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Independent Practitioner/Fall 2005 |
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Practitioner Information |
Origins of a Positive Psychology for Women: Full Circle – A Therapist’s Recognition of The Enchanted Self in Her Clients as Well as Herself Barbara Becker Holstein |
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Women in our culture often feel that, as the title of Carol Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice, (1982) implies, we have been misunderstood by a male gender dominated culture. Inside of ourselves, we know there is a special place, a place where we feel whole. We also know that this space is often violated and shattered by various forms of victimization, such as abuse or incest, or more subtle destructiveness, such as disparaging verbal comments such as, “Don’t worry about a career, just worry about finding a husband” or “You are beautiful but dumb.” My search for what I call The Enchanted Self1®began 17 years ago when, after many years in private practice, an urge was building within in me to learn more about how the messages girls receive in childhood about whom they should become interface later with their sense of self in adulthood. I wanted a first hand sense of how ordinary women handle a profound array of messages given to them in childhood. I anticipated somewhat despairing findings having worked for many years with women in my private practice who reported negative and destructive messages from family members, lovers, husbands – messages that were in dissonance with a woman often fragile sense of self. For example, I’ll never forget the strength of emotion behind the voice of my client as she talked about her husband who would squelch every good idea she brought up by saying, “And that and five cents will get you a cup of coffee.” To do this project I developed a structure interview, which I administered to 18 non-client women, ranging in age from 35 to 75. I took extensive notes during each interview as well as audio taping each survey participant. All of them were white, middle to upper middle class; Christian or Jewish. Several had psychotherapy; most had not. This was case study data done by myself at my own expense to give me a broader sense of women’s development. I did not attempt to have a statistically random group of women but, rather, worked in a reality situation where friends recommended other friends who might participate in the structured interview. My interview questions were geared toward gaining insight into how the messages girls received in childhood about the role they were to play in society influenced their adult development. I was also interested if a woman was, or had been, married, whether she had experienced criticism in the marriage relationship and how this experience influenced the way she felt about herself. I had initially included a question geared to asking the women when she felt most whole in adulthood. However, as I interviewed the women and became increasingly aware of the enhanced reports they were giving me of good times and feelings, new questions emerged. My structured interview evolved to include other questions such as when the woman felt most whole, most centered, in girlhood. The major questions were:
Of course, because this was a personal structured interview, administered by me, I used my professional psychological judgment in terms of discretion. Not every woman received all the questions, nor did I pursue every question with the same depth or intensity. I had to judge, on the spot, what I felt was in a woman’s best interest. It was gratifying and exhilarating to discover that without focused production time and without any public recognition – both essential values in the American concept of “success” these ordinary women had found so many ways to have an enhanced adult life experience. These ways were often secret, at least in the sense that these women did not typically think of talking about their heightened moments or creating artistic forms around them. These women were too tired, too busy, too preoccupied, and too worried about a multitude of tasks. However, some by conscious decisions, others by what seemed to be unconscious process, had permitted their enhanced selfhoods to emerge whenever it was reasonably possible to do so, without jeopardizing the other tasks they considered essential, such as mothering, providing an income, being a wife, etc. This unexpected finding surprised me. Yet, I found myself captivated by the theme of personal capacities for well-being and pleasure. In fact, I was more captivated than by the original thrust of my investigation. As a therapist, I was developing a new hypothesis: many of our clients may, in spite of the destructiveness of the cultural environment, have experienced times of adult enhancement – moments and/or periods of time when there is a return to some sense of self-worth, a feeling of joy, a sense of bliss. This is a special place within one’s self that each person can recognize, although it is easily overlooked. I began to call this place “The Enchanted Self.” Later, as I used the term in writings and in teaching and in the treatment room, I was told how appreciative women often were that I had given a name to this special place within ourselves that is so often ignored, dismissed and/or devalued. Further definition emerged. The Enchanted Self, it is a unique reservoir of wellness that resides in each human being. It is specific to that person’s memory bank and unique experiences. Once tapped into, we experience a state of well being that may include positive feelings, thoughts, sensations, both cognitive and in the body. The woman may become aware of a sense of integrity and self-integration. Some times we experience this place while alone – other times while in connective experiences. This