A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

Mon Dec 1 17:09:32 CST 2008

Dear Kate : This is truly a testimony to you as a trainer and to your staff that you have trained. This is also a great example of staying in the moment Kate.Congratulations. I enjoyed reading about the dramas. I pray that our Souldrama trainers will be as well trained as we go from country to country. They also want to hurry up and go through the process but so did I .

About the three protagonists, although when I was training I was told I could NEVER have more than one protagonist, I have done so when the drama and sociometry has called for it. I have learned to trust myself and with Gods help things do work out. This is the magic of Moreno's work I love this saying 

Trust your own innate knowing
and the energy moving
within you.

Life speaks to you
through your deepest longing,
and guides you with every step.

"As soon as you trust yourself, 
you will know how to live."
Goethe

Love and ligt Connie

Connie Miller TEP, LPC. NCC 
http://www.souldrama.com/ 
The International Institute of Souldrama 
620 Shore Rd 
Spring Lake Heights 
NJ 07762 USA 

1-800-821-9919 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dr Kate Hudgins [mailto:drkatetsi at mac.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 03:40 PM
To: 'grouptalk Listserv'
Subject: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

Dear TSM Listserve and Group talk

I have been home two weeks now after two months in Japan and China. As always after such a trip I feel like I do a "mind dump" from my various rich experiences there. This was the best trip ever with full emotional and physical balance and some amazing work with my Chinese teams. I'd like to share two dramas with you all.

In Nanjing, China we held a workshop with a fully Chinese team in all TSM roles of Team Leader, Assistant Leader and Trained Auxiliary Ego. I was the supervisor to pass them on doing the COntainment workshop without me there next year. They did some amazing dramas but I wanted to tell you about one directed by Professor Sang who works at Nanjing University. 

The protagonist was VERY left brain oriented and hard to get to pick strengths or use the Containing Double, so as Sang, or Singer