The Healing Power of Expression (2)

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Having elaborated in the first part of this diptych on energy leaking and possible injurious ways of expression, let’s now move to the ones with the potential of healing power.

The arts are by default connected to feelings and emotions. If we love cinema or theatre and we want to go for a laugh, we watch a comedy. If we want excitement we go for an adventure. And if we feel melancholy, we see a tragedy. In the same way music touches our hearts rather than our rational minds, and the same goes for paintings, sculptures, dance, poetry & literature, architecture, etc. That is because these art forms emerge from some other place than our rational, distinguishing minds. That is to say, they come from the place where those oh so recognizable and universal human traits like love, compassion, hatred, beauty, greed, romance, cunning, pride, humility, lust, grief and charity emerge from. The artist, by expressing him- or herself through their chosen art, therefore speaks directly to our hearts where our innermost humanity dwells, where true Love and compassion for ourselves and every being rule, and where our connection (or: oneness) with the universe can be experienced. It is like Dr. John Keating says in the sublime movie Dead Poets Society: “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, beauty, love, that’s what we stay alive for.”[4] That is why art has the potential to touch people of all races and classes, whether we’re touched by our own expression or by the expression of others.

The touching has to do with the fact that anyone using an art form as a means of expression, is putting up their soul for display – even if it’s only for ourselves. For if we want it to be meaningful, it has to come from our inner core. We have to open ourselves up to our whole being, not just the intellectually fabricated one that we post on social media.[5] That means opening up to, getting in touch with, and embracing our shadow side, our ‘faults’, habits, and obscenities. That might seem difficult at first, but if we decide to go on that path and allow ourselves to express our being human in the broadest sense of the word, the rewards are nothing short of mesmerizing. Allow me to share a personal story where the art of theatre provided a breakthrough I could never have imagined.

A few years ago I had the honour of helping interdisciplinary artist Frouwke Florentina and the wonderfully creative Afra Leydelmeijer to create their performance ‘Will You Sit With Me.’ As part of the rehearsals, Frouwke was teaching us how to get in touch with our innermost emotions by means of so called ‘interviews.’ Frouwke would ask us questions and we were allowed to express ourselves in any way, except using words and language.

One of the first times I went through this, we were in a large theatre rehearsal room. During the interview the main emotion which emerged had been rage. She then positioned me in the middle of the room and invited me to express my rage by means of movement and sound; my body could literally do anything it felt like, except using language. I remember vividly thinking the first few minutes: “Okay, now what. What is expected of me? Should I move? Not move? This is really silly. What am I doing here?” As is obvious, my rational mind tried to come up with explanations for something that was happening outside of its realm, hence the deep feeling of uneasiness. Yet I kept standing where I stood and after about five minutes the thinking faded into the background. Then there were a few moments of stillness. Suddenly, as being struck by lightning, movement began to happen. I flew from left to right, delivering punches and receiving them, releasing primal screams, waving my arms around like an African shaman during a ritual dance, alternated with dry vomiting, cries and sobs which seemed to emerge from an abyss that went beyond the lowest hells of Dante’s Purgatory. It was an expression of pure emotion, pure feeling, and it was as if my body and therewith my whole being finally felt liberated from the chains of social repression I had felt bound by all these years. I moved from what looked like dancing to fighting to jumping to climbing to walking on all fours and every imaginable movement in between, combined with sounds I didn’t even know were producible by humans. After about fifteen or twenty minutes I fell down on the ground, completely exhausted, yet feeling light as a feather.

Afra (l) and Frouwke during their performance ‘*Will You Sit With Me*?’
Video still: Bob Schellens

How come I felt as if a backpack with fifty kilograms of bricks had been lifted off my back? Most importantly: I was very aware of having made the decision to participate in this exercise/experiment. There was an openness for something unknown to happen, to get acquainted with an as yet mysterious part of my being, however it turned out. To a lot of people my uncontrolled outburst of movement and sound might have proven silly or even intimidating, but that is only because there is still a deep (often hidden or repressed) anxiety to experience themselves fully. And truth be told, I don’t know if I could have done it without my love for self-inquiry which was ignited well over 18 years ago. Yet allowing the non-rational part of myself moving space and time to emerge and express, felt liberating because a feeling of wholeness was experienced: a total embrace of both my dark and light aspects, the yin and yang making the circle whole.

Moreover that feeling was enhanced by the fact that someone other than me had been watching the entire performance. Frouwke had been a silent and fully objective observer to my ‘tantrum.’ The fact that I had dared to ‘let myself go’ in the way I did and even in front of someone else felt mighty strong, for obviously there was no more shame of my dark side – at least not in that moment. Therefore the experience turned out to be incredibly cathartic, healing and strengthening, both physically as well as mentally. Therein, for me, lies the healing power of the arts – whether we use it as an expression for ourselves or share it with others. It provides us with the opportunity to get in touch with that unknown, unconscious, mysterious part of us which at the same time is exactly the part that makes us human.

Another typical human characteristic is that somewhere in life we become aware of stumbling into psychological blocks. These come often into awareness for instance in patterns of failed or destructive relationships, work related stress, depression or anxiety, or issues around self-identity and sexuality. The repetition with which we appear to end up continuously in similar kinds of situations, or where we incessantly meet similar types of people, presents that gnawing feeling of being stuck in a time-loop. We become aware of our vicious circle when a threshold has been reached pointing out the senselessness of it all, and we begin to wonder about our own contribution to ceaselessly ending up in déjà-vus. That marks the beginning of examining our unconscious habitual patterns and the ways in which we express them, often with the help of some or other therapy.