place permits a profound sense of feeling centered and whole. When we are there we recognize it I remain convinced that girlhood messages are profoundly important in terms of adult female development, at times in clearly dysfunctional ways. For example, much of the current research in gender issues, as well as depression research, documents vividly the mental health risks for women in absorbing typical gender girlhood messages. A major national study on depression, Women and Depression – Risks and Treatment, ed. by Ellen McGrath et. Al., clearly demonstrated that women exhibit coping styles that are less than optimal. For example, women tend to be introspective when faced with a dilemma rather than quickly moving to a problem-solving mode. Women also personalize, easily seeing themselves at fault. But my study and what I took from it into the treatment room, convinced me that adult women have a much better capacity for happiness than has been appreciated or documented by the public, by mental health professionals or by the women themselves. This capacity is critical to women. It gives women a way to re-fuel and replenish, to experience joy, to feel whole. Documenting, talking about, and giving a name to this special part of each woman encourages the woman, her family, her therapist and the world at large to reinforce and applaud her talents, abilities, strengths and potential. Gilligan (1990) emphasizes that wonderful sense of self and well being that exists in childhood for girls and then is pushed underground by the male-female adult expectations of our society. Hancock (1989) argues that, for girls, the years immediately before puberty are a really heightened time of well being in which girls experience a sense of power. Gilligan believes that it is during adolescence that girls really experience violation in terms of their real selves. I would not be so time specific. I think that girls can experience profound violations, in terms of the damage caused to their internalized sense of well-being and wholeness by destructive messages, at any age. Any messages that are dissonant with a girl’s sense of herself can interrupt her sense of well being. Likewise, moments of well being and of feeling empowered are usually experienced throughout girlhood. At least some enhanced moments come at each stage of development, even in dysfunctional environment. Whether consciously remembered or not, the capacity for a sense of well-being has been experienced and can be tapped into again and again in adulthood. In other words, women, even from dysfunctional families, are able to integrate their Enchanted Selves into their adult patterns of behavior. The good news is that the therapist can learn techniques that will further encourage and then validate the re-emergence of The Enchanted Self in even the most distressed of her clients. Let’s now look at one woman’s story from my research. Beth “My place was on the porch, watching the world go by”, says Beth, a pediatrician, age 44, from upstate New York who is eager to share her memories. “I was responsible for babysitting my brother, who was five years younger than I was, but I wasn’t allowed to leave the porch,” she says. “We didn’t live in a very nice neighborhood, so the big wrap-around porch was more or less my domain. I could play on it, or read, or even have friends over to play with me. But my main responsibility was to be out on that porch watching my brother. “Although I really wasn’t allowed to, sometimes I would go into the back yard to watch him. Then I’d get to play with some of the neighborhood boys. Some of them had jackknives they’d throw in to the ground, over and over again. My father had told me that I shouldn’t play with jackknives because I might get hurt. But once in a while the boys would give me a turn and let me throw one of their knives. I remember how exciting that was and how powerful it made me feel. And when they played action games, like Cowboys and Indians, I loved being able to participate in the chasing and shooting parts. However, the boys usually wanted me to play a sweet female part, like Dale Evans for instance. Dale was not a very exciting character. It was Roy Rogers who got to do all the good stuff. All Dale did was praise Roy for his accomplishments. Since I was a little older than the boys, I started writing plays for them. In the plays I would write bigger parts for myself. Roy Rogers still had most of the fun, but at least I got to orchestrate the action. My parents knew I wanted to play sports, but they were indifferent to my desire. To them education was the number one value and everything else was secondary. Even if I ran down the street, they would caution me, “Don’t run, you might fall.” My mother told me it looked funny for a girl to run, so I really had no choice but to direct my energies toward professional endeavors, which were acceptable to my parents. Of course, like all the other girls I knew, I wanted to get married and have a family. I was an avid reader of fairy tales and often fantasized my own fairy tale romance in which the strong handsome prince would carry me off. In medical school I fell in love and was loved in return. I t was like a fairy tale. “After we were married, I quickly relinquished certain dreams in order to accommodate to a workable marriage. I haven’t published in the medical field, and I haven’t lived out my dreams to become a college professor. I never seem to be in the right place at the right time. Like many women, I ended up by accident, living where I live and doing what I do – even though I did become a doctor. My practice is extremely busy and my teenage children demand a great deal of time and energy. Joe is helpful but I still feel I have the burden of organizing and running the household. I don’t have enough emotional or physical energy to live out my dreams; I’m always exhausted. “But I do have a part of my life where I really soar. It is a new interest in the last five years. I’ve taken up karate and earned my black belt. I love it. The great thing about karate is that it combines my longing for physical activity with my precise competitive nature. As I get better at it and advance to higher levels, I get to use a lot of my talents. We’re always organizing conventions and workshops. I’ve also had a chance to publish articles about the karate experiences, and that has satisfied my earlier ambitions to write. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still devoted to my work as a pediatrician, but that is my work. I go to the office, take care of my children all day and do the best I can. Then I go home and take care of my family. Those are things that I do for others. But this is different. The karate is totally separate, all mine.” Stories, such as Beth’s have profound significance for the treatment room. This is particularly so for women clients because of the multitude of ways women in our society are perceived as having less than adequate capacities. Once they enter the treatment room the hidden biases are potentially even more dangerous. The woman therapist is not exempt; she herself may see attributes of her own selfhood as less valuable than male attributes. She may not fully understand that impact of minor or major violations experienced in girlhood that have led women to develop the strategies they often present to the world, such as crying in frustration, manipulation, cajoling, flirtation, etc., rather than shedding cleansing tears or showing focused anger when appropriate, and then moving to goal-oriented problem-solving techniques using well developed negotiating skills. Once I began to really appreciate the secret selves that my interviewees had shared with me, I went back and looked harder at my clients. I wanted to see whether they had secret selves that continued to operate when they were in crisis or feeling diminished, anxious, and depressed. What I began to discover, as I listened more carefully, is that every one of my clients, no matter how ill she was at the time (in terms of a diagnostic definition) was still in touch, although perhaps not able to effectively access, some part of her Enchanted Self. For example, one client who was in a very distressing marital situation in which she felt constantly diminished deprecated, and unable to function, could vividly remember her Enchanted Self from childhood. “I have a special feeling about myself as a child,” she said. “I saw myself as a sweet, nice, good person, living in a blessed life: - the sense of being one of the most blessed stayed with me through being a teenager.” That special feeling had left her and she was certainly in need of good psychotherapy. However, before my research I doubt whether I would have listened as actively for some sense of wellness, something that she could remember, that she could retrieve—some connective emotional links from that sweet girlhood blissful self. Perhaps within these emotional links would lurk the beginnings of an integrated self that could feel and experience joy. Let’s look at another client, Mary. She had suffered chronic anxiety and a feeling of a diminished sense of self, exaggerated by feelings of frustrations and guilt around a learning disabled daughter. “I had a great time last week” she said. “I went to Maine with a group of women that I play cards with. I’ve been friendly with these women for years, but held back. I’ve been uneasy about sharing certain intimacies, particularly since we all know each other’s children and I have a learning disabled child. Usually they plan to go on this five-day trip to coastal Maine when I am busy working. But this year, in an effort to include me, they had picked a different date. This put me in conflict. I was still hesitating when I mentioned it to my husband and he said something like, “Oh, you won’t go so what difference does it make? Well, that did it. As soon as he said that I knew I was going. That he should be so certain I wouldn’t go with these women convinced me I was ready to go. The five days were the best days in my adult life. We laughed and shared confidences and stayed up all night chatting just as I had with my best friends before I grew up! It was the real me having a ball. And the interesting thing, as an aside, is that since I have been back, my daughter seems to have flowered. Perhaps it was coincidental, or perhaps I am more at ease with her.” As the therapist listens for wellness reports, supports them, and encourages them, her client will begin to look at her enhanced self through the mutuality of acknowledgement of this special place within her. Mary was back in touch with herself, a self she had know and enjoyed in her girlhood. Daily, I saw myself more consciously celebrating my clients’ sense of well-being, as I did Mary’s, rather than racing ahead to other agendas. On what I was more and more perceiving as a personal odyssey, I realized that I was beginning to come full circle and bring back into the treatment room what I had gone out of the treatment room to discover. And in bringing it back I discovered that it had been there all the time. This fact—that there is tremendous wellness potential still existing within even the most distressed clients—is an important concept for therapists to understand and incorporate into their practice. All of our clients come in with some sort of an Enchanted Self. It may have been lost or buried in childhood, or it may form and unconscious part of the client’s present repertoire of every day behaviors. But that Enchanted Self may hesitate to go on record in the therapy hour, or it may not even recognize itself. Women often tend to be critical of the best of themselves, and by the time a client reaches our office she may have acquired the habit of