A Retreat Exercise

A Primal Exercise – As most of you know at each retreat we participate in a variety of “exercises” designed to not only trigger specific feelings but to help activate our childhood memories. Over the years we have not only refined many of these exercises and techniques but experimented with adding new ones that we have found to be effective. At our last retreat we chose a word for each participant which they were instructed to focus on and bring up at some point during the week. The word we chose was not at all random but quite specific for each person. What developed from this simple exercise turned out to be not only interesting but illuminating. The following is a blog from one of our participants describing his experience with his word “Friendship”.  As an aside I don’t believe a single person asked me why their word was chosen for them.  Gretchen       Further Reflections on Retreats – I hope you enjoy our latest blog entry submitted by Steve Miller. I did find it quite thought provoking and I believe it illustrates some important truths about friendship and the long process most of us go through coming to terms with our expectations of other people. The powerful forces of therapy, life experience, and getting older, compel us to face the grief of past relationships, while coming to acceptable terms with the people in our life now. It is not easy and tears must be shed, but the reward for expectations based on reality rather than repressed pain is enormous.  Barry                                                                                                                              My Word – It had been on my mind and was not a complete surprise. In the weeks leading up to a retreat, my brain always has a little extra chatter about the topic of friendship. “Who will be there that I know? Who will be there that I like? Who will be there that likes me?” When I opened the envelop and read that bold word sitting all alone on the card, “Friendship,” I assumed it was a mystery I was expected to unravel. If there were double or triple meanings in this directive, I would surely ferret them out and, as the week progressed, I started to review all the possible reasons the topic of friendship was chosen for me at this retreat. The first thing that jumped to mind had to do with a longstanding friendship of 20 years with someone in the group that had apparently evaporated in the previous few years with no clear explanation or ending. However, as I broadened my search and my observations, one thing came into focus. As I sat in group looking around the room, I was intrigued to discover that the whole spectrum of friendship was represented there. I see the spectrum as two-fold; what I would call the spectrum of importance and the spectrum of lifespan. The first fold is a discussion I’ve had regularly with my best friend and partner, Jeannine. I have formulated a model of friendship that helps me keep perspective on mine. Rather than see friendships in parameters of black and white – either you are, or you aren’t; rather than group people on one team or another – either you are for me or agin me, I see friendship as a spectrum, much like the spectrum of light seen as a rainbow. There are my coffee friends and my movie friends. I have 12-step meeting friends and writing workshop friends. I have friends that I interact with in the context of a particular activity, like sailing. I have been able to admit to some that I love and value them greatly, even though we aren’t best pals. I have been able to admit to myself that I need friends of all stripes, not just full time, never let me down friends. I have some friends that I can reveal the most intimate details of my life to and cry with easily (not necessarily Primal) as well as friends who don’t talk about their feelings, have political views in complete opposition to mine and referred to the retreat as a “Hippie Convention,” yet I love them equally. I have wrestled with the disappointment of having friends I only hear from every few months and have lunch with three times a year, or friends that like to chat on the phone but never suggest a movie or a hike. But on reflection I have realized just how important all types of friendships are; that this just may be the comfort zone for that particular friendship. I had a friendship that included intimate discussions on the phone for years on almost a daily basis. We both struggled through severe bouts of depression and suicidal fantasies only to have our relationship burst into flames and self-destruct as soon as we attempted an extended travel vacation together, a sad and disappointing discovery. When I find myself hopeful or disappointed about a friendship, I try to envision where it belongs on the spectrum. Some friendships evolve and redefine themselves only to appear at a different spot on the spectrum, sometimes up and sometimes down the scale. On the far left of this scale would be the slightly more than casual acquaintance category, on the far right would be the best-buddy-tell-em-everything-friends-for-life category. One great advantage of dispensing with the black or white measure of friendship is the sheer flexibility of the spectrum model. Friends who get mad at me don’t have to suddenly be shifted to the other category. I can empathize with someone despite some previous harsh treatment I have received from them. It is truly liberating to be able to be mad at a friend and yet not have my