18. FILLING IN THE HOLES: CREATING STRUCTURES

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

I
CHAPTER 18
FILLING IN THE HOLES: CREATING
STRUCTURES
The great­est dis­cov­ery of my gen­er­a­tion is that human beings can
alter their lives by alter­ing their atti­tudes of mind.
—William James
It is not that some­thing dif­fer­ent is seen, but that one sees
dif­fer­ent­ly. It is as though the spa­tial act of see­ing were changed by
a new dimen­sion.
—Carl Jung
t is one thing to process mem­o­ries of trau­ma, but it is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent
mat­ter to con­front the inner void—the holes in the soul that result from
not hav­ing been want­ed, not hav­ing been seen, and not hav­ing been allowed
to speak the truth. If your par­ents’ faces nev­er lit up when they looked at
you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cher­ished. If you
come from an incom­pre­hen­si­ble world filled with secre­cy and fear, it’s
almost impos­si­ble to find the words to express what you have endured. If
you grew up unwant­ed and ignored, it is a major chal­lenge to devel­op a
vis­cer­al sense of agency and self-worth.
The research that Judy Her­man, Chris Per­ry, and I had done (see
chap­ter 9) showed that peo­ple who felt unwant­ed as chil­dren, and those
who did not remem­ber feel­ing safe with any­one while grow­ing up, did not
ful­ly ben­e­fit from con­ven­tion­al psy­chother­a­py, pre­sum­ably because they
could not acti­vate old traces of feel­ing cared for.
I could see this even in some of my most com­mit­ted and artic­u­late
patients. Despite their hard work in ther­a­py and their share of per­son­al and
pro­fes­sion­al accom­plish­ments, they could not erase the dev­as­tat­ing imprints
of a moth­er who was too depressed to notice them or a father who treat­ed
them like he wished they’d nev­er been born. It was clear that their lives
would change fun­da­men­tal­ly only if they could recon­struct those implic­it
maps. But how? How can we help peo­ple become vis­cer­al­ly acquaint­ed
with feel­ings that were lack­ing ear­ly in their lives?
I glimpsed a pos­si­ble answer when I attend­ed the found­ing con­fer­ence
of the Unit­ed States Asso­ci­a­tion for Body Psy­chother­a­py in June 1994 at a
small col­lege in Bev­er­ley on the rocky Mass­a­chu­setts coast. Iron­i­cal­ly, I
had been asked to rep­re­sent main­stream psy­chi­a­try at the meet­ing and to
speak on using brain scans to visu­al­ize men­tal states. But as soon as I
walked into the lob­by where atten­dees had gath­ered for morn­ing cof­fee, I
real­ized this was a dif­fer­ent crowd from my usu­al psy­chophar­ma­col­o­gy or
psy­chother­a­py gath­er­ings. The way they talked to one anoth­er, their
pos­tures and ges­tures, radi­at­ed vital­i­ty and engagement—the sort of
phys­i­cal reci­procity that is the essence of attune­ment.
I soon struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with Albert Pes­so, a stocky for­mer
dancer with the Martha Gra­ham Dance Com­pa­ny who was then in his ear­ly
sev­en­ties. Under­neath his bushy eye­brows he exud­ed kind­ness and
con­fi­dence. He told me that he had found a way of fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing
people’s rela­tion­ship to their core, somat­ic selves. His enthu­si­asm was
infec­tious, but I was skep­ti­cal and asked him if he was cer­tain he could
change the set­tings of the amyg­dala. Unfazed by the fact that nobody had
ever test­ed his method sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, he con­fi­dent­ly assured me that he
could.
Pes­so was about to con­duct a work­shop in “PBSP psy­chomo­tor
therapy,”1 and he invit­ed me to attend. It was unlike any group work I had
ever seen. He took a low chair oppo­site a woman named Nan­cy, whom he
called a “pro­tag­o­nist,” with the oth­er par­tic­i­pants seat­ed on pil­lows around
them. He then invit­ed Nan­cy to talk about what was trou­bling her,
occa­sion­al­ly using her paus­es to “wit­ness” what he was observing—as in
“A wit­ness can see how crest­fall­en you are when you talk about your father
desert­ing the fam­i­ly.” I was impressed by how care­ful­ly he tracked sub­tle
shifts in body pos­ture, facial expres­sion, tone of voice, and eye gaze, the
non­ver­bal expres­sions of emo­tion. (This is called “micro­track­ing” in
psy­chomo­tor ther­a­py).
