aspects of human nature equally part of our primate heredity? What, if anything, I wondered, could our study of chimpanzees tell us about the roots of love … and whilst our biological nature and instincts can hardly be denied, we are, and have been for thousands of years, caught up in cultural evolution as well…. Are we, forever, to be torn in two different directions, cruel in one instance, kind the next?  Or do we have the ability to control these tendencies, choosing the direction we wish to go?”…… “…if chimpanzees can control their aggressive tendencies, and diffuse the situation when things get out of hand, so can we. And herein, perhaps, was the hope for our future: we really do have the ability to override our genetic heritage. …. Our brains are sufficiently sophisticated; it’s a question of whether or not we really want to control our instincts.”

We can support each other to cultivate different ways of being, and as I have referred in many previous posts, science has shown that we are wired to be kind and compassionate and these are more beneficial states to rest in both for our physiology and emotional health, but also, for others. Goodall believes that the seeds needed to develop a compassionate and moral society are in us as human potential. She also notes that as a species we have come a long way in a very short time, and the fact that our species developed spoken language has enabled us to develop sophisticated moral, ethical codes of behavior. And this happened in all parts of the\world in all cultures by all peoples. She quotes Pierre Lecomte du Noüy ,  French biophysicist and philosopher, who as early on as 1937, stated that humans, having slowly and against all odds arrived and survived on planet earth, were in the process of acquiring the moral attributes that would enable us to become increasingly less aggressive and war-like and more caring and compassionate. This, he felt, was our ultimate destiny, the raison d’être for the human species.

In the book there’s also a chapter on unethical by today’s standards scientific experimentations on animals, in which Goodall writes about some pretty harrowing stories of chimps in laboratories. She also refers to the fact that wild animals kept in captivity or as pets often cannot adapt to their wild habitats. This reminded me of the novel, Jennie, by Douglas Preston about a chimpanzee, the species that shares 98+ % of our DNA, which I must have read about 25 years ago or more. The novel is based on scientific findings and research at the time. So in this story a scientist encounters an orphaned baby chimpanzee while he’s on a research trip in Africa. He decides to bring the ape back to Boston and raise her alongside his own two young children as a kind of scientific experiment. Jennie believes herself to be human. She rides a tricycle, fights over the television with her siblings, wears clothes, communicates in American Sign Language and shows signs of grief over the death of her pet cat. Above all, she bonds with the family. All is well until she reaches adolescence…. The story is told from the different points of view of those closest to Jennie. The book asks the question: What does it really mean to be human?

Towards the end there’s a poignant passage in the novel that contains part of the farewell speech at Jennie’s burial after she has committed suicide banging her head against the bars of her small cage at the sanctuary she’s been taken after having been raised like a human within her human family. Sandy, her human brother, whom Jennie had created a deep bond is saying farewell to her.

“It is a great irony. With all these experiments they did, they almost managed to eliminate any difference between human and animal. The only thing they didn’t count on was Jennie’s ability to grasp the idea of ​​death……… I made the arrangements for the ceremony. I chose an excerpt from “Farewell to Arms”, which was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager, and I memorized it, it is a book that deals with death ……. I’m not as crazy about Hemingway as I used to be, but I always liked this quote… .. Listen to what he says: “If people bring so much courage to the world that this world has to kill them in order to crush them, then of course it kills them. The law crushes each and all of us, but some become stronger at the wounded / broken places. But those it cannot crush, it kills. It kills the good ones and the most tender and the bravest, without discrimination.” That’s what Jennie was like. Good, tender and above all brave. She wanted to be a free human being or nothing. Without compromises.…… She was never going to accept being a caged animal or the mate of some chimpanzee on an island. Her death had courtesy and beauty. And it taught me a lesson: I will not let people crush me. And when I leave here I will have learned to carry my freedom in my heart …… ”

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Continued from 30/9/2021 post

Misconceptions and the possibility of change

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly” Henri Bergson

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”  George Bernard Shaw

“As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself. But since nobody seems to know what to do, it might be worth while, for each of us, to ask himself whether by any chance his or her unconscious may know something that will help us…” (From Man and His Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung, 2012)

One common misconception is whether people can actually change in adulthood. The potential of transformation and change is usually there and perhaps the most important question to ask is how to support this possibility in ourselves and others. Research has shown that through various modalities and processes people can heal from trauma or decrease post traumatic effects, and also, adopt new behaviours and ways of thinking and being. People can also move through grief and make new meaning of deep losses, and also, move beyond bad habits and even more entrenched addictions. Through environmental changes, particular interventions and internalization of positive experiences more lasting changes can take place as positive and resilient states of being can turn to traits.

