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Mary:Welcome to Unravelling. This is a podcast that sees the world through the lens of mental health. I'm Mary Wilson, a journalist.
Kurt:And I'm Kurt White, a social worker and psychotherapist. Now, Mary, I've got a question for you. Do you like to tell stories?
Mary:I do like to tell stories and listen to them too.
Kurt:Yeah. Do you? And you've got kids, and you do probably make up stories
Mary:too and tell
Kurt:them something.
Mary:Sure do.
Kurt:Yes. Yeah. And they love it. Right?
Mary:Oh, they love it.
Kurt:Yeah. It's a funny thing, isn't it? Because, like, we grow up learning about the world largely through the stories that we hear, that we learn from others, that we digest from the larger culture and society. And I think we never really stop loving them.
Mary:I would agree. Yeah. I'm getting back into children's books, like you said, with my kids, and it's one of my favorite parts of the night is reading them their bedtime stories.
Kurt:Great. And I I think it's an interesting thing if we were to think about mental health as related to the stories that we've learned to tell about ourselves and that we've taken in about ourselves other people's stories about us. And one way to think about psychotherapy is a sort of a rewriting and retelling of those stories.
Mary:And today, we're talking about storytelling in a different way that involves a lot of imagination.
Kurt:That's right. And there's a, you know, history of that kind of thing in the field of psychotherapy and psychodrama and methods of of sort of embodying different parts of yourself and personifying them. There's a lot more to psychodrama than that, but that's a part of it. But there's some new and interesting things in the world of group psychotherapy in particular that we're going to talk about that has to do with the collaborative storytelling environment of tabletop role playing games.
Mary:Yes. And specifically, Dungeons and Dragons, if you've heard of it. I had heard of it, but never played it. I didn't even know that a dice were involved. So I was clueless about D and D.
Kurt:That's right. I, you know, I I know about it, and I've listened to some podcasts where they do that and things like that. But I I've only ever played really one game like that when I was in college visiting actually another friend in college somewhere else and and had a lot of fun with it. But I didn't really think about it much and certainly not in the world of psychotherapy.
Mary:Yeah. So we're going to be learning about how these tabletop based role playing games have a space in therapy now.
Kurt:Yeah. And and, essentially, we're gonna talk to two guests. We're actually gonna have a series of three episodes that are very special and I hope are fun and enjoyable for our listeners in the way that they were fun and enjoyable, at least for me Oh, yes. When we put it together, where we're going to be talking about using this framework of tabletop role playing games, D and D, what our two guests are calling collaborative role playing integrative therapy or CRIT as a model for telling different stories about yourself and exploring them using this medium of a game combined with group therapy.
Mary:Role playing and then using that role to process something that's happening in real life. Doctor Vinnie Deheely is a group coordinator and licensed psychologist. He's also the owner of Change the Narrative Counseling. Vinny has a passion for bringing diversity, consciousness, and anti racism practices to group therapy, serving in various roles within American Group Psychotherapy Association as the consultation coordinator with the College Counseling Special Interest Group, co chair of the Racial and Ethnic Diversity Special Interest Group, and co chair of the Diversity and Equity Task Force.
Kurt:And E. Merton has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Clark University and a master's degree in social work from the Smith College School for Social Work, where I originally came to know them some years ago. They've completed postgraduate fellowships in psychoanalysis and intersubjective psychotherapy, as well as other advanced training in couples and family therapy. They teach at the graduate level in the world of group psychotherapy at Springfield College in Massachusetts. And, E and Vinny have presented about this work that they've done together at, regional and national conferences.
Mary:And they're both just such a delight. So we really hope you enjoy this episode.
Kurt:Let's have a listen.
E:I'm E. Merton. I'm a clinical social worker. And when I play D and D, I tend to play sorcerers with lots of spells, often aristocratic and socially domineering.
Vinny:I'm Vinny Dihile, a licensed psychologist, group coordinator at Vassar College and owner of Change the Narrative Counseling. And I also tend to be sorcerers, although I tend to enjoy the wild magic because my ADHD mind enjoys a random dice roll and a slot machine to see that something can be helpful or harmful to the people around me.
Mary:Well, thank you both so much for joining us. We've been especially excited about this conversation, so let's dive right in. I know a lot of people have never played Dungeons and Dragons. That's the truth for me. I know that's going to change soon, which I'm looking forward to.
