How Exposure Makes You a Superhero

I found the shirt at the consignment store on the small main street in the downtown area of the North End of Tacoma.  It was the skimpiest one in the store that actually fit me.  It was covered in flowers and had a criss crossed pattern across the chest and a cropped area that left a small triangle of midriff exposed.  

I could hear blood rushing in my ears as I walked, in this tiny (to me) shirt, along the waterfront path at 2pm on a sunday afternoon.  I noticed and tried not to notice people looking at me, at my body, hiding my fear behind my sunglasses.  I silently  rated my anxiety and looked at my phone to type the number into the app. After 15 minutes of walking back and forth along the path I took off my sunglasses and did it again.

When I was on internship for my degree in clinical psychology at the VA American Lake in Tacoma, I began training in a technique called Prolonged Exposure.  This is an evidence based treatment for PTSD where the client chooses one specific traumatic incident (usually the worst one they remember) and systematically reduces their avoidance of the memory and all associated people, places, and things.  If this sounds rough to you then wait until you hear the process.  

You start by identifying all the things you now avoid as a result of the incident.  So if it were a car crash, maybe you avoid highways or the street that the accident occurred on, maybe you avoid driving at dusk or even watching shows that you think might have car accidents in them.  So the first step is to make a list of things you avoid and rate how stressful doing them seems to you (from 1-10).  Then you start with things at a 3-4 level and start doing them.  One a day, every day.  

At the same time, in your therapy sessions, you start telling the story of the memory.  You do so including as much detail and sensory information as you can.  Over and over again for the duration of the session.  And you record it on your phone and then go home and listen to it every day, rating your distress from 1-10 each time you listen. If this sounds profoundly unappealing to you, you are not alone.  Most people find this idea daunting if not outright terrifying.  But for some, the symptoms of PTSD - the nightmares, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and rumination, are worse. 

The process of moving toward the things you fear (rather than avoiding them) is called exposure. Doing it in your outside life (walking the waterfront in a tight t-shirt) is called In Vivo (literally “in life”) exposure and doing it in your imagination or memory (recounting the trauma in a therapy room) is called imaginal exposure.  

What our subjective ratings (and hundreds of randomized controlled trials) show is that our distress goes down over time.  The more we face the thing we fear and discover that nothing bad happens, the less we fear that thing.  This is a process called habituation.  In the same way that when you live in a house near the airport, after a while you no longer hear the planes going overhead, when you are exposed to your memory and the things you fear and nothing bad happens, your fear response lessens.  

You see, our brain registers and is bothered by loud noises like planes flying nearby because they are signals of possible danger.  But if we hear the stimulus (loud noise) multiple times and nothing bad happens, our brain recategorizes that sound as “safe,” and focuses its anxieties on other potential threats. In the same way, my brain paired cute sexy clothing with danger. And I was walking the waterfront path to teach my brain that wearing a cute sexy top would not get me assaulted. 

Often clients come to see me after trying to work with other therapists on their trauma.  I always feel a tinge of grief and a lot of tenderness when this happens.  So many therapists are still not trained in effective use of exposure, often because they are uncomfortable with the concept themselves. The urge to avoid what we fear is so powerful - it is endemic to our survival as organisms on this planet.  And because we therapists care so much about our clients and their pain is painful to us, if we have not learned to face our own fear, we can collaborate with our clients in their avoidance. 

But we do ourselves and them no favors.  Instead, when we avoid, we make our (and our client’s) lives smaller and smaller, we never get to fully heal from our traumas and - worst of all in my opinion - we never become the superhero that we are meant to be!

Because here is the thing - I learned to walk that waterfront.  I learned to walk it wearing whatever I wanted to, I learned to do it with my sunglasses off, I learned to do it making eye contact with the people I passed.  I will admit, I got a little bit hooked - I wanted to find every damn thing I had ever been afraid of and do it just for the high it brought and to know that fear did not own me. And for those of us who have struggled with PTSD or any kind of intense fear reaction, we know that this is a tremendous liberation.  Enough to make you feel like a superhero.  

1 McLean, C. P., Levy, H. C., Miller, M. L., & Tolin, D. F. (2022). Exposure therapy for PTSD: A meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 91, 102115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102115

Powers, M. B., Halpern, J. M., Ferenschak, M. P., Gillihan, S. J., & Foa, E. B. (2010). A meta-analytic review of prolonged exposure for posttraumatic stress disorder. Clinical psychology review, 30(6), 635–641. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.04.007

Spiral

In the National Aquarium in Baltimore there is a tank that has a spiral ramp in the middle.  The tank is all around this ramp and with each turn of the descent, the hardscape of coral reefs, sea plants, seaweed, and the stationary softscape of anemones, starfish and cave dwelling eels, change.  The sharks, grouper, and porcupinefish all circle at different speeds and in different directions. As I descend I feel like a part of a grand process, one that I have only a small amount of agency over but that has a rhythm and pace to it - an interconnection.  Other people in the aquarium also circle down or up the ramp at different paces, they too are of different shapes and sizes.  We all move around and around and around.  

When I return to any particular point in the spiral, I see familiar landscape - a giant rock or a log.  A notable crustacean. At first, my brain registers the familiarity- I know this place! But then, when I have a moment to sit with it I realize it is not exactly the same.   I am at a different height, the angle is different.  So although that stone was there before and I know it, I can now see its shiny underbelly and the algae growing there.  And the fish that met me at eye level at the previous loop are now slightly above and I see their lighter bellies, smooth and taut rather than their stripe-finned sides. 

