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Last week I wrote about storytelling and romance: how when we're young, the stories we tell about ideal love are different from the ones we tell when we're older.
I'm still thinking about the stories we tell ourselves. Here at the hospital, I'm giving therapy to a 19-year-old boy who suffered a brain injury that largely took away his use of language. He lives without access to most words. He can speak four- or five-word sentences, but that's about the limit of his vocabulary. While he experiences emotion, sensation, and images, he doesn't have labels for them. In turn, it's hard for us to imagine what his world feels like. One strange thing is that when he does speak, he actually doesn't show the frustration most of us would feel if we'd temporarily forgotten our words. He just speaks a quiet sentence then stares blankly, as if his desire, pride, and anger had vanished with his vocabulary.
Maybe we do need words to turn events into something that feels personal--into something desirable or important or delicious or evil. My patient is partly in the hospital because a year ago, he got shot in the stomach. One of my jobs is to figure out if he's suffering from "trauma," or painful memories of the shooting, in the way another person might. He does sometimes say he feels terrified about what happened to him. But his terror is not personalized in a story. For instance, he doesn't sit in his room ruminating, like many of us do, with angry language about his fate. He doesn't shape and emphasize the memory by telling it to his shrink. The images of being shot, and of being left in a hospital bed without visitors, must move in and out of his visual cortex like a dream. I imagine he has emotionally intense flashes of the man who almost killed him. But he has no narrative to tell.
If you live in a world of emotion without a story binding it together, it's probably hard to own any experience as "mine." If you can't name the actors in the story, and your own role, and what caused what to happen, the story can't feel like your own. In turn, your future probably doesn't feel like a real thing which you can shape, either. Looking at this boy is frightening for me--as if he's suspended in space. Even his peers on the ward come and go without his being able to think "I'll go play cards with him after lunch."
Of course this sad fact has its flipside, too. Those of us who love our words know--in contrast--that words are the tools that give us a handle on life. Words help us name and remember the things we like and the things we want to avoid. We can label parts of our identities to emphasize in our relationships with others, shaping personality by naming, valuing, and choosing. I'm thinking of how we are authors as long as we have access to our grammar. We turn the visuals stuck in our memory and the surprises of our bodies into a story that is "mine," and steady, and subject to our will.
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Ha! I was taking off into another direction, a reaction to what was being said. Sorry if I lost you!
I interpret words as more than what comes out of our mouths. I was vague. Interactions. Feelings. Any kind of non verbal responses can become expressions of those feelings. We normally interact with all of our senses.
Getting back to the boy. My thought was: Could he be able to express his history, with a non verbal form of communication? I don't know. Whatever he had learned, from his past, can they actually be feelings that are stuck, when actual words are not there to be formed? Damage to the brain - I know nothing about how it regenerates itself.
Exercises of any type, to the body, or the brain, I might think, could spark, or strengthen it as in growth, into something within his lost imagination/memory. Give him a lump of clay, a dish of water, and a sponge, and see what his hands do with it. Give him water color pencils, a brush.... and again, leave him alone with them....see what happens. Have you ever interpreted "simple" lines on a piece of paper? They all mean something. The lines may be made with a pencil, or a brush, or even made with finger tips...The use of color....it all has meaning. Maybe something would come of this, maybe not. And, again, it's all interpretations.
Just off the wall mind wander, on my part.
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From what we know so far....
One strange thing is that when he does speak, he actually doesn't show the frustration most of us would feel if we'd temporarily forgotten our words. He just speaks a quiet sentence then stares blankly, as if his desire, pride, and anger had vanished with his vocabulary.
...it doesn't sound like he is struggling to find words to express himself. If he was struggling, llana would see frustration -- instead, she is just seeing blankness, as if he has already said all he wants or needs to.
It actually reminds me of what it used to be like to talk to one of my nephews on the phone when they were younger -- I'd ask all sorts of questions to get a conversation going, but all I'd get back would be one word answers, as if they were playing a far more interesting video game while talking to me on the phone. It was like pulling teeth with them -- but in truth, they just didn't have anything to say! Now they'll talk to me for a good hour at a time about all sorts of interesting things, but back then, all I got was the shortest answer possible.
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It actually reminds me of what it used to be like to talk to one of my nephews on the phone when they were younger -- I'd ask all sorts of questions to get a conversation going, but all I'd get back would be one word answers, as if they were playing a far more interesting video game while talking to me on the phone. It was like pulling teeth with them -- but in truth, they just didn't have anything to say! Now they'll talk to me for a good hour at a time about all sorts of interesting things, but back then, all I got was the shortest answer possible.
You know when I was that age, for me it simply a "gee I don't want to talk to a grown up about that". Too many adults looking like I was spooky mixed with hearing the "don't trust anyone over 30" bit.
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That could have been part of it, TB. Fear of being judged, too, I guess, or fear that they would get some kind of old person lecture if they opened up the door any further than a polite one word response.
"So, how's school?" "Fine". "How's your teacher?" "Ok, I guess" "What are you studying in History?" "Stuff about the country".... "What kind of stuff?" "Just wars and stuff"
You get the picture...
