All I Bring is Myself: Reflections in the Art of Psychotherapy

By Peg Elliott Mayo

A lot of people come to me for the jokes. Those that continue, stay for the hope the relationship brings. I’m a therapist, among other things, and this is a collection of stories about heroes, cowards, bullies and good and evil genius. It recounts stupidity, cruelty, absurdity, struggle, laughter, tragedies, and miracles of the human spirit. It’s about being a witness and participant in the everyday dramas of modern psychotherapy in settings as diverse as a Dantesque corrections camp, a tumultuous big city mental health treatment center, and the freedom of private practice—from my perspective as a therapist and an artist.
"Peg Mayo's writing should be taken very seriously, with the expectation that it will bring you great insight and understanding, as well as significant pleasure. She is a master therapist with unique observations on what it means to be human--in all its many dimensions. Her writing is lively and colorful; she a storyteller par excellence, and a national treasure."
Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D.
Author: Woman As Healer: Shamanism and Modern Medicine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peg Elliott Mayo
• Release date: Aug 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476080673

Peg Elliott Mayo

Born March 31st,1929, Easter Sunday on the cusp of April Fools Day in the year the stock market died. So much for karma! Don, is the tall Shy Guy, spouse, creative force & phenomenal companion. Three living middle-aged offspring who are neither children nor “mine,” KT, Stan and Peter. When your “baby” is eligible for AARP you search for new descriptors. Three outstanding grand “children.” Jane and Anna Rose, college students, and Aaron a graphic designer, metal artist, gardener, creative force, all around good sport and friend. Home is a modest place on the banks of Coast Range Oregon river, 28 miles from “town.” I’m part of a mixed neo/retro hippie, artistic & staggeringly diverse forest community. Identity at various times: daughter, wife, widow, mother, grieving parent, Aries, failed factory worker, potter, basket maker, sewin’ fool, adequate organically-committed cook/food preserver, clinical social worker specializing in PTSD, loss, relationships & creative expression, hospice volunteer, tree hugging ecoappreciator, party girl, recluse, foolish risktaker, writer, computer graphics-photography neophyte, established writer & storyteller.

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ALL I BRING IS MYSELF:

Reflections on the Art of Psychotherapy

Peg Elliott Mayo

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2003/2013

DEDICATED THANKS TO

Those who have dared to share their secrets, lives, skills, fears, joys, spirituality, courage, trust and hope with me.

David Feinstein, Donna Eden, Don Pauls, Jill Current and Jerry Campbell without whom there would be no book.

Maggie O'Neill is the meticulous, patient and tactful copyeditor I have needed forever. Any typos or misspellings are mine, done after she'd done her magic.

AUTHOR'S REASSURANCE

Names, locations and other identifying details throughout this book have been changed to protect privacy. Some are composites of real individuals. Every event mentioned occurred, though only two of the encounters occurred after 1979, when I left San Diego County Mental Health. I have used my copious personal journal entries and, in several instances, tape recordings to support the ideas and reactions recounted. I have been scrupulous to protect the identity of those who trusted me with their secrets so none will feel betrayed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forward: David Feinstein, Ph.D.

Introduction: Who Do I Think I Am?

Chapter 1: Therapeutic Ritual: When Talk Is Not Enough

Chapter 2: Madness and the Appearance of Madness

Chapter 3: Sexuality: The Double Edged Instinct

Chapter 4: Death: The Final Adventure

Chapter 5: The Second Adolescence: Midlife

Chapter 6: Professionals in Process

Chapter 7: Survivors: Reason to Hope Epilogue:

EPILOGUE: So What Did You Learn In Life, This Time Around?

FOREWORD

David Feinstein, Ph.D.

Peg Elliott Mayo was my first clinical supervisor in 1969, and at the time of this writing 44 years later, she remains among the most adept therapists I have had the good fortune to witness (and I have, in my own continued training, had opportunity to observe the best and the brightest; Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, and Alexander Lowen to name three). Her ability to help people grapple effectively with the challenges of dreadful circumstances, difficult passages, and unfortunate biochemistry is often remarkable. I am not saying her work is magical—she is actually enormously practical and down to earth. What I am suggesting is that her work is profoundly empowering. Her clients often walk away with a new assessment of their circumstances, a cleaner window into their own motivations and possibilities, and an empowering vision of how to move forward.

