"Breaking out of the Box 6: Loosening the Shackles of Fear and Shame"

I am both a psychotherapist and artist. For a long time I had the fantasy of going wild with my paints.  Physically it felt like I was squeezed literally in a box and wanted to take my fists and punch my way out. I work with acrylics, oils, and watercolor. I have a large patio in the back so one day I brought the acrylic paint and some water and loosely applied it to a large canvas. I often wished I could be like Jackson Pollock- freely dripping paint on the canvas on the floor beneath him.  So I took the brush and the water mixed it with whatever paint I felt like using-no conscious deliberation-and threw it, literally, on the canvas with a large brush. The result after working and reworking, not obsessively, is the painting above. I am  now thinking I'm going to be judged but I don't care. Well, to be honest, there is little judgment- the painting is weird. It is different from the other art I have portrayed here in this LinkedIn Breaking out of the Box series. However,  I'm letting it stay. What can anyone's thoughts or feelings do to me? I will acknowledge fear but not let it rule me.

I think living freely is about being able to be vulnerable and spontaneous. I  love when people blush. At that moment they are caught with some mistake- some imperfection in some anticipated performance.  They are caught off guard. It's so awful to be burdened with such  expectations of  being perfect. I have that burden personally, and writing here releases me in some way from the shackles of fear and shame. But I want to break away from it. Writing and publishing "Stalemates in Therapy and the Notion of Gratification" was the beginning of some taste of that freedom; of breaking out of the box through writing. I  wrote about loving and hating Jane, the patient I was working with. Even though not acquainted with modern psychoanalysis at that time, I  grasped some essential elements of the theory and therapy: the role of emotions, the primary importance of the relationship between patient and therapist, the major role of countertransference and countertransference resistance in treatment, and  the expression of emotions not only by the patient but also by the therapist. I'm not talking about wild analysis.  The paper was published back in 1994 in the Psychoanalytic Review. It has never been mentioned in the literature.  Ironically,  the woman from the backwoods of Vermont (see "Breaking out of the Box 4") in her email to me, quoted from that paper. Reading it and watching the  YouTube video I made "Are feelings good or bad" helped her with the struggles she was having trying to understand boundary issues with two therapists and a friend.  Reading that email was as satisfying as it would have been to see my paper quoted in the literature.  

A final example comes to my mind of breaking out of the box.  I used to have this wonderfully wild yet constrained teacher, Dr. Gerry Lucas, who would say spontaneous things to some of his male and female patients. So one day one of my female patients walked into the room and I said "That's a very beautiful perfume you're wearing, I'll have to be careful to restrain myself."  So something that I thought would be catastrophic amounted to nothing. I was practicing. I've always wanted to be able to say something like that but being somewhat rigid it took sometime to develop the courage.  I think with this patient it fit her because she had doubts about her desirability.  Eventually she found a compatible partner and had a child.  That was something she never thought she could achieve in life.

In my group, "Tuesdays with Mark: Free Speak for Therapists" we read some essential papers on technique  but we do not get caught up in over intellectualizing "theory speak." Members take risks,  are courageous, and  allow themselves to be vulnerable.  As one member Linda exclaimed one day "In this group  I can be myself. "  Members struggle to be who they are, and not who they think they should be. That's a beautiful thing to observe.  Because of the way many of us were raised, we were not invited to be authentic and genuine. It was just the opposite. We learned to temper our personality and give back what we thought was wanted. Fortunately therapy provides the opportunity for authenticity within a safe, consistent,  and  nurturing environment. 

For more information about  psychotherapy videos, Mark's bio, papers to download,  Tuesdays with Mark, and art scroll through this link and thank you for your attention.