Finding warmth and sharing it

As the earth turns and we enter a new year, my thoughts are of course with the challenges we are facing, collectively and individually. And on this frosty day, where much is dark and troubling, I find myself feeling a deep warmth within.

I read somewhere that if you have a cold shower on a cold day, it actually warms you up. I tried it – pretty painful – but it worked! Today, in quiet moments, I have been mulling on this and wondering what other actions might create unlikely effects.

I’ve been tussling with ideas about how to bring about positive change, create connections and share skills, resources and hopes. I turned to my Inside Story illustrations, as I often do when I want a new perspective, and found these two jumping out at me.

To me it looks like they are playing with muddy puddles; stomping and flinging themselves about. Their antics brought me warmth and lightness and reminded me of the utter joy of being at ease within my work which is so at odds with the pressures and worries of needing to earn a living.

I love to run 1-1 Inside Story sessions and co-create story with individuals, I am energised when I share the Inside Story technique and resources with people in my courses, so this is what I will fill my January and February days with. My own version of jumping joyfully in puddles. 

If you read this and would like to experience the release, joy, discovery, connection of a 1-1 session, please let me know and don’t let the cost put you off. I want to share the work and connect in this way with people, so have decided that until the end of February I will invite people who are eager to have a session to pay what feels manageable to them. Just email me. fiona@an-inside-story.co.uk

Likewise, I am offering a big reduction on the online course for coaches, counsellors and facilitators. Look at the link on Eventbrite to see the offer. Only 8 places, so don’t miss out!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/welcoming-the-hungry-ghosts-image-and-story-for-coaches-therapists-tickets-689964822357

I asked participants on the November course what they would say about the course if they wanted to recommend it. Here are their responses…

This is a course with both professional and personal impact. We learned the method by practicing the method on ourselves and with each other. Fiona is a consummate professional and incredibly skilled at bringing the group together and offering structure and ideas to generate moving, relevant and developmental stories. Grab a chance to be a participant!

I cannot recommend this course highly enough, it was remarkable. The care and creativity that Fiona has put into her methodology and the way she shares it with others is just a wonderful thing to witness and be a part of. Fascinating methods, beautiful tools, great teaching and a wonderful community to be a part of for three weeks.

This course provides a wonderful connective space to explore and experience the ways in which our imagination can free us from our stuck and fearful narratives that no longer serve us well.

This course has helped me step-out-of some of my familiar ways of working as a therapist and step-in-to a rather different imaginary landscape, giving me permission through gentle play to imagine other narratives with clients, with all our eight senses very much in the mix.

I think I had forgotten, or maybe never been fully aware of, how good people are at getting comfort and wisdom from stories and metaphor and accessing their own deep wisdom.

I have become so much more confident in my ability to tell stories through writing, and allow myself the freedom to experiment and play without pressure, which I’m deeply grateful for. . - I have learnt some invaluable techniques for taking challenging thoughts outside the body and into a creative space to work through them 

Gave me ideas that were easily accessible to use with my clients. I am able to dare to use metaphor more confidently with clients to expand their imaginations in finding expression to their experiences and emotions, especially when they are ‘stuck'.

 I would love to hear from you and know what matters to you at the moment. Let’s keep turning towards one another.

Images ©chrisglynn2021

The therapy of finding treasure in a dark room

I do not describe myself as a therapist; I am a facilitator, trainer and teacher and have created a technique that draws on practices of dramatherapy, narrative therapy, Processwork and applied theatre.

I unearthed the Inside Story technique through 4 decades of facilitating interactive, participatory group sessions with people who are lonely, marginalised, angry, sad, awkward, hidden, defended, wounded, strong, wise, thoughtful, open, warm and funny. People who want to connect with others, understand themselves better, learn how to be in a group, get support, be heard, change their habits, become happier. People who come to the sessions saying they don’t like drama or they’re not creative. People who discover they have imagination, intelligence and will. People who discover that drama and creativity is an accessible form of communication. Through running drama sessions in many settings over many years I have developed an appreciation of the rules of story, the power of imagination and the innate wisdom of the individual. The Inside Story technique is a joyful combination of story, imagination and listening to wisdom. The riches of our imagination are great and can provide us with an incredible, reliable source for healing and growth.