On hearing of her plans to retire sometime (she being 75 years at the moment of speculation), I suggested to Peg that she write a book that gives other therapists the benefit of her experiences and her approach. I have consulted with her hundreds of times over the years on clinical matters large and small. I explained that her perspective and method have been so enormously useful to me that the idea of having a compendium that addressed, say a dozen challenges therapists commonly face, struck me as an invaluable contribution. But Peg had other projects in mind for her retirement years.

I begged, pleaded, and cajoled. Finally Peg, who has always driven hard bargains with me that somehow work out to my advantage, said she would do the book if I would co-author it with her. Much dialogue later, I agreed if I were allowed to make an unambiguous statement at the beginning that this is Peg’s book. I am perhaps its midwife, but it is properly birthed in her voice, out of her experience.

In early discussions about the project, Peg’s husband, Don Pauls, asked Why just for therapists? That comment was the catalyst for the book’s current focus. The intended audience has grown to include not only therapists but anyone who might benefit from the ideas of a seasoned therapist with nothing left to lose. The very issues that pose challenges within the process of psychotherapy are instructive for all of us as we move through our lives, and the guidance offered in this book is the distilled experience of one of the best.

INTRODUCTION

For two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances;

if there is any combination at all, both are transformed.

Carl Gustav Jung

WHO DO I THINK I AM?

A lot of people come to me for the jokes. Those that continue, stay for the hope the relationship brings. I’m a therapist, among other things, and this is a collection of stories about heroes, cowards, bullies, good and evil genius. It recounts stupidity, cruelty, absurdity, struggle, laughter, tragedies, and miracles of the human spirit. It’s about being a witness and participant in the everyday dramas of modern psychotherapy in settings as diverse as a Dantesque corrections camp, tumultuous big city mental health treatment center and the freedom of private practice—from my perspective as a therapist.

Let me see if I understand this, I said, carefully framing the dilemma of a distressed, obsessing client, You have the choice of spending Thanksgiving with your petulant father and cranky step-mother or joining your new love on a bare-foot cruise in the Caribbean? Now, if your suffering index is falling dangerously low, you will obviously want to be with your parents.

After asking one of my groups to, Visualize your life three years from now, two people blocked and could come up with nothing. I responded, If you can’t fantasize the future, then make something up. Both did.

An attractive but self-deprecating woman, Nancy had a series of sexual liaisons that she did her best to keep separate from her emotions and day-to-day life, claiming she was neither fit for nor interested in a lasting relationship. All she really wanted, she said unhappily, was the sex. Bemoaning her latest outing on a ski holiday, she was exasperated that she had feelings for the handsome young man she’d successfully propositioned. Pity, I chided, You’re not as shallow as you’d like to be.

Tucked into the laugh we shared was a refreshed perspective validating her depth and worth. Humor is powerful. Therapeutic humor puts the facts of life into new perspective and proportion. It can ease a new idea into consciousness in a simple, pleasant manner, unsettle rote thinking, and provide an intellectual intimacy between client and therapist. Therapy—insight, action, and consolidation—is best nurtured in a friendly environment. Good humor, like solid validation and the truth told softly, is the foundation of healing relationships.

Humor also prolongs the playing life of the practitioner by lifting the mood from the necessary regard of human suffering to the human capacity for amusement. In the ability to reframe impasses, highlight opportunities, and teach us that taking ourselves seriously need not mean somberly, good humor provides a powerful metaphor and context for practicing the art of psychotherapy

What I bring to my client is myself. My life experience, the filters I wear, the lessons learned, the strengths and vacancies in my understanding. The tools of the trade are my resources. And, like all creative endeavors, the art of psychotherapy shapes the therapist as surely as it does the client. No amount of technique, research, or reliance on outside authority can substitute for the therapist’s experience, reflections on that experience, and the resulting self-awareness.

