The raging or weeping is real and powerfully felt. Under these feelings is another kind of awareness within my patient which may be the attractor in this emotional chaos. Resolving the patient's need for the old structure is part of freeing energy locked in an old coping pattern. This can allow a new distribution of energy and form to assemble. So the therapist, when the time is right, can affirm the existence of that new inner attractor when the patient begins to become aware of it himself.

Increased therapist awareness can help the therapist recognize the patient's awareness. The blind cannot notice when someone makes a subtle visual discovery. We need to expand our vision and conceptual possibility range to encompass our patient's experience.

I affirm that staying present and listening through chaos is essential for healing. I had a supervisor, Lars Lofgren, who once said to me, "Anytime you think your work is easy, you are doing something wrong." I understand that comment more all the time.

For those of you who are interested in exploring these ideas in your own work, I recommend image immersion. Intellectual understanding is important, but alone it won't get us through the storms.

Look at photographs, find examples in life. I like painting to get close to natural formations. To me clouds are three-dimensional watercolor paintings alive with chaos and complexity. But we all find our own medium. These concepts are alive in sound, in texture, perhaps in scent. They abound in the natural world. I suggest that we work and play with fractals and turbulence. I suggest that we learn to recognize co-evolution in action. Let these concepts become so familiar to us that our senses and emotions can recognize and stay present longer for the tension between what is simultaneously familiar and unknown.

This process can add silent and confident appreciation to our listening. It can help us follow energy shapes at times when we know the words are irrelevant. I believe this can help us and our patients negotiate or just plain survive the flood and reach a new and more cohesive awareness of the present.

Then our task becomes accepting, with grace, flexibility and courage the new organization which emerges.

And that, as the storytellers say, is another presentation.

next: Guided Imagery and Eating Disorder Treatment

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