I recently facilitated a series of 4 Inside Story sessions with a client looking at a recurring, seemingly unresolvable issue in their life. The structure for a course of 4 sessions works well. The first session runs for 2 hours. In this session we identify the issue or wish, choose the Inside Story figurative illustrations that resonate, and co-create an improvised story. The subsequent sessions are an hour long, following a loose pattern; development of the original story, introduction of a new character and reflection on the new perspective about the initial need or wish. Most of this is done with reference to the characters and the action of the story in 3rd person.

It is a structure that works well and the boundary around personal disclosure and emotional vulnerability is maintained through the medium of story. However, reflecting on a recent series of sessions I facilitated, I observed that the holding frame of story was thin at times and one of the dialogues that was created was a gestalt process.  I’m not a qualified gestalt therapist, but I am trained in the skills of facilitation; deep listening, careful observation, keeping my own thoughts and issues out of it, trusting my intuition, openness to ‘not knowing’, willingness to improvise and ability to welcome mistakes. I facilitated my client to describe a ‘sense of hopelessness’ as something outside themselves and through a creative process, we observed and named this sense and explored its power. As in a dramatic improvisation, there are rules to maintain within which there is freedom to try things out. On this occasion one of the things we did was write a dialogue between a character and this ‘sense of hopelessness’.  It seemed like a good idea, it was apparent it created space for the client to envisage themselves differently, more fully. They spoke the dialogue for the character and also for the ‘sense of hopelessness’. A few times the character’s words became a first person monologue and my reminder to keep it third person seemed nit-picking, but I know this is one of the rules of the process that provides freedom from habit and stuckness. Naming a character, having a visual image of that character is incredibly valuable. If you have created a character who finds treasure in a dark room, who felt the weight of the treasure and put it in their pocket, you have experienced the discovery of something valuable and can carry it with you, way beyond the end of that particular story. Yes, the character may be representing a familiar part of you or a part you want to grow bigger, or it may represent something totally different from you, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that although it takes place in the imagination, it is also a real experience of feeling and thinking differently and, for this particular client, an invitation to keep their reclaimed treasure from the dark room for their own marvellous use.

When hope is not enough

I have discovered that being hopeful is not enough. Having hope can be a positive thing, but when I 'hope' that I’m free of cancer, there is an underlying murmur that says, ‘because if I’m not.. dot dot dot…’

Two years ago I received a frightening diagnosis about my health. It shook me to the core and demanded my attention for the next year whilst I underwent treatment. Although people react differently to a cancer diagnosis, a commonly shared experience is feeling a cold shock of fear in your gut. I carried this cold fear throughout treatment and although I found ways of minimising the dread and ‘being positive’, once I had successfully completed the treatment, I discovered the fear hadn’t completely gone, far from it. There is no escaping the bombardment of information and stories about cancer; advertisements for cancer research, people who have survived against the odds, people who have faced sudden and unexpected diagnoses. I was ready to move on with my life, but my gut pulled me back to the place of fear way too often. 

‘I hope… because if not…’ is a little murmur, but it creates a big space for doubt and that doubt undermines the positivity of hope. One day I noticed how expressing my hopefulness in response to a friend’s delight that I was well again, actually made me fearful. Later that day I took myself to a quiet place and sat with that sense of hope and questioned it. 

‘What else is there if there isn’t hope?’ I asked.

‘There is knowing’, the answer came back. 

“How can I know I am free of disease? Suppose I believe that and then I’m not?’

‘Find a place you can visit where you can know for sure.’

