Souldrama®: Twelve Step Recovery in Action
Connie Miller
Souldrama® was developed by Connie Miller, NCC, LPC. TEP. in 1997 and trademarked in 1999 as a therapeutic tool created for use as an adjunct to psychodrama and designed to move clients from co-dependency to co-creativity. Connie is the founder of the International Institute of Souldrama and also the owner of the Spring Lake Heights Counseling Center, in New Jersey. Connie runs a group for professionals in training in action methods and also trains the staff at Seabrook House in southern New Jersey. She is a Trainer, Educator, Practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. Connie has developed a new model to access our spiritual intelligence that incorporates psychodrama, group psychotherapy, the creative arts, energy work and sociometry. By incorporating spirituality and action methods into the psychological process to help a client access their spiritual intelligence, Souldrama helps clients to move past resistance to remove the blocks that stop one from moving forward onto their higher purpose by aligning the ego and soul. She can be contacted at connie@souldrama.com or www.souldrama.com
Introduction
How do we move from relapse to recovery? In twelve-step programs, people heal partly through the experiential telling of their own stories. It is through the sharing of trauma and pain, and the subsequent healing, that people form common bonds that unite them on their road to recovery. To go beyond that initial connection of pain and addiction, clients need to go further by sharing their soulful moments: their hopes, moments of understanding, and their dreams. This requires re-establishing a relationship with their creativity and through their higher awareness, connecting with others on a spiritual, healing level. One of the new techniques to help assist them in doing so is the action method of SouldramaÒ. Souldrama puts spirituality into action as the Twelve Steps are linked to seven doors of spiritual transformation aligning the ego with the soul.
Souldrama as a Psychotherapeutic Tool to Prevent Relapse
A Twelve-Step program is a set of guiding principles for recovery from addictive, compulsive, or other behavioral problems, originally developed by the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to guide recovery from alcoholism. As summarized by the American Psychological Association, working the Twelve Steps involves the following:
Ÿ admitting that one cannot control one's addiction or compulsion;
Ÿ recognizing a spiritual higher power that can give strength;
Ÿ examining past errors with the help of a sponsor (experienced member);
Ÿ making amends for these errors;
Ÿ learning to live a new life with a new code of behavior;
Ÿ helping others that suffer from the same addictions or compulsions.
The way of life outlined in the 12-steps has been adapted widely composed of millions of members in recovery from addictions. The same principles, are found around the world. What is common in every program is that each step requires taking action, learning new roles, and applying new behaviors. There is a need today to create action techniques in counseling to help prevent relapse that are superior to the feelings of fear, rage, anger, pain, and sadness that maintain dysfunctional roles. The spiritual growth process is achieved by permeating the barriers to the repressed Higher Unconscious (i.e., fear of letting go and surrendering) and embracing it, Maslow’s transcending self-actualization (Maslow, 1971). This represents an increase in the experience of higher, mystical, and spiritual states of consciousness. With many clients, self-loathing is so great that it impedes forward movement and trust is absent because they feel so alone and afraid. In their world, trust, love, and acceptance come from something outside of themselves such as alcohol, drugs, or a dysfunctional relationship; it is their higher power. Twelve-Step recovery programs help in converting the non-transcending self-actualizers, stuck in their rational intelligence. The next step, Souldrama®, shows how the experiential process of progressing through seven doors of transformation can help a client move toward the transcendent self-actualized state thus reducing relapse while accessing a higher level of spiritual consciousness.
Transformation usually follows a predictable pattern: an ending, an intermediate zone, then a new beginning. When something ends, we are afraid of loss, separation, and death of the old self and roles (Bridges, 1980). Subsequently, in the intermediate zone, we feel confused and ungrounded. At times of new beginnings, we often feel uncertain or anxious about choice and commitment leading to the resistance of change and the subsequent problems that accompany it.
Humans, in general, prefer constancy to change and instability. When change does come, there is resistance and the ensuing avoidance can come in the form of indecision, ambivalence, procrastination, and relapse. The underlying fear driving the avoidance of permanent change is unpredictability, disorder, confusion, and uncertainty. How do we consciously make a doorway for transformation to a higher level, a self-actualized, or a transpersonal self?
When people embark on a journey of personal growth, they hope to overcome pervasive feelings of fear, addictions, self-hatred, and unworthiness. Becoming identified with mind and emotion can sabotage our relationships, preoccupy our thinking, increase our state of anxiety and unhappiness and keep us out of a state of joy. As we begin to identify with our minds and emotion, we identify with ego, and any time we become identified with something or label ourselves we feed the ego. Too often if we have had no identity as a child, we grab onto a label and do not want to let it go (e.g. I am an Alcoholic) and we begin to define ourselves by our dysfunction.