Mary:But for someone who's never played D and D or they have no idea what a tabletop role playing game is. Can you just sort of spell that out for us?
Vinny:Yeah. I try to explain this to my daughter, like, all the time where I'm just like, it's just pretend, where we tell stories together and we make the stories with one another, essentially collaboratively creating a story where we go back and forth, and we build up on ideas, like, with one another. We talk about, like, what happens if they try to make that jump, what happens if they try to do this heroic action.
E:And so the game part and the part that is sometimes intimidating for folks is that it is there's a structure. Right? So D and D is one kind of tabletop role playing game, but that genre of games doesn't necessarily have a board and pieces to move, although sometimes it can, but, provides a structure, a set of rules and roles in which to have this collaborative storytelling. It's could have a group of players, and then it has a what's called a dungeon master or a game master, someone who's sort of leading the game who sets the stage, describes the context and environment, and plays everyone in the world except for the player characters. And so the dungeon master would present a scenario, and the players would respond with how their character would, respond to the environment.
E:And then the story builds from there. And the dice part, right, adds an element of chance. So a player might, you know, give an example of something that they would do. They have a plan, something they're gonna try. They have different abilities and statistics, you know, bonuses to certain things that they're good their character is good at, and they roll the dice to see how well their plan works.
Vinny:And some things that we often, like, do with our clients, when they're first talking to us about maybe entering this group, I usually try to paint a scene of, like, you're in the Ironwood Tavern after a long day of plundering some treasures by the shoreline. You exhaustively call over the barkeep to order a drink. They saunter over to you a few drinks in hand when all of a sudden the door crashes open in the stormy night. The barkeep gets knocked onto the floor, glasses shattered. A drunken sailor stumbles into the room, a crooked eye, mouth agape, slamming his fist on the table in front of you and says, what's your problem, Mary?
Vinny:You wanna go? Think you're better than me? And what do you do? Like, so at that point, it's really up to you. The world is your limit, like in terms of imagination.
Vinny:For newer people, we might do something where we give options to help them see what's possible because you don't know what you don't know. So you may say, you can, try and see if you recognize this person who knew your name. Like, You can check on the barkeep to see if they're okay. Or you can look above you on the roof and around the area for something to help you. Or try and calm them down.
Vinny:Whenever there's an amount of chance, it's like, I'm trying to recall my memory or I'm trying to convince this person to calm down, that's when we would roll the dice. And if we use, like, a 20 sided dice, we just might say, it's above 10, you win. If it's below 10, you lose. And it's very simple. And there's not really a lose in this because, really, if you fail to intimidate or to calm down the person in front of you, then something else happens, and we roll with the failure.
Vinny:We roll with the change, and the story continues, and we make meaning out of what is. When we get to that level of comfort for people, you can ask us questions about anything, like, at any time. It's really a game that helps you understand as you go. So you might ask, can I try and jump over the table to, like, get to the door and run away from this person? Then I'm probably going to reward that with some explanation or description.
Vinny:We want to help reward curiosity and exploration for people. So I will never tell you if you say, Is there anything on the roof? No. Ask another question. I'm gonna say, yes.
Vinny:You see a banner, and there's some rats, like, crawling back and forth through that in a dangling piece of a broken chandelier that seems to be hanging right above him that you feel you might be able to, like, hit loose if you were to throw something at it.
E:Sort of yes and rule of improv. Right? We always wanna be adding to the story rather than stopping it.
Vinny:And feeling that responsiveness from the world that what I do matters, and what I do, like, has a consequence, whether that's good or bad, just you feel that immediacy.
Kurt:I'm curious about the sort of integration of this into a group therapy context. In a regular group therapy, what would a group leader typically be trying to do with a group?
Vinny:One of the ways that process groups that are more emotion focused can tend to be is a laboratory to bring more awareness to yourself, to others, to the ways that the world affects you, and allow yourself to play with new ways of showing up in relationship with people. So if you tend to be more accommodating, passive, vigilant towards others, and you maybe are the wallflower that just kind of takes a step back, because that's been what's been helpful to keep you safe and take in the environment, then we might invite you in a group process to notice what you're feeling inside your body, to invite yourself to see who are you feeling most curious about, to kind of invite them to, like, lean in to engaging more spontaneously within the room. But they're seen more, again, as experiments and ways that you can play with what is rather than trying to take it from a model of there's a right way to be assertive or a right way to be angry. You know, it's more about trying to work with the unique person's, like, body and history to expand what's capable for them.
