The stories we tell ourselves
Not surprisingly to the reader, I have this morning downloaded and listened to this week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippett. This week Mrs. Tippett is talking with Kevin Kling about “The Losses and Laughter We Grow Into. (Recorded March 15, 2012)
As a counselor/psychotherapist and as a human being living my own story, I am often invited to explore with individuals and families the story they have been telling themselves and the possibility of allowing themselves a new story.
Kevin Kling, the story teller, poet and wise man was born with his left arm disabled and shorter than his right. In his forties he had a motorcycle accident and lost the use of his right arm. In the process of healing (not curing as he is quick to point out) a therapist suggests that he tell the story of the accident, but give it a different ending. The ending he had been giving himself was apparently one of fear, anger, regret, and possibly hopelessness (my words for what he was feeling). When he gave himself a different ending he was essentially allowing himself, as he later says in his poem, “Tickled Pink,” “a new dance. A Dance of Pink.” One story is that the accident did happen. He did lose the use of his right arm. He does have to learn to function differently. He will not be able to do some of the things he did prior to the accident. That is the truth. It is true he has to learn to use the voice recognition software or dictate and hire a transcriber if he wants to write. It is true that doing everyday tasks which he had formerly learned to do with one good arm and one disabled arm may now require assistance. If he wants independence he may now take public transportation unless, of course, he can hire a driver. How he eats, sleeps, makes love, bathes, writes, and moves about in the world will be different.
It is normal when we face such changes in our lives for we humans to become discouraged, even angry, and to focus on what we cannot do or what we cannot do in the same way we used to be able to. The story we may tell ourselves is that our useful life is over. We may even tell ourselves that life is not worth living if we have to live as an even more disabled person.
By suggesting that Mr. Kling give the accident a different ending, the therapist helped him see that we are in charge of our healing story. Even though the new accident story was a lie, he now had the possibility of other new stories.
To a large extent, if we live long enough, we all will face increasingly limitations and even disabilities. We may develop arthritis or hearing and sight problems. We may not be able to safely drive a car. We may function better in an assisted living setting or even a nursing home situation. We may respond by:
· Telling ourselves nothing has changed and challenging everyone in our life to pretend as if all is the same, while we burden them with responsibility for taking care of us.
· Sinking into depression and hopelessness.
· Wearing our Job costume and ask, “Why me?”
· Hiding behind anger and punishing ourselves and others.
· Exploring the benefits or positives of this new stage of or lives.
Only the last option will allow us to heal. Healing is giving ourselves a new dance – a new story. It is the opportunity to live as the person we now are rather than waiting to finish the process of dying which could take years. When the AIDS epidemic began to affect a significant number of people and there were no effective treatments, the story was that people were dying with AIDS. Someone decided to introduce a new story line. The new story line was to suggest that we began to think of ourselves and our friends as living with AIDS. That was a hugely important paradigm shift. We were going to live until we died rather than dying day by day until the act of dying was completed.
When working with combat soldiers experiencing PTSD, the therapist might suggest that they first share the story of the pain, the heartache and the overall gruesome tragedy they have lived through. One has to face the true story. This happened. This, however, is not or does not have to be the end of the story or the only story. Some of those same people have then gone on to create music, plays, sculptures and paintings. Some have become counselors who help other returning veterans explore ways using their experience to provide comfort and new dreams/stories.
Mr. Kling says that he shares both his tears and his laughter more in his new dance. He has become part of a theater group composed of performers with disabilities. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are performers who know or admit they have disabilities. We all have disabilities or limitations. Some are obvious and some not so obviously. His life is both more expanded and more limited than it was prior to his accident. But then, even without the accident, his life dance would be different today than it was yesterday.
There are those cultures or tribes of people who maintain that we are our stories. Some of us believe that life happens to us and some of us believe that we can take the raw material or ingredients and create our story. There are cooking shows on radio or television where the host or the participants are challenged to create a meal out of a few ingredients found in a refrigerator. Often, even frequently, the cook de jour takes five or six ingredients which the listener might think could never play with each other and creates an amazingly, yummy dish. There are those, however, who might look at the same group of ingredients, cross their arms, and insist that nothing good can be created from them. They are not able to allow those ingredients to tell a new story.
I want to end by sharing Mr. Kling’s poem, “Tickled Pink” which beautifully “tells a new story:”
"At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow, composting waiting to grow. And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors. But rush headlong or lie fallow, it doesn't matter. One day you'll round a corner, your path is shifted.
In a blink, something is missing. It's stolen, misplaced, it's gone. Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person. Your innocence is gone, and now your journey has changed. Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you pointed in a new direction.
Some won't approve. Some will want the other you. And some will cry that you've left it all. But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone. We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is not cheap. To survive we must return to our senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, sound. We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath. With each breath we inhale, we exhale. We inspire, we expire. Every breath has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song. Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue. Every scar is a monument to a battle survived. Now when you're born into loss, you grow from it. But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it. A slow move to an embrace, an embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque, an embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink." Kevin Kling
Kevin Kling
Jim Pickett Written May 21, 2016
Not surprisingly to the reader, I have this morning downloaded and listened to this week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippett. This week Mrs. Tippett is talking with Kevin Kling about “The Losses and Laughter We Grow Into. (Recorded March 15, 2012)
As a counselor/psychotherapist and as a human being living my own story, I am often invited to explore with individuals and families the story they have been telling themselves and the possibility of allowing themselves a new story.
