Two Philosophies: The Witness as Experiencer.

 neil benbow:

            “The Death of Fear is Doing what You Fear to Do” (Sequ’lchie Runningdeer)

             “You do what the circumstances around you dictate, but when those circumstances are            

               overwhelming…” (Frank Herbert, Dune 1978)

             “The one thing missing was you” (Janet Jackson)

The Personal and Spiritual Ground – Being Called to Witness

Hopefully, the above quotes might begin to shape your expectations of what is to follow. 

Within the past few years’ two colleagues have lived through the death of their child.  I write this to explore how differently death can be experienced and managed by the parent of a dying child, but also how differing therapeutic orientations – inclusive of their philosophies – offer differing kinds of support to their practitioners. 

The children mentioned here were in their twenties, however, for these parents they were their children, and the ‘natural’ order whereby children outlive their parents was disrupted.  I make no claim here for impartiality between the different philosophies, or for personal impartiality; all in proximity to the death of a child are affected by that death. What follows is my version of events, some disguising of the characters involved has taken place, but essentially this essay is about the deaths of children who I never met, and yet my life is nevertheless affected by. First, a little about myself and the paradigm I ascribe to in my life and its work.

In my Counselling Practice and Teaching I aim to include myself, you, our shared thoughts, feelings, frustrations and attempts to determine the ‘real’, which I see as phenomenologically constructed and co-created, all with a view to illuminate the wider field to “what” is happening and “how” it is happening. These attempts cause me to view therapy as a process and progression, an event where clients come to me to learn more about their own processes, while I in turn learn about my own – for they are my mirror as much as I am theirs. Foremost, my Gestalt is humanistic, more lately informed by the transpersonal – in the form of North American Indian shamanism. Experience within the latter tradition has taught me that events have a tendency to erupt, occur or seep into my life to either remind me of earlier – as yet un-integrated learning – or to bring to focus the newer knowledge I now most need. Simply put, my life has not been without “events”, and though some of these events have been unhappy and particularly difficult, the skills or knowledge they have brought have always proved useful.  But there is something more, an innate intelligence in the field that appears to bring such events to me. I find here that I wish to escape the Ethereal, to avoid using the word spirituality and ground this story in pragmatism, but I cannot.  By spirituality I am referring to a movement in my own (and others psyche) which involves a quest or meaning, a quest which appears to have always been an aspect of humanity, I believe this to be the base of religion, the nebulous “something” or spiritual wisdom people form religious groups to experience and to pass on. Experience links me to me, you and to something greater outside of us all. Others may term see this as a racial unconscious or collective memory, spiritual, Shamanistic, or more plainly as God.

My colleague’s experience of the death of their children affected me in many ways, ways that not only threw me further in to my own experiential crisis of meaning, but also deepened the contact we shared in together – but not always in positive ways.  I only know that at the time of the events described here I was struggling to understand my need for shape, and to describe my Spiritual or Shamanistic experiences; whether I have yet corralled these experiences I don’t know, I can but say: the Map is not the Territory…

Although the events described in this paper took place many years ago, I have disguised the setting and people involved, as to protect their identities. This said, what follows then is my construct and understanding of events.

Event 1 – A Psychodynamic Illumination of Death

‘J’ is a Psychodynamic Counsellor/Therapist and Trainer of Counsellors, her daughter died after initially being diagnosed with breast cancer, receiving treatment for the loss of a breast.  ‘A’ (the daughter) then was in remission for almost a year before ‘secondary’ cancers were discovered.  During this time J – according to her self-beliefs in psychodynamic philosophy  – would not overtly discuss her daughters’ cancer with students, they did however become aware of J ‘leaking’.  That is, giving out small snippets of information to students she felt closest to.