We also now know that neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s capacity to transform itself physically, continues throughout our lifespan and does not become fixed after adolescence as was previously thought. This allows for changes to take place throughout our lifespan. Paul Bach-y-Rita’s early research showed that in cases of brain injury or loss of capacities the brain has the potential to re-organise itself. It has since been found that the brain is capable of massive rewiring in response to trauma, disease and new learning.  Another well known study conducted by neuroscientist, Eleanor Mcguire, that measured the gray matter of London taxi drivers before and after their license exams found that their hippocampus had grown significantly after learning to navigate through the thousands of winding streets in London. Scientists have also found that we can cultivate desirable traits. Similarly, meditative practices have been found to create changes in the brain. Sara Lazar, psychiatry professor and researcher, measured the brain cell volume of the amygdala of people before and after a two-month mindfulness meditation course and found that it had decreased in size, which correlated with the participants’ reports of experiencing less stress. In relation to bad habits and addictions, Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, who has studied addiction, suggests that the practice of mindfulness can help people understand the mechanisms of habits and addictions and interrupt them. Our brain is wired to move away from unpleasant sensations and emotions and seek distractions in the form of substances, food, relationships and activities. Very often we do detrimental things to ourselves and others like smoking, over-eating, drinking, abusing substances, gambling or behaving abusively or recklessly, without being fully aware of the driving or underlying, unconscious forces. By cultivating interest and curiosity through being mindful about these experiences we can more easily deal with addictions or break free from bad habits.

Another misconception that one frequently comes across is that without pain we cannot learn or grow. However, this prevailing theory of no pain, no gain justifies socio-economic and political systems that normalize aggressive competition, misery and injustice and shifts responsibility to the individual sphere alone, and in some sense, removes accountability in terms of how people behave in social contexts and what people are allowed to do to others. And we could probably trace its roots back to different cultural and religious traditions.  On the podcast Forrest Hanson says that it is wise when encountering statements or theories along these lines to dig into the cultural narratives or agendas that the view is pushing to understand what is being tacitly endorsed. At this point I should say that there can definitely be post traumatic growth and there are perhaps certain insights that we may not easily reach without deep loss, like getting to know the depths of our psyche or the breadth of our resilience. But this growth comes after processing and coming out on the other side of adversity, pain and loss, and it is actually, the result of the exploration, healing and meaning making process rather than the trauma or loss in itself, because it only comes about after engaging in this process, otherwise it remains loss or damage. However, Rick Hanson notes that one question we should always ask is whether we could have grown psychologically, become wiser or freed human potential without trauma, pain or punishment. For instance, punishment in childhood might build a certain behaviour, but at what cost? Research has decisively shown that physical punishment in childhood has similar effects to other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

We shouldn’t forget that across the globe for most people a lot of their physical pains, traumas, oppression and losses will not bring any gains nor will they have the opportunity to take part in therapeutic processes that could support growth and transformation or sublimation of their expereinces into something positive. Sometimes sublimation might actually be the mere perseverance a person displays to keep on going. We are as a species inherently vulnerable, we get sick, we lose people and things, we get mistreated and oppressed, we age and we eventually die. And the world is not a rose garden. There is a lot of injustice, cruelty and aggression, stifled creativity and potential, but being resilient and resourced can support one in finding or fighting for justice, kindness, peace, compassion, creativity and a better life. So, we could say that resources like good educational and therapeutic contexts are those that can arm people with the confidence and tools to both seek and create the good in an imperfect world and to recover from adversity. Concerning this kind of support Joanne Greenberg writes in her novel, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, “I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice […] and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is so that you can be free to fight for all of those things.”

