SHE COULDN'T GET OVER HER MOTHER'S DEATH: AN INTERNAL DIALOGUE

We continue here from SHE COULDN'T GET OVER HER MOTHER'S DEATH: WHEN SAFETY WAS LOST.

An Internal Dialogue

T: That’s interesting [whispered]. Just placing your attention near but not in that kind of watery expansive place, not drowning in it, but just sort of standing on the shore, I wonder if you would be willing to listen to it? Listening to anything that has to tell you. If it had a voice, how would it speak? What would its vocal quality be like? [Inge sighs.] Do that again [blowing softly out, as Inge does the same]. How do you imagine it would speak, with what kind of voice?

I: I can’t imagine it having a voice.

T: How would it communicate what it has to tell us or teach us?

I: [Pause] I see it more as something that is not something communicative, but more something that is there to deal with and carry. 

T: To deal with and carry.

I: Rather than it being communicative or. . .

T: Uh huh, uh huh. . . . So I wonder if, from that place [that] is near but not in it, I wonder if you can just try some words like these and see if they feel true to you? And if not, change them to make them so. Something like “I’m willing to carry you.” [Long pause] How would you need to change those words to make them fit for you? [Inge begins to cry.] What’s the feeling that comes to you with that?

I [weeping]: I was going to say, “I’m having a hard time carrying you.”

T: I’m having a hard time carrying you.

I: [Nods yes.]

T: I’m having a hard time carrying you. Then use those words: “I’m having a hard time carrying you.” Tell her or it or him what it is that is hard about that. [Long pause.] What would you say about the difficulty carrying that dark, expansive and contractive, some- times tranquil and sometimes more turbulent space?

I: [Long pause.] I guess it’s difficult to carry because I sometimes feel like it’s too overwhelming; it’s too much and that it swallows me. And it feels like it’s something I have to stay ahead of.

As Robert and Inge search for a way to dialogue with the image, they learn that it is less “communicative”, that it is something to “carry” though at great emotional cost. Even with repeated efforts to establish a safe nearness to the feeling to explore the relationship to it, Inge is easily swallowed by the sea of grief and seems at risk of drowning in it. What seems required, then, is a degree of separation that would make exposure to the feeling possible, but at greater distance.

Externalizing the Felt Sense

T: Something you have to stay ahead of? What if you could speak those words directly to the kind of feeling? And I wonder if we were to offer that image a place here with us, but a place a little bit outside you, would that be okay? [T places a third empty chair facing C, forming a triangle.] So if we offer a kind of comfortable chair here where it can repose so it doesn’t have to be lodged in your abdomen in this moment, I wonder if you can just return to those words, speak them to this sensed feeling, right? [Gesturing with both hands toward the empty chair.] “Sometimes it’s overwhelming to carry you.” What would you say to it about that?

I: Sometimes it’s overwhelming to carry you [weeping]. And it seems like it is never get- ting easier. It seems that it should get easier over time. Or that I should get better. It feels that I always have to be on my toes to not let it swallow me.

T: Say this and see if it feels like it fits: “It’s like I have to be vigilant or guard myself in some way.” What’s the “staying on my toes” feeling? What would you say about that?

I: It’s also this feeling that I lost my place and universe a little bit. And so I have no safe position from within to carry you.

T: So you have no safe position?

I: No position of strength.

T: No position of strength to carry you.

I: And I have to do my best all the time.

T: Yeah, yeah. What would that position of strength look like if it had a physical shape or structure?

I: [Pause.] Something very upright, like a rectangle, something very square.

Speaking to the now-externalized feeling, Inge voices the essence of her struggle: deprived of the secure base provided by her mother, she has “no safe position from within to carry [her grief].” Turning her inner gaze from the visualized pain to the strength needed to carry it, she sketches briefly what it would look like: upright and rectangular. The geometry of her language and gesture suggests the next move.

Standing Up to the Feeling

T: Shall we stand? Let’s stand up and see how that is. [T and C stand up as C chuckles.] So here we are, kind of rectangular [standing almost at attention, like a soldier]. So how does it feel relating to this same image [gesturing downward, toward chair]? Is it still a quiet form, or is it more turbulent? What is it?

I: It’s turbulent.

T: It’s turbulent?

I: Yeah.