E:And the group therapy becomes a container, a safer place to practice. Right? You can practice assertiveness with your group members and get feedback in real time, whereas practicing assertiveness with your boss might have some some real consequences. Right? Might have some repercussions to it that in a group setting with group therapists facilitating, you can kind of explore more explicitly.
Kurt:I spent a lot of time thinking about different ways of doing psychotherapy, for a lot of different reasons. I've thought about that, including especially maybe group therapy. What does it mean? You know, I get into wondering, what does it mean to play a character actually, to inhabit a character? And how in this work are folks being invited into sort of portraying and embodying something?
Kurt:And how do you how do you see that working in a in a therapeutic context?
E:Well, I think to understand how to create a character, we first are trying to understand ourselves. Right? We're looking first at how do I move through the world? How do I interact with people? How do I feel about that?
E:How do I wanna feel? And thinking about the stories and different media we have through our lives and using that as models or people that we know to sort of build parts of ourselves and parts different from ourselves into a character.
Kurt:You know, I saw I saw once at psychodrama conference. I there was a talk that had the title, How am I not the protagonist in my own life? You can get into this idea of playing a role is something, but I guess in a way we're all playing a role. And are we playing a role that is actually unsatisfying to us? It's a kind of an interesting therapeutic question, I think.
Vinny:Yeah. I think I think it's like a Jungian therapy, like, quote that I had read once that said, like, we're all born in shoes too small for us, like, to fit in. And I think about that sometimes when we talk about roles and how all of us find the roles where we can creatively dance and get through the world and, be able to adapt to whatever is put in front of us. In the D and D language, I usually say, like, we've all had to forge armor on the quests that life has thrown at us. Like, I'm thinking about how that armor has been protective.
Vinny:Those roles have been protective. And like all armor, it's protective and rigid sometimes, right? And I think the idea of expansiveness and flexibility is a lot of what we talk about psychologically with clients. And being able to think about the roles that we didn't get to play, or the ways in which we still feel a desire to diversify who we can be and how we can show up in the world. If these restraints weren't here, if my life were different, I think that that's really enticing and exciting.
Vinny:You know, my seven year old daughter, like, has kind of been continuously reinforcing these lessons as she's grown up because imaginative play and dressing up or pretending to be other things is, like, one of the youngest and earliest forms that I think we can all, like, kind of relate to. So I just think about how a lot of this is recapturing some of that wistfulness of when things were possible just by pretending to be something other than what you are in this moment.
Mary:And what happens when a character fails? Or you said, you know, the goal here isn't winning or losing like in most games, but is it actually an opportunity when there's sort of a a failure in the game?
E:Absolutely. Some of the best moments in D and D and maybe even group therapy are when there's a failure. Right? When something does not go according to plan. As Vinny was saying, we develop that flexibility, that adaptability.
E:Part of what's helpful about D and D and D group therapy is that we can slow that moment down. Right? So, okay. I was gonna do I was gonna jump up and grab the chandelier. That didn't work.
E:And we can as a group even support each other. Okay. Maybe I could do this or maybe I could go this way. Okay. Now I'm gonna take this fruit.
E:And we now have a new environment, a new aspect of the story to play with, which mirrors real life, right, with lots of chance and plans changing.
Vinny:I'm thinking about that idea of making meaning out of pain. Like, you know, I think oftentimes, I think it was Resma Menachem that highlighted this idea of purposeful pain or clean pain is the goal, like, with suffering, not to avoid bad things happening or that there can't be any pain at all. I'm thinking about a member and group who maybe has a really hard time feeling responsible, beating themselves up when they cause harm unintentionally to others. And so maybe you, you know, you have a great creative plan. You think about jumping up to put the chandelier and throw it down on the pirate that's seemingly violent or coming in very aggressively.
Vinny:And you roll the dice, and you roll a one, a one out of 20, which is the worst roll that you can get. It means you failed miserably. In usually some creative comedic way, we might make up. You actually accidentally, like, have so much momentum. You throw the chandelier and hit a couple of bystanders over at the side and injure, like, another table of adventurers who are about to get up to help you.