need or caring for them diminished at all. I no longer have to see people in my life as huge chess pieces I am moving around a war map. Sitting in group that day, the insight that descended on me was profound. As with other topics and facets of life, that group was a microcosm of my life outside and life on the planet. In cosmology, the life of a star is depicted as an arc of phases from white dwarf to red giant and black hole. There in the group room I suddenly became aware that every phase of the life of a friendship was accurately represented right in front of me. I could sense burgeoning relationships and new people I held some hope for and interest in. I could see the middle phases of short and long-standing friendships that were solid but often in flux. I saw the remains of important friendships that, unfortunately, represented black holes whenever I struggled to find resolution to the how and why of their endings. And then, in a dark corner of the sky, I perceived another phase I hadn’t noticed previously. It was the hope of rekindled friendship; a friendship that had faded from my life but, like that sun before it rises, was showing a faint glow along the eastern horizon, thus completing the circle. I saw hope and disappointment as one continuum. Some time back I formulated another theory along the lines of my spectrum theory of friendship that has helped me greatly. Years ago there was an advertising campaign by the Weyerhouser paper company touting the many strengths and uses of cardboard. In the print ad, across a ravine they had constructed a bridge made entirely of cardboard and were driving a heavy tractor- trailer across it. The notion was that you could take a relatively flimsy material and, with the right design and implementation, cause it to have great strength and integrity. I adopted this theory in imagining that, if one were to take a toothpick and stand it on end, it would not have the structural integrity to hold up much weight. However, if one were to gather enough toothpicks bundled side by side, they could theoretically support the weight of the entire Empire State Building. I began to see friendships as toothpicks. Rather than place all of the weight of my needs on one person, putting entirely too much pressure on the relationship, I found I could spread the weight around. Valuable interactions, from acqaintances to seasoned buddies, then became part of a bigger structure. No one member took too much of the weight. I began to value the wonderful, pleasant interchanges I had with people like the woman who cut my hair or the checker at Traders Joes that recognized me each week. I even told one person, “You are one of my toothpicks,” and got a friendly but puzzled smile. I realized that some people might actually be 50 toothpicks in my structure; some were trunks and some were outriggers. The greatest advantage of that was, like the game called Jenga where opponents build a block tower and remove one block at a time until one person causes the tower to topple, in this case one could remove a great number of toothpicks from their friendship support structure and not completely collapse. In contrast, if you have only two good friendships that you lean on heavily it could be like walking with crutches; remove one crutch and you will quickly fall on your ass, or at best, walk in circles. Knowing what I want and what I need out of each of my friendships has been liberating; no longer living a life of constant disappointment but remaining realistic about what people can and want to give me and visa versa. In my relationship, whenever I start to dwell on something I’m not getting, to get on the “pity pot,” as they say in A.A., I try to dig deep and find a way to be especially generous that day. It is an indispensible tool in my arsenal to fight that impulse to let my old feelings destroy good things in my current life. When I am listening to people share their feelings in group there is a range of interest and identification that comes to bear (some touch me more deeply than others, I’m sure for very personal reasons) but I am aware that I care about everyone and always hope that they will get what they need. And though I used to think that one person couldn’t truly feel someone else’s pain (if it was possible, I speculated, then some might chose to hire another person to do their therapy by proxy) I have re-thought this notion. More than at any previous retreat, I found myself crying along with people as they shared their stories. As I shared one day in group, it is one of the gifts of feeling old feelings in this therapy that I am able to experience a profound sense of empathy toward others in the present. I feel truly able to sense and participate in the feeling they are in. It is an empathy that, at times, swells my heart near to bursting. I actually can feel their pain. It one of the gifts that allows me to live up to the platitude; “If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend.” I no longer have to live in the world of what I should or shouldn’t have or be or give, do or say when it comes to friendship when I realize that the person I may have been yearning for or struggling with to be good enough or say the precise thing or be just the right person to earn their friendship – that this person is someone I don’t even like that much – or – they are someone I love deeply that won’t or can’t ever return the feeling. ps – my word to the therapists – THANKS! Steve Miller 7/11/11