As her colleague observing this behaviour I felt indecisive, how to continue to ask about J’s daughter without somehow being probing about her own mental and emotional status.  More and more of the administration duties of running our courses were now becoming ever more my responsibility, as J understandably became increasingly concerned about her daughters health.  In addition, though I am a Humanist/Integrative Counsellor and not a Psychodynamic Counsellor; I was aware that J was leaking in what I judged to be an inappropriate manner; creating favourites to whom she could talk to; this behaviour also ran counter to her own stated principles of  “the Counsellor as a ‘Blank Page’ for students to place their transferences/projections/shadows upon”. This behaviour threw me in to conflict, on one hand I felt immense sympathy and concern for her plight, on the other, I felt powerless to intrude or to directly challenge her behaviour.  Eventually, I could stand by no longer, and gently suggested that perhaps bereavement counselling could help support her. These hints at her beginning bereavement counselling were ignored, as indeed later were my direct requests.  Instead J moved further and further into ‘You just don’t understand’.  Indeed I didn’t, I have not had one of my children die, but I also felt affronted, for to suggest to a fellow counsellor that they wouldn’t understand seemed a very strong insult to their professional craft and personal artistry. Perhaps here we see my own omniscient and narcissistic defensiveness coming to the fore? My need to be recognised as important and valued, after all, with J receiving so much attention perhaps a part of me felt devalued? Whatever, I was certainly struggling with a very personal sense of “helplessness”.

A little later it struck home to me how self absorbing and alienating grief can be, as J started to isolate herself ever more within her grief, and began to punish me for daring to witness her vulnerability, and now ever more frequent professional errors. At first her punishments were minor. If another colleague were to ask after her daughter, J would respond and, then suggest, “at least somebody cares”.  I found this attitude almost impossible at times to be around, especially as J would not converse with me in any direct way about the progression of her daughters’ illness. The more she was feeling isolated and hurting, the more it seemed necessary to heap the same on me.

When ‘A’ died, J was there to look after her during her final hours.  J talked to me of the peace that descended into A’s hospital room and how A finally herself looked at peace, how friends and relatives rallied around to be there at A’s death.  This peace however was not to last long, A’s husband wanted a non-religious service, J became angry at this and began a bitter war of attrition with her son in law over any arrangements.

My part in this was to listen to J being angry and to hope that her rage was a sign of her working through her emotions at A’s death, but sadly, this was not to be.  J insisted upon working with Clients and Counselling students throughout all this. Her rage, frustration and unhappiness seemed to leak further and further into our work, and into our relationship.  In desperation for J and for myself, I arranged for her to receive four weeks compassionate leave, as she was by now so angry and alternately depressed.  Whether I was more concerned for her, myself or the programme we co-facilitated was difficult to unravel. Perhaps my cry for her to address bereavement counselling, was itself a symptom of my own need to rescue myself from an inner emotional danger zone that was becoming ever more figural?

J’s distress was glaringly apparent to students, yet J would not talk about this openly, instead her anger would spill into student’s concerns or tears appear as students talked through their own issues.  They as students now began to avoid loss/death issues in their discussions of counselling. Yet, J would not take any suggestion that she needed time to begin her bereavement process or stop work. As her co-tutor I arranged more compassionate leave for her.  She was at this point still refusing to enter into bereavement counselling.  Echoing what I’ve also (unfortunately) heard other Psychodynamic Counsellors say over the years – she said, “ I received my four years of analysis and now that’s over”. I felt faced by complete denial, rage and guilt, and within me, began to feel these same emotions within myself. I was beginning to feel contaminated by elements of projected identification, so strong was the relational field I found myself trapped within.

Parkes (1996) suggests five stages of grief: Shock-numbness, Denial, Anger-guilt, Depression, and Acceptance. I felt faced with a colleague who was definitely in the first four stages, but simultaneously denying that she was in a grieving process. I hoped that four further weeks of compassionate leave would give her the space to begin to come to terms with her awful loss. I also felt hurt and rejected myself. 

At the end of four weeks J returned, she seemed more at peace with herself and able to continue.  She still continued to leak, and I still harboured a wish that she would begin counselling/therapy, but now said nothing. Other colleagues who were due to work with J ‘mistakenly’ rescheduled weekend workshops in order that they may work together instead of with her. A workshop that we were due to run together, privately, she decided not to do; other work already scheduled she would call in ‘sick’ for and yet demand a share of the profits.  At the end of the academic year we decided to part company with working together on a private basis and I paid her off with half a share of our assets.  I saw little of her that summer, though I stayed in contact by telephone. We agreed to continue to work together running counselling courses in the next academic year within education settings, but unfortunately, all too soon the cracks between us began to appear. J was still very numb to others’ emotional needs, angry and depressed, and whilst I felt enormous support for J, the teaching load became ever more intolerable as I inherited responsibility for all resourcing, administration, and increasingly had to remind her of her current duties. In policing the boundaries I became the ‘bad guy’.  I “still didn’t understand” and now – “you treat me like a dotty old woman”.  Sadly this became increasingly true, as J seemed to sink further and further into depression. Still, I increasingly assumed responsibility for her teaching duties, until eventually we came to a depressing place where J would turn up for a session and I would need to remind her what she was teaching. During her sessions.