Vinny:And then we can start to ask on multiple levels, like, how did that feel for you in character? Like, we could say, how does your character feel in this moment having just caused that? And maybe you're trying to role play a character who's a little more okay with saying, hey. I did my best. I tried.
Vinny:And you know what? I'm giving myself grace that I can't know or control things, you know, that go wrong. And that's very different from the natural voice in that person's head. The familiar voice, rather, that says, this is all your fault. Why did you do it?
Vinny:You shouldn't have done anything. So it's giving them that deliberate practice to change this internal dialogue with this, like, fantasy character, you know, to kind of practice that. And And then we can ask them as a person, how did they feel having that unfold with their character? So we can kind of help them almost have a step back and zoom out from that experience. A lot of ways that I think D and D is uniquely positioned or just tabletop role playing, We can zoom in and zoom out of an emotional intense experience with the way that we use pronouns, the way that we address the person and the character they're playing.
Vinny:If they speak in first person, which is a common thing in group therapy, If we say I statements, it tends to make us more emotionally connected to our experience. Like, I feel really upset that I've just hurt somebody, is much more visceral than saying, you know how sometimes people feel upset when they hurt others and they don't mean to? Right? There's like a distancing.
Mary:And you're using D and D as this therapeutic tool. How does that differ than just playing the game? Is there a way that you run the game that makes it different, or would someone maybe observing just think, oh, they're just playing Dungeons and Dragons?
E:Part of the way D and D becomes D and D therapy is in our character design, is in creating an interpersonal goal. What is a different way of being in the world, being with yourself and others that you want to sort of try on? So a D and D therapy session would include both gameplay and process. So there would be time that we would spend checking in at the start, seeing you know, maybe setting some goals for the session, and then we would spend some time at the end as well reflecting on what we noticed, how it related to the interpersonal goals that we've set, and then thinking ahead. One thing that we do in our D and D therapy games is, we use this tool called a bounty quest.
E:And a bounty quest is a way in which the kind of interpersonal learning growth that's happening in the session can be applied outside of. So you might we have someone, identify a goal for the week. So it might be I'm going to tell my roommate how frustrated I've been with them not doing their dishes. Right? So you're trying to practice more assertiveness.
E:And if the person is able to do that that week, they come in next week and they get an in game bonus. If they weren't able to do that, that's something that we talk about. What got in the way? Right? What did you not have access to that would have made that easier or more more accessible?
Kurt:I was thinking a little about the idea of, you know, what does it mean to even, seek help for a psychological problem, like I say, from a therapist. And how do you even define that as a problem? Right? And there are lots of ways to do that. We have big lists.
Kurt:But if you were to sort of distill it down, one way you might say it would be that when you lose psychological flexibility, when you lose the ability to think about things that are important to you about yourself, then probably you're on the cusp of something that could be diagnosed. You're gonna feel depressed about that. You're gonna feel anxious. You're gonna feel stuck. You're gonna feel like your life isn't moving in a particular way.
Kurt:Someone once said psychotherapy is to help people move from life is just the same damn thing over and over again to life is just one damn thing after another. At least in the second one, it's not the same all the time, right? I mean, that there's some variety we can't always protect. You know? Well, that's maybe a little depressing, but there's something to that, this kind of like fixity.
Kurt:It's interesting as a therapist that it's very how stuck people get because when you're in a real stuck moment, you don't have insight into that that you're stuck. It just feels like the way that the world is. Right? And so we a lot of the techniques in therapy, I I think, are about trying to help people get a little bit of that into things. And it cuts across all kind of different modalities.
Kurt:But I'm interested in the use of the storytelling device here as a way of doing that. And I'm curious, do you see it that way? Is that part of what you're trying to help people with? Is this sort of regain a certain flexibility of thinking and being with themselves through a certain kind of exploratory collective storytelling process?
