Artemis Captured- Narrative Therapy

Spoiler- this is not regarding the Artemis space launch.

There are some experiences that take a while to process. I don’t mean in just the classic sense of trauma or shock. I mean there are some places and events that leave such an impact that your mind will house it away for safekeeping clear into old age! Hard to believe? We’ll stick with me and let’s see if I can convince you. Let’s find out if I can paint my memory in your mind.

Imagine a perfect mid 70’s degree day, Sun poking through cotton ball clouds above a Turkish hillside carpeted in red anemones. The breeze swirls through the crimson field navigating its way from a stone amphitheater below, fighting its way toward the heights of ancient temple stones once for Artemis, now left for folklore. The sound of trickling water running through stair stepped gutter system catches your ear. Not ten minutes prior, a stroll through a hollowed history Ephesus called ‘church’.? Pillars holding up the blue sky with inscriptions of faith. A stark difference from the symbols etched on the ancient sidewalks billboarding the nearest brothel of that time. Along the way a white-furred companion joins you, giving you a sense of power to keep climbing the endless Amphitheatre steps covered in overgrowth. Finally, you are met not by a deity or mystic, but rather by a bright little soul selling flowers out of a basket.

You wonder how paradoxes exist in real life? It’s when a weathered Grecian temple and an extinct Christian church glare at one another for millennia to a backdrop of an uncaring Mother Nature eating them both into the ground. And yet, a Christian tour group and Athenian visitors snap digital keepsakes to the tune of a minaret bellowing an Islamic call to prayer.

Do you have the scene? I do. It’s been frozen in my mind for 14 years. That’s the power of the amazing neural nets we create. We harbor memories not just for sentiment or survival, but also for deep meaning. It is crucial to learn that experiences are not simply visual stimuli reflecting light into our eyes causing a chemical response. No, experiences hold meaning. Sometimes that meaning won’t define itself until years later!

14 years ago and a day after, the group I was with toured an ancient mosque. Even if the faith is not shared, there can still exist respect for the beauty and history of the people and land. I, however, chose to sit outside of this mosque.

It overlooked a cityscape miles below. A man sat beside me as I awaited the group. The man proceeded to explain Islam, his pillars of faith, and the promise of his religion. He passionately urged me to consider his faith as true and gave many health reasons as to why it would be a wise choice.

I was appreciative of his passion. The man believed in something so boldly that a mere stranger was an opportunity for dialogue.?

Why does our mind keep these instances? What sort of lessons are we attempting to teach ourselves? Why keep this one, but not others? These are the experiences that form and shape identity. They are the milestones of our growth, the gatekeepers, the rites of passage!?

I often have clients that suffer from feeling lost, wandering, and not certain who they are anymore or whom they’ve become. They present confusion when discussing virtues, values, and beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve memorized tenants and idealized boundaries, but somehow missed the love letter behind it all. The prompt is to explore the inner self through the external human experience. Finding humanity through humanity.?

There is a psychological framework called narrative therapy that I am quite fond of. This modality prompts the client to wander through their life timeline using a new perspective. The therapist walks along with the client and both begin to infuse meaning and purpose into these otherwise trapped memories. Pain, joy, boredom, doesn’t matter the context. What matters is the ability to loosen and restructure the neural net in a healthy way. Allowing it to leak, but with purpose and gratefulness.

This is all a bit too abstract to explain at times, and so part of the experience is the journey itself.?

This practice is a form of psychotherapy that seeks to help clients identify their values and the skills associated with them. It connects them with knowledge of their ability to live these values so they can effectively confront current and future problems. The therapist seeks to help co-write a new narrative about themselves by investigating the history of those values. Narrative therapy can be viewed as a ? social justice approach to therapeutic conversations, seeking to challenge dominant discourses that tend to shape people's lives in potentially destructive ways. Narrative therapy was developed during the 1970s and 1980s, largely by Australian social worker Michael White and David Epston of New Zealand, and influenced by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists such as Michel Foucault,[Jerome Bruner, and? Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky.

The intent is to separate people's identities from the problems they face, narrative therapy implements “externalizing” conversations. The process of externalization lets people explore their relationships with problems rather than embody them. A person's strengths or positive attributes also are externalized. This allows people to engage in the construction and performance of their true and meaningful identities (where otherwise meaningfulness had been lost).

If this interests you, consider learning more about the handful of narrative-based interventions!

Now let’s see if my recollection matches what you had in mind!

Do you have a favorite memory? Is there a snapshot that forever lives with you? Do you favor it? Fear it? Condemn it? Approach it? Revisit it? I would love to read about it!

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Geries Shaheen is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Nationally Certified Counselor operating in and around St. Louis Missouri. Geries holds his MA in Professional Counseling from Lindenwood University, BA in Intercultural Studies from Lincoln Christian University, and holds a certificate in Life Coaching, Geries provides life coaching services to clients online globally.?Geries is EMDR trained, and practices from a TIC lens.