Each time Pes­so made a “wit­ness state­ment,” Nancy’s face and body
relaxed a bit, as if she felt com­fort­ed by being seen and val­i­dat­ed. His qui­et
com­ments seemed to bol­ster her courage to con­tin­ue and go deep­er. When
Nan­cy start­ed to cry, he observed that nobody should have to bear so much
pain all by her­self, and he asked if she would like to choose some­one to sit
next to her. (He called this a “con­tact per­son.”) Nan­cy nod­ded and, after
care­ful­ly scan­ning the room, point­ed to a kind-look­ing mid­dle-aged woman.
Pes­so asked Nan­cy where she would like her con­tact per­son to sit. “Right
here,” Nan­cy said deci­sive­ly, indi­cat­ing a pil­low imme­di­ate­ly to her right.
I was fas­ci­nat­ed. Peo­ple process spa­tial rela­tions with the right
hemi­sphere of the brain, and our neu­roimag­ing research had shown that the
imprint of trau­ma is prin­ci­pal­ly on the right hemi­sphere as well (see chap­ter
3). Car­ing, dis­ap­proval, and indif­fer­ence all are pri­mar­i­ly con­veyed by
facial expres­sion, tone of voice, and phys­i­cal move­ments. Accord­ing to
recent research, up to 90 per­cent of human com­mu­ni­ca­tion occurs in the
non­ver­bal, right-hemi­sphere realm,2 and this was where Pesso’s work
seemed pri­mar­i­ly to be direct­ed. As the work­shop went on, I was also
struck by how the con­tact person’s pres­ence seemed to help Nan­cy tol­er­ate
the painful expe­ri­ences she was dredg­ing up.3
But what was most unusu­al was how Pes­so cre­at­ed tableaus—or as he
called them, “structures”—of the pro­tag­o­nists’ past. As the nar­ra­tives
unfold­ed, group par­tic­i­pants were asked to play the roles of sig­nif­i­cant
peo­ple in the pro­tag­o­nists’ lives, such as par­ents and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers,
so that their inner world began to take form in three-dimen­sion­al space.
Group mem­bers were also enlist­ed to play the ide­al, wished-for par­ents who
would pro­vide the sup­port, love, and pro­tec­tion that had been lack­ing at
crit­i­cal moments. Pro­tag­o­nists became the direc­tors of their own plays,
cre­at­ing around them the past they nev­er had, and they clear­ly expe­ri­enced
pro­found phys­i­cal and men­tal relief after these imag­i­nary sce­nar­ios. Could
this tech­nique instill imprints of safe­ty and com­fort along­side those of ter­ror
and aban­don­ment, decades after the orig­i­nal shap­ing of mind and brain?
Intrigued with the promise of Pesso’s work, I eager­ly accept­ed his
invi­ta­tion to vis­it his hill­top farm­house in south­ern New Hamp­shire. After
lunch beneath an ancient oak tree, Al asked me to join him in his red
clap­board barn, now a stu­dio, to do a struc­ture. I’d spent sev­er­al years in
psy­cho­analy­sis, so I did not expect any major rev­e­la­tions. I was a set­tled
pro­fes­sion­al man in my for­ties with my own fam­i­ly, and I thought of my
par­ents as two elder­ly peo­ple who were try­ing to cre­ate a decent old age for
them­selves. I cer­tain­ly did not think they still had a major influ­ence on me.
Since there were no oth­er peo­ple avail­able for role-play, Al began by
ask­ing me to select an object or a piece of fur­ni­ture to rep­re­sent my father. I
chose a gigan­tic black leather couch and asked Al to put it upright about
eight feet in front of me, slight­ly to the left. Then he asked if I’d like to
bring my moth­er into the room as well, and I chose a heavy lamp,
approx­i­mate­ly the same height as the upright couch. As the ses­sion
con­tin­ued, the space became pop­u­lat­ed with the impor­tant peo­ple in my
life: my best friend, a tiny Kleenex box to my right; my wife, a small pil­low
next to him; my two chil­dren, two more tiny pil­lows.
After a while I sur­veyed the pro­jec­tion of my inter­nal land­scape: two
hulk­ing, dark, and threat­en­ing objects rep­re­sent­ing my par­ents and an array
of minus­cule objects rep­re­sent­ing my wife, chil­dren, and friends. I was
astound­ed; I had re-cre­at­ed my inner image of my stern Calvin­is­tic par­ents
from the time I was a lit­tle boy. My chest felt tight, and I’m sure that my
voice sound­ed even tighter. I could not deny what my spa­tial brain was
reveal­ing: The struc­ture had allowed me to visu­al­ize my implic­it map of the
world.