In the dysfunctional family system, love and attention are so inconsistent that the child becomes addicted to that inconsistency. Love, to this client, means being addicted to that inconsistency or waiting for the feelings of love that come from outside oneself; they become addicted to the potential of love. The addiction becomes one of potential because one never can find the perfect “other” and the sense of self is unstable. They learn that in order to “be loved” or to exist, they must first “do” something, in order to “get” love. Their energy comes from an addiction to outside problems as opposed to energy drawn from within created from “being”, by living a life full of purpose. This is often why an addiction is seen as a spiritual calling, but one that goes to the wrong address.
When a client is addicted to this potential, they are always looking outside themselves for validation on how to act or feel. In an absence of a relationship with the self, they are always seeking to attach to another person or thing: relationships, alcohol, or substances. The negative inner voice is so strong that even after family of origin issues are resolved, the person fails to move forward to a higher purpose. With no true self-love and acceptance, recovery can result in addicts becoming addicted to their own potential and, instead of moving forward, they engage in self-sabotaging behavior. A client from a dysfunctional family system views their higher power as being outside, not within themselves; they have developed internalized object relationships with the spiritual beings in their lives, offering conditional love (Miller 2000). Many of these relationships have become contaminated with residuals of childhood traumas and misunderstandings. Spirituality is a state of “being” not “getting”, and it is important for the client to develop a relationship of unconditional love of the higher self (Miller, 2000).
One of the most critical moments of an addict or individual with compulsive behavior is after the urge and before acting to fulfill it. In most cases, the most realistic point of access in treatment is to intervene in the addictive/compulsive behavior cycle precisely at the transitional moment. What can we do as therapists for the addict to be present for that moment instead of dissociating in the compulsive ritual? One important step is assisting the client in slowing down that process and inducing a self-reflective reverie, which helps them to develop the capacity for self-containment and control. One must stay present in the transition rather than impatiently “getting on with it” and moving through it or thinking about every problem that could potentially happen. Skipping being present in the transition could have regretful results which must be dealt with later such as unresolved grief, grudges, lingering resentments, unfulfilled promises, unexpressed but somaticized anger, and avoidance. Avoidance can come in the form of reflexive, habitual responses that allow a person to act on automatic pilot and avoid any conscious experience of the transitional space. It can come in the form of impulsive actions such as jumping into things headfirst, staying constantly in chaos, “hiding out” in drama, or shock.
In addition to the fear of future instability and change, refusing to grieve the losses that will inevitably result from moving forward will result in relapse. People hold themselves back because of potential regret; they do not want to lose the inordinate need for security, control, the status of the social role that has become suffocating or the belief that they are irreplaceable. They are afraid of who they will leave behind and how others will be affected if they move on.
Transitional times, such as when a client is in a program and has the compulsion but consciously does not use, offer opportunities of growth through Souldrama that leads to a thriving life. Souldrama navigates transition by providing anchors (i.e., transitional objects; Light MessengersÓ) and encourages a personal pilgrimage through the seven stages of spiritual growth, staying conscious, mindful, and transcending resistance to change. The anchor is always connected to staying true to the essential nature and being intentional about working with integrity, morals, values, and goals. Through this integrity a client can see their life through Souldrama and get the closure they need to move on from their past, accept the present, and create a viable future.
Souldrama: Process and Purpose
Souldrama offers a process of development for every individual by proceeding in sequential stages, each one building on and incorporating the earlier ones in such a way that none can be skipped. In between these stages are transitional spiritual experiences, special windows of opportunity for transcendent growth experienced by the individual that is necessary for their own integration of the work being done.
The purpose of Souldrama is to align the ego with the soul so that one can move through all three levels of intelligence, the rational, emotional, and spiritual with the goal of becoming a spiritually intelligent individual. It may be compared to a pilgrimage allowing one to process any change in life with conscious awareness of what we leave behind and provides an infrastructure and guide to facilitate entering the unknown of what lies ahead. The common elements in a pilgrimage are to (1) accept the call to journey for a specific purpose; (2) find the faith in one’s vision needed to set out; (3) to learn how to invoke the strength of spirit; (4) allow the spirit to speak and work through you in order to persevere; (5) overcome the obstacles whose intentions are to slow you down or to stop you; (6) perform the appropriate rituals, enact the mythology, and connect with the transcendent self, upon arrival at the destination of the pilgrimage, and (7) to return to one’s home community bringing back the blessings and enlightenment obtained. Without structure in the therapeutic process, the ego always thinks it is more advanced than it is and tries to leap over important steps in recovery. One extreme is spiritual bypassing, in which the individual focuses on spiritual experience as a short-cut to resolving psychological developmental tasks of identity formation, maintaining stable interpersonal relationships, and generativity (Weldwood 1976). The other extreme is the tendency to become absorbed in and preoccupied with the contents of our developmental history and our dysfunction becomes our identity.
The transition from the level of the ego to the existential requires the ego to de-construct. Adaptive regression in the service of the ego is, in fact, one of the twelve recognized healthy ego functions: the capacity to let go, to suspend controls with pleasure and to permit ideas and fantasies to emerge in a regressed state thus furthering imagination, play, humor, inventiveness, and creativity (Bellak & Goldsmith, 1984).