So I did, I imagined travelling to a place where I sit on the edge of a rocky outcrop, my feet in the water, the sun warm upon me and the waves gently coming and going. In this place I can belong, I am not a tourist. Everyone else here has travelled from far, we all know that our journeys have been bigger and taken us further than we would choosen. Here in this safe harbour, there is absolute delight in what we know. I know I am free of disease, the knowledge flows through me, melts the fear and doubt away. It is the sweetest of sensations. I look around me at the others in the place and see they too have faced a lonely terror and now it has dissolved. We ask no questions of each other. I understand that I can rest in this place and gather resources for the continuing journey. I understand I can’t stay here because doing so would be driven by fear of the hurly-burly of our marvellous, unpredictable world.

But I can come back when I need to. 

I ask the question of the people here “Can I get back here when I’m out on the ocean again?’ “Can I summon up this safe harbour even in the middle of the wild seas?’ 

I know the answer is yes. And that the wilder the seas, the harder it will be to reach my safe harbour, but it will never be impossible. 

Feeling that sweet sensation of ‘knowing’ rather than hoping, is a practice that I know will guide me on my continuing journey.  A practice, not only of using imagination to experience the ease of sitting in a quiet place for peace and respite, but a practice that responds to necessity, and the challenge to rewire fearful patterns of thinking. 

To remind me how to find this place of knowing, to accompany me as I face recurring fear and doubt, I turned to two figurative illustrations from An Inside Story (www.an-inside-story.co.uk) and named them as my guides. They remind me to fear less and trust more. 

#facingfear #beingwell #selfhelp #mentalhealth #cancerrecovery

On the Edge

There’s a drama exercise called ‘Headings’ – people create a frozen image response to a series of words or short phrases. A phrase I have often used is “on the edge”, it can be used literally or metaphorically; someone on the edge of losing their mind, or clinging onto the edge of a cliff or poised on the edge of anticipation.  It’s a phrase that describes a period of my life when I was stuck in a familiar pattern and knew I needed a change, but everything I thought of felt like flinging myself off the top of the cliff and I simply couldn’t do it.

Every time I started to believe I could take the leap, something held me back. I identified strongly with a life-long narrative of being responsible and reliable, and taking a leap towards something different felt like a challenge to that identity, something so shocking that to imagine living without it felt like a little death. It wasn’t that there was even something concrete I was trying to get away from or change, just the sense that I was stuck in a familiar groove listening only to the demands and expectations I was used to putting on myself, not hearing the deeper voice of my longings and a sense of possibility.

What finally pushed me to make the leap was a short illness that showed me how absurdly my sense of over-responsibility was running my life. I was teaching in a university at the time and had regular headaches and bouts of dizziness. One afternoon I felt too dizzy to stand up and teach, so told the students not to worry, but I was going to teach the class lying down. They were of course concerned but the lesson continued. It was one of several wake-up calls that made it very clear to me I needed to leave my job (which I loved) and find a different way of working. I hovered on the edge of change for months, until, in a moment of clarity, I used the creative tools I had been teaching for years; I imagined someone else making the leap and telling me about it. A simple shift from myself as centre stage to observing in the wings, a shift that allowed me to make the leap without actually doing it!

It’s so blindingly obvious to me now that I’m still a bit embarrassed it took me so long to work out.

Being stuck in a rut is never a positive experience, but there is comfort in the familiarity it offers. Over the years I have regularly put my energy into justifying why I should stay with the familiar and avoid taking leaps into the unknown. Once I noticed I was standing on an edge, there were only two options; turn back, or step over it. What helped me step over the edge was drawing on something different than my usual thinking process. I used the creative, non-logical part of my brain and found that getting an imaginary character to take the risks and show me what they found, gave me a new perspective and created a path for me to follow. Imagining doing something literally wires the new behaviour into the range of possibilities for future action, it's incredible how imagining something can affect us.

If you are interested in knowing the science behind this, listen to Emily Holmes on A Life Scientific talking about why images are more powerful than words in shaping how we think and feel.

I developed An Inside Story technique as a guide for those moments when you know something needs to be different but can’t work out what it is or how to get there and want some help to imagine something new.