April 20, 2020

In the eye of the storm

We are situated within a vagueness with no name.

This is unlike anything we know.

The days, the clouds, the light, all have a transverse quality.

Spring is gorgeous this year, we had so much rain!

Do I really hear more birdsongs, or have I not been paying attention before?

Is everything greener?

Are there really more birds?

I notice ordinary details. I feel more precision and attention.

Everything slowed down.

And yet, some days the evening surprises me, as I was into something and suddenly it is dark.

I have called this ‘time in brackets,’ as it is a kind of capsule with no end in sight. But I called it this as there is also hope that this chapter of our lives will be framed as such, and this strangeness will not take me over and frighten me too much.

The world has experienced disasters and plagues before.

Archaic emotions and life’s fragility are present.

It is not a philosophy lesson.

I collect my thought crumbs, and when I read what I have written over the past month, I see a process.

What I thought and wrote three weeks ago now seems ancient.

Everything flows and changes.

Three cows came up from the valley and strolled majestically through the business center. How quickly nature pulses and suits itself to the new space of empty of people.

It continues doing its own thing, but with different proportions.

The atmosphere’s pollution is dramatically lower, the Everest Mountains seem clearer than they had been in 30 years. And we in the middle, those people that have polluted and used it badly, look into the distance towards a clear view and breathe air that has not been cleaner in decades.

So I feel we have an opportunity here.

And a particular opportunity for therapists.

I assume that when we go back to work we will not be the same therapists as before.

Our setting has been changed in every direction: time, place and matter are not the same.

Everything has shifted.

So what is really important? What will stay? What will we work hard for?

In other places I have said that the central issue is to hold the client in our consciousness and transmit this to him/her in suitable ways.

So what will happen when we return? Will we bring everything back to our old setting as if nothing has happened?

How will we know? How will we prepare for this? How will we develop into this?

If I have said that the therapist’s role, now more than ever, is to hold the client in her mind.

When someone in the world holds me in their mind, and I have faith in it, I feel that I genuinely exist. This is what our clients feel when they are held in our minds. It is a quality of the permission experience. Permission to be who they are.

The therapist represents the role of the mother as a carrier of memories of life in the studio, of stories being told, and of actions being executed upon the materials. The therapist, too, aims to be in a reverie state of mind so that they can be best attuned to the needs of their clients.

Moreover, as therapists, we are the memory keepers of the baby/client, and we carry it in the days to come. The studio, in turn, holds us both as a womb, and for that matter, the studio is a fine co-therapist.

The Good Enough Studio, 2020

It seems to me that it is also important to hold myself as a therapist in my own mind.

What does it mean to hold myself in my own mind?

As I trust my clients in their distant home to be able to strengthen by creating, I can activate the same mechanism within myself as well!

For me.

Within this strange situation I will activate my inner guide who will embrace me and encourage me to observe and experience events fully.

I will hold myself gently with compassion in my learning process.

And document it.

Yes, document.

The series or collection I create will include documentation of the observations, notes, photographs, thoughts and scribbles done through me. The dreams, the lunch recipe, loading a washing machine and the food delivery from the grocery store – everything is relevant.

This is the time of the ‘window of opportunity god’ visiting us here.

This is the a course we have stumbled upon.

It is happening now.