Psychodrama is the therapeutic modality used within the structure of Souldrama that encourages this to happen. Successive deintegrations are necessary in the developmental process to allow for new growth and for consolidating it. It is a healthy function of the ego called adaptive regression, relaxing secondary thinking, increasing awareness of previously unconscious content, and increasing conscious thinking. Doorways are used in the process of Souldrama as they provide space for transitions. Transitional experiences also provide a bridge between the relational dimensions of the self and the structured aspects of the self (Chirban, 2000). That is, the individual approaches the threshold in relationships that provide enough security to proceed alone across, which in turn strengthens the individual to expand the sphere of relationships.
Souldrama: An Experiential Approach
In the following section, the developmental stages of Souldrama are reviewed and related to the Twelve Steps of recovery and a case study is provided to describe this powerful experiential approach. Considering that Souldrama is a group process, clients are encouraged to participate in this intervention at their own comfort level. The ability to experience a connection with another is central to the healthy evolution of the self and this can be done within a healthy group situation. In order to achieve oneness, they must have had the developmentally necessary connective experiences to unify a cohesive self.
Stage One: Rational Intelligence
The ego is very busy trying to define who we think we are and the soul is trying to communicate to the ego who we truly are.
The ego speaks in terms of words or rational intelligence ( what I think). Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp such words can never describe in depth the ultimate purpose of your life or your experiences or who you are. The ego is who you think you are, the false “I”. When we move through the rational intelligence we can dis-identify from our thoughts and there is a feeling of the thoughts shifting from being the content in your mind to being in the background.
When we become locked in compulsive thinking we cannot be present to hear the voice of the soul. The ego is a form of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental emotional thought patterns that identify it to form, and attachment to something outside of itself. The ego is conditioned by the past and its identity is the content to which you identify yourself growing up. You are not your past. Sometimes it is difficult to let those old roles go for fear we will have no identity. We try to find ourselves in things such as material things, addictions and then lose ourselves in things only to want more.
In order to stay safe and loved as a child, we forget who we really are and the ego develops (Edging God Out). The ego forms we begin to define ourselves in relationship to others and by the roles we play in life. We begin to define ourselves with words….. we learn how to be cleaver to survive and loose wisdom as we learn rational intelligence.
Souldrama teaches you to see your parents as your “spiritual teachers” Balance midway between ego and the soul resides in the heart. Repairing damaged balance requires attending to the practical, the somatic and the "here and now" experience; it also requires letting go of old roles patterns, beliefs, and structures. Then we are able to experience an "open heart," where we allow the vulnerability of taking others in as well as putting oneself out to others. It is here that the protagonist begins to reframe the wounds from their parents as gifts. They now begin to recognize a higher purpose and are able to stand back from a situation or problem and see the bigger picture; see the problems in a wider context. This stage is in the first level and must be completed before we can move to level two.
Door One: Faith
Purpose : To access our faith and to surrender to something higher than ourselves
Goal: To build trust among group members
Corresponding Steps:
Step 1. Admitted we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives were unmanageable.
Step 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Initial Group
As with most group approaches, members are introduced and an overview of the group process, goals, and Souldrama are given. During Souldrama groups, facilitators use warm up and trust building activities to link commonalities between members, build group cohesion, reduce anxiety, and encourage here-and-now interactions.
In another activity to encourage group cohesion and honest discussion within the group, Souldrama draws upon sociometric principles to illustrate here-and-now connections within the group (Weldwood, 1976) . In this activity, the leader draws an imaginary line down the center of the room and defines the line as a scale from one to ten representing perceptions of comfort in the group. Members are asked to stand at a place on the line that represents their comfort level. Once each member decides their place, they share with the person closest to them. Sharing with others brings out similarities which may help facilitate group cohesion. Next, members are asked, “How comfortable are you with your own spirituality?” They may use the spectrogram to choose a location representing their comfort with their personal spirituality. Finally, the group shares with each other in dyads or in small groups about their experiences.
In these developmental stages, members are introduced to the concept of Messengers of Light©, and are asked to access their faith and humility with an invitation to connect to their higher power. The leader suggests prayer, meditations, or just plain asking as a method to encourage spiritual surrender and facilitate relaxation and trust among members. When surrendering, members realize they are not omniscient and trust they are connected to a greater whole and power greater than themselves. Prayer and surrender offer the group themes of vulnerability and trust, which is essential to for members to commit passionately to their path. These experiences are framed as members consider the concepts in Serenity Prayer:
Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can, to accept the things I can’t and the
wisdom to know the difference. (http://www.therecoverygroup.org/jtr/serenity.htm)
The purpose of the first Door is to surrender and have faith in a “power higher than themselves” and trust that there is a, God or the ‘Wholeness of Being’. Here, the process of prayer or meditation is invoked; prayer offers surrender and the ability to relax and trust. A high level of trust allows an individual to commit passionately to their path without attachment to the outcome (Miller, 2000).