The soul journey is like this.  We like to think that progress is a straight line but that is a falsehood of the materialist mind.   The journey sometimes feels like a circle (and often the ways we try to do the journey without wise support can be a circle, following our blind spots round and round).  But if we have a sincere desire to grow and change, and we have wise support, the journey is more of a spiral.   There is a deepening.  It is circular, but in three dimensions. Like the seasons.  Every year there is a spring but it isn’t the same spring. 

Sometimes the darkness is overwhelming.  If we have done some unproductive circling before we truly got on our soul journey, we are sensitized to fear getting stuck in a loop.  And so we see the things that look the same, that recurring part of the spiral, and we panic.  The fear brain screams - I am here again!  Look - its THAT rock!  That same fucking speckled rock!  I am not going anywhere.  I am going in circles.  This isn’t working.  There is no journey.  Just my same dumb loop. 

And this is the point where I ask us to pause, to stay with the familiar long enough to look at it more closely. If you do this you can see that you are in the same spiral but it is not exactly the same because you are at a different angle. That rock is still that rock. (Of course it is that rock - its YOUR journey!  That is YOUR ROCK!  You may see that rock for the rest of your days as it is your karma in some way - you and that rock are intimately linked in ways understandable and not.)  But you are different - you are seeing that rock from a different angle.  

Contextualizing our journey this way can help us adjust to the rhythm of the soul life.  It is not a line but that does not mean that it does not follow a pattern.  It is just a pattern more ancient and rhythmic than the rise over run of modern productivity.  As we descend into ourselves, our presence deepens and so the energy gets more dense, more intense.  We become more the naturally sensitive being we were always meant to be and so become less tolerant of things that do not suit our soul life.  We learn to build a kind of sea legs, a metabolism that allows us to withstand the pressures of the depths and to trust the inner path’s unfolding.  And we gradually also become acclimated to the truth that each of us is a part of a dynamic and intricate ecosystem whose journey of healing and growth is intricately connected to the journey of every other thing. 

Because unlike the Baltimore aquarium, your depths don’t end.  They just keep going, keep circling, keep richening.  Your depths are unfathomable.

Indecision is a Decoy

On my first ever backpacking trip, I climbed 5 miles up into the Gifford Pinchot wilderness to a lake on a mountain.  The camping spot was exquisite and so were the mosquitoes.  My companion and I literally could not be outside the tent unless we were cooking (the heat pushed them away) or sitting in the hot sun (which the mosquitos also detested), or in the water (where they still went for our ears and cheeks).  On the second day, a wind picked up and this was helpful as it blew the bugs away intermittently.  

On our last morning, my friend decided to jump in the lake before we left. I considered this option with care.  It sounded like a good idea - it would give me a break from the bugs, wet hair might cool me down for the return hike, it might give my nervous system a reset that I can always use, maybe it would dispel some of the angst I had built up over all that swatting.  

On the other hand, it was a long hike down, my hair dripping down my back might be annoying and I had only carried this pack once - it might chafe if it was wet. The hassle of undressing and suiting up and then changing again and then carrying my swimsuit…seemed like a lot of bother.

But then again, this was a beautiful lake and my first backpacking trip. What if I regretted not doing it later?  Would I feel proud of myself like I had been brave on top of brave jumping in the lake at the top of the mountain after backpacking up?  

I could feel the tension building around this decision.  I was starting to feel frustrated.  Why couldn’t I just make a choice?  Was I going to spend the whole last hour that we are at this beautiful place agonizing about whether to do a thing that A.) didn’t matter and B.) was supposed to be enjoyable?  What was happening in my brain?  

And then something happened. 

Something that had not happened before.  

I realized that my brain had duped me!  The decision wasn’t the problem, the indecision was!

I realized that it didn’t matter whether I jumped in the lake or not.  This was not a crisis.  The real crisis, the one that had my well-being on the line, was 1. Whether I let myself safely experiment with doing new things and 2. Whether I could be kind to myself and keep a stance of learning while I did. 

In other words, I could not know the outcome of jumping in the lake.  I could not know for sure how I would feel afterwards - I had not had this experience before.  But it was unlikely that either option was dangerous or going to have long lasting negative consequences - in fact, based on the information I had, both options had potential pros and cons and were pretty evenly matched. Otherwise, I would not have been able to debate them so thoroughly.

However, I could know with absolute certainty how I would feel if I chose to either debate myself into a place of paralysis or choose one of these options and then berate myself for that decision afterwards.  The only choice I could make that would for certain make me - if not the most happy ever - at least functional and able to make better decisions in the future - was to 1. Make a choice and 2. Be kind to myself about whatever choice I made. 

So I let go of the agonizing back and forth and chose to practice, in a small way, having my own back.  Instead of staying locked in the endless back and forth, I tried saying to myself,  “That’s ok honey.  Either of these are fine choices.  Just pick one and see how you feel.  If later you wish you had jumped in the lake, you can do that next time.  There will be other lakes and other chances to jump.  You got this.  I trust you and you can trust you.”

So, if it matters to you, I did not jump in the lake.  I decided this time I would try not jumping. Next time maybe I will. As my newfound compassionate voice said to me, there will be other lakes.  And yet the principles here are widely applicable. I have found that there are a million opportunities to have my own back in my daily life.  And the more I do it the more I feel able to take risks because I know I have myself to fall back on.  