undervaluing many positive aspects of herself. It is a therapist’s responsibility not only to aid healing but to constantly encourage, support, value, and enhance the healthy parts of the client’s collection of life experiences We certainly cannot assume that our clients know how to value the healthy aspects of their personalities. Mutuality of experience helped me grow as a therapist and a person. I found myself traveling a circle of self-enhancement. The interviewees stimulated within me stirrings of some capacities that had been stifled and/or cut off. The reaffirmation of these parts of myself came through my odyssey—the privilege of listening to ordinary women’s revelations about themselves without the strain of wearing my hat as the psychologist. I too had a secret inner life. I also had devalued parts of myself and I wanted to restore these parts to their proper value. I needed to be enhanced and made to feel more significant. Part of this happened as I listened again and again. I found I had begun to internalize what the women had told me and behave and think differently as a result. I started a journey to my own Enchanted Places. I was beginning to reconnect with certain joyous, self-enhancing parts of me As I moved into a different listening mode with my clients I found myself being freed, so that I did not look upon my own attributes from the more standard American perspective of achievement and success. I began to acknowledge within myself beautiful sensitivities and capacities that were hard to define by typically goal-oriented standards. These parts of myself echoed back to younger days, just as was often the case with my clients. I found myself taking certain practical steps in the therapy room. I began to intentionally help my clients to find their Enchanted Selves. I designed questions and opportunities to engage clients in sharing their Enchanted Selves. I asked clients to tell me about a time in their lives when they had felt most whole, most productive, most integrated. I began to realize that it was essential to use memory techniques as the therapist differently in the treatment room. Instead of interviewing my client with the intent of discovering the pathology and dysfunction in her past, I found it extremely useful to focus whenever possible on helping the client remember the good. The more I could help a client remember positive states of being, and/or her own talents, strengths and potential, the more likely she was able to put into action positive changes and behaviors that were good for her. Of course, her positive self-regard was also enhanced. Donna comes to mind as I talk. A bright young woman, married, with two young daughters, and with an advanced degree, Donna was experiencing anxious feelings, as well as down moods. Having taken a high level job with a large corporation, she found herself caught in the jet stream of modern life. Her job was not nourishing her. She was experiencing fatigue as she attempted to manage her multiple roles in life. Her marriage had always had communication problems, and these had been further exacerbated when the children were born. During the first interview I had with her, Donna concluded her review of herself by saying, “I need help in both sorting through my job goals, as well as learning to interact better with my husband.” I asked her what some of the best times in her life had been. Some of the times when she had felt most whole, when she felt the most centered, perhaps experiencing some real joy, Donna seemed a little surprised by this question but then her eyes lit up and she appeared more peaceful than during the rest of the interview. She came up with two memories. “I would say I was happiest growing up when I got to live in England for a summer with a family. I felt elated and super competent. I had achieved and excelled. I also felt I had proven to myself I could go beyond my own heritage. My parents had lived simply and had never traveled and here I was going off to England. And the experience itself was just as thrilling as winning it. The other time, when I felt really happy and whole, was after the birth of my first child. Every day was a delight and really worth living for. Just seeing her grow up and change made it worth waking up.” I told her that she had just clearly illuminated two of the great capacities in life. One was the experience of validating one’s own talents. The second was the wonderful opportunity of connectiveness with another human being, which can fill a person with joy and hope and life. If we now worked toward recreating a stronger sense in her present world of both these human capacities – the threads of which, I believed, extended back in time – she would regain a sense of well-being. After two years of psychotherapy, Donna was doing well. She was no longer depressed; she was thriving professionally; her children were developing nicely; she and her husband were communicating better, too. In therapy she had worked through her anger and disappointment toward the family in which she grew up. Although somewhat passive, Donna modified this style through my support for her creativity. In her last session we talked about how her rediscovered talents had helped her to heal and we talked about her success in handling difficulties in the marriage even when there was more work to be done. We reminisced about her family of origin, which she now saw in a positive light. We reviewed her professional growth. She left confidently, with her head held high and with a bounce in her step. Donna’s inner feelings of confidence, her capacities to function so successfully in all of areas of her life, and her sense of daily well-being were gratifying to me as her therapist. She certainly represents a real example of what The Enchanted Self therapist can hope for as she attends to the clinical hour with the new perspective of