Door Two: Truth
Goal: Clarity of our life’s purpose; embrace the shadow
Corresponding Steps:
Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as I understood him.
Step 4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.
This door helps us to discover the truth of how we see ourselves and how we are seen by others . It enables us to understand the roles we played in our family in order to stay safe and be loved, and to understand our loyalty to that process. As we reframe the wounds we received from our parents and transform them into gifts for our soul’s purpose, we begin the embrace the shadow side of ourselves. The purpose of this door is for members to discover and clarify their higher purpose. One measure of spiritual development is purpose in life, defined as the capacity to find meaning, satisfaction, and direction in one's experiences .This has been shown to be profoundly grounded in confrontations with adversity (Hartman & Zimberoff, 2007). In this stage, group members become aware of roles they unconsciously play in the world, which originated in their family of origin. As they recognize the old roles they unconsciously play, they take responsibility for re-creating situations and dynamics in their lives they no longer desire. As the group begins to gain cohesion and honest dialogue is encouraged, members begin to hold one another responsible for their behaviors in a group.
Stage Two Emotional Intelligence: What I Feel
We often look through the present situation through the emotional lens of the past what we see is not the experience but the event within us. We often overreact to the situation through our old roles, feeding into the ego and becoming trapped in the emotions. Instead of feeding and explaining away the pain, Souldrama allows us in Door Three and Four to totally experience the feelings and emotions right there in the “here and now” and connected with the feeling. When we refuse to feel or want the moment to be different, we feed the ego, and we want inner acceptance of all our feelings. In this stage, we learn compassion for ourselves and others and the minute we realize the pain is inside and not outside of us, it begins to disappear. This does not mean that we make ourselves into another label, it means we allow ourselves to accept whatever it is we need to feel and not judge ourselves. We need to be who we already are, love made in the image of God.
Door Three: Compassion
Goal: Forgiveness
Corresponding Steps:
Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of wrongs.
Step 6. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
In this stage, participants move through the Third Door called Compassion. It is within this stage that members develop empathetic compassion and begin to celebrate the diversity and uniqueness inherent in all people. Compassion is defined as having an experience of ”feeling with”, a deep empathy with self and others. By employing a social network to facilitate deep change, Moreno invited people to live out the Golden Rule: reversing roles and imagining what it may be like to be the other person, promoting empathy, compassion, and self-reflection (Blatner, 2000). In this spirit, members of the group could be asked to partake in role reversal, experiencing and sharing what they notice from this vantage point. When we reconstruct the scene in time, place, and age, we can take the pain out of ourselves and observe the present from outside and not within us. When clients become trapped in their stories of the past, they feed the ego and do not even know that there is a place where they can observe themselves and their pain to stay present. Through the psychodramatic technique of mirroring, we can become the observer of our pain and decide then what steps to take to move past it. This stage helps us to become conscious of our emotional triggers, when we become conscious of them we shed light on our pain and unhappiness and are able to take the steps necessary to move forward.
Exploring different roles enables members of the group to see and grasp the dynamics of the relationships in their lives. They could be asked to take the role of God, family members, friends, or individuals with whom they struggle. In order to find one's unique path, it is necessary to become aware of the various unconscious aspects of the self. It is through the discovery, affirmation, and integration of these aspects that individuals gradually move toward a higher sense of individuality.
As individuals become aware of the voices emanating from the underdeveloped aspects of their personality, they develop a clearer awareness of self and a greater appreciation of others. Hearing an empathic recount of their experiences in group will help facilitate member’s growing awareness of themselves. An individual must be capable, indeed, must devote attention to and practice self-reflection in order to progress in the transformation of consciousness. It is a building block for mindfulness and for exploration of states of consciousness.
By encouraging empathy and understanding other’s perspectives, members begin to appreciate diversity and differences. As members value other people for their differences, not despite them, they begin the process of celebrating diversity. As a consequence, an individual is more likely to value their own uniqueness and that of others. As a result, one’s impulse to judge or criticize diminishes ( Moreno, 1972). This combination of “self” and “other” awareness moves members through the process of forgiveness as they let go of judgments and resentments.
Door Four: Love
Goal: Unconditional Self-Love
Corresponding Steps:
Step 7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8. Made a list of persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
As we move through the Fourth Door, we move into a state of being known as love. This is where we find out who we truly are. The purpose of this doorway is to identify for each participant a sense of being, and not doing, in order to be loved. As members move through this doorway, they are encouraged to consider the experiences and personal meaning of love. Other areas of exploration are defining their relationship with a higher power and gaining a deeper sense of self-acceptance, and unconditional self-love. As a child, our parents are our higher power and therefore we think that love comes from something outside of ourselves. We have been defined by our relationships with others and told who we were, should be, and should not be. We are much more than our beliefs or our labels. For many , God or other forms of spiritual connection serves as a secure base from which to explore not only the physical world, but the transcendental domains of the psychic, mystic, and cosmic realms. Kaufman (1981, p. 67), a theologian, states, “The idea of God is the idea of an absolutely adequate attachment figure… God is thought of as a protective and caring parent who is always reliable and always available to its children when they are in need.” In research by Kirkpatrick and Shaver (1992), participants with a secure attachment to God perceived him as more loving, less controlling, and less distant than those with insecure attachment. Adult attachment style and attachment to God are strongly related for subjects reporting an insecure childhood attachment to their mothers. People whose parental attachments were disrupted by separation or loss in childhood are less likely to turn to God as an attachment figure (Kirkpatrick, 1999). Resolving early disordered attachment in psychotherapy may well result in removing the resistance or avoidance in an individual’s spiritual relationship. In our experience, Souldrama and this spiritual reconnection quite commonly co-occur.