When I told Al what I had just uncov­ered, he nod­ded and asked if I
would allow him to change my per­spec­tive. I felt my skep­ti­cism return, but
I liked Al and was curi­ous about his method, so I hes­i­tant­ly agreed. He then
inter­posed his body direct­ly between me and the couch and lamp, mak­ing
them dis­ap­pear from my line of sight. Instan­ta­neous­ly I felt a deep release
in my body—the con­stric­tion in my chest eased and my breath­ing became
relaxed. That was the moment I decid­ed to become Pesso’s student.4
RESTRUCTURING INNER MAPS
Pro­ject­ing your inner world into the three-dimen­sion­al space of a struc­ture
enables you to see what’s hap­pen­ing in the the­ater of your mind and gives
you a much clear­er per­spec­tive on your reac­tions to peo­ple and events in
the past. As you posi­tion place­hold­ers for the impor­tant peo­ple in your life,
you may be sur­prised by the unex­pect­ed mem­o­ries, thoughts, and emo­tions
that come up. You then can exper­i­ment with mov­ing the pieces around on
the exter­nal chess­board that you’ve cre­at­ed and see what effect it has on
you.
Although the struc­tures involve dia­logue, psy­chomo­tor ther­a­py does
not explain or inter­pret the past. Instead, it allows you to feel what you felt
back then, to visu­al­ize what you saw, and to say what you could not say
when it actu­al­ly hap­pened. It’s as if you could go back into the movie of
your life and rewrite the cru­cial scenes. You can direct the role-play­ers to
do things they failed to do in the past, such as keep­ing your father from
beat­ing up your mom. These tableaus can stim­u­late pow­er­ful emo­tions. For
exam­ple, as you place your “real moth­er” in the cor­ner, cow­er­ing in ter­ror,
you may feel a deep long­ing to pro­tect her and real­ize how pow­er­less you
felt as a child. But if you then cre­ate an ide­al moth­er, who stands up to your
father and who knows how to avoid get­ting trapped in abu­sive
rela­tion­ships, you may expe­ri­ence a vis­cer­al sense of relief and an
unbur­den­ing of that old guilt and help­less­ness. Or you might con­front the
broth­er who bru­tal­ized you as a child and then cre­ate an ide­al broth­er who
pro­tects you and becomes your role mod­el.
The job of the director/therapist and oth­er group mem­bers is to pro­vide
pro­tag­o­nists with the sup­port they need to delve into what­ev­er they have
been too afraid to explore on their own. The safe­ty of the group allows you
to notice things that you have hid­den from yourself—usually the things you
are most ashamed of. When you no longer have to hide, the struc­ture allows
you to place the shame where it belongs—on the fig­ures right in front of
you who rep­re­sent those who hurt you and made you feel help­less as a
child.
Feel­ing safe means you can say things to your father (or, rather, the
place­hold­er who rep­re­sents him) that you wish you could have said as a
five-year-old. You can tell the place­hold­er for your depressed and
fright­ened moth­er how ter­ri­ble you felt about not being able to take care of
her. You can exper­i­ment with dis­tance and prox­im­i­ty and explore what
hap­pens as you move place­hold­ers around. As an active par­tic­i­pant, you can
lose your­self in a scene in a way you can­not when you sim­ply tell a sto­ry.
And as you take charge of rep­re­sent­ing the real­i­ty of your expe­ri­ence, the
wit­ness keeps you com­pa­ny, reflect­ing the changes in your pos­ture, facial
expres­sion, and tone of voice.
In my expe­ri­ence, phys­i­cal­ly reex­pe­ri­enc­ing the past in the present and
then rework­ing it in a safe and sup­port­ive “con­tain­er” can be pow­er­ful
enough to cre­ate new, sup­ple­men­tal mem­o­ries: sim­u­lat­ed expe­ri­ences of
grow­ing up in an attuned, affec­tion­ate set­ting where you are pro­tect­ed from
harm. Struc­tures do not erase bad mem­o­ries, or even neu­tral­ize them the
way EMDR does. Instead, a struc­ture offers fresh options—an alter­na­tive
mem­o­ry in which your basic human needs are met and your long­ings for
love and pro­tec­tion are ful­filled.
REVISING THE PAST
Let me give an exam­ple from a work­shop I led not long ago at the Esalen
Insti­tute in Big Sur, Cal­i­for­nia.