I became increasingly frustrated and angry myself; I was taking on the whole emotional load of ‘fear-full’ counselling students and feeling more and more isolated within the maelstrom of feelings that characterise experimental learning groups. 

Exactly one year after her daughters death J decided to push one step further and act out her anger by sabotaging me within groups. The first time she decided without any discussion to permanently move a time boundary, causing my group to be left outside a workroom, whilst she worked over our previously agreed time.  The second time (in a different group), she suggested to a student that all decisions would be taken by me and that she had no part in them, the students remonstrated about this within the group as “Neil’s’ need to be in power”. I did not respond within the group immediately, and instead talked to J about her non-discussion of her feelings and these subsequent happenings.  She refused to talk.  The following week I raised the issue of changed boundaries as a puzzle, as in `how had this happened?’  World war three broke out, all manner of accusations came my way from students, how I was power crazy, playing games and pushing them around.  At the end of this teaching session – J decided that she wished to retire.

Some six months later I was to discover that to justify her retirement J had written an incredible document to our employers about my mental instability and her concerns about my professionalism, i.e. that I played favourites amongst students etc.  This increased further my sadness about how our once good working relationship ended.  I’m not writing this to denigrate my colleague in her unhappiness, but rather to come to terms with and explore what happened to a good working relationship when grief and anger were not worked through within that relationship.  I feel that I took the brunt of J’s rage about the death of her daughter, I did not ‘understand’ and my taking responsibility for classes instead of helping her, only served to further her fall into depression. I felt relief at her abandonment of me, this felt then to be a leaving which I welcomed – though did not enjoy the circumstance of.

I did not get it right….

Event 2 – A Gestalt Illumination of Death

I did not get it right with ‘P’ either. P is a Counsellor/Therapist and a trainer of counsellor/therapists.  His philosophy is Integrative/Humanist in that his studies have included amongst others: Psychodynamic and Humanist Philosophy, Gestalt and the Transpersonal – the latter from within the context of the martial arts and a Zen/Taoist warrior tradition. He also had a son, ‘M’, who was diagnosed as having cancer. M entered into chemotherapy treatment and then enjoyed six months of remission before the chemotherapy failed and he died.  My relationship with P was fairly new at this point; he was my personal tutor for a research group I had entered.  I became aware at times that P was distracted and upset about something, then one of his colleagues informed me of M’s cancer.  I was unsure how to broach this with P so I left the subject alone, instead he talked to me.  I was a little taken aback by this, as my experience of J was concurrent.  P in a tutorial said, “ Before we begin, I’m a bit upset this morning about M, can I just take five minutes and talk about this?”.  I was only too glad to offer that small amount of time. My fear about death and bereavement is that of being squeamish, that I will be dragged into long discussions of the ins and outs of illnesses and operations, to ask for five minutes of my time was a wonderful and brave new concept to me. P would not talk about illnesses and operations, unless I specifically asked, but instead focused upon his feelings about M.  I began to enjoy talking to P about his son, though I never met M, I feel that I now know something of his life and character.  After this five minutes, P would then move on to discuss my work and my issues, the only time M was mentioned was if I broached his illness, and later death. 