Miller (2007) defines spirituality as an individual’s relationship with a Higher Power. When God is seen as being inside oneself, a greater sense of co-creative responsibility exists. The opportunity for a person to be authentic emerges, bringing the truth of the inner world to the outer world, thus creating greater spiritual leadership. The technique of enacted dialogue, similar to what Carl Jung called “active imagination” is the technique employed here for helping others find the course of their spiritual journey in their life, consciously becoming associated with the emerging sense of self (Blatner,1999).
Souldrama builds on the idea of interactive conversations with a higher power as a way to live consciously. Enacted dialogue synthesizes the functions of the ego ideal and the creative unconscious. When the spiritual other is embodied as either the persons own subconscious “higher power” or as the “still, small voice” which is the link to an externally spiritual authority, the creative unconscious is thus identified as a source of wisdom, warning, comfort, and guidance. (Blatner, 1999b) This process intensifies the idea that at some deeper level clients often know what they need and believe, and it is healing to put their superficial identities in touch with deeper knowing. Through the interactive role-playing, patients often find themselves saying things they ordinarily would not think or say from the perspective of their ordinary or familiar egocentric positions, thus the client develops a relationship with that aspect of their creative unconscious that is formed as the “higher power”, “soul” or “self”. In enacting the role of the “higher self” or some other benevolent spirit or entity, patients find themselves embodying their own ego ideal, and as a result, the statements made in the course of role playing then become affirmations which consciously become associated with the emerging sense of self. When the ego ideal is wise rather than clever, loving rather than selfish and giving rather than getting, patients are helped to move toward healthier goals. missing
Level Three: Spiritual Intelligence, “What I am”
Door Five: Humility
Goal: Self Empowerment
Corresponding Steps:
Step 9. Made direct amends to such people except when to do so would injure others.
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Who we think we are also depends on how we perceive we are treated by others. An absence of spirituality exists when one feels separate from others; the soul is present and speaks in terms of vision and connection. Every time we separate ourselves by labels, definitions, and words, we feed the ego. Helping clients to think of themselves in terms of content within and completeness helps them to begin to see the higher order of things. We see the totality of who we are, our purpose begins to become clear, and we see the hidden harmony connecting the internal with the external. The main objectives in this stage for client’s spiritual development include balancing a sense of empowerment with self-trust and humility. They learn the value of staying true to their convictions while honoring and respecting different perspectives among others. Particularly in the Souldrama group, individuals feel accepted even when expressing ideas which are contrary to the group as a whole.. Members learn they can belong to the group without being forced to suppress their own feelings or ideas. Central to the Souldrama method is allowing for self-expression, whether unconventional or traditional; for this reason individuality is encouraged over allegiance to group norms (Blatner, 2000).
Door Six: Gratitude
Goal: Self-worth.
Step 11. Sought through, prayer and meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for use and the power to carry that out.
Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of this step. We tried to carry this message to those that still suffer and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Containment is a fundamental requirement for healthy mental processes, especially exploratory ones. The concept of containment implies the ability to experience what is happening in oneself and others with accepting awareness, and being able to tolerate direct experience without becoming defensive or acting to discharge the tension (Rand, 1996). Containment is a way of providing secure support and honoring other’s boundaries as well as learning not to take things personally.
The purpose of this phase of the Souldrama is to encourage self-worth and invite members to deeply consider those things for which they are grateful. Each of these objectives is framed within a context of being in the here and now, staying in the present. Here the group members can see themselves living with purpose and performing their soul’s mission. In this phase, vision expands, imagination is freed, consciousness grows, bondage to the fear and anxiety regarding mortality is vanquished, and the descending spirit unites with the ascending soul. Consciousness discovers the divine world, the Divine Self, the permanent, living manifestation of God expressed within and through the human psyche, characterized by a stable individual filled with all the qualities the Messengers represented in all Six Doors: Faith, Truth, Compassion, Love, Humility, and Gratitude.
Door Seven: Inspiration
Purpose: Inspiration and Co-creativity.
Goal: Transformation and integration of all three intelligences and all twelve steps; being open to the present.