T: How does it feel to just regard it [gesturing toward it] from this position of standing up [lifting hands to body] to it? Is there a difference between that and the kind of sitting with it? [As T speaks the word “sitting,” he slowly sits down again, and Inge follows.] 

I: No, it feels the same. Whatever shape it has or whatever shape I have, it can overpower anything. [T: I see.] So that’s why I try to contain it in a box [I forms box with hands at level of her abdomen] [T: Oh, contain it in a box.] to make sure it doesn’t get out of certain boundaries.

T: Oh, I see. That’s the kind of almost abdominal tightness [forms tight box with hands] that’s the boxing up of this? [I: Yeah.] [Pause] And if it kind of leaks out of the box or spills over [gesturing to suggest these actions], then it feels more overwhelming? I: [Nods yes.] 

Inner strength, it seems, is not enough; soon enough, the grief leaks out or over the embodied box that contains it. Something more is needed.

Continue to part 2 here below to find out how Robert and Inge renegotiate Inge's attachment to her mother by consulting with Mom.

SHE COULDN'T GET OVER HER MOTHER'S DEATH: AN INTERNAL DIALOGUE pt. 2

Consulting With Mom

T: Who or what might help you carry that sense, that feeling?

I: I thought a lot about that, and I don’t know. [Pause] I don’t know [crying].

T: I wonder, if you were to meet your mother’s eyes in this moment of clear pain, what might she have to tell you about how pain can be carried, from a position of strength? [Turns photo toward Inge and gazes at Mother.] What message would she have for us about that? 

I: I remember she would read me from those books that she kept reading about thinking positive.

T: The Bernie Siegel kinds of books. [I: Right.] So what kind of model or message might she have for you?

I: She was a strong person; she would say that I should shut up and move on.

T: Shut up and move on?

I: Yeah, she would have just said that: “Deal with it.”

T: And she was able to somehow do that even in the midst of her cancer? [Inge nods.] Were there times that it was even too hard for her?

I: I think there were times that were hard for her, but she showed those very rarely.

T: She had that kind of strength to contain the turbulence, the pain, in her own way [I:Yeah, yeah.] . . . not wanting you to see that. [Long pause as Inge gazes at Mother.] What difference does it make, if any, to invite her into this conversation about the pain, about the grief? To have this very inner grief, right, this kind of reddish, purplish, swimming, elastic kind of form [gesturing to suggest the wavy, expanding and contracting shape at level of his abdomen] and then to bring Mom’s kind of structure and centering and strength [making a vertical, upright gesture at abdominal level, melding to a circle and then to two closed fists, in synchrony with each description] to bear on that?

I: [crying] It’s hard because she caused it.

T: Because she caused it? I see. . . . So how does it make that hard, that she caused it by dying?

I: [Nods.] So sometimes thinking about her is good and gives strength, but sometimes thinking about her causes the feeling to be more overwhelming. So thinking about her is not a safe place.

T: It’s not a safe place, I see. . . . So sometimes you need a little distance from her just as you need the distance from this feeling?

I: Yeah. I used to spend—I told someone who was surprised about that—up until about a year or two ago, I spoke with her almost daily. Not explicitly, not in spoken words, but in thoughts.

T: In your mind? Did you ever write those down? Like in a letter to her, or. . . ?

I: No.

T: Did you ever sense her speaking back to you and kind of making it into a dialogue rather than a monologue?

I: Sometimes, when things would happen . . . for example, today is her birthday [smiling]. T: Today is her birthday?

I: Today is her birthday! [T: Ahh (warmly).] And so I felt this was a very odd setting. And my second son was born on her birthday too. I remember I had a conversation with her at the time: “I don’t want him to be born on Friday the 13th or on Sunday, because there was no doctor in the hospital, and so he was born on her birthday three days later. So there are ways—and these are probably in my mind—there are ways in which I sometimes feel like there is some part of a conversation.

T: Yeah, yeah. And when you feel that conversation like really including her and that she’s responsive to it, what does that do to the kind of reddish, purplish. . . ?

I: It calms it; it’s a nice feeling because it’s a presence, I guess it’s more [that] I feel her pres- ence rather than her absence.

T: You feel her presence rather than her absence.

I: [Nods yes.] And sometimes when I think about it, I only feel her absence.

