1: “The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.
Because we read back over our work. Continuously. To make it better.
Dealing with trauma is similar, David believes. He calls this process “excavation.”
“It’s going back and back over events,” he writes. “The goal is to try to create mental flexibility, the ability to have multiple perspectives on a single event. To find other ways to see what happened. To put the tragedy in the context of a larger story.”
2: Yesterday, we looked at the story of Frederick Buechner, who was ten years old when his father committed suicide.
The pattern is “a familiar one,” David writes. “A person is hit by a blow. There is a period when the shock of the loss is too great to be faced. Emotions are packed away. The person’s inner life is held ‘in suspension,’ as the psychologists say.
“But then, when the time is right, the person realizes that he has to deal with his past. He has to excavate all that was packed away. He has to share his experience with friends, readers or some audience. Only then can he go on to a bigger, deeper life.”
Therapists often play an essential role in the “excavation” process. David points out, however, that friends can also ask questions to help the other person “go back into the past and reinvent the story of their lives.”
3: He outlines five exercises.
“First, friends can ask each other the kinds of questions that help people see more deeply into their own childhoods. Psychologists recommend that you ask your friend to fill in the blanks to these two statements: ‘In our family, the one thing you must never do is _____’ and ‘In our family, the one thing you must do above all else is ________.'”
Asking these questions provides insights into “the deep values that were embedded in the way they were raised,” David observes.
A second exercise involves playing “This Is Your Life,” a game couples can also do at the end of each year.
“They write out a summary of the year from their partner’s point of view,” David writes. “That is, they write, in the first person, about what challenges their partner faced and how he or she overcame them. Reading over these first-person accounts of your life can be an exhilarating experience. We see ourselves through the eyes of one who loves us.
“People who have been hurt,” David reflects, “need somebody they trust to narrate their life, stand up to their own self-contempt, and believe the best of them.”
“Filling in the Calendar” is a third exploration where the person walks through each period of their life, year by year. ‘What was your life like in second grade?’ ‘In third grade?'”
A fourth exercise is called “story sampling,” a free-form expressive writing exercise. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin used this process to turn victims into writers.
James would instruct each participant to “open your notebook. Set a timer for twenty minutes. Write about your emotional experiences. Don’t worry about punctuation or sloppiness. Go wherever your mind takes you. Write just for yourself.”
The final step? “Throw it out at the end,” he suggests.
As people begin writing, their stories are often rough and fragmented. “But then unconscious thoughts surface,” David writes. “They try on different perspectives. Their narratives grow more coherent and self-aware as the days go by.”
Some studies show that people who undergo this process have lower blood pressure and healthier immune systems.
As Susan Sontag once observed, “I write,” to define myself—and act of self-creation—part of the process of becoming.”
The fifth exercise is David’s favorite. We have real, authentic conversations with friends. When someone we love has died, we “tell each other stories about that person,” he suggests. “Reflect on the strange journey that is grief; tell new stories about what life will look like in the year ahead.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Reflect on the strange journey that is grief; tell new stories about what life will look like in the year ahead.
Action: Experiment with one of the exercises outlined by David above.
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