Maria was a slen­der, ath­let­ic Fil­ip­ina in her mid­for­ties who had been
pleas­ant and accom­mo­dat­ing dur­ing our first two days, which had been
devot­ed to explor­ing the long-term impact of trau­ma and teach­ing self-
reg­u­la­tion tech­niques. But now, seat­ed on her pil­low about six feet away
from me, she looked scared and col­lapsed. I won­dered to myself if she had
vol­un­teered as a pro­tag­o­nist main­ly to please the girl­friend who had
accom­pa­nied her to the work­shop.
I began by encour­ag­ing her to notice what was going on inside her and
to share what­ev­er came to mind. After a long silence she said: “I can’t
real­ly feel any­thing in my body, and my mind is blank.” Mir­ror­ing her inner
ten­sion, I replied: “A wit­ness can see how wor­ried you are that your mind is
blank and you don’t feel any­thing after vol­un­teer­ing to do a struc­ture. Is
that right?” “Yes!” she answered, sound­ing slight­ly relieved.
The “wit­ness fig­ure” enters the struc­ture at the very begin­ning and
takes the role of an accept­ing, non­judg­men­tal observ­er who joins the
pro­tag­o­nist by reflect­ing his or her emo­tion­al state and not­ing the con­text in
which that state has emerged (as when I men­tioned Maria’s “vol­un­teer­ing to
do a struc­ture”). Being val­i­dat­ed by feel­ing heard and seen is a pre­con­di­tion
for feel­ing safe, which is crit­i­cal when we explore the dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry of
trau­ma and aban­don­ment. A neu­roimag­ing study has shown that when
peo­ple hear a state­ment that mir­rors their inner state, the right amyg­dala
momen­tar­i­ly lights up, as if to under­line the accu­ra­cy of the reflec­tion.
I encour­aged Maria to keep focus­ing on her breath, one of the exer­cis­es
we had been prac­tic­ing togeth­er, and to notice what she was feel­ing in her
body. After anoth­er long silence she hes­i­tant­ly began to speak: “There is
always a sense of fear in every­thing I do. It doesn’t look like I am afraid,
but I am always push­ing myself. It is real­ly dif­fi­cult for me to be up here.” I
reflect­ed, “A wit­ness can see how uncom­fort­able you feel push­ing your­self
to be here,” and she nod­ded, slight­ly straight­en­ing her spine, sig­nal­ing that
she felt under­stood. She con­tin­ued: “I grew up think­ing that my fam­i­ly was
nor­mal. But I always was ter­ri­fied of my dad. I nev­er felt cared for by him.
He nev­er hit me as hard as he did my sib­lings, but I have a per­va­sive sense
of fear.” I not­ed that a wit­ness could see how afraid she looked as she spoke
of her father, and then I invit­ed her to select a group mem­ber to rep­re­sent
him.
Maria scanned the room and chose Scott, a gen­tle video pro­duc­er who
had been a live­ly and sup­port­ive mem­ber of the group. I gave Scott his
script: “I enroll as your real father, who ter­ri­fied you when you were a lit­tle
girl,” which he repeat­ed. (Note that this work is not about impro­vi­sa­tion but
about accu­rate­ly enact­ing the dia­logue and direc­tions pro­vid­ed by the
wit­ness and pro­tag­o­nist.) I then asked Maria where she would like her real
father to be posi­tioned, and she instruct­ed Scott to stand about twelve feet
away, slight­ly to her right and fac­ing away from her. We were begin­ning to
cre­ate the tableau, and every time I con­duct a struc­ture I’m impressed by
how pre­cise the out­ward pro­jec­tions of the right hemi­sphere are.
Pro­tag­o­nists always know exact­ly where the var­i­ous char­ac­ters in their
struc­tures should be locat­ed.
It also sur­pris­es me, again and again, how the place­hold­ers rep­re­sent­ing
the sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple in the protagonist’s past almost imme­di­ate­ly assume a
vir­tu­al real­i­ty: The peo­ple who enroll seem to become the peo­ple he or she
had to deal with back then—not only to the pro­tag­o­nist but often to the
oth­er par­tic­i­pants as well. I encour­aged Maria to take a good, long look at
her real father, and as she gazed at him stand­ing there, we could wit­ness
how her emo­tions shift­ed between ter­ror and a deep sense of com­pas­sion
for him. She tear­ful­ly reflect­ed on how dif­fi­cult his life had been—how, as
a child dur­ing World War II, he had seen peo­ple behead­ed; how he had been
forced to eat rot­ten fish infest­ed with mag­gots. Struc­tures pro­mote one of
the essen­tial con­di­tions for deep ther­a­peu­tic change: a trance­like state in
which mul­ti­ple real­i­ties can live side by side—past and present, know­ing
that you’re an adult while feel­ing the way you did as a child, express­ing
your rage or ter­ror to some­one who feels like your abuser while being ful­ly
aware that you are talk­ing to Scott, who is noth­ing like your real father, and
expe­ri­enc­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the com­plex emo­tions of loy­al­ty, ten­der­ness,
rage, and long­ing that kids feel with their par­ents.