Vinny:There's different frames that people might have to explain this. I tend to come from a more Buddhist informed like approach, and so I think a lot of the ways in which I'm seeing D and D therapy and therapy, like, maybe in general being helpful is kind of having a shift from this very self focused and self responsible narrative to something that's more system focused and system centered, and, like, understanding how even if we have things in us that we feel frustrated at or disappointed in or we want to change, that that comes from something outside of us and that there's something outside of us that, like, influences that. Something I think that's freeing about understanding I'm like nature. I'm I've adapted this way in my life for a reason, and I've found like my thoughts and my feelings are not just mine, but there's something that I've understood or gotten from my experiences, the world, my relationships. I'm just reminded of, like, Thich Nhat Hanh's way of talking about non self and Buddhist philosophy where he says, if you look deeply at a flower, you see what makes up a flower is all the non flower parts of it, the chlorophyll, the sunshine, the water, the nourishment from the ground.
Vinny:And if you look deeply at a Vinny, you'll see all the parts that are not Vinny that make up Vinny, my family, my relationships, you know, the interactions I've had with the world. All those intersections are like what makes up me, this thing that I call Vinny. If I see a wilted flower, I don't look at that and call it a depressed flower. I think something happened to you from the outside and something in the systems, maybe that drought, maybe, you know, overwatering. Something's causing you not to blossom in the way that you want in this moment, but you're doing the best you can with what you've been given at this moment.
Vinny:And so what do you need in the systems around you, whether that's relationship systems, whether that's work, whether that's, like, you know, play to help you grow, like, in ways that you're wanting to. It kinda helps shift the frame. So, like, when we talk about bounty quests, this is a good example. Like, if somebody comes back and says, I couldn't, like, confront my roommate this week. Like, he was mentioning this idea of, like, then becomes a conversation around what did you need to be different around you or what kinds of resources could have supported you in being able to do that, getting away from this idea of this bootstrap almost mentality of you should have tried harder.
Vinny:There's a lesson to be learned in the limitations of like what we need around us to support us, how we need to be scaffolded and support, how we need to rely interdependently on our friends and our families, those who we feel trust in to give us our needs or our nourishment to thrive.
E:And this is where that degree of separation between, you know, I may feel stuck, but my character doesn't because my character has these qualities or these skills or is in this other context that allows them to respond differently. Like, we are so much more able to have that compassion for that flower, right, than we are for ourselves. So if I'm playing as a flower, I'm like, oh, I'm not getting enough water. Whereas with ourselves, we're often, more critical.
Kurt:So it it sounds like that there is that there's a number of parts to this, that there's quite a bit of preparation actually, right, in developing an idea about what a person might wanna lean into and work on. And then the doing of that, which is storytelling and collaborative and guided, but with a lot of openness and also randomness. And then a certain amount of practicing, right, even in the time in between. But the part we haven't talked about much is the sort of how does one kind of consolidate that knowledge? I mean, is it to go from having had a different experience to sort of really feeling like having had that different experience, it means something to me in the way that I'm going to be in the future.
Kurt:How do you how do you get at that in something that's a kind of a storytelling and playful in this way?
Vinny:I'm reminded of the way that my, like, previous supervisor, like Lisa Ferdinand at USF would often talk about in supervision that we, as therapists, are not mind readers, Vinny, and you will never know what's meaningful about a client's experience unless you ask them. And so I always try to end my groups by asking, like, what was the meaningful moment, the highlight, the takeaway for you in this session? Just to have them put in their own words what it is that's sticking out to them. And I think you can still offer your own observations. Because again, they may not even have the consciousness to notice when they were assertive or when they were pushing on a goal.
Vinny:But kind of having that dialogue at the end of a session or even in the middle of a very meaningful moment can help us kind of digest this into our bodies and kind of accept the praise or even to notice how it feels hard to accept the praise because we meet people where they're at in that experience. But just noticing that more fully somatically can have it feel like it's integrated more as we come in week by week. And as we're kind of speaking about the frame of this group, we're often, as within D and D therapy, talking about the characters and the characters' ambitions and the characters' goals and the story and in the world were created. But then we're also talking about how that may parallel what's going on in the people's lives, the group members' lives, and how they're engaging with the world around them. So someone who was in our group before, who was trying to, from the beginning, introduce herself as within a feminine identity, like being trans and having not come out to family or really anyone, this was the first space they wanted to play with and trust the group to kind of hold that and to show up from the beginning as that person.
Vinny:And so they were able to really lean in and practice the sass and the flourishes that they wanted to embody more in their life. And that was wonderful. And they also got to talk about the hardships of the fear of going home over Thanksgiving break and worrying about how to talk to their family about their transition and their identity and getting support from members in that. So there was a way in which they almost could see into the future and see the hope in this character that they were being able to embody.