Yet in deliberately pointing the spotlights on our unconscious behaviours in order to become aware of them, an incredible amount of courage is needed because we are now opening up to the likelihood of encountering own behaviours we feel shameful or guilty about, and might have repressed from consciousness until this moment. Therefore in these types of therapeutic settings we are particularly studying the various ways in which we express ourselves, because there we can find the keys to unlocking the vault towards our unconscious behaviours.

In these settings we also need a particular kind of expression to express our feelings about anything that startles us in the course of the therapy. But the big difference with our detrimental habitual behaviours which unconsciously developed over time, is that this time we consciously choose a way of expression that feels right for us. There is understanding that the problems we seek counsel for are not to be solved by means of rational thought or analysis, otherwise we would have thought of a working solution before seeking counsel, and therefore an openness to as yet unknown ways of problem-solving emerges from within. Opening up about our deepest, darkest secrets with a therapist is one way. But what to do when a therapist is not around? When we’re being haunted by the ghosts of our past, how to work through instead of repressing them which in the long run only makes them stronger?

Whatever way of expression is chosen, it should help to put the spotlight on patterns of as yet unconscious behaviours in a way that is meaningful to us. Different art forms lend themselves well to it, but it might be anything, any type of activity – as long as it aids in shining the light onto the hidden parts of our being with the aim of reconciliation of our light and dark sides.[6] In my particular case, writing became the chosen way of expression.

After a colossal collision between me and Wendy (my beloved ex-wife) back in 2006, it became apparent that certain of my habitual behaviours kept me stuck in a time-loop; one of them being my tendency to downplay of a lot of memories which emerged with varying frequencies of recurrence. That very fact points out their significance for me, but because of the emotional pain attached to them they were either repressed or downplayed. Since I had to wait for over two months before I could see a psychologist, I decided to start writing down all those memories I was in fact very afraid of, because the strong feeling arose that they were actually trying to speak to me. Therefore if they were made ‘real’ by putting them down in written form, I felt that they were getting the acknowledgement they were looking for by their recurrence. Moreover there was a deep visceral conviction, not rational, that my acknowledgement of them would be beneficial, although there was no clarity at all as to how.

Here’s one story which was deeply engraved in my memory. At the age of 17 I was walking on the premises of my high school towards the entrance, as I passed a group of ‘the popular’ girls. I never considered myself a popular guy and was actually rather shy (a trait I tried to mask with a very big mouth and acting like a clown). Some of the girls I knew and was more or less friends with, so I looked in their direction when walking by. Now, one of them had doubled a class and was a year older than us. She was rather vocal about her sexual escapades and I overheard her complaining about ‘not having had any’ in the previous weekend. Right when I passed the group, one of the other girls jokingly said: “Well, why don’t you try Erik?” In reply, she looked me straight in the face and said: “Please, I’m not that desperate.”

Naturally I walked on and pretended nothing had happened (note that here is a clear example of repression of my emotions – remember the pressure cooker from part 1). But the fact was that this little occurrence deeply wounded my soul and did a huge number on my self-confidence. So when I had trusted this and many similar memories onto paper it gave me all kinds of interesting nausea at first, especially during a re-read. But as the writing continued something interesting and unexpected began to happen: the more of these memories were penned down, and the more they were being read, the less nausea would come up. By the time I went to see the psychologist two notebooks were filled with anxious memories. Yet by the act of making them real, that is to say giving them a solid form by means of the words they were written down in, I acknowledged and embraced them fully.

If we put this into an image, it would look something like this. When the occurrence happened at age 17, I repressed the accompanying emotion. Afterwards I kept repressing it every time it emerged as a memory – which happened when the button was pushed to which this particular memory was attached. The button getting pushed however was basically my 17-year-old-me appearing and begging to be acknowledged in the pain he felt when the remark was made by the girl. But every time I repressed the memory, in essence I split myself and was pushing myself away, that is: my 17-year-old-me. In fact, I was blaming my 17-year-old-me for haunting me and making my life so darn difficult.

Now, every time I push my 17-year-old-me away, the emotional charge grows with each time the memory is repressed or downplayed. So by the time I write the memory down on paper, this is what happens: First, the writing down pushes the button. But this time, instead of pushing my 17-year-old-me away, I open my arms and invite him in. His first reaction is one of intense fury for having neglected him so many years, and he charges me with punches, kicks, insults and primal screams. This is the initial nausea and stress response which happen after writing down and re-reading the memory. Yet by allowing him (17-year-old-me) to express the incredible pain he felt when the remark was made by means of my (grown-up-me) nausea and stress response, the memory is being mentally digested.[7] Because by sticking with it, by allowing him to punch this big nausea in me while yet keeping my inviting arms open to him, at some point his fury subsides. It might temporarily change into intense grief and crying, but in the end he is very happy that he finally is seen, acknowledged, and that his pain does not go by unnoticed. It is at that moment that he and I merge, that the painful emotion of that moment has been digested and lost its detrimental power. The button to which that particular memory was attached has been dissolved and, at least in my experience, never re-emerged afterwards as a painful memory.

That’s what is meant with the healing power of expression.

Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout

[4] Dr. Keating was performed by the brilliant late Robin Williams.

[5] Immediately it becomes apparent that the difference between (intellectually) contrived art and true art can easily be distinguished, for the former will never be able to touch our soul and make a connection with our hearts.

[6] It goes without saying that activities like thinking and analysing are useless in this setting since they belong to the realm of rational thought, while we’re dealing here with issues taking place in the emotional realm.

[7] Just as undigested food that gets stuck in our stomach will rot, so will undigested memories stuck in our brain rot as well.