As Maria began to speak about their rela­tion­ship when she was a lit­tle
girl, I con­tin­ued to mir­ror her expres­sions. Her father had bru­tal­ized her
moth­er, she said. He was relent­less­ly crit­i­cal of her diet, her body, her
house­keep­ing, and she was always afraid for her moth­er when he berat­ed
her. Maria described her moth­er as lov­ing and warm; she could not have
sur­vived with­out her. She would always be there to com­fort Maria after her
father lashed out at her, but she didn’t do any­thing to pro­tect her chil­dren
from their father’s rage. “I think my mom had a lot of fear her­self. I have a
sense that she didn’t pro­tect us because she felt trapped.”
At this point I sug­gest­ed that it was time to call Maria’s real moth­er
into the room. Maria scanned the group and smiled bright­ly as she asked
Kristin, a blonde, Scan­di­na­vian-look­ing artist, to play the part of her real
moth­er. Kristin accept­ed in the for­mal words of the struc­ture: “I enroll as
your real moth­er, who was warm and lov­ing and with­out whom you would
not have sur­vived but who failed to pro­tect you from your abu­sive father.”
Maria had her sit on a pil­low to her right, much clos­er than her real father.
I encour­aged Maria to look at Kristin and then I asked, “So what
hap­pens when you look at her?” Maria angri­ly said, “Noth­ing.” “A wit­ness
would see how you stiff­en as you look at your real mom and angri­ly say
that you feel noth­ing,” I not­ed. After a long silence I asked again, “So what
hap­pens now?” Maria looked slight­ly more col­lapsed and repeat­ed,
“Noth­ing.” I asked her, “Is there some­thing you want to say to your mom?”
Final­ly Maria said, “I know you did the best you could,” and then, moments
lat­er: “I want­ed you to pro­tect me.” When she began to cry soft­ly, I asked
her, “What is hap­pen­ing inside?” “Hold­ing my chest, my heart feels like it
is pound­ing real­ly hard,” Maria said. “My sad­ness goes out to my mom;
how inca­pable she was of stand­ing up to my father and pro­tect­ing us. She
just shuts down, pre­tend­ing everything’s okay, and in her mind it prob­a­bly
is, and that makes me mad today. I want to say to her: ‘Mom, when I see
you react to dad when he is being mean … when I see your face, you look
dis­gust­ed and I don’t know why you don’t say, “Fuck off.” You don’t know
how to fight—you are such a pushover—there is a part of you that is not
good and not alive. I don’t even know what I want you to say. I just want
you to be different—nothing you do is right, like you accept every­thing
when it is total­ly not okay.’” I not­ed, “A wit­ness would see how fierce you
are as you want your moth­er to stand up to your dad.” Maria then talked
about how she want­ed her moth­er to run off with the kids and take them
away from her ter­ri­fy­ing father.
I then sug­gest­ed enrolling anoth­er group mem­ber to rep­re­sent her ide­al
moth­er. Maria scanned the room again and chose Ellen, a ther­a­pist and
mar­tial artist. Maria placed her on a pil­low to her right between her real
moth­er and her­self and asked Ellen to put her arm around her. “What do
you want your ide­al moth­er to say to your dad?” I asked. “I want her to say,
‘If you are going to talk like that, I am going to leave you and take the
kids,’” she answered. “‘We are not going to sit here and lis­ten to this shit.’”
Ellen repeat­ed Maria’s words. Then I asked: “What hap­pens now?” Maria
respond­ed: “I like it. I have a lit­tle pres­sure in my head. My breath is free. I
have a sub­tle ener­getic dance in my body now. Sweet.” “A wit­ness can see
how delight­ed you are when you hear your moth­er say­ing that she is not
tak­ing this shit from your dad any­more and that she will take you away
from him,” I told her. Maria began to sob and said, “I would have been able
to be a safe, hap­py lit­tle girl.” Out of the cor­ner of my eye I could see
sev­er­al group mem­bers weep­ing silently—the pos­si­bil­i­ty of grow­ing up
safe and hap­py clear­ly res­onat­ed with their own long­ings.