I was a licensed psychotherapist for forty years. I think of myself as a guide a few steps further along the trail, looking for the same things most people are: zest and serenity, transmutation of sorrow to creative vitality, meanwhile tending my karma and earning a living doing satisfying things. I have been a storyteller for the entire conscious span of my eighty-four years. The core of my personal identity is my creative surge, which has manifested in basketry, clay, writing, sewing, cooking, and counseling. Combining the artist in me with the therapist is a natural alliance, opening a full-palette of possibilities. If I am remembered for anything, I hope it will be my delight in seeing new things emerge from familiar materials and for my humor. Otherwise, frankly, I’m ordinary as a rain boot in Oregon.

I believe psychotherapy is more art than science. An adept potter is an artist, but cannot be ignorant of the principles by which earth, water, fire, and air combine to create a new entity. So, too, the counselor must grasp the complex interactions of the human psyche and the environment. She needs to understand social context, family dynamics, and the delicacy of changing perceptions. Yet if she applies in a mechanical or dogmatic way what she has learned from even the best books and training, her results will be soul-less. I, in fact, feel considerable impatience with orthodoxy wherever it lays its suffocating hand on human activity. In particular, I am restless when my profession—psychotherapy—is practiced in programmatic, inflexible ways as if human suffering and potential were mechanical problems to be solved much as a technician would tweak the guts of a computer.

As potter, I know that my vision, touch, finesse, and ultimate willingness to commit my efforts to the merciless fire are the measure of my art. With a client—and for me—the fire is life. Will the pain of the burning bring out unexpected glory in the glaze, subtly shifting the form, improving functionality? I bend my efforts and understanding in that direction, while knowing the clay has its own characteristics separate from my control. When it is in my hands I am respectful of its nature and do not attempt to impose my will to change that nature, only my careful exploration, being willing to stop when I can do no more, taking pleasure in what has taken shape, recognizing in it a collaboration of material and hands.

If I have a defined theoretical framework, it is rooted in the philosophy of Carl Jung and the Gestalt practice of Fritz Perls, informed by Joseph Campbell’s profound work on mythology and further augmented by considerable study and practice with David Feinstein’s approach to personal mythology. Respect for the indivisible integrity of mind, body, emotion, and spirit is always present with me.

The spiritual context into which I was born was Theosophy, the passion of my father and his father before him. Later, I had an uneasy sojourn in Fundamentalism, of the Christian variety, abandoned it for Science, came home to my spirit via the alchemy of transmuting sorrow to creativity, and now, well-over the doorsill of age, am an animist, living intimately with nature on seventy-seven acres of Oregon forest, with a half-mile of the Yaquina River running through The Land my husband and I are privileged to call home.

Core shamanism, is a compendium of universal tribal practices as well as modern healing and spiritual insights, has informed and influenced my personal and professional work, though no one should make the error of believing I am a shaman, druid or other defined spiritual initiate. While I do see shamanic elements in good psychotherapy, I am also of a pragmatic nature, well aware that we modern human beings long ago left behind the simpler life of our tribal ancestors. We live in a culture with inhumane demands on our time and energy, leaving few resources for contemplation or even wholesome renewal, let alone creative expression, emotional expansion, and wholesome play. I am an advocate for balance.

My life has brought suffering—why should I be different?—and hence opportunity to transform. I have also known much delight and creative ferment, with associated satisfactions. I take comfort and exhilaration from community, yet savor my solitude. In my eighties, there is much to say. Some of it emerges organically throughout this book of my philosophy, opinion, and experience. I write for those curious about the thoughts of a seasoned therapist and guide, eclectic in her thinking, committed to optimism.

My view of myself as a psychotherapist has almost nothing to do with my academic degrees or other professional learning and everything to do with a willingness to share with my clients the essence of what I have learned in a long lifetime, intimately engaged with the passions, terrors, and foolishness of life. I am, in my own estimation, a pretty good guide for a respectable range of painful and confusing emotional-spiritual-cognitive-physical challenges. For others, particularly, passive-aggressive folks, they had best look elsewhere.