Fitzgerald (1966) depicted the following aspects of personality as components of openness to experience: (1) tolerance for regressive experiences (e.g., affects, childishness, fantasy, daydreaming, etc.); (2) tolerance for logical inconsistencies (e.g., seeming impossibilities or bizarre implications); (3) constructive use of regression (e.g., uses fantasies in a creative way); (4) altered states (e.g., inspirational experiences with relative breakdowns of reality orientation); (5) peak experiences (e.g., seeks experiences which are overwhelming, enrapturing, and thrilling); (6) capacity for regressive experiences (e.g., inquisitive into the unusual, with rich imagination and not bound by conventional categories of thought); (7) tolerance for the irrational (i.e., acceptance of things which violate common sense or science). In the last Door, members begin to live in the moment, listening to the voice of the soul and becoming co-creators with God. They listen non-defensively and openly, integrating all three spiritual intelligences. They appreciate being in the here and now with purpose instead of impulsivity. They are spontaneously living and are responsive to the current moment, focused on their higher purpose. At this point, members concentrate on the spiritual integration of their experiences and perceptions, express humility, and embrace their uniqueness while understanding their inherent spiritual journey.
Case Study: Utilizing a locogram.
The following case study shows the method of Souldrama applied at an inpatient rehabilitation facility. I had a large group of in-patients (35) that I was working with at the time . Using a locogram, I placed three scarves on the floor and I asked the patients, “Stand here on the red scarf if you have been in rehab one time...stand on the blue scarf if you have been in rehab two times...and on the yellow scarf if you have been in three or more times.” The group made their choices and was evenly divided. I had them share with the closest person about the time spent in rehab. When they were finished, I asked one individual, who had relapsed six times, to go back again to the spot that represented the first time in rehab. I asked him to tell us what happened how he wound up on the other side of the room on the yellow scarf which signified multiple times in rehab. He said he did not do the steps, that he skipped them each time. Then I asked him to try to leap from one end of the room to the other, which is physically impossible, and he could not do it. This showed my unspoken intention to the group, making the words action. I then asked him to return to the yellow scarf.
Then I asked him to return to the red scarf again. He walked there and I said, “Now how did you get there? He said “I walked!” I replied, “What did you have to do?” He immediately answered, “Take steps… OH!” I asked, “How many?” He went back and counted, there were twelve. He then said, "Oh, you mean I have to walk the 12 steps to get there?”
Case Study: Warm up, Locogram, and Souldrama.
The next case study works with 40 male patients for in-patient recovery from drugs and alcohol. After the group was warmed up through introducing themselves through the eyes of a fantasy character, someone mentioned the word “ghosts”. Using a locogram, I asked the group to stand on one of three colored scarves and to choose an issue they would like to work on today from three choices: the white scarf was representing unresolved grief or “ghosts from the past that we never said goodbye to”; (Door Two) The second was red and represented making amends (Door Three) and the third was blue and represented the client’s relationship with a higher power (Door Four).
I asked the group how many had been in rehab more than two times. Half stood on the left of the room and the other half were on the blue scarf that represented the higher power. Of these 20, 15 were standing on their relationship with a higher power. I then said, “Each group choose someone you would like to hear more from by placing a hand on their shoulder.” Each protagonist shared their issue with the group. The three groups chose the person who had difficulty working in his relationship with a higher power. He refused to work, which in itself showed lack of trust within the group, (Door One) and I asked the group as a whole to make a second choice. They chose B from group 2 who needed to make amends with his son.
The drama began, B chose A to represent his son. As the process evolved, I asked him about his father and he said he was killed when he was 12 in a construction accident. He was 36 and never said good bye to him. He chose E from group 1 to represent his father and when it came time to hand him over to God, he chose C from group 3 to play the role of God. “I cannot hand him over to you because I love him and I’m not ready,” said the protagonist B to God (played by C). I told them to reverse roles as God. I asked B, who was now in the role of God, how much love God has, and he responded softly by saying, “God has limitless amounts of love to give.” I then asked B, in the role of God, to listen what C said. C then stated, “God, I can love my father more than you.” B, as God, replied, “do you think you are God?” I asked him what kind of God he was and he said, “I am a kind, omnipresent God that stays with you always.” I told them to reverse back. I had the person playing God, who was C, repeat the last line and then I asked B, who was now playing himself, if God could take better care of his father and give him more love than he could. In tears, he said, “Yes.” So I asked him to give his father over to someone who can love and care for him more than he could and he took E, who was playing his father, and walked him over to C, who was playing God. (C agreed to play the role at this point) He then told his father that because of him he now runs, at age 50, a successful construction company ( Door Two). I told B to say one last thing and ended the drama.
When B shared with the group later that he thought he was more powerful than God and could not turn his father’s soul over to a God who could not love his father more than him. He admitted he thought he was God and thought it was his fault his father went to work that day when he had a day off ;and later shared how this may be affecting his son. C shared how the drama helped him believe that he could trust others and began to admit perhaps he had some difficulty with his Higher Power who he had seen to be in the same role as his father.