The same could be true of this young man. Llana was evaluating him. He didn't ask for that evaluation. It's being done TO him. Why should he open up more than just being polite? What's in it for him?
Another thing with my nephews was a typical paucity of emotional vocabulary -- we used to call it "mad, glad, sad" syndrome. It is very typical of young pre-adolescent boys. They really didn't think about their feelings much.
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My point is...and I'm reaching back to find it, now
...DON'T hover....
DON'T sit and watch him.....
DON'T ask questions....
LEAVE HIM ALONE...with objects to feel and to touch
Don't tell him WHAT TO FEEL
Don't tell him how to act.
Don't give him any idea of your expectations, except to say, do with these things, what you will.
Again....my point is to not expect him to speak his feelings....
CAN HE FEEL THEM BY SHOWING ANYTHING BY WAY OF HIS OWN VISUAL INTERPRETATIONS?
I don't know this kid from Adam, and here I am asking these stupid questions!
I'm done on this subject. I'm getting frustrated!
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Yes, it does seem as though we all are suffering from lack of real information!
Kathy, assuming that he has the ability to manipulate art media, your idea is a good one. Give him the stuff, set up a hidden camera, leave the room, and watch what he does with it.
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The truth: Last night I was feeling good about the things I was saying/writing, although I wasn't saying anything new, anything that hasn't already been talked about on Ilana's board....then frustration set in, because we were trying to solve a real problem, which really wasn't asked of us...then, today I have to laugh...This whole blog subject, is all a fictional set-up by the author. And I know why. I hate this! 
I fall for it every time! Nothing we have to say proves a solution. There won't be one. No more blogging for me...sorry, my intellect, and common sense, is fried.
IlanaSimons wrote:Last week I wrote about storytelling and romance: how when we're young, the stories we tell about ideal love are different from the ones we tell when we're older.
I'm still thinking about the stories we tell ourselves.
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(shrug) Always thought of it as a form of comunication. A "situation" is set up, if desired we tackle it from different angles. In the process learning about outselves and each other.
Who says there needs to be a solution? The conversation and the discovery was the whole point.
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It's OK, Kathy... really. We love to talk to you but you're not comfortable doing it in this thread. No need for you to explain further. We'll converse elsewhere, OK?
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All:
My frustrations are nothing new, and I hope you all didn't take them as directed towards you. I've enjoyed our conversations. And I do learn a lot from them. But, I do take these "situations" given to us, and conversations, seriously, probably too seriously, and that's my usual approach. I simply do it to myself, when I don't find the answers I'm looking for. Blogs are notorius for this. I need to stay off of them for my own sanity....nothing personally intended towards any of you.
In retrospect, I looked at this young man as someone I would have loved to have helped. That's not going to happen. I felt for him, with his non verbal ways of existing. I know the feeling of not being able to feel, or speak those emotions, but I know there are ways around this. I have visuals in my mind, what I would do if I could come in contact with him. It's obvious, my desire to help him is useless. That's my frustration in this situation.
Communication can happen in so many different ways. I mentioned the senses...I wanted to pull all of this young man's senses out of him...find the ones he can use. Stimulate those. I know very little about art therapy, but I want to learn more.
Now that I've spoken this, does that make me an author? Or could I just feel for him, and not say a word?
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(shrug) (sigh) I don't know. I look at these conversations as a shadow boxing match. No blows really ever land, a practice of art and mental form.
Who doesn't feel for this guy? But I also find myself thinking dark thoughts about what when he was a rational human what he harm he may have caused. What put him in line with gun?? Not truly knowing him puts one a disadvantage, automatically. I can only feel just so much for someone I've never met, nor talked to. That human deep connection just isn't there.
Sorry folks too much of a realist to be a bleeding heart. (Kathy, not that I think you are one either) But my empathy has limits.
But Kathy this puts me in sort of mind. Ever looked into voluntary at rehabilitation? Many often look for people willing to bring art interaction. Could your frustration be a lack of ability to help someone?
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Hi,
I'm sorry that I did not offer more details of this kid's life earlier in this discussion. I have simply been working at a place where I can't post during the day, and I come home tired, and I have been reluctant to offer further details because of a need to respect patient privacy laws. I learned a lot from everyone's posts in this discussion (and I don't know enough about the patient's brain functioning to say if what he's suffering is truly aphasia, or catatonia, or what exactly). The story was, as some of you said, really a prompt for thinking about the power of narrative to tame and shape experience.
On that note, I have to give a head's up that the post for this week is about gaps in communication--or the value of leaving information out. I was not consciously thinking of that topic (i.e. the power and goodness of silence) in order to "fight back" about the discussion above, about my inability to supply needed details about the patient's condition. I can understand why people wanted some more details from me. I'm sorry I dropped the ball a bit.
In any case, the next post about silence in good communication is not supposed to be moralizing. I really hope it doesn't feel that way. It was inspired by an amazing book, The Hamilton Case. I'd be interested to know if any of you have read it. I find it totally delicious--and teasing in its silences. I have been teased by its silences.
Ilana
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