After a while I sug­gest­ed that it was time to sum­mon Maria’s ide­al
father. I could clear­ly see the delight in Maria’s eyes as she scanned the
group, imag­in­ing her ide­al father. She final­ly chose Dan­ny. I gave him his
script, and he gen­tly told her: “I enroll as your ide­al father, who would have
loved you and cared for you and who would not have ter­ri­fied you.” Maria
instruct­ed him to take a seat near her on her left and beamed. “My healthy
mom and dad!” she exclaimed. I respond­ed: “Allow your­self to feel that joy
as you look at an ide­al dad who would have cared for you.” Maria cried,
“It’s beau­ti­ful,” and threw her arms around Dan­ny, smil­ing at him through
her tears. “I am remem­ber­ing a real­ly ten­der moment with my dad, and that
is what this feels like. I would love to have my mom next to me too.” Both
ide­al par­ents ten­der­ly respond­ed and cra­dled her. I left them there for a
while so that they could ful­ly inter­nal­ize the expe­ri­ence.
We fin­ished with Dan­ny say­ing: “If I had been your ide­al dad back
then, I would have loved you just like this and not have inflict­ed my
cru­el­ty,” while Ellen added, “If I had been your ide­al mom, I would have
stood up for you and me and pro­tect­ed you and not let any harm come to
you.” All the char­ac­ters then made final state­ments, deen­rolling from the
roles they had played, and for­mal­ly resumed being them­selves.
RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE
Nobody grows up under ide­al circumstances—as if we even know what
ide­al cir­cum­stances are. As my late friend David Ser­van-Schreiber once
said: every life is dif­fi­cult in its own way. But we do know that, in order to
become self-con­fi­dent and capa­ble adults, it helps enor­mous­ly to have
grown up with steady and pre­dictable par­ents; par­ents who delight­ed in
you, in your dis­cov­er­ies and explo­rations; par­ents who helped you orga­nize
your com­ings and goings; and who served as role mod­els for self-care and
get­ting along with oth­er peo­ple.
Defects in any of these areas are like­ly to man­i­fest them­selves lat­er in
life. A child who has been ignored or chron­i­cal­ly humil­i­at­ed is like­ly to
lack self-respect. Chil­dren who have not been allowed to assert them­selves
will prob­a­bly have dif­fi­cul­ty stand­ing up for them­selves as adults, and most
grown-ups who were bru­tal­ized as chil­dren car­ry a smol­der­ing rage that
will take a great deal of ener­gy to con­tain.
Our rela­tion­ships will suf­fer as well. The more ear­ly pain and
depri­va­tion we have expe­ri­enced, the more like­ly we are to inter­pret oth­er
people’s actions as being direct­ed against us and the less under­stand­ing we
will be of their strug­gles, inse­cu­ri­ties, and con­cerns. If we can­not appre­ci­ate
the com­plex­i­ty of their lives, we may see any­thing they do as a
con­fir­ma­tion that we are going to get hurt and dis­ap­point­ed.
In the chap­ters on the biol­o­gy of trau­ma we saw how trau­ma and
aban­don­ment dis­con­nect peo­ple from their body as a source of plea­sure and
com­fort, or even as a part of them­selves that needs care and nur­tu­rance.
When we can­not rely on our body to sig­nal safe­ty or warn­ing and instead
feel chron­i­cal­ly over­whelmed by phys­i­cal stir­rings, we lose the capac­i­ty to
feel at home in our own skin and, by exten­sion, in the world. As long as
their map of the world is based on trau­ma, abuse, and neglect, peo­ple are
like­ly to seek short­cuts to obliv­ion. Antic­i­pat­ing rejec­tion, ridicule, and
depri­va­tion, they are reluc­tant to try out new options, cer­tain that these will
lead to fail­ure. This lack of exper­i­men­ta­tion traps peo­ple in a matrix of fear,
iso­la­tion, and scarci­ty where it is impos­si­ble to wel­come the very
expe­ri­ences that might change their basic world­view.