We also know that the development of psychological inner resources is mostly gained through frequent positive and rewarding experiences. Rick Hanson, PhD, suggests that the primary path to growth is through having enjoyable, meaningful experiences of the resources that we want to grow. Many of us would not imagine putting our children through suffering to foster resilience and other positive qualities in them or locking their potential through trauma and negative messaging so as to create opportunities for growth through pain later on. Nurturing authenticity and positive reinforcement seem to be more productive and less traumatic strategies. And in any case, nobody goes through life unscathed and life includes hardships and uncertainty and loss to some extent for everyone, so there is no need to endorse theories like no pain, no gain or that strong people heal and recover alone. One of my favourite actresses, Liv Ullmann, says: “Nobody is one block of harmony. We are all afraid of something, or feel limited in something. We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked to each other, not just pitter patter but real talk. We shouldn’t be afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too. It’s so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.” An attuned other that has the capacity to listen deeply, without any hidden agendas other than the facilitation of growth in the other can make a difference, assist in recovery and growth, and also, accelerate the journey through providing tools, guidance and insights. Through therapeutic processes we can unburden ourselves from baggage we might otherwise carry to our graves with all the accompanying difficulties or suffering. Just briefly looking at our human history reveals so much collective senseless violence and trauma. One reason for this ongoing strife is that what we don’t face or heal can get projected or inflicted upon others.

So, to come to the theme of good therapy, on the first podcasts Rick Hanson suggests that “sometimes it’s useful to go to someone who does not have a vested interest in any particular outcome, who is constrained by many, many professional regulations and standards, and also has been trained in a variety of skills”. I would add that it is essential for the providers of therapy and counseling services to have also done their own inner work and healing, in order to become aware of their own baggage and trigger points, and to be better able to discern when they are in the present and when they might get hijacked by their own experiences, interests, prejudices and less than optimal power dynamics. Also, most training programmes require completion of a certain amount of therapy. Therapy professions are one of the fields of work where one of the most important tools at your disposal is your own self-awareness. Integrity is another big factor, as well as, being open to new learning and new ways of viewing and proceeding with things. Good therapeutic contexts should involve psychoeducation, be trauma informed, facilitate small awakenings, and not become processes of further burying material, misinformation or re-traumatisation.  Above all, it should be a co-constructive growth experience and a safe container.

It is suggested on the podcast that in good therapeutic contexts “the scab isn’t ripped off the wound” and that the initial phase needs to include appreciation of the value of the defenses a person may have used to come so far. Then one can move on to explore  the costs of these adaptations and defenses and better ways of doing things. Rick Hanson claims that good therapy resources people first, before starting to take a look, a little at a time, at what might be behind a particular door or in the basement of the mind, and that ripping off the scab from the wound would be a little like going to a body worker or a masseur that just went too deep, too fast. This would be unskillful and counterproductive.  An example that comes to mind is like having one’s tooth extracted without the adequate amount of anaesthesia. When working with trauma we need to work on building resilience and move back and forth between states of constriction and expansion like swimming underwater and coming up again to get some air.

In his book, In an Unspoken Voice, Peter Levine, PhD, describes the process of pendulation, a back-and-forth movement between two different states of contraction (e.g. anger, pain) and expansion (e.g. calm). Summarily, pendulation involves finding an “opposite” sensation located in a particular area of the body or posture or small movement, which he calls “little islands of safety” and which are associated with feeling more powerful and fluid and less frozen or helpless. Levine writes: “When enough of these little islands are found and felt, they can be linked into a growing landmass, capable of withstanding the raging storms of trauma. Choice and even pleasure become a possibility with this growing stability as new synaptic connections are formed and strengthened. One gradually learns to shift one’s awareness between regions of relative ease and those of discomfort and distress. This shifting evokes one of the most important reconnections to the body’s innate wisdom: the experience of pendulation, the body’s natural restorative rhythm of contraction and expansion that tells us that whatever is felt is time-limited … Pendulation carries all living creatures through difficult sensations and emotions. What’s more, it requires no effort; it is wholly innate…….. While trauma is about being frozen or stuck, pendulation is about the innate organismic rhythm of contraction and expansion.”