I have lived my life intimately with others and the storyteller has always been motivated to gather teaching tales. Some I share here.

WHAT DO I THINK I'M DOING?

The art of psychotherapy lies in creative interruption of perceived truth.

My task is to provide instruction, comfort, protection, and validation. Together, we will strip away layers of assumptions. The governing myth of each life can be examined and, to a significant degree, reshaped. Where grief is deep we will call on the principles of alchemy for transformation. Although the client’s profound complexity and hidden potentials can never be fully known, I will support all that I recognize as life-affirming and hopeful.

I fully use my life experience, intuition, and attention toward accomplishing the objectives the client formulates. I do not believe it is not mine to alter a human work of art, but to provide tools of self-transformation that may be used however the person chooses.

Art is the synthesis of known elements into a refreshed vision. As an artist, I see several elements in any creation. Consider a basketry. It may be carelessly constructed of shoddy materials, unsuited to useful, decorative, or sacred function. It may be utilitarian, sturdy, and without pretensions. It may be a masterpiece created with exquisite skill. In any case, it is composed of specific materials combined with given techniques in the hands of a greater or lesser craftsperson. The crafter has brought some level of vision, skill, intention, and persistence to the finished product before it goes on its way into the world. The integration of parts brings into being an object greater than any element: the gestalt.

Humans elements are body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Drawing parallels with basketry, structural integrity is basic. If the piece will not reliably carry a load of apples, sit upright on the altar, or hold a vase of daisies, it is difficult to appreciate its other qualities. So it is with the body. The usage of the basket relates to the mind. Thinking, despite some recent bad press, is a distinct asset. To learn from past mistakes and incorporate lessons enhancing utility is a function of mind. Emotions parallel the color, the embellishments, the grace notes of the piece, and, if done tastelessly, obscure the pleasing elements of the container. Spirit is reflected in unity of parts and the vision which conceived that unity.

Entering a new therapeutic relationship wholeheartedly I must feel the potential to love my client. This shocking statement is bound to perk the ears of the cynical. I do not mean I will set up a crib in the corner of my bedroom, allow emotional enmeshment, nor entertain-act out sexual fantasies. Love, in this context, is open-hearted acceptance of the person. It means empathy without accepting suffering as inevitable and directing my energies for client.

Most of all, love means honesty. I cannot pretend to know what is hidden, give false sympathy or allow incursions inappropriate to the relationship. I do my best to tell hard truths softly, but I do tell them. Honesty wears down resistance and fosters trust, a necessary ingredient for intimate work. Optimistic truths bring joy.

Individuation—becoming all we can be—is the ultimate human responsibility. I cannot reconcile free will with the idea that we are compelled—forever doomed—to unproductive attitudes and behaviors as victims of history, heredity, culture or some original spiritual shortcoming. Taking charge of our own energy means directing choices wisely, gathering forces to learn, and cultivating consciousness. At any point in our lives, we are the sum of our choices and their ultimate authority.

At the same time, we are compelled by our primal nature to learn and apply life’s lessons. When we lose hope, we despair. Much suffering incurs from the helpless hopelessness imposed by dysfunctional personal myths and the lifetime of terrible and unnecessary struggle resulting from them. The ground for growth is hope change is authentically within grasp. Not, you will note, cure, but positive change. No one said anything about easy or quick, either. Most personal change comes after hard pick-and-shovel work.

THE THERAPEUTIC THREE-STEP

None would invite grief, fear, rage or disillusion into their lives. Seeking or not resisting disruption and pain are signals of profound alienation. Few sane individuals do. Yet those emotions, and spiritual bleakness, are pervasive. What I, as a guide, tried to show are paths and trails through the brambles. All I Bring offers fresh vision of what life can be and encouragement to bring make it real.

Asked a version of How do I change? my guidance is both challenging and hopeful. I told a client, Knowing that your perfectionism is draining the joy out of life is step one of three. Just knowing that and a dollar will get you a bad cup of coffee. How many people know they should eat better food, quit smoking or stop drinking? Knowing is the start, not the solution.