This is one rea­son the high­ly struc­tured expe­ri­ences of psy­chomo­tor
ther­a­py are so valu­able. Par­tic­i­pants can safe­ly project their inner real­i­ty
into a space filled with real peo­ple, where they can explore the cacoph­o­ny
and con­fu­sion of the past. This leads to con­crete aha moments: “Yes, that is
what it was like. That is what I had to deal with. And that is what it would
have felt like back then if I had been cher­ished and cra­dled.” Acquir­ing a
sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence of feel­ing trea­sured and pro­tect­ed as a three-year-old in
the trance­like con­tain­er of a struc­ture allows peo­ple to rescript their inner
expe­ri­ence, as in “I can spon­ta­neous­ly inter­act with oth­er peo­ple with­out
hav­ing to be afraid of being reject­ed or get­ting hurt.”
Struc­tures har­ness the extra­or­di­nary pow­er of the imag­i­na­tion to
trans­form the inner nar­ra­tives that dri­ve and con­fine our func­tion­ing in the
world. With the prop­er sup­port the secrets that once were too dan­ger­ous to
be revealed can be dis­closed not just to a ther­a­pist, a lat­ter-day father
con­fes­sor, but, in our imag­i­na­tion, to the peo­ple who actu­al­ly hurt and
betrayed us.
The three-dimen­sion­al nature of the struc­ture trans­forms the hid­den, the
for­bid­den, and the feared into vis­i­ble, con­crete real­i­ty. In this it is some­what
sim­i­lar to IFS, which we explored in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter. IFS calls forth
the split-off parts that you cre­at­ed in order to sur­vive and enables you to
iden­ti­fy and talk with them, so that your undam­aged Self can emerge. In
con­trast, a struc­ture cre­ates a three-dimen­sion­al image of whom and what
you had to deal with and gives you a chance to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent out­come.
Most peo­ple are hes­i­tant to go into past pain and disappointment—it
only promis­es to bring back the intol­er­a­ble. But as they are mir­rored and
wit­nessed, a new real­i­ty begins to take shape. Accu­rate mir­ror­ing feels
com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from being ignored, crit­i­cized, and put down. It gives
you per­mis­sion to feel what you feel and know what you know—one of the
essen­tial foun­da­tions of recov­ery.
Trau­ma caus­es peo­ple to remain stuck in inter­pret­ing the present in
light of an unchang­ing past. The scene you re-cre­ate in a struc­ture may or
may not be pre­cise­ly what hap­pened, but it rep­re­sents the struc­ture of your
inner world: your inter­nal map and the hid­den rules that you have been
liv­ing by.
DARING TO TELL THE TRUTH
I recent­ly led anoth­er group struc­ture with a twen­ty-six-year-old man
named Mark, who at age thir­teen had acci­den­tal­ly over­heard his father
hav­ing phone sex with his aunt, his mother’s sis­ter. Mark felt con­fused,
embar­rassed, hurt, betrayed, and par­a­lyzed by this knowl­edge, but when he
tried to talk with his father about it, he was met with rage and denial: he
was told that he had a filthy imag­i­na­tion and accused of try­ing to break up
the fam­i­ly. Mark nev­er dared to tell his mom, but hence­forth the fam­i­ly
secrets and hypocrisy con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed every aspect of his home life and gave
him a per­va­sive sense that nobody could be trust­ed. After school, he spent
his iso­lat­ed ado­les­cence hang­ing around neigh­bor­hood bas­ket­ball courts or
in his room watch­ing TV. When he was twen­ty-one his moth­er died—of a
bro­ken heart, Mark says—and his father mar­ried the aunt. Mark was not
invit­ed to either the funer­al or the wed­ding.
Secrets like these become inner toxins—realities that you are not
allowed to acknowl­edge to your­self or to oth­ers but that nev­er­the­less
become the tem­plate of your life. I knew none of this his­to­ry when Mark
joined the group, but he stood out by his emo­tion­al dis­tance, and dur­ing
check-ins he acknowl­edged that he felt sep­a­rat­ed from every­one by a dense
fog. I was quite wor­ried about what would be revealed once we start­ed to
look behind his frozen, expres­sion­less exte­ri­or.
When I invit­ed Mark to talk about his fam­i­ly, he said a few words and
then seemed to shut down even more. So I encour­aged him to ask for a
“con­tact fig­ure” to sup­port him. He chose a white-haired group mem­ber,
Richard, and placed Richard on a pil­low next to him, touch­ing his shoul­der.
Then, as he began to tell his sto­ry, Mark placed Joe, as his real father, ten
feet in front of him, and direct­ed Car­olyn, rep­re­sent­ing his moth­er, to
crouch in a cor­ner with her face hid­den. Mark next asked Aman­da to play
his aunt, telling her to stand defi­ant­ly to one side, arms crossed over her
chest—representing all the cal­cu­lat­ing, ruth­less, and devi­ous women who
are after men.