T: Yeah, so I’m wondering, would it feel right to offer your mom this chair [pulling the chair in a little closer] instead of the grief? [Inge: Right.] We can allow the grief to go wherever it needs to go, whether it’s back into you or to just take a place in the hall for now. [Inge smiles and chuckles: Right.] As we kind of invite your mother’s presence there in that chair, I don’t know if we should sing her “Happy Birthday” or not. . .

I: [laughing] Probably not!

T: Probably not, but we could wish her that in some way. [Looking at Mother’s photo, which he has placed in the chair] . . . She looks like she’s amused in this picture now to me, with that little smile.

I: [smiling and gazing at the photo]: Right . . . yeah.

As Robert and Inge consider what would help Inge carry her grief, they turn naturally toward her original secure base: her mother, visibly present in the room in the form of her picture. However, initial barriers must be acknowledged and overcome: Mom’s stern gruffness; and, more significantly, perhaps, the fusion of memories of Mom with painful images of her dying. Seeking a way to soften, even a little playfully, into the relationship and to begin to differentiate between the mother Inge still needs, and the grief over her death, Robert shifts grief out of the chair and invites Mom to occupy it. Inge’s expectant gaze suggests that more steps toward renewing the bond are now feasible.

Renegotiating Attachment

T: You know one of the hard things about grief, I think, is that in some ways we’re having to negotiate a change between losing what we had [reaching out with both hands toward the photo, as Inge returns gaze to it] and then attempting to have what we have we’ve lost [pulling hands inward, toward abdomen, as if taking the photo into himself, as Inge follows the gesture with her eyes] but without the material presence of the other to anchor and structure that. [Inge nods.] Almost like we have to find a way to take that secure base and structure [gesturing to suggest the upright structure] and find a place for it inside us [drawing the gesture in, covering his heart].

I: Yes . . . [spoken softly and evocatively].

T: So we can carry some of what we need with us. [Leans in, as if moving forward.] [Inge: Yeah.] And sometimes hearing the voice of the other or inviting that voice is a part of that. It’s like the echoes of the conversation remain accessible, right? Do you ever sense that yourself?

I: Yeah, yeah.

T: What would you hear her saying to you at those times?

I: Umm, for example, there are times that I hear her say things, when I’m traveling in foreign cities, and I would say, “Look, Mom, where I am now,” especially when I was younger and on my first trips for work, and I could hear her say, “Wow that’s great!” [T: Ahh!] “Like you’re doing all this traveling and all of these things that I never got a chance to do.” [T: Ahh. . .] So those are conversations that were nice to have.

T: She would be sort of cheering you on and really celebrating your living large.

I: Yeah, that’s encouraging.

T: Encouraging. Like your moving out into a bigger world was not an abandonment of her. She was, in a way, going right along with you and commenting on the experiences too. 

I: [smiling] Right. Sometimes I do feel that, like when we are decorating our Christmas tree and I use all the old ornaments [shaping her hand into an ornament with a hook], and I show my kids, and I see her, and I put the music on that we had, too; I put on those old records that she used to put on. And she made us decorate the tree together, even when we were older and didn’t want to do that together. And now I’m doing this with my kids, and then I sense that she would probably be looking on in some way.

T: Sure, sure. That’s a lovely image. I mean, I have the sense of your being a link [holds up right hand] between her [reaching higher up] and these kids [reaching down, as if to the next generation], even to a point where they’re being a little reluctant now; they’re getting a little big for this [voice suggesting a joking tone]. But it’s part of the family culture [voice slowing, becoming serious], and you’re transmitting in some way something precious and unique, probably stories of her with the little ornaments that you’re hanging in the tree [forming hands and fingers into ornaments with hooks and attaching them to a “tree” before him]. You’re hanging a memory or connection.

Robert begins by sketching, in experience-near language and gestures, a brief rationale for their work: grieving is partly a matter of creating a portable secure base in our ongoing lives at a heartfelt level, that is derived from our ongoing relationship to the deceased. Inge strongly resonated to this and produced two vivid examples, in the form of her proud inner conversations with Mom, as she began living large in the world, fulfilling her mother’s dreams, and the sweet commemoration of her Mother, her music and her stories during the holidays. Each ornament hung with her children on the tree, is a link to Mom, as Inge is herself a link in a transgenerational story.

Continue to the final part of this series "RE-ENGAGING WITH MOM" to find out how Robert and Inge hold Inge's feeling of attachment to her Mom and allow for a new "engagement" to occur.

Wishing you Well,

Your Shrink in Bansko