Will to change is the next step, using every resource for support and insight. Reordering a way of doing business. It means treating yourself humanely. In your situation, I told my perfectionist client, I recommend that for a start you pick out some simple task where you typically strive for an ‘A+’—say vacuuming the house or cleaning the car—and set your sights on a ‘B.’ It’ll be tough, but turn your head around to doing a good, but not perfect job. Watch your process, see what’s driving you, and, most of all, treat yourself humanely. You will not do this paradoxical thing easily or perfectly. If you fail and do the tasks flawlessly—get an ‘A+’—simply stop and recognize this is what you used to do. Don’t call yourself names. Don’t give up. Redirect your energy and do another chore to the ‘B’ level. Be kind, recognize what a valuable thing you are doing.

The third step is practice. You get to do that the rest of your life. After a lifetime doing things a particular way, to change means to be vigilant—to practice—so the old ways don’t creep back in.

There are a multitude of opinions about what the ultimate goal of psychotherapy should be and what the proper equipment is for the journey. This book is a testament to psychotherapy as art made lively by observations and examples, and real-life stories of the good people I have known. The presentation has been clarified through dialogue with a practiced, David Feinstein, known as a leader in Energy Medicine and Psychology. He asked penetrating questions and offered cogent commentary from his somewhat different perspective. I have found the challenge refreshing and his insistence they be publish to be confirming, though I have had the impulse to shuffle a little and say, "Aw, shucks…

CHAPTER 1:

THERAPEUTIC RITUAL: WHEN TALK IS NOT ENOUGH

Rituals build community creating a meeting ground where people can share

deep feelings, positive or negative a place where they can sing or scream,

howl ecstatically or furiously, play or keep a solemn silence.

Starhawk

Therapeutic ritual transports consciousness, carrying us where minds alone cannot journey. Art is the synthesis of known elements into a refreshed vision. Psychotherapy as art gathers material—character, experience, capabilities, temperament—and selects, reassembles, improvises, and reinforces the various elements. Then, the client, an emerging piece of art, interfaces with the therapist-artist and a new formulation emerges from pooled experience and intention.

In therapeutic ritual all the elements—abreaction, visualization, trance, symbolization, and dramatization—are familiar to non-psychoanalytic counselors. The ethics of fully informing the client of the intention and method used are scrupulously attended. There are no planned surprises. Witnesses are required. Safety, physical and emotional, are central concerns. No deity is called on, though a client will certainly interject whatever Source is important to him.

I never assume a role such as shaman, priestess, druid or other spiritual guides. I am myself, more formal than usual and with solemnity not usual to my nature. There is no charge for ritual. While it is appropriate to bill for consultations preceding and following it, I feel a contamination when money intrudes on ceremony. Art exists for its own sake: it only acquires monetary worth when someone chooses to narrowly define its value. I will not do that with ritual.

There are occasions when the usual processes of psychotherapy are not enough, when introspection, catharsis is not enough. Reflection, reframing, and encouragement have all been experienced, but there is still a sense of an open gestalt, something undone.

GLORIA

Gloria fit exactly the criterion I require to do ritual work.

Gloria and I worked intensely for a year on her dreadful memories of an automobile accident, said, When its all said and done, I still don’t feel finished.

The first essential is ritual cannot be used as a quick fix. It is the last, culminating, moment of our therapeutic relationship. We knew each other deeply: she, my steadiness and directed concern: I, her intention and wisdom.

Gloria was a mature person, a tenured college professor, rational, but fully capably of accessing her emotions. Critically important, she had shown no evidence of psychosis, borderline personality, nor histrionics in a solid year of intense therapy. Her spiritual system was a fluid collection of sensed forces. She believed, In something, I just don’t know how to name it. I don’t think my life is random, but I can’t buy into deities. I don’t know why, but I feel safest in nature.

