By, Gail Noppe-Brandon, LMSW

In an article entitled Post-Prozac Nation, in the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times yesterday, Helen Mayberg, a neuroscientist at Emory University referred to depression as, ‘Emotional pain without a context.’

It is this very predicament that speaks to the power of Narrative Therapy, which seeks to frame, and then re-frame, the story – or context – of what people are feeling. In the article, Mayberg connects this loss of context with malfunctions in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. It is interesting to note that research in other quarters on ‘Reminiscence Therapy’, (Brooker and Duce, 200), has demonstrated that seniors who reminisce, display greater well-being than their non-reminiscing counterparts. Thus the power and importance of (re)connecting people to their own narratives.

As a Narrative Constructivist clinician, with a background in playwriting, I like to collaborate with my clients in a meaning-making exercise that uses deep dramaturgical questioning.  This evokes a narrative arc, based on key phrases that the clients use, right from the first meeting. In fact, I begin every initial session by asking each client to tell me ‘the story of them’; beginning with the most important thing they feel I should know. Usually this first thing that they tell me, or the way they tell it, provides a window into the most wounded part of their souls.

I like to think that as clinicians we serve as dramaturges (or midwives) to the sacred texts our clients bring. That we not only need to listen with three ears, but to ask the right questions…those that will help them to unravel the riddles that may be dividing them, from themselves. Once the context is recovered and reorganized, the meaning of the depressed life force becomes evident, and begins to unfreeze.

By Gail Noppe-Brandon, LMSW

This question was posed in an article by Steve Almond, in the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times last week. Being both a therapist who takes a Narrative approach, and a writing Coach who has spent decades helping people to find the words and the courage to give language to their experience — to weave a coherent portrayal of their dreams, and their nightmares — I might be in a unique position to ponder this!

As a clinician, I am a firm believer that the ability to make meaning of our experience is crucial to our mental health. Equally important, is the ability to share and revise our self-story — to have it witnessed and affirmed by others. For the past few decades I have run Find Your Voice (FYV) Workshops that led participants through the process of writing short plays, as a means of giving voice to their stories, and learning to do so in an authentic and coherent manner.

Initially developed at NYU as a way to lead reluctant freshmen toward a love of writing, my goal with this FYV method was always meaning and voice-making, rather than art-making — thought the results were almost always artful. We began the process with a picture, a sort of Rorschach inkblot stimulus intended to open the imagination and override the editors that had been installed by years of training to spit back the answer that the teacher sought. Students were asked to write freely, briefly, about what had happened — or was about to happen — in this image. I always chose pictures that were free of figures, inviting the viewer to populate this pictorial stage with their own. Almost universally, respondents wrote about whatever was most pressing in their hearts and on their minds: if someone in their family had recently been mugged, an image of a park bench would elicit a moment of violence. If someone had recently been diagnosed with cancer, the same bench was the scene where this news would be divulged. In other words, they picture was merely a can-opener, they wrote about that which they most needed to make sense of. These free writes were then shaped into treatments for plays, as we co-constructed scenarios in which their two characters would grapple with one conflict, and then resolve it…not necessarily happily. And these characters were given fictional names, and they enacted dramas and spoke truths that their creators had never dared to. And across many rewrites, as we in the room asked hard questions about: the logic of the plot; the redeeming motivations of the characters; and the back-story that preceded the moment of crisis around which the play revolved; the writer made sense of their own experience, safely, under the (dis)guise of their artistic creation. And along the way Workshop members learned to love one another’s stories; to empathize with one another’s struggles in articulating them; and to celebrate one another’s [literary] breakthroughs. And when the plays were ultimately presented to an invited audience, the participants saw in the faces of both the strangers and the familiars in the room — the glowing light of recognition. And in the Q&A that followed, they spoke not about their autobiographies, but their process of creation. And they were healed as much by the affirmation that others had identified with the story they’d heard, as the applause for their craft.

Since leaving academia, I have worked with hundreds of people of all ages in this manner, and have used elements of it in private practice. While FYV Workshop members would not have deemed their experience as ‘therapy’, they would certainly credit it as therapeutic — as transformative. Without ever discussing a symptom, or verifying a ‘truth’, members of these groups were relieved of blockages far greater than the inability to write or share their writing. They were relieved of their silence, their frozen positions, and their isolation. The writing cure is indeed and underutilized resource.