Kevin Kling, the story teller, poet and wise man was born with his left arm disabled and shorter than his right. In his forties he had a motorcycle accident and lost the use of his right arm. In the process of healing (not curing as he is quick to point out) a therapist suggests that he tell the story of the accident, but give it a different ending. The ending he had been giving himself was apparently one of fear, anger, regret, and possibly hopelessness (my words for what he was feeling). When he gave himself a different ending he was essentially allowing himself, as he later says in his poem, “Tickled Pink,” “a new dance. A Dance of Pink.” One story is that the accident did happen. He did lose the use of his right arm. He does have to learn to function differently. He will not be able to do some of the things he did prior to the accident. That is the truth. It is true he has to learn to use the voice recognition software or dictate and hire a transcriber if he wants to write. It is true that doing everyday tasks which he had formerly learned to do with one good arm and one disabled arm may now require assistance. If he wants independence he may now take public transportation unless, of course, he can hire a driver. How he eats, sleeps, makes love, bathes, writes, and moves about in the world will be different.
It is normal when we face such changes in our lives for we humans to become discouraged, even angry, and to focus on what we cannot do or what we cannot do in the same way we used to be able to. The story we may tell ourselves is that our useful life is over. We may even tell ourselves that life is not worth living if we have to live as an even more disabled person.
By suggesting that Mr. Kling give the accident a different ending, the therapist helped him see that we are in charge of our healing story. Even though the new accident story was a lie, he now had the possibility of other new stories.
To a large extent, if we live long enough, we all will face increasingly limitations and even disabilities. We may develop arthritis or hearing and sight problems. We may not be able to safely drive a car. We may function better in an assisted living setting or even a nursing home situation. We may respond by:
· Telling ourselves nothing has changed and challenging everyone in our life to pretend as if all is the same, while we burden them with responsibility for taking care of us.
· Sinking into depression and hopelessness.
· Wearing our Job costume and ask, “Why me?”
· Hiding behind anger and punishing ourselves and others.
· Exploring the benefits or positives of this new stage of or lives.
Only the last option will allow us to heal. Healing is giving ourselves a new dance – a new story. It is the opportunity to live as the person we now are rather than waiting to finish the process of dying which could take years. When the AIDS epidemic began to affect a significant number of people and there were no effective treatments, the story was that people were dying with AIDS. Someone decided to introduce a new story line. The new story line was to suggest that we began to think of ourselves and our friends as living with AIDS. That was a hugely important paradigm shift. We were going to live until we died rather than dying day by day until the act of dying was completed.
When working with combat soldiers experiencing PTSD, the therapist might suggest that they first share the story of the pain, the heartache and the overall gruesome tragedy they have lived through. One has to face the true story. This happened. This, however, is not or does not have to be the end of the story or the only story. Some of those same people have then gone on to create music, plays, sculptures and paintings. Some have become counselors who help other returning veterans explore ways using their experience to provide comfort and new dreams/stories.
Mr. Kling says that he shares both his tears and his laughter more in his new dance. He has become part of a theater group composed of performers with disabilities. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are performers who know or admit they have disabilities. We all have disabilities or limitations. Some are obvious and some not so obviously. His life is both more expanded and more limited than it was prior to his accident. But then, even without the accident, his life dance would be different today than it was yesterday.
There are those cultures or tribes of people who maintain that we are our stories. Some of us believe that life happens to us and some of us believe that we can take the raw material or ingredients and create our story. There are cooking shows on radio or television where the host or the participants are challenged to create a meal out of a few ingredients found in a refrigerator. Often, even frequently, the cook de jour takes five or six ingredients which the listener might think could never play with each other and creates an amazingly, yummy dish. There are those, however, who might look at the same group of ingredients, cross their arms, and insist that nothing good can be created from them. They are not able to allow those ingredients to tell a new story.
I want to end by sharing Mr. Kling’s poem, “Tickled Pink” which beautifully “tells a new story:”
"At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow, composting waiting to grow. And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors. But rush headlong or lie fallow, it doesn't matter. One day you'll round a corner, your path is shifted.
In a blink, something is missing. It's stolen, misplaced, it's gone. Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person. Your innocence is gone, and now your journey has changed. Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you pointed in a new direction.
Some won't approve. Some will want the other you. And some will cry that you've left it all. But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone. We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is not cheap. To survive we must return to our senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, sound. We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath. With each breath we inhale, we exhale. We inspire, we expire. Every breath has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song. Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue. Every scar is a monument to a battle survived. Now when you're born into loss, you grow from it. But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it. A slow move to an embrace, an embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque, an embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink." Kevin Kling
Kevin Kling
Jim Pickett Written May 21, 2016
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