It would be a profound disservice to suggest a ritual of the sort I am equipped to direct with anyone who holds a different view of the process. I, in turn, will not ape the routines of a system with which I have no affinity. Since I am not a priestess, shaman or druid, I perform the rites as myself, but with formality and respectful manipulation of symbols meaningful to us both.

Insight was gleaned from Campbell, Feinstein,and Estes. My personal spiritual practice was the underpinning. It was delicate work. I questioned my worthiness and knowledge. I was concerned my intervention would be clumsy or even harmful. Gloria and I discussed all parts, including my naiveté, as we designed the ceremony together. We agreed the purpose was to deeply express the horrifying sorrow she felt and to use the elements of fire, water, salt, and other tools collected along the way to transform the energy to something wholesome.

The ceremony was witnessed by the person, her husband, she selected as protector, two women friends who traveled long distances to be with her, and a drummer I introduced. I require anyone participating in a transformative ceremony to bring a protector. This person must be physically competent, alert, and sensitive to the person working. His or her task is to be sure no harm comes from stumbling into the fire or other mishap and care for her during the night. Other witnesses are welcome.

We met in a secluded place, beside a river, and had a huge fire. She has asked me to not to detail her work, but I am free to say that it signaled a profoundly beneficial change in her life.

I have since participated in dozens of individual and group rituals for purposes ranging from blessing an unborn child, witnessing commitment vows, exorcising hideous abuse memories, validating community, grieving deaths, and memorials celebrating a life. The essays were chosen to demonstrate principles.

LEELA

We met, the two of us, and her memories, on the gravel bar one cool April evening for the climactic ceremony. Weeks of talk, exchanging information, clarifying the relationship, dreams and growing trust prepared us for the work we were determined to accomplish. There was respect and affection between us, enacting archetypal roles.

At one time, I resisted acting as an emotional midwife assisting suffering people through their grief and, in so doing, assisting their births into the next phase of life. An odd specialty, not so much sought, but given. The tools were learned in the fire of experience, with both personal suffering and personal gratification. With practice I have learned to look forward with assurance. Such labor bears reward for both companions. I was called to another birthing by this gentle woman consumed by sorrow and impotent rage. We were prepared.

The setting is a river bank. We are surrounded by tall trees in a place where all sound is absorbed by wind and water music. Safety has been seen to. She has promised that in her expected outburst of fury, she will do herself no harm. Most of us have had our voices and raw expression of outrage stifled. We have been punished for passion. Her's is righteous anger and is screaming from within for release. I encourage her to devise a way to be loud, violent, and focused without danger. I tell her she is not to suffer harm from emptying herself of toxic anger.

Earlier, I set her to the task of hauling the wood for the transmuting fire. She is a city woman, soft-handed, not appearing athletic, but she works like a logger getting the fire in place and constructed effectively for a good flame. She says the work feels good. She is sweaty and smiling. We embrace, silently understanding each other’s worth.

I set up my simple altar. The silk cloth transforms a drab bench to a focal point. I set out my things. She sets out hers. We rest on the bank, centering energies, preparing spirits for the work. She is the purpose, I am the guide, having passed this way before many times. It is always the first time for my student, freshening my experience.

I fill an abalone shell with spring water, sprinkle in sea salt using a fresh-water mussel shell as a spoon, recognizing that sea water has about the same minerals as our blood, binding us intimately to Earth. We taste the water, remembering the sorrows of the ancestors, our generations, the generations to come, and of Earth, Herself. Gloria sprinkles the salt water in a circle surrounding our unlit fire, chairs, and the site she has chosen for her punching bag (a black bean bag chair on a tarp). We agree to keep our focus within the circle while performing the rites.

We smudge with cedar, sage, Arctic Hemlock pitch, and lavender, knowing breath connects us to all creation. The associated scents are deeply meaningful. We speak of objects on the altar, each dedicated to archetypal elements enhancing our humanity and connect us with the wider sphere of symbols. There is a picture, touching beyond words, Leela is a tiny infant, with her hand in Gloria’s larger hand. It is Leela, moments after her birth, meeting her mother. Leela will die seventeen hours