For more information about Communication Workshops for teens and adults email FYV: info@findyourvoice.us

Participants in the workshop this term represent six different Middle and High Schools in three different boroughs. Most of the students will receive academic credit for their participation in this rigorous program. Participants are hard at work on their monologue study, as well as their own plays, (suggested by the trigger photo above). We are pleased to welcome Prep for Prep and City As School back to a partnership with us, along with our ongoing partner, the NYC Museum School, and new partners: Urban Assembly Academy of Arts and Letters, Simon Baruch Middle School and The International Community HS.

Most students are contributing something toward tuition and we are deeply grateful to those partnerships and individuals who provided sponsorships to cover the difference, as well as all of those who helped us to meet the Stern Foundation’s generous $25,000 matching grant. A special thank you to the Pinkerton Foundation and Bank of NY Mellon: supporters of the afterschool program old and new!

By Gail Noppe- Brandon, LMSW

As I have presented my work to clinicians in many different settings over the last few years, I have discovered that I bring a unique perspective on client ‘material’, having been a playwright and a dramaturge.

Clinicians are all looking for creative ways to reduce people’s suffering and I have, perhaps, something creative to offer. I agree with Dan Siegel, [the cutting edge psychiatrist who has brought the science of brain development into clinical practice], In the most recent issue of the Psychotherapy Networker, when he says that, “the most important thing about a person’s history, is how they’ve made sense of that history” — in other words, the story they tell — or have been told. A dramaturge helps a playwright find a coherent narrative; a therapist does the same, and within a safe relationship.

Clinicians are often trained to ‘ignore the words’ and focus on the affect. While client’s tell their story in many ways (body language, symptoms, facial expressions, feelings, etc.), their words are an essential part of the story…especially if the right questions are asked, and if the material is handled with respect, flexibility and transparency.

The Find Your Voice approach to clinical work grows out of the approach we’ve taken to Narrative Coaching for the past twenty-five years. This approach begins from the first critical question asked at the first client meeting, to paradoxical sentence completions, to transcript sharing, to in and out of session writing assignments, to the creation of dramatic dialogues that bring chair work to life and offer clients the opportunity to balance their view of the characters in their lives; resolve conflicts; speak the unspoken; effect revision; and safely activate that which has been frozen.

FYV Teen Company Announces:

Two Spring 2012 Events

Tuesday, April 3^rd

5:30pm, Q&A to follow

Friday, May 11^th

6:00pm, Q &A to follow

The Final Presentation of Plays

Written and Performed by

CALL 212-741-9868 FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ATTENDING THESE EVENTS

Take the challenge!

Applications are now available for our Summer Programming for teens & tweens.

Visit our  Summer Inward Bound Program page for more information

  OR

Download the  Brochure and Inward Bound application

Space is limited, registration is on a first come, first serve basis. To register over the phone call: (212) 741-9868

This 10 week long workshop will be held at our studio space at located at W 18th Street, near all major subway lines. Interviews will be held on February 14th from 3:45-6:15pm.

Click here for more information on our teen workshops

For more information call: 212.741.9868 or email: info@findyourvoice.us

Tuesdays February 14th- May 8th 2012

Find Your Voice After-school gets a new home at a professional  Theater Studio!

(18 West 18^th Street, near all major subway lines)

Find Your Voice offers ongoing After-school Workshops to New York City school students city-wide (ages 13-18).

Workshop format:

• Guided writing sessions in which students develop, revise, and complete a finished play, which ultimately tells the story of what is on their minds and in their hearts.

• Acting sessions in which students learn, through monologue study, how to listen and fully engage.

• A Final Presentation of the finished plays for invited guests, performed by workshop participants.

These are mixed level classes, where everyone faces their own challenges and is given the tools to succeed!

 Space is limited. Register today!

 Call (212) 741-9868, or email: info@findyourvoice.us

FYV alums and Broadway stars Bobby Lopez (Avenue Q/Book of Mormon) and Sarah Paulson (Studio 60/New Year’s Eve) served as Co-Chairs for FYV’s first ever Benefit at Lincoln Center on Nov. 14, 2011. Watch the video where they look back on their time with Find Your Voice and share how much the program meant to them. The video also features a scene from a play performed by Sarah & Bobby at age 15 (he had never acted before his FYV training, which he began at age 11!). The scene was from a cluster of plays entitled Ashes, which was comissioned by Phoenix House (PH) and based on stories told to our participants by teenagers in residence at PH.