E:And I think the group aspect is such a big part of that integration. Right? It's not just that they're noticing. It's not just that we as therapists are noticing, but they're experiencing others experiencing them in real time. And that is really deepening and kind of brings home some of those experiences.
Mary:How does it differ from typical group therapy, the relationship among the participants? Are they forming closer bonds through D and D, or is it a similar relationships that are formed in in typical talk group therapy?
E:Well, it's sort of doubled in a sense. Right? Because their characters also have relationships. Right? And that's something that we're very intentional about.
E:At the start is sort of exploring, like, bonds and associations and relationships that characters might have, which off the bat kinda gives people things to play off of or, you know, a character another character to turn to in different moments.
Vinny:Yeah. It's very meaningful in terms of the experiences in either of those groups. So it's hard to compare it one to one, but I do agree that the excitement and the enlivening feeling of this is our story and these are our characters, the adventure that we went on together is something that's really it's very stimulating. It gets stuck, I think, very intensely in the long term memory of people that often will talk about their favorite D and D stories from ten plus years ago that they still hold on to. And I think about those flashpoint memories in our lives that we can still remember something out of all the moments in our life that happened over a decade ago that has to have something of a value like for us and our bodies and in our sense of self.
Vinny:So that part feels unique to D and D therapy.
Kurt:There's a certain kind of positive quality to it, isn't there? I guess I'm associated I watched a documentary once about like the history of D and D as a game. And there was a sort of weird historical footnote. There was some controversy about it when it came out and there was a sort of, well, there's a demonic thing and there was a whole worry about demonic things in the eighties. I sort of remember it.
Kurt:And I remember some of the folks in the documentary saying that what a funny thing that was because it's actually a story that's set up for the good guys to always win. There isn't a scenario here where evil evil wins out. And I think it seems to me, you know, in talking to about it and reading some of what you have given us about it, that there's a certain kind of forward looking element to it, more than other kinds of therapy. It's a little more forward looking instead of kind of present or past looking. Is that am I getting it right?
Vinny:When I hear forward looking, I think about hope and, like, seeking. I think there is a lot of ambition in, like, setting goals for oneself, like, that we want to accomplish on this quest or, like, character moments that we're hoping to have and hoping to take place. And kind of balancing that, I think, is when things go wrong or things go in a different direction than what we expect. Like, how do we be okay with what is and hold loosely to expectations with that equanimity so that we can, you know, find the purposefulness in our story as it's being written and coauthored among the group. To me, it feels really important given how life and how the world can feel to have a sense of hope and a sense of purpose in moving forward, and like having the responsiveness from the world that you make a difference and that you're having an impact on the characters, the lives around you, I think that that's essential.
Vinny:Essential in our actual lives too. I often like we'll talk about the metaphors of that there are a lot of forest fires that are causing very real pain and suffering that are happening around us, And we need to also focus on the garden of our current relationships, right? What do we need to water around us, and what can we have an impact on in the here and now so that we can feel that sense of reaction from what's happening around us. Because just thinking about or looking at the forest fires from afar can just perpetuate that hopeless, helpless, nothing I can do, nothing to be done right now.
E:I think therapy also makes intentional. Right? Brings intention to a change process or self examination that, yes, does kind of include this future. And D and D therapy sort of puts it on this epic scale. So the goals seem bigger, right, and have this kind of a, you know, magical element, fantasy element.
E:But ultimately, you can't look ahead. You can't move toward that without what's happening presently and what's come before. So I think that all the elements are there, but the quest, the sort of future the future momentum is highlighted.
Mary:And the game never ends. Right? Or is there an ending, or does the story continue?
E:Stories have chapters. Right? So I think sometimes when, you know, if we have a time limited group, then we, you know, choose an ending point. Right? It might be, yeah, an an arc.
E:Right? Something that we solved this mystery or we stopped this thing from happening. Right? And the story absolutely could go on. These characters might continue to live and do all sorts of things, but this chapter that we've made together might come to an ending.
Vinny:Yeah. And, you know, they can I think there's a lot of themes that we can explore related to grief and, like, again, trying to define, like, continuation of, like, others within ourselves? Right? Like, what part of, like, Robert the barbarian are you gonna take with you, right, from this? Like, how are they gonna stay with you now as a meaningful part of your story?
