Story Clinic with Dr Walter Willies
The Glue of You
In September, it was time to ask ‘who’s in charge’. This month the inescapable conclusions is that having and being fun is an integral part of being humanly alive.
We rose from the seat of semi-awareness, we asked who’s in charge, and now we’re going to explore the elusive you to find out more.
Please bear in mind that the basis for the Story Clinic is the sense of story which has so much to do with attention and understanding.
I have a book by Jung titled “The Undiscovered Self” and the covers of the paperback are clever in that they’re shiny and mirror-like. When you hold the book, you see a vague outline of your face dancing about.
Being a self is like that.
If I ask you to tell me about yourself, you would probably offer a description with carefully chosen adjectives, and the accuracy thereof would be highly doubtful.
If I ask you to tell me important memories, you’d find that easier because you could be more spontaneous. Spontaneity is a big clue to how the sense of story works because we live life spontaneously by default. Our bodies live spontaneously: we might eat what we choose but once food descends from the mouth to the stomach, things run on automatic.
Natural responses are like that, too: we’re attracted, repelled, disgusted, overwhelmed, exhausted, excited, enthused, and so on, by all the sensory data that comes our way. How that sensory data turns into meanings is via a passage called story. Most people feel that they’re real, and that’s a feeling difficult to deny, because it’s a healthy feeling. Yet the balance of it is unique to each individual, and not very well understood, if at all.
I don’t think that asking “What makes you real?’ is an answerable question. “What makes you you?” is less baffling, but conceptually difficult. But when grandchildren ask grandparents to tell them stories about their lives in the old days, the genie escapes the bottle.
The Story Clinic works like that. The glue of you is truly magical and fascinating. It’s healthy to pore over photographs from long ago, listen to music from decades before and revisit nostalgic memories. It’s also constructive to be in charge of yourself by making wise and clear decisions. This takes courage because it helps the ongoing story of you to unfold in new ways. Depending on you, this could be daunting or exciting, because of the limits of your comfort zone.
The interesting thing is that we make unconscious decisions on a minute-by-minute basis, in terms of the unconscious story that we tell ourselves from the moment that your reticular activation system gets you back to yourself in the morning to when you fall asleep again.
The easy thing about the Story Clinic is that it reminds the body and mind that having and being fun is an integral part of being humanly alive. Animals play, too, as the red ball left on my back lawn buy the fox shows.
A very good friend of mine, now in heaven, used to tell me frequently “A friend is someone who knows you and still likes you” and give a hearty laugh after this pronouncement. But we were good friends. The stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves are like this. There are those that give us self-esteem, self-recognition, perhaps even self-love. Some are healthy, some are not. It’s instructive to notice which of your stories enable you to trust yourself. When your last name is Trump, you could really believe anything.
The glue of you is most accessible in terms of memories, dreams and reflections, which is another book by Jung. When you come to Story Clinic you can expect spontaneous expression of what your body wants to say. Sometimes this is a relief, sometimes it’s surprising. The intention is movement towards health. We tend to think of health by way of a medical model that springs into action when there’s a problem. Going the other way, the Story Clinic affirms that you don’t have to be ill to get better. Sharing the glue of you could be exactly what’s healthy for the glue of another. To do that, we have to get our hands sticky with what goes on in the heart. It’s safe to do this, although you may not trust your own heart. The heart, just as unconscious as the stomach, knows its parameters, pressures, pulses and, remarkably, purposes.
What the glue of you sticks to is as important as its own stickiness. We explore this next month.
Contacts
Walter Willies
Emeritus professor of Narrative Studies, Western Orthodox University, European American University
The Story Clinic
Glasgow London New York Cape Town