The Therapeutic Intervention in Souldrama
Psychodrama is best understood as a method integrating aspects of existential therapy. It is effective because it emphasizes engagement through active role play and dramatic dialogue as the major factors which lead to transformational change. It helps clients to embrace their shadow side and also helps them to change their internalized image of a higher power to be all loving resulting in unconditional self love. If the future of mankind can be “planned”, then conscious evolution through training of spontaneity opens a new vista for the development of the human race (Moreno, 2000). Psychodrama is the tool that Moreno developed as a method to facilitate this transformation. It is experiential, as deeply held perceptions, patterns, and beliefs are expressed, bringing the unconscious into consciousness.
Moreno (1972)) believed that God is in each one of us and that everyone is a potential co-creator with God. This was an appeal for each one of us to learn to double for God, thereby, unleashing our spontaneity and creativity. Moreno believed that each person in the group becomes the healing agent for the other without any special training other than their own life experience. The power of a group, he felt, came from the religion of its anonymity and of just being embraced by love in the moment. We all have the collective responsibility of continuing the works of our creator to become all that we can be and not be limited by the cultural constraints of society. Psychodrama makes the expansion of reality possible by methods not used in life. Souldrama takes this one step further by providing a circular model and structure to integrate through all three intelligences to align the ego and soul. If we introduce more spirituality into the healing process, the attachment to self becomes easier. The client incorporates the divine or higher self thus unveiling their life’s purpose.
As noted by author and psychodramatist Tian Dayton, psychodrama is a useful method for resolving trauma-related issues. It empowers the client by allowing him to be at the center of his own experience with clinical supervision and support while allowing him to view this material in the present tense. It also provides a method through which emotional triggering can occur in a clinically safe environment so that powerful reactions can be worked through toward resolution. Feelings that were fused can be reexamined and untangled. Scenes can be played out in their concrete form where distorted reasoning becomes evident as personal meaning that was made at the time of the trauma can be clarified and reframed into a healing memory.
Psychodrama allows the protagonist (client) to learn to take in support from the group through identification and sharing. It provides a therapeutic alliance with the director, double, and group that allows the client to explore repressed and threatening material with support, so psychological defenses that the client used in childhood can be identified and understood. It slowly breaks down emotional constriction through spontaneous role-play and releases externalized pain and anger that can cause depression. It slowly reduces anxiety as protagonists confront and work through situations that they fear and provides a therapeutic alternative to self-medicating emotional pain, allowing it to be felt in an atmosphere of support and understanding.
Psychodrama restores relationship bonds through positive group dynamics and examines the source of traumatic bonds and the transference dynamics that are part of them cite source . It reduces hypervigilance by working through the source trauma issues and increasing tolerance for sitting with threatening material within the self and the group and slowly moves toward modulating emotions. Another benefit is that it elevates the immune system through the release of repressed material and examines somatized material through role-play, which can help to clear up psychosomatic symptoms cite source . Having internalized this restorative relationship experience, the client begins to restore a sense of trust and faith in self, other, community and spirituality or universal order.
Souldrama gives much needed structure to psychodrama in twelve step recovery programs. It gives them doors of opportunity and transition to symbolize their recovery as they actually see and experience spirituality in action.
Summary
It is difficult to show a client how to open his heart to experience love so that he might be able to live in loving, healthy relationships, while doing meaningful, creative work. A great deal of study in psychology has been done so that a client might understand the scars and abuses of childhood and help them heal and forgive those responsible for their wounding. Although this helps let go of the past, not enough attention has been paid to vision: to moving forward and living a life of joy, satisfaction, and purpose. When one nurtures one’s soul, they have a vision for themselves and for the world as a whole. Seeing how they are all connected to each other and to God, they can then connect on a divine level. After a certain point in therapy with the addict, vision seems to be more powerful in the recovery process than the clearing away the baggage from past scars. A client without vision cannot see far enough ahead to move forward toward complete recovery. Many clients lose their enthusiasm for life; the will to live it joyfully and creatively, and the passion for interests and projects. Many have lost the ability to appreciate the positives in life and, more importantly, have lost a commitment to action. Complete recovery needs to involve the body, mind, and spirit. It involves controlling compulsions, learning effective coping skills, removing abusive relationships, learning new behaviors, and putting vision into what life could be for them.
To support clients in identifying their vision and moving forward in achieving their life’s purpose, we need new, creative therapeutic tools. One way is to provide a structured stable format for recovery, such as the Doors and Stages in Souldrama, but also including and working with the twelve steps. For the developing adult, a supportive environment serves to create the transitional space for stepping from the current level of functioning into a new, higher level, offering sufficient ego security to allow for acceptable risk, redefining roles, order, and simultaneously accepting chaos, “Order within disorder, stability and instability side by side – herein lies the developmental riddle” (Mayes, 2001, p. 168).