I faltered once, encountering P in a corridor shortly after M had died. I shied away, mumbled “hello” and passed on quickly.  A week later I was due for a tutorial with P, he asked gently if I was ok?  He mentioned my shyness the previous week and again gently asked if this was due to M’s death?  I told P it was, and we began an incredible and enjoyable discussion about death, dying and bereavement that still stays with me.  He talked of M and how he felt death is part of his living process, how M had made peace with all his friends and family before he died and had accepted his death as due, and how at the last it held no fear for him.  That the discussion comforted me didn’t elude me either, here I was somehow supposed to be comforting P about his loss, failing and being comforted myself instead…

Later I was to discover that P had been in hospital with M during his last six days; during that time they had discussed anything and everything.  This is not my place to say what was said, but if this had been my father I would have been honoured to have had those discussions.  From this I have thought long and hard myself how I would wish to make peace with those around me if I had the opportunity and have taken opportunity as I can while I am still alive.

Post his son’s death, P gave to those closest to him who had been indirectly most affected by his son’s death the following letter:

“M… throughout his journey was supported by healers of the spirit, dietary supplements, massage, visualization and counseling. All contributed to his clarity and comfort, enabling him to face totally and completely all that happened, learn from it, and let it go. I remember sitting with M… when he was first informed that the options were running out. His first thoughts were of me. “It must be really hard for you dad, to watch your son die”. This says masses about the quality of his being.  Later, when we heard that there was nothing more to be done, we discussed the options, shed our tears together and moved to a place where the present moment was far more important than the past or future.

We did much work to prepare ourselves. I remember watching M… play with the young son of a patient next to him. Soon after we worked together upon letting-go of the future and mourning the family he would never have. M…’s growth accelerated during his last two weeks. He told one nurse he had “learnt to love the executioner”, he was no longer angry with his tumour. He told another he was “moving to a new level”. This change was undeniable, his eyes shone and a light and lightness permeated and radiated from his being.

The contract he had earlier made with me, that I would not show grief around him, was now no longer necessary, for there was no grief, only awe for the quality of our meeting.

Spiritually, M… really began to fly. He was alert to the end. By fully staying in contact with what unfolded the worst never happened. He made one request of me: to not wake up alone.

A few days before the end he held sway with a group of friends, reviewing past excitements, joking and teasing them to new levels of joyful encounter. He acknowledged that he was the happiest he had ever been. I am indebted to the nurses who enabled M… to spend his last days in a private room – usually reserved for fee-paying patients – so that I might sleep alongside him.

During our final days together we meditated upon “what was”, “what had been” and “what we meant to each other”.  M shared his love and thanked me for all I`d done. He also acknowledged that he would have without hesitation done the same for me. M… could never understand why he was so loved by all who met him. I remember asking him if he felt worthy of being loved yet?  He said “he was getting there”.

Shortly before he died I guided him through several meditations from which he returned with powerful and symbolic images of what we took to be earlier lives. There was one where he was in Celtic tunic, a warrior in metal helmet resting on one knee with his short sword drawn. Having repulsed one wave he was preparing himself for the final battle as the light faded. From another journey he returned having been taught breathing exercises by a man in white. Earlier M…’s mother had been visited in a dream by his great grandfather who told her “not to worry – everything would be all right”. M…’s great grandfather felt very present for me as I held M…’s hand, encouraged him to relax, to go with love and to gently depart in his own time. Though he was as much a friend as a son, in the final days he became my teacher. Four qualities especially summarize M… at this time: courage, humour, compassion and joy – the qualities of a free soul.

I have learned so much from observing/hearing from P of his grief and loss, and am grateful for his sharing of those and other feelings for M. Death has now become something that I can discuss and no longer feel indecisive about.  This learning has been simple, P asked me for what he needed, he would then continue on with his teaching/tutoring and I could move on from my feelings of possibly being ambushed by another’s’ grief.

As I said earlier, I did not get it right, I know now I didn’t have to.  I now teach in my bereavement classes that those who are grieving the death of a loved one may be able to ask for and get what they want from others.  Even if they only need to ask for that five/ten minutes.  I hope that I can pass on this teaching from P to me to you, simply put: help those around you to help you.  Death is a part of the living process and talking to each other about this helps us to live with this.  I could not make things right for J; I couldn’t make things right for P.  Each of them found their own way to mark the loss of their child. I prefer P’s way as I can now celebrate the life of M who though I never knew whilst he was alive, I do now.  This way is I believe the way of a Warrior: coming straight and true from the heart, sharing our lives in celebration.