Vinny:What part of the group members are you gonna remember and hold on to? One of my members who I very much adore, that they've coined this term like, Oh, I was going through my life and I thought about I was thought about you group members as I was talking to my partner about something really difficult. I had a little pocket group moment. Like, I pulled you out and thought about what you would say in this moment and how you would feel like if you heard me saying this. And that again, I think kind of reinforces this more interdependent, like interconnected view of humanity and people that, you know, we are others, like, in the people that that came before us, as well as the people that are around us now that we're forming new connections with, they can stay with us rather than feeling like it's over and I never experience that moment again.
Kurt:You know, I sometimes say to to it's more mostly I think I say to supervisees and students, but than to clients. But I have it in mind with clients that that the self is really constructed at first in the imagination, actually. And that you could say to somebody, well, could you do this or that? But if you don't have an experience of it, they're just words. They don't they don't they don't mean anything, actually.
Kurt:And, you know, you may as well say, could you go to the moon? It doesn't like, it's it could be a simple thing from someone else's point of view. But from their point of view, they can't they don't have a story about how they could be in a in a life doing that. And so I've I've sort of found that a lot of therapy has seemed to me to be an imagination endeavor about how could I imagine myself into a life that is one that I want rather than one that I'm given. It has something to do with the self and something to do with the environment that you're in.
Kurt:I think I could just really see the the intersection here in this in this modality.
Vinny:You know, we kind of see these things as very separate, like that there's a concreteness to reality and that there's a, like, kind of a fakeness almost make thee to fantasy or imagination. Whereas, really, if we think of that imaginary as just the image near you at the time, like, that that's still very real and has a real consequence on your body and a real effect on our mind. I think about how, you know, trauma therapies focus on holding past images in our mind and finding ways to alter them in more empowering ways so that people can feel like they can change that narrative or not feel as tightly affected in their body by that image, like, and that has a real effect on them. You know, when we watch TV, when we read books, we have images in our minds that are like not there, but also really there when we feel the characters and the stories and the developments. Like there's nothing more real than that, like when we're connected to that experience.
Vinny:And even in the future when we imagine failing a test or breaking up with someone, we can feel that in this moment as if it's happening to us, like, right now. And it's a very real experience even though it's just an image or just words, like, to your point. Having people notice that, and then how do I become an author to, you know, work with my mind and body to kinda create opportunities to change that or, like, play with those things more lightly instead of taking them as written rules or law about me or about the world, I think is a very empowering thing to work towards.
Kurt:Well, Ian and Vinny, thank you so much for talking with us today on Unravelling. And I'm happy that this is not the end at all, actually, but sort of the opening scene in a way to our own adventure that we'll be having in just a few days and listeners will hear about in our next episode where we get to try some of these things out.
Mary:I'm looking forward to it. I was a bit nervous about the role playing part, but I'm feeling more confident now. This feels like a safe space to do it.
E:Yeah. Thank you so much. We're looking forward to our adventure.
Vinny:Thanks so much for having us. Glad to be here.
Mary:It was so great talking with Vinny and E. Normally, is the part of the show where we would thank them, But, we get to continue on with Vinny and E in our next episode, and party's just getting started, and we're adding some, more voices to the mix.
Kurt:Hans and Andrew, our producers are gonna join us on this adventure. We're all gonna create characters, as we mentioned, and start to really try to explore some aspects of things we might wanna work on and, you know, in a way that feels comfortable to share with all of our listeners, but and sort of play it out in this adventure.
Mary:I'm very excited to meet everyone's alter egos and see what that might mean about them.
Kurt:And I really do feel like it's an opportunity to get to know all of you a little bit differently, a little bit more, and and maybe get to know myself a little more too.
Mary:So we really hope that you'll join us for this, very interesting episode next time.
Kurt:I can't wait. Unravelling is brought to you by Brattleboro Retreat. Our producers at Charts and Leisure are Andrew Adkin, Hans Buteau, and Jason Oberholzer.
Mary:And you can find us on social media by searching Brattleboro Retreat. Bratiborle Retreat is committed to exploring diverse perspectives on mental health. While we invite hosts and guests to share their insights, the views expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of the hospital or its
E:staff.