spontaneity fears

Mon Aug 21 20:42:33 CDT 2006

What most people like and respond to is something which is real (honest) , is fun and capable of challenging them in moments when they want to be challenged. We know that psychodrama can provide these kinds of experiences and community, especially when we accord people respect, and attend to moments of difficulty in a direct and courageous manner.  Our real job is to do the work to become the person capable of being real,  fun, skilled, and respectful.  Getting people in the door is NOT our job but becomes the willing effort of people who have met us and want others to meet us too. To go overboard and make our work being "getting people in the door" is a tragedy to my way of thinking.  If people aren't coming then I need to out and get connected to groups of people and become known and involved and offering expertise where it is useful.  

I see towns sending tourist boards to other towns to see what they are doing to get people to come spend tourist dollars in their towns. Pretty soon everybody is doing the same thing: sidewalk art shows, chili cookoffs, farmer's markets and wooden toys. People roam around and look bored cause nothing really catches their interest. It has all been done somewhere else. Do we want to go that route?

We have a unique method. It is one which calls on us to continue to refine our instrument...ourself. If we do that well we are attractive to others.  And, a little (or a lot) scary as we are more able to see into people, can read their fears and they can't exactly hide.  We all need to project our acceptance of their timing and readiness.

    "Let's take a look at the light under the bushel"
    "The truth no one would believe"
    "A small step toward something new"
    "The letter that never arrived"
    "What no one ever tells you about life"

    Bibliodrama?  Nothing is more full of stories than country music. Bring your favorite c&w song and lets share the music and its power in our life. Write a song ourselves if we feel like it. Lets have some lightness here, some fun.

    Well, that's enough of that. Ann

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: CGayle 
  To: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 2:00 PM
  Subject: Re: spontaneity fears

  What I was more talking about is, getting people in the door.  Even w/ "bibliodrama", the "drama" part scares people.  My favorite line, from a chaplain I was referred to, to perhaps bring bibliodrama to some venue, is "Oh, role playing give me diarrhea!".  
  She was terrified at the mere mention of "role playing" (I tried leaving out the "drama" part that time).  

  Also, at a couple of interfaith conferences, no matter how I work to reframe the language, make inviting and safe, I am lucky to get 4 to 6 people; where 30 may run to a writing workshop.  When I talked with folks, although they not so graphic as the chaplain, the fear emerges.

  When psychodrama is used for psychotherapy, does one market the psychotherapy (and the method is relayed later)?. In Washington, you legally need to disclose your methods used for therapy when people start therapy.  I am thinking, as I use this with spiritual work, that the marketing needs to be tweaked re: how to describe the method  Yet, if there is workshop, at a conference or elsewhere, and it is going to be experiential, ethically, people should know that.  Maybe just saying, "experiential" is enough.  The rest, as you said Bud, is building the trust and increasing telic connections once people are there.  Some dancers who do spiritual work sometimes use "movement" vs dancing, another term that scares people.  

  Though no matter how it's labeled and presented, the fear is there, and people will self-select out if they are too scared.  People choose workshops not on the method used (well it might be for us drama and movement junkies), but what need they have that they are drawn to meeting.  At what point is the choice for the growth that is desired, and marketed, overridden by the methods used that are too scary?

  Again, my question relates more to how one presents and markets, I suppose.  Do we relabel and reframe, or put out as it is, for what it is?

  Cynthia Gayle
  Seattle

  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: BARNETT WEISS 
    To: Adam Blatner ; list at grouptalkweb.org 
    Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 5:55 AM
    Subject: Re: spontaneity fears

    I really think that the context in which improvisation or spontaneity is encouraged is essential.  This is why Psychodrama's without sufficient sociometric warm up work with the group is so much less effective. If I cannot create a safe environment in which the ultimate protagonist can feel the sense of group support as a consequence of what you might call synergistic group telic increase ( there's a mouthful ) which takes place during good group warmups, then the action/spontaneity training will be far less effective and in some cases will confirm for those "shy" persons that groups are in fact not a safe place. 

    For me, all actions sessions are about spontaneity training of one kind or another giving role improvement overall and the experience of the safety of operating in a non judgemental supportive group allows for that at a maximal level; quite different from an individual session where the dyad becomes more of a good parenting session at best. The learning  there needs a trial in the more real world of the supportive group and then using future projections, the protagonists can try out the new role learnings in more and more "unsupportive" though still play situations as preparations for the totally unsuported real world experience. 

    Blessings, Bud

    Adam Blatner <adam at blatner.com> wrote:
      Cynthia, howdy.  Responding to your email below as I clean up old emails...
               resistances to psychodrama:

       Any thoughts about how to help people to get closer to improvisation, enactment, creativity, spontaneity?
             I'd like to hear more about how artists feel about creativity.... 
                       Nothing has to be re-labeled, in the have to.. world, but our own creativity regarding different types of audiences, the semantic associations to these words, may lead us to start folks out with more neutral language .

            I guess it's a bit like talking about spirituality or sex... 
                     There is a great deal of vulnerability associated with
                           --self disclosure    (what will you judge about me?)
                                    -- unconscious self-disclosure: the more I behave, act, nonverbally, the more I say, the more there is to see and judge that I may not be wanting you to judge
                 -- because I fear you will misinterpret, you excessively weight the negative, come to conclusions without my permission... 
                          so enactment is a big deal...

                 And improvisation is also big: You will see how afraid, stiff, shallow, inhibited, I am and judge me and I shall feel ashamed... I'm embarrassed even to bring this up into my consciousness, and resent your stirring me up... 

               I think folks are more often more this way than the opposite, ready and willing to plunge in..
                                   warmly, adam blatner
        ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: CGayle To: list at grouptalkweb.org   July 12, 2006 

        How about...the word, "psychodrama", scares people.  Even the word, "bibliodrama" scares people.  It's the "drama" piece I think.  Performance anxiety?  Unconsciously knowing one's stuff could emerge?  Frozen in cultural conserves?  
        A broader discussion is that people are also afraid of "creativity", however it is phrased.  I have had artists who work w/ spirituality also speak to this.  Warm up increases spontaneity in order to decrease anxiety, yet if people are turned off to these terms, they won't come in the door.  Does everything have to be relabeled?  Or are the methods prone to draw the people who self select for creativity?  And if so, then do we relish our "alternative" methods with glee and give up trying to be accepted in broader contexts?  
               I am very interested in understanding these fears more, and how to deal with. Cynthia Gayle Seattle
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