 “The clear bead at the Centre changes everything there are no edges to my loving now. I’ve heard it said there’s a window that opens from one mind to another, but if there’s no wall, there’s no need for fitting the window, or the latch”

(Rumi).

Epilogue – A Personal Illumination

Some time later, post the above events, I had time to reflect on my part in all of this.

As a child, whose mother left him when he was 3, the larger part of my life has been dealing with the loss of and death of a loved one. This was exacerbated by my father’s inability to discuss my mother’s disappearance and my loss only served to further emphasise his loss pain and anger. Working with J. didn’t create any psychoanalytic space for ‘a good mother’ to emerge, instead she too left, leaving me to carry on without her. Thankfully, our ‘children’ as students were able to express their loss and begin to move on…

Having since worked with other Jungian Analysts I have been struck by their ability to share their own processes and emotional states. From this, I’m left with a sense that J’s style was a product of who she was rather than a strict adherence to any analytic procedure.  In analytic terms, both J and I as colleagues, were bound to replay earlier unresolved emotional situations; analytically, this could be suggested in that I unaware invited J to act out my early family history of abandonment by my mother. For J, my attempts to suggest she needed some help in dealing with her loss, my taking more responsibility for her work replayed her need to flee controlling men, which possibly, in itself resulted in her interpreting or reframing any attempt by me to help her, into loss of control, something she was already experiencing within her emotions over the death of her daughter. As such, neither of us could ‘analytically’ get it right. I can understand this type of analysis, though I reject much of it here. Certainly I feel loss of my mother, however I have many other relationships with colleagues where this is not been replayed. My feelings toward J are those of sadness and sorrow in that a successful relationship, one that had worked for years before, could not be built upon to take us through our more difficult times. As such, for me, our ending reflected our own Divorce rather than that of my parents or hers.

Which brings me back to my Humanist understanding of the world; J and I met to build and accomplish our training offer together, when we could no longer support or work together, we fell apart. Being humans with imperfect understanding of our emotions we hung a title on our unhappiness and used that ‘map’ rather than the territory it signified, to part. Essentially, we stopped talking a common language and developed different dialects over the same understanding of our difficulties in working together. With P, I could work up an analytic understanding that he represented my father and that I transferred that understanding of an inability to talk about emotional loss upon him, except that I was acutely aware that this was my difficulty. Rather, that within the moment that I shied away from him I was experiencing my own emotions and fearfulness on whether I might be ambushed by a possibility that P may have an ‘over ability’ to discuss death… Stuck in a moment I might not be able to get out of. Thankfully P was able to stay within the moment and recognise what was his, and what was mine, and so this much-feared event did not happen. Later he was able to help me explore my fear of being emotionally ambushed and to be able to explore his own feelings in a way that did not negate my own.

From this I grew positively, I have grown too from J’s experience – though I did not enjoy that learning as much. My understanding now is that I was presented with two mirrors; both valuable, clear and offering a learning from their experiences. Also that these same mirrors offered me choices in the ‘present’ to work through some of my own issues of loss; that of my mother’s abandonment. I consciously chose to travel this journey to the self. If I had ‘risen above’ the issues presented to me, I would not have encountered ‘fellow feeling’ or the hurt that in its pain offered me a chance to work through and learn about others and myself. This is the positive side of transference.  J presented me with own pain and my own inadequacy in dealing with it. P, offered a chance to see that if I held the pain and inadequacy, and held out my hand, that the Universe would provide me with a way to take further steps on my journey.

   “… The most significant and widespread complex today is not the Oedipus complex – or difficulty transforming from body to mind – but what we might call the Apollo complex – a difficulty in transforming from mind to soul, or from personal, mental, egoic realms to transpersonal, subtle and supraegoic realms.’ (Wilber, 1982. p. 79).

Maybe my anger at the loss of my mother seeps through this essay to marinade all events and any understanding; I would rather instead that my disappointment in that J. could or would not escape her own self-limiting beliefs gives flavour here. I am but a creature of my own limited understandings of a greater whole, I am disappointed too that I couldn’t get it right for her and myself.   

  References:

 Colin Murray Parkes: Death and Bereavement across Cultures, Charles Press 1996

Ken Wilber: Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Shambala Press 1982

©neilbenbow