Post note: Later on the hike down, my lake-jumping friend confided that they often struggle with indecision about whether or not to jump in cold water.  They remarked that after many trials, they have made a mental note to themselves that says: If you ever are wondering whether you should jump into cold water, you should do it. I laughed out loud thinking about how maybe someday, after multiple trials and trusting myself to learn, I might have a little notebook of mental notes of things I have learned when I let myself experiment and observed the results with kindness.

Dead Weight

Have you ever injured a toenail and watched it turn black and blue and purple with all the blood congealed beneath?  The nail starts to calcify, get more rigid.   Eventually it starts to feel loose and then finally is hanging on by a smaller and smaller piece.

These days I feel the overculture hanging on like a bruised up toenail.

I wake up in the morning and I can’t believe it's still there. Throughout the day I walk about, limping a bit but managing.  Trying to watch out for it even though I know it has no energy and life of its own.  It is still connected to me.  I still need it in some way my body knows but my brain can’t quite comprehend. Inevitably at some point it snags on something and I feel the pain scream through my system.

I have to call an insurance company, I get a recorded message with a phone tree and eventually it just hangs up on me without ever offering me a human voice or giving me an answer to my question.  I feel a little more dry and this makes sense - the old system is binary and desiccated, antagonistic and materialistic.  It is extractive.  

I look in the eyes of people I don’t even know and I know they have their own experience of this bruised up hangnail.  They have some basic life need and they make a call and listen to a robot and get hung up on. Their water bill was abnormally high and so they tried to find their account online but got locked out of their devices 5 times trying to reset their passwords and so gave up.  I see the exhaustion of this blackened, dead shell hanging on as they try to go about their survival routines and I have more care and compassion for them than ever before. 

But just this week I felt something new - just the hint of it but it was real I am sure.  The naked pearlescent little snailshell of a new nail beneath. 

And I find more and more I catch little glimpses of her.  My neighbor offers me fresh eggs.  A crow brings me an instant coffee packet in exchange for a month of sunflower seeds (and more recently some cheesy poofs).  A stranger picks up trash on the street. The long branches of the fir tree in the park are suddenly flush with new growth at her tips (like…new fir tree fingernails?).  I breathe deeply. I remember that my breath is an emission of carbon dioxide that feeds this tree and so I breathe out more intentionally in her direction. 

This is the new toenail I think we are growing, friends.  Interconnection. Empathy.  A nervous system that recognizes each other.  It's not all the way here yet - it comes and goes.  We all still sometimes need to retreat into the protection of an old dead shell. 

But the gift that comes from acknowledging death is that we are forced to remember that it is always accompanied by new life.  Maybe not for us, maybe not without suffering, and maybe not soon, but new life of any sort is worth pausing for with awe.

Any new life offers possibility.

Because we all know how the toenail story ends: eventually it just falls off.  And when it does, it returns to being a part of a composting process that is way older than patriarchy, capitalism, or white supremacy. 

Interview on A Wild New Work

Molly and I had the chance to have a conversation with Megan Leatherman of A Wild New Work…

We got to talk about ancestors, myth, connection with the land, and why we must learn to regulate our nervous systems before we start processing ancestral trauma. It was a powerful conversation with a couple friends who I just love chatting with. I have shared a couple highights below.

I hope you enjoy it.

“Myth speaks to us in a way that can really circumvent our defenses. It helps get us into a state of mind into - just like dreams - this other place in our psyche where there are openings, and being in that place can also be another portal to hearing and listening to ancestors.”

— Molly Klekamp

"There's a lot that we've inherited from our ancestors... Most of us, if not all, have inherited trauma through our family lines, and that can be big, big things, big traumas, but also little ones that happen to us every day, some sort of wounding…something that happens to us internally, and then it often makes us less flexible, more rigid, more feeling like we have to protect ourselves, and that's so normal in our culture today.”

— Megan Leatherman

“ The truth is that we are already connected to our ancestors…At some point we developed this lie about disconnection. That was a survival strategy, too. We're just now at this place in the evolution of consciousness where that lie no longer serves us. And it's time. It's time. But the only way to do it is to continually peek under the veil by being really present with ourselves.”

— Magda Permut

Upcoming Seminar: The Wild Within II

Facilitated by

Magda Permut and Molly Klekamp

October 13 - December 15th 2023

Fridays @ 10 - 11:30am PST

“We were made for these times... For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plane of engagement.” - Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We are living in times of great change.  Seismic shifts have created cracks in the old systems ~ our old ways of being no longer serve.  This has been destablizing and uncomfortable. It has also created the opportunity to heal old wounds at the individual and collective levels and to create a world that is interconnected, soulful, and more aligned with our true purpose. We are all being called to listen to the “deep song:”  the wisdom in our bones about who we are and what we are here to do. 

To support this great change, trauma therapists Magda Permut and Molly Klekamp will guide a small group into the depths of self discovery through the myths, stories, and teachings of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and other wise teachers.  Using Women Who Run with the Wolves as a mythic frame, we will unpack old binaries and biases, discern and disconnect from that which no longer serves, recover our innate wisdom, and find our own ways of orienting to soul in uncertain times. 

Video teachings by Molly and Magda will be available one week before each session.  We will meet weekly for facilitated group discussion of the reading and lecture material and its relevance to living our individual and collective myths. 

This transformative experience is designed for individuals of all genders and lived experiences.

Note: For those interested in joining session 2 without participating in session 1, the recordings from session 1 will be made available in advance for a small fee. Also, each session stands well alone so feel free to join without feeling the need to catch up!

Please email tendrilscommunity@gmail.com for registration.

Upcoming Retreat: The Journey to the Great Below

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Facilitated by

Magda Permut and Molly Klekamp

September 22 -23, 2023

Registration: tendrilscommunity@gmail.com

We are living in times of great change. From our unique vantage point, poised between the cosmos and the earth, we can feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath us and know that there are seeds longing to grow through the cracks.  A world that honors all of life is waiting to be born. 

Each of us has our sacred work inside this transition. 

Each of us is called.

And yet, living in the shell of the overculture there are precious few places to practice the deep listening that is required to navigate the path forward.

Welcome to the Journey to the Great Below

Enter “the space between”.  Step intentionally into the seasonal shift from summer to fall. Gather with a small group of committed others and let yourself be guided by one of the oldest myths recorded.   Speak with land that presented itself synchronistically to teach and be honored for this purpose.  Come reclaim your ancestors and history, find a heartspace big enough to hold your part of the suffering of the world, and source a sovereignty inside that you can call on to make powerful decisions in the days to come.   Expect storytelling, connection with others, deep reflection, nature-based ritual, authentic communication with land, creative expression, dreamwork, and reclaiming the magic that is your  birthright. 

Details:

This is a 2 day and 1 night all inclusive residential retreat

Various accommodation options will be available including double rooms, outside in tents, or find private accommodation in the area and just come for the programming. Weather permitting, most of the event will occur outdoors

All meals will be included, dietary restrictions will be honored

Expect variable temperatures ranging from warm, dry weather to cooler temperatures and rain

Those joining from out of state will be assisted in finding rides and accommodation on the adjacent days if needed

Participants should be prepared for:

Periods of intentional silence/darkness

Meditation

Movement (adapted as necessary for those with varying abilities)

Finding your growth edge

Managing your own bodily needs and adjusting, asking for help with, or abstaining from activities that do not support your well-being

Participating in emergent, intuitive process ~ Facilitators will be responding to the co-created field in real time and following what wants to be created at this time, in this place, with the human and non-human beings that show up.

Who This Retreat is For:

Our retreats and classes are best suited for those already engaged in their own personal work who are looking to expand this work. This retreat is especially suited for therapists, counselors, coaches or others engaged in deep self exploration either personally or professionally.

Cost and Registration:

The base cost of the retreat is $440.  This includes all costs from Friday afternoon to Saturday dinner. Scholarships are available.

For more information and to fill out an application, please email us at tendrilscommunity@gmail.com

Upcoming Talk Series and Book Club

“We were made for these times... For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plane of engagement.” - Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We are living in times of great change.  Seismic shifts have created cracks in the old systems ~ our old ways of being no longer serve.  This has been destablizing and uncomfortable. It has also created the opportunity to heal old wounds at the individual and collective levels and to create a world that is interconnected, soulful, and more aligned with our true purpose. We are all being called to listen to the “deep song:”  the wisdom in our bones about who we are and what we are here to do. 

In this 9-week exploration, trauma therapists Magda Permut and Molly Klekamp will guide a small group into the depths of self discovery through the myths, stories, and teachings of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and other wise teachers.  Using Women Who Run with the Wolves as a mythic frame, we will unpack old binaries and biases, discern and disconnect from that which no longer serves, recover our innate wisdom, and find our own ways of orienting to soul in uncertain times. 

Each two hour online session will begin with teachings by Molly and Magda. This will be followed by a facilitated group discussion of the material and its relevance to living our individual and collective myths. Participants will be invited to participate in an online message board and discussion space to build connection and community between sessions.

This transformative experience is designed for individuals of all genders and lived experiences.

Please email wildwithin2022@gmail.com for registration.

The Predator: Recent Encounters

In 2008 I was travelling in Asia and had the following experience:

I am at an animal park where people pay to stand beside a female tiger and have their photograph taken.  The tiger has a chain around her neck and a keeper who stands near her at all times.  She maintains her impressive size and the lazy royal attitude that characterizes the large cats, but for the most part she looks dulled and heavily sedated - completely disinterested in attacking anyone.  I watch her allow person after person to stand beside her, smiling at their relatives who tout cameras or phones, garish with big square teeth and holding up bunny fingers.  I retreat inside myself. I feel sad and somewhat despondent.  I grieve this majestic wild beast contained and treated like a stuffed toy.  My mind wanders to ecological disaster and existential angst. 

I am yanked back to the present when about 20 feet away, a small child darts away from its parent and, in a quickened heartbeat, the predator’s eyes are upon it.  Her face is still and intense and there is an anticipation- the feeling of energy gathering.  She tracks the child with her eyes and head.  I can sense the electricity in the air as the connection between predator and potential prey turns to something palpable – almost solid.  The crowd has noticed too and faces follow the gaze of the tiger. The mother runs after the child and in just a few moments the little one is back within the purview of her protection.  The giant cat looks away, bored again.  The spell is broken.  The moment is passed and the predator resumes her lazy process of posing, acting the part of domestication.

After the first session of facilitating my most recent workshop, "Feeding the Instinctual Self: Living into Myth through the work of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés,” I had three nightmares in three nights.  In each, a woman or girl is attacked by a man. Sometimes this man was her father, sometimes a stranger. Sometimes he was not visible, but there was a sense of him in the shadows. In each of these dreams I awoke in distress, my body and nervous system reacting as though I was under physical attack. 

These types of dreams fall into the category of what Dr. Estés calls “dark man dreams.”  She describes these dreams as being particularly common among those who identify as female, with most women reporting having experienced at least one by the age of 25 (Estés, 1991). In her theory, dark man dreams represent the natural predator in the female psyche, the force that Carl Jung posited acts in opposition to the life force – “contra natorum,” against nature.  This force “seeks to inhibit the women’s ideas, energies, and thoughts” and when women express their thoughts, their true feelings, or take steps toward their dreams, they often experience a kind of psychological backlash.  This natural predator responds to the emergence of creative new life.  With attack.

On the morning after the third night of nightmares, I prepared to go for a run.  I needed to shift my energy and as I fiddled with my saved podcasts and happened upon one I saved a while back – Donald Kalsched on Jungianthology talking about early trauma and dreams (Kalschad, 2015).  As I ran, the built up residue from fear, upset, and distress pumped through my vascular and respiratory system and I listened to Kalsched describe several examples of “dark man” dreams.  He works with clients who endured early “unbearable experiences” and contends that the predator is an archetypal (as he breaks it down – archaic + typical) defense that emerges from these early traumas and serves as both persecutor and protector.

This talk, in combination the physical exertion of running, helped shift my energy enough to transcend my previous state.  I had woken that morning as the victim of a nighttime predator, carrying the pain and baggage of the attack in my body.  Kalsched’s depiction helped me expand my frame so that my understanding was larger than my previous narrow view.  And movement pulled the transition through the body. 

In a previous essay, “On Overculture,” I explored the concept of internalized overculture.   This is the idea that there is a set of forces that press down upon us and try to contain us in ways that do not serve the soul.  Often the overculture is experienced as an amalgam of internalized messages from one or more authoritative entities we encounter in our development (family, school, work, mass media) and so there are multiple levels at which internalized overculture can operate.  From this vantage point, one might say that Kalsched’s clients’ persecutor/protector operates at the family level as this is the young child’s sphere of reality (using family loosely here to describe whomever is in the child’s immediate sphere in early years). The “dark man” that Estés refers to could be operating at any of the levels, or at multiple levels.   She posits that the internal predator is native to the psyche but add that “if we have difficult childhoods, this can make [the internal predator] more vicious and ferocious.” And that although men certainly do have an internal predator (she references La Belle Damme Sans Merci), she suggests that, for those who are raised female, the familial level predator may be compounded by the cultural predator due to the influence of patriarchal forces at the cultural level.

Interestingly, both Estés and Kalsched also highlight the beneficial side of the internal predator.  Estés remarks that the dark man dreams are helpful in that they point to where the work is.  She even suggests that sometimes the dark man dreams have a healing function such that if one is avoiding one’s calling out of fear then the dark man must be evoked by behaving in the feared way so that the tension between the new life that wants to be born and the predator can be felt.  Kalsched contends that when a child’s needs are not met and this creates unbearable distress, the psyche creates the persecutor/protector to help the child survive the experience.  The persecutor/ protector emerges to help the child bear what is psychologically unbearable.  As such, the persecutor/protector becomes what he has called the “self care system” – designed to help the psyche manage unbearable experience and protect it from potential future trauma.

To those of us who are perceived as or socialized female, the overculture presents a specific set of oppressive messages, just as those with other oppressed identities (based on race, ethnicity, dis/ability, sexual orientation, gender conformity, to name a few) encounter specific sets of oppressive messages related to that axis of identity.  I believe that for all of us with traditionally oppressed identities, our inner predator has been strengthened by experiences of internalized overculture along the lines of this nonconforming identity and that this strengthening has both an adaptive function (protection) and an oppressive function (persecution/predation). 

To return to the “dark man dreams” that emerged during my seminar, sharing my views in a public, international forum evoked internalized messages about the place of women in society.  This is the classic imposter syndrome experience – a well-relatable version of the predator/prey dynamic.  The “new life” part of sharing myself publicly – the inner child of my creative energy emerging - instigated a predator/protector response in the psyche.  Much like the small child wandering away from the parent did in my anecdote at the animal park. 

In a more nuanced way, sharing my affinity for the work of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, someone whose work evokes a more (in my estimation) feminine, culturally-rich, poetic take on the hard science of clinical psychology in which I was trained, provoked another layer of internalized overculture questioning not just “who am I to share this” but “is this material valuable according to the constraints of my chosen field?”  Finally, it felt imperative to both be my authentic self as I presented the material, and also to facilitate in an emotionally-present, heart-centered way that held the magical and liminal elements of the material (rather than retreat into my intellect and present in a more distanced way).  This decision provoked an additional layer of internal persecution – one that has resonances through all of my education and also my early childhood where thinking was valued and feeling was taboo. In a sense, my internal predator (the dark men in my dream) tried to protect me from the censure I internalized from culture, my education, and my family by saying ~ “Be small – don’t draw attention.  If you must speak, do so in an intellectual, distanced way.  Have references, be secular and materialistic. Don’t show emotion, vulnerability.  Don’t be yourself.  I am doing this for your own good. But if you violate these terms, I must attack you to bring you back into the box.”

In her analysis of two predator stories she often tells, Bluebeard and Mr. Fox, Estés argues that the way that fairy tales resolve this dynamic is to “call the brothers.”  That is, to evoke the internal healthy protective forces in the psyche[i].  In the tiger anecdote, this is the parent moving closer to the child, encircling him, putting the larger, more powerful body in proximity to the smaller one.  This is to invoke a protector, a part of the psyche that can stand up to the predator and shield the child spirit so it can grow[ii].  The outcome of this is to “keep going.”  Let the creative, child spirit live and thrive.

In Kalsched’s work, the resolution occurs relationally with the therapist.  The child spirit reaches for the therapist relationally – allowing the therapist to be important to them, allowing themselves to feel a longed for attunement or connection.  The predator/protector attacks to prevent the feared connection which has in the past been painful.  The dynamic resolves when the client brings this experience to the therapy relationship, often in the form of a dream, and the therapist is able to respond with warmth and compassion for both parts, the child spirit and the protector/predator.  The healing is predicated on the client’s ability to initiate the connection with the therapist, to continue in the relationship long enough to build enough trust enough that the child spirits’ longing emerges, and the dark man dream is evoked. And then the client brings the dream to the therapist.  This is a way of “keeping going.”  The final stage is to allow the self to witness the therapist’s compassionate reaction and allow both parts to be witnessed with love and connection. This is what allows the dynamic to be transcended.

So often my clients (and myself:) want to kill the predator.  When we are identified with the child spirit, there is a wish to be free of the one who persecutes us internally and holds us back.  When we are identified with the protector/persecutor, we just want the child spirit, the longing one, the vulnerability to shut up or go away. But as both Kalsched and Estés point out, the tension does not resolve through the annihilation of a part of self.  My favorite resolution is the fate of the predator Bluebeard - he is dismembered and fed to the birds, but a hank of his beard, “blue as the dark ice of the lake,” is kept “at the convent of the white nuns in the far mountains” (Estés, 1996 p.40). The inner predator does not get to persist in current form, but is taken apart so his power no longer can damage the person and derail them from their path.  He is transformed, by being given to nature, consumed by the birds and presumably digested and distributed in a different form that better serves the psyche.  And what remains is held to be sacred, by a circle of holy women, in a place remote but contained where the air is cool and clean. 

When working with human experience, it is usually wise not to limit ourselves to one perspective for too long.  More often one angle works for a while and then another is needed to make room for our evolving psyche. In any given instance how do we know whether to befriend the predator or dismember it? My experience is that when I have a large enough frame, my inner wisdom can help me determine how to interact in a particular encounter.  And so I offer these two options to you, to myself, knowing that as soon as I publish this post it is likely that the tiger’s eyes will lock onto this vulnerable description of my inner world[iii].

But, like Estés’ prescription – what is there to do but to keep going?  Writing about my experience.  Sharing lyrically and vulnerably in my own voice as best I know it the journey of my child spirit, and my predator/protector as they emerged most recently, knowing that doing so will likely provoke another encounter.  And in some way also as Kalsched recommends, I bring this dream to you - stranger, reader, hoping you will hold my fumbling passage through these concepts with the compassion I have come to hold them.  Hoping that in some way my journey will be connected to yours and that some new transcendent experience can emerge.  That your child spirit will perk up her little ears perhaps and feel a bit emboldened.  While the birds fly over ahead and far off in the mountains, and the sound of holy women singing carries on the wind.

***

[i] I am evading the obvious analysis of gender here to maintain focus on the predator/prey dynamic.  The attributing the quality of protection to the masculine forces of the psyche (fathers, brothers) is clearly influenced by social mores, though how much and in what ways will be fodder for another article.

[ii][ii] It is also worth noting that in Estés work, the internal protectors stand up to the internal predator, whereas in Kalsched’s theory, these are two sides of the same coin.

[iii] The night after I sent this out to a few colleagues to read I dreamed that my soul had discovered a treasure but that Hitler was there interrupting and correcting me as I tried to interpret and communicate what I had found.  Dr. Estés remarks on how frequently Nazis and Hitler appear as predator characters in dreams, even among those who are of generations long past that which survived WWII.  In this dream, one twist was the that tone was light – even comedic at times.  This is one way I have found my dream world to evolve a theme – by presenting similar elements and varying the tone or emotion content.  I expect that there are seasoned dream analysts who have previously observed and written about this but I share here out of my own personal and clinical observations.

References

Estés, C.P. (1992) Women who run with the wolves. Ballantine Books.

Estés, C.P. (1991) In the House of the Riddle Mother: The most common archetypal motifs in women’s dreams. Sounds True.

Kalsched, D. (2015) Early trauma and dreams: Archetypal defenses of the personal spirit  https://jungchicago.org/blog/early-trauma-and-dreams/

On Overculture

As the conversation about systematic oppression has increasingly moved to the mainstream in America, we need clearly defined language to understand and articulate the paths of the rising movements.  Many new words and terms have been created to this end.   

New words are new ideas and new ideas are seeds.  If you place a seed in the crack of an old structure – it will be there that new life grows.  This essay will explore two terms, “Overculture” and “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.” I will discuss how Clarissa Pinkola Estés and bell hooks use these terms to chisel cracks in the old constructs and plant new life there.

In my writing and teaching, I often use a relatively newly-minted term, “Overculture,” coined by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.  This term has specific advantages I wish to elucidate further. 