Sur­vey­ing the tableau he had cre­at­ed, Mark sat up straight, eyes wide
open; clear­ly the fog had lift­ed. I said: “A wit­ness can see how star­tled you
are see­ing what you had to deal with.” Mark nod­ded appre­cia­tive­ly and
remained silent and somber for some time. Then, look­ing at his “father,” he
burst out: “You ass­hole, you hyp­ocrite, you ruined my life.” I invit­ed Mark
to tell his “father” all the things that he had want­ed to tell him but nev­er
could. A long list of accu­sa­tions fol­lowed. I direct­ed the “father” to respond
phys­i­cal­ly as if he had been punched, so that Mark could see that that his
blows had land­ed. It did not sur­prise me when Mark spon­ta­neous­ly said that
he’d always wor­ried that his rage would get out of con­trol and that this fear
had kept him from stand­ing up for him­self in school, at work, and in oth­er
rela­tion­ships.
After Mark had con­front­ed his “father,” I asked if he would like
Richard to assume a new role: that of his ide­al father. I instruct­ed Richard to
look Mark direct­ly in the eye and to say: “If I had been your ide­al father
back then, I would have lis­tened to you and not accused you of hav­ing a
filthy imag­i­na­tion.” When Richard repeat­ed this, Mark start­ed to trem­ble.
“Oh my God, life would have been so dif­fer­ent if I could have trust­ed my
father and talked about what was going on. I could have had a father.” I
then told Richard to say: “If I had been your ide­al father back then, I would
have wel­comed your anger and you would have had a father you could have
trust­ed.” Mark vis­i­bly relaxed and said that would have made all the
dif­fer­ence in the world.
Then Mark addressed the stand-in for his aunt. The group was vis­i­bly
stunned as he unleashed a tor­rent of abuse on her: “You con­niv­ing whore,
you back­stab­ber. You betrayed your sis­ter and ruined her life. You ruined
our fam­i­ly.” After he was done, Mark start­ed to sob. He then said he’d
always been deeply sus­pi­cious of any woman who showed an inter­est in
him. The remain­der of the struc­ture took anoth­er half hour, in which we
slow­ly set up con­di­tions for him to cre­ate two new women: the ide­al aunt,
who did not betray her sis­ter but who helped sup­port their iso­lat­ed
immi­grant fam­i­ly, and the ide­al moth­er, who kept her husband’s inter­est and
devo­tion and so did not die of heart­break. Mark end­ed the struc­ture qui­et­ly
sur­vey­ing the scene he had cre­at­ed with a con­tent­ed smile on his face.
For the remain­der of the work­shop Mark was an open and valu­able
mem­ber of the group, and three months lat­er he sent me an e‑mail say­ing
that this expe­ri­ence had changed his life. He had recent­ly moved in with his
first girl­friend, and although they’d had some heat­ed dis­cus­sions about their
new arrange­ment, he’d been able to take in her point of view with­out
clam­ming up defen­sive­ly, going back to his fear or rage, or feel­ing that she
was try­ing to pull a fast one. He was amazed that he felt okay dis­agree­ing
with her and that he was able to stand up for him­self. He then asked for the
name of a ther­a­pist in his com­mu­ni­ty to help with the huge changes he was
mak­ing in his life, and I for­tu­nate­ly had a col­league I could refer him to.
ANTIDOTES TO PAINFUL MEMORIES
Like the mod­el mug­ging class­es that I dis­cussed in chap­ter 13, the
struc­tures in psy­chomo­tor ther­a­py hold out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of form­ing vir­tu­al
mem­o­ries that live side by side with the painful real­i­ties of the past and
pro­vide sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences of feel­ing seen, cra­dled, and sup­port­ed that can
serve as anti­dotes to mem­o­ries of hurt and betray­al. In order to change,
peo­ple need to become vis­cer­al­ly famil­iar with real­i­ties that direct­ly
con­tra­dict the sta­t­ic feel­ings of the frozen or pan­icked self of trau­ma,
replac­ing them with sen­sa­tions root­ed in safe­ty, mas­tery, delight, and
con­nec­tion. As we saw in the chap­ter on EMDR, one of the func­tions of
dream­ing is to cre­ate asso­ci­a­tions in which the frus­trat­ing events of the day
are inter­wo­ven with the rest of one’s life. Unlike our dreams, psy­chomo­tor