Moreno (year) felt that we co create our lives and that we all have the potential to be Godlike and that spontaneity and creativity are those qualities that can stream us into our Godlike natures. One recognizes in this the honoring and the power of the present moment. It is the constant goal of Souldrama to help one to define their relationship to a higher power and thus to themselves as one that is all loving-not based on the internalized image of their parents or other authority figures. Recovery is as individual as the person who is attempting to achieve it. Souldrama addresses the personal belief system in such a way that the client resolves past issues, redefines their role in current issues, as well as addressing and defining what the future holds for them.
The ego can manifest a far richer consciousness in everyday life than thought possible if brought into alignment with soul. SouldramaÒ, which I developed as an adjunct to psychodrama in the treatment of codependency, is an action-oriented method that includes both psychodramatic and narrative techniques Souldrama® redefines a human’s relationship to God. Rather than being subservient to God, we are a part of God. This recognition helps to establish a greater sense of belonging psychospiritually, as well as psychosocially. When we are aligned with the energy of God's love, we reflect this light to dispel the darkness. We can then see life as a mystery to be embraced and not a problem to be solved. We become co creators in our lives to access our divine purpose.
Through the experiential group process the client gets to relive traumatic events in a supportive, safe environment structured in such a way that it facilitates closure and healing. In becoming spiritually intelligent ,we live once again in touch with our soul, our inner strength, and our higher power. We all function as a part of a greater whole, from family to social systems, and only by establishing our new roles and identity through Souldrama and the Twelve Steps can we successfully learn to live a life in recovery with more meaning and increased satisfaction.
List of Terms
http://www.blatner.com/adam/pdntbk/glossrypdterms.html
Action Methods: A synonym for psychodramatic techniques, experiential exercises, a general category of techniques that might include physical action; imagination; theatre games or creative drama techniques; nonverbal communications; using music, poetry, sculpture, song, dance, movement; and so forth.
Auxilliary The auxiliary was originally called "auxiliary ego" in the psychodrama literature. This term refers to any other person besides the protagonist or director in the group who plays a role in an enactment. It's like a "supporting actor" except that an auxiliary can play a wider variety of roles: An inanimate figure in a dream; the unspoken or subconscious thoughts or feelings of the protagonist or one of the other characters in the enactment, and, as noted above, even the role of the person of the protagonist (while the protagonist watches from the sidelines). Auxiliaries can change roles, also. In short, the auxiliary is a term used in psychodrama to refer to any person who helps the enactment by playing an active role.
Mirror Technique: The director suggests that the protagonist come out of the enactment and the scene is re-played by an auxiliary who portrays the protagonist, while the protagonist observes from the sidelines or farther away in the room. The protagonist may also then discuss what is observed with the director and the group. Then she re-enters and replays the scene having had a chance to thus reflect (literally!).
Axiodrama A drama in which the protagonist explores some abstract idea that requires a more careful analysis, such as the meaning of anger, loyalty, spirituality, purpose–using auxiliary egos to play the parts of teachers, spiritual guides, and so forth.
Double The double is the name for the role of a person who plays the inner voice of the protagonist or the co-character. The double is also called "the alter ego." S/he positions herself beside the character for whom s/he is doubling and speaks the words that the character might not feel free to say or needs help in expressing.
Director The person who conducts or facilitates a psychodrama, etc. This person is often, but not always the group leader. Sometimes the director is a student in the group, taking turns or operating as a co-director or auxiliary, but used as director for some enactments or explorations
Locogram the group demonstrates how they feel about an issue in the group by placing themselves on various spots in the room marked by scarves or other objects. It helps in objectifying and clarifying the problems.
Psychodrama: A method of exploring life situations by enacting them rather than talking about them. Psychodrama was originated by Dr. J.L. Moreno around 1924. Its methods have wide application beyond the realm of therapy. Psychodrama addresses its attention to the "truth" of each person's life, that unique complex and dynamism of interacting roles that makes up the individual in his or her relations with others and the world
Protagonist: The individual who enacts his/her life situation. Co-protagonists are people participating in a shared drama or a structured encounter.
Role Reversal: The technique of inviting one person to change places and play the role of another. Role reversal gives the protagonist insight into the position of others, and the opportunity to see himself as others see him. In an encounter or sociodrama, role reversal ensures that the protagonist has heard the other position and can place himself temporarily in it.
Sociometry A group of methods for measuring some aspects of the interpersonal dynamics in groups.More specifically, it notes the aggregate of preferences in terms of responses to a question such as, "Who would you prefer to have share working on this project?" The answers are charted and shared with the group so as to respond to their needs to organize themselves more realistically. It can also be modified in many ways, using written questionnaires, diagrams, or action techniques. A group of concepts are also associated with the term, such as the general desirability of helping people to be with those with whom they feel the most rapport, noting that different relations are constellated when different criteria are used, etc. On a deeper level, sociometry is a way to more clearly identify preferences and to check out how one is perceived by others.
Spectrogram: the group demonstrates how they feel about an issue in the group by placing themselves on a invisible line in the room. It helps in objectifying and clarifying the problems.
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