what is right about the client, rather than what is wrong. Of course more is involved than just a paradigm shift, so let me briefly update you on where the Circle of Enchantment has been and is currently, both within and outside of the treatment room. My initial definition of The Enchanted Self as that special capacity, often ignored or diminished by women and the public at large, to experience a genuine sense of well-being that is consistent with the woman’s talents, history, strengths, coping skills and potential, has stayed as a cornerstone of The Enchanted Self. I have added to that framework over the years, methods for the clinician to encourage well-being in her client as well in herself, so that indeed both flourish. I have also developed methods and activities for women not in treatment to enhance their sense of well-being and confidence to take positive steps in daily living. The first part of the Circle of Enchantment resulted in 1997 in the publication of The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy by Harwood Academic Publishers. The book went into a second printing in 1998 and is currently available through Routledge. In this book I share many case studies from my practice, and my own journey in development. I take the clinician on her own growth, via activities, at the end of each chapter. I also instruct the clinician in how to structure her treatment approach, respecting her own style and methods, so that more positive memory retrieval takes place and more hope, optimism and encouragement is reinforced. As Ellen McGrath, Ph.D. stated, (see back cover of The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy), “The Enchanted Self is a mystical journey to a new inner exploration of the lost or forgotten positive aspects of ourselves. The book describes a shared rich partnership between therapist and client toward empowering ourselves to make real changes in our lives.” It is interesting to note, that I subtitled The Enchanted Self, ‘A Positive Therapy’. In l995 when this book was going to press, I was not even aware of a Positive Psychology movement. In fact, I don’t think the term was in active use. It turned out, as is so often true, that when a correction needs to be made, many people are beginning to make it. It may well be that my book turned out to be the first book in the field of Positive Psychology that clearly addresses the clinician’s well-being, as well as that of her clients, and also instruct the clinician in detail as to how to bring positive changes into every area she confronts. These include: her own life, her client’s mental health, and her treatment techniques. The second major Circle of Enchantment that has happened over the last ten years is taking The Enchanted Self to the public. This includes ongoing lectures, workshops, teleclasses, mind-body workshops. In the early days there was a paper newspaper, The Enchanted Self, and a radio show out of Phoenix, Arizona. Currently, I also have an e-magazine for women on the web, The Enchanted Self, at www.ladybuglive.com and a cable television show out of New York City, once a month. Of course, I had to take my ‘baby’ into the fast paced world of the Internet. My website, www.enchantedself.com is seen by thousands of women every month. Women tell me that they are thankful for the information I teach and the term The Enchanted Self. Often I am told I put into words aspects of treatment that a woman knew were off base, but didn’t know how to articulate. For example, many women have commented that some how their problems felt too big in treatment and treatment seemed to further exasperate depressive feelings. The third Circle of Enchantment has been the publication of more books and related products. My second book, Recipes for Enchantment, The Secret Ingredient is YOU! is a series of stories that teach core principles of living a more positive life. Each story is followed by an activity, so the reader can immediately practice. Delight, my third book, is my personal journey into another growth area of my life-coming home to being Jewish. I write the personal stories in a style that invites in the woman reader, so she can also look for areas that she must take the time to come home too. Of course, activities are included. And most recently I published my mother’s book, Feel Good Stories. She just turned 85 and these are her adventures from babyhood to living in a retirement village. They are funny, and inspiring and teach that it is never too late! As you can see, like throwing a pebble into a pond, The Enchanted Self has sent ripples from me to other women everywhere and then back again. And beyond in ever widening positive circles. Because maybe after all, “...everything in this world works in circles and everything tries to be round!”
References: Becker, Bernice (2005). Feel Good Stories. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse Gilligan, C. (1989). In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. Gilligan, C. (1990). Making Connections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. Holstein, Barbara Becker (1997). Second Edition. The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy. Singapore: Overseas Publisher Association, Harwood Academic Publishers. Holstein, Barbara Becker ( 2001). Recipes for Enchantment, The Secret Ingredient is You! Bloomington, IN 1st: Books. Holstein, Barbara Becker (2005). Delight. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse Hancock, Emily (1989) The Girl Within. New York: Dutton McGrath, E., Keita, G.P., Strickland, B.R., Russo, N.F., (1990). (Eds.), Women and Depression. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association 1 The Enchanted Self is the capacity for positive states of well being, unique to each woman, utilizing her memories, talents, strengths and potential. |
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