In response to a readers’ inquiry, Estés explained the process by which she came to this term.  

I coined the word Overculture many years ago to speak about the grid that the overculture slams down or sometimes subversively dreams down over the spirits and souls of human beings... in order to diminish them, set them into matchboxes, exhort them to behave, or else.

I'd been taught the words 'culture' and sub'culture in school long ago, but/ and did not find them to be descriptive enough, and in fact re' subculture,' when used by some -seems to carry a slur about smaller non-dominant groups of any kind, racial, religious, various proclivities groups, talents etc, that are 'sub,' which means below, or under, rather than radiant in one's own right.

In psychoanalytic training I was taught the word 'collective' meaning what people altogether think, believe, feel, in some kind of projected consensual reality.

I found that word wanting also. For it, to me, is like calling humans who go to war 'troops,' -' today a 'troop was killed.' No, boys and girls, mothers and fathers are sent to war, a young person who has a beloved dog and a kid sister who cries at night now, and a mother with red hair who thought she would die to hear the tragic news of her boy shot down, is not 'a troop dying.' It is a fully formed person, a soul, a mind, a spirit, a heart, a wild and beautiful body, and thousands of stories inherent.

So, I found the word 'collective' as taught to us too much of an idea that we all agree with one another on everything, and there is only ONE' collective' to which we belong. No, I don’t find it so. In fact I find it reductionistic and therefore again, an erasing of the many different and valuable hearts and minds in our world.

So my made-up word, Overculture, is meant to define one aspect of the dominant and often power-mad culture we try to navigate without being crushed or over-assimilated into, thereby losing all our unusual talents, our never before seen wonders we are bringing to life, whether children or works ... and more.

To my thinking, the Overculture has some good things to recommend it, but also it is far too often a force and intent to shape, trim and mal-form and diminish and enslave.

Consciousness about the ways and means of the Overculture, will allow us to be more free by questioning the Overculture's motives that we all be nice little well behaved automatons in order to serve those in power. No.

More no!

More than NO! (Estés, 2015).

Perhaps you notice the way that this writing differs in tone from the typical tone of academic or formal writing (the format, perhaps, of the Overculture).  Estés never says anything in a way that is dry or devoid of feeling. Her speaking and writing are always poetic, infused with image and emotions- saturated with a healthy dose of that yellow dye in the margarine that Audre Lorde speaks of in “Use of the erotic: the erotic as power.[i]”  Although Estés’ writing has sometimes been seen as “less serious” as a result, I argue that this is a kind of protest against the intellectual, linear, desiccated language that is often expected and elevated by the Overculture.

Some points that feel important about her definition are:

1. Overculture describes a collection of social and political forces that impact individuals in any culture in ways that are mostly oppressive (but not always and entirely – it does have “some things to recommend it.”)

2. Overculture is a word designed to specifically recognize a particular cultural force while also empowering and making room to celebrate smaller groups with less cultural power, rather than to denigrate and push them to the side.

3. Overculture has implications that are non-homogenous and intended to recognize that everyone has a different experience of internal and projected realities.

4. Overculture intends to honor the holistic experience of individual humans all of whom have multiple identities, roles, and perspectives.

These nuances are important.  They are the treasure map that guides us to the crack in the institution of language.  I like to think of them as coordinates for the exact place where Estés places her chisel and starts to tap.

The first lines of her response describe the closest thing to a definition of Overculture.  She calls it “the grid that…slams down or sometimes subversively dreams down over the spirits and souls of human beings... in order to diminish them, set them into matchboxes, exhort them to behave, or else.”  One might say then that Overculture is a force that contains, reduces, threatens, (in other words, oppresses), either overtly or covertly. 

She pictures it as a grid – which feels apt.  I picture bars – like that of a prison cell but with crossbeams also – being held someplace above our heads.  This image evokes a term coined by another important thinker of our time, Dr. bell hooks[ii]. 

Dr. hooks, also finding existing language lacking, began using the phrase “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”  Her intent, she explains, was “to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality”(hooks, 1997). Her use of the word “interlocking” harkens to the image of a chain or grid, and her use of the word “domination” evokes the feeling of something pressing down. In this way, the new words of these two great thinkers have shaped my own image of systems of oppression. I also find it helpful that hooks specifically identifies several types of oppressive force.  It is as though she names the pieces of metal that compose the grid. 

However, one of the ways that the word Overculture adds to hooks’ phrase is to recognize the limitation of the words “patriarchy” and “white supremacist”[iii].  That is, these words point to members of a specific group and constrain them to one layer of identity. 

Patriarchies, the word implies, are composed of dominant “paters” (fathers) and white supremacy is composed of “white supremacists.”  Each of these, at least in language, highlights and evokes one identity – and draws for the impression of the extreme.  The patriarch implies the dominant authoritarian patriarch either in the family, the workplace or the nation.  The white supremacist evokes a clan member in a white hood. The evoking of extremes, while powerful in some specific uses, has the downside of, obscuring an important truth – and that is of the very common and seemingly innocuous ways that these forces are experienced.  Although egregious examples do exist and I do not wish to minimize them, one of the gifts of the term Overculture is that it highlights the omnipresence of the force.  And recognizes the truth that the experience of the micro-aggression is far more common than the egregious examples of racism, sexism, homophobia.   Far more frequently, we are left with the sensation of gripping in the belly and wondering to ourselves “did that really happen?”  The term Overculture makes room for the tiny, nuanced, daily experiences of oppression as well as the obvious ones.

Additionally, although there is value in recognizing that power constellates around certain groups, it is also important to recognize that these groups are made of individuals with multiple identities and experiences.  And to erase that truth is to perpetuate the insidious work of Overculture by putting “people in matchboxes.” This makes our identity one thing and does not let us be whole.  Some fathers, while being men, and holding one identity that is privileged under the influence of patriarchy, are also disabled, poor, of an ethnic, sexual, or religious minority, to name a few.

There is also a practical limitation to naming the oppression after the dominating identity.  That is, it alienates and creates fear of alienating. I have too often heard folks use the term patriarchy with an implicit apology in their voice or their words – as if to say “sorry men, not you personally – please don’t stop reading.”   This highlights the risk of using a term that points at one facet of identity and names the group in power.  This pointing kind of naming has the appeal of “turning the tables,” empowering the voice of the minority and putting the one with the privileged identity in the hot seat, which has a certain satisfaction for sure. But the most important function of this new language - naming cultural forces for the purpose of changing them – gets lost. 

I am not saying that individuals who have privileged facets of identity do not need to be made aware.  This is necessary – particularly because we are all more blind to our areas of privilege than to the ways we are oppressed.  (This is the nature of being an organism – privilege doesn’t sting).  But I believe that using terms that name the privilege has the effect of overcompensating and recapitulating – it turns the spotlight up too brightly, and its edges are too sharp and the effect is that it creates defensiveness and shame where what is needed is awareness and empathy. 

The term Overculture has the benefit of individualizing the experience and acknowledging that everyone is impacted.  Along each “bar” of the grid, every one of us is either benefitting from the oppression of someone else, being oppressed, or witnessing the oppression of another (Watkins & Shulman, 2008).  No one escapes unscathed.  And not one of these experiences is without suffering.  This is not to say that all experiences of harm or suffering are equal - just that everyone is impacted.  Once one is aware of one’s own location in any given situation, empathy for those in the other seats becomes more available. Empathy allows us to join together to act against a common force with less resistance. 

Overculture in its most simple interpretation refers to a force outside the self.  But, in the same way that hooks refers to internalized racism as a part of the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” Overculture also lives inside of us.  I believe that this is what Estés refers to when she says that the Overculture “sometimes subversively dreams down over” us.  I believe that the task of our time is to join together in dismantling the external Overculture in solidarity.  In order to do so, we have to be steadfast in observing and disempowering the internalized Overculture within each of us.  Neither of these tasks is more important than the other but they both are necessary as we seek individual and community freedom.

[i] In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde uses the following metaphor to describe her experience of the erotic: “During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine,  Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth over and over until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.  I find the erotic such a kernel within myself.  When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.

[ii] I have abstained from highlighting Estés and hooks’ identities, wanting to make room for their ideas first and foremost.  In the way that hooks uses lower case letters to highlight her work over her name, and that I do not wish that their work be relegated to a particular shelf because of one dimension of their identity. I also want to allow them to describe their identities in their own words. This is of course problematic as their writings and biographies are vast enough that I still must select parts and so any explanation is in this way less authentically theirs.

Disclaimers aside, in her book “The Gift of Story,” Dr. Estés’ biographical description calls her an “award-winning poet, Jungian-trained psychoanalyst, cantadora in the Latina tradition…”. She describes her heritage as “Mexican-Spanish by birth and immigrant Hungarian by adoption”(1993).  Dr hooks often describes herself as a “black feminist scholar” and also coined the term “queer pas gay” to describe her sexual identity.

[iii] This commentary is directed entirely at the use of the words/phrases coined by these two thinkers.  In meaning, I believe these two actually shared very similar beliefs about oppression.  Hooks explained the meaning of the term “white supremacist” as including all forms of racism including internalized racism and the structural forces that perpetuate racism.  One powerful quote by her very clearly describes a construct very much like the spirit of Estés’ Overculture as I have explored it.  Hooks says, “dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community (hooks, 2013). 

References

Estés, C.P. (2015). Dear brave souls. On the word I've coined called-The Overculture. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/29996683634/photos/dear-brave-souls-on-the-word-ive-coined-called-the-overculture-q-a-soul-asks-i-a/10152805542223635/

Estés, C.P. (1993) The gift of story: a wise tale about what is enough. Rider. 

hooks, b. (1997). Bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation, Transcript. Northhampton, MA:Media Education Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Bell-Hooks-Transcript.pdf

Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward Psychologies of Liberation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 51.

Upcoming Seminar: Feeding the Instinctual Self

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I am so excited to announce this seminar I will be presenting through the Salome Institute. Check out the description below and reach out if you have any questions.

This three-session seminar will offer an experiential immersion into the teachings of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Over the course of three gatherings, we will dive into the liminal through the storytelling of a single myth, finding ourselves in the story and allowing it to work on us.

Throughout the seminar, we will discuss the concept of “overculture” and explore how we can make our daily lives countercultural by connecting in small, deliberate, consistent ways with our “instinctual self.”

Participants will be guided to develop a personalized way to engage the myth between sessions through intuitive practices like meditation, dreamwork, active imagination, and ritual. This transformative experience is designed for individuals of all genders and lived experiences.

Register: Feeding the Instinctual Self: Living into Myth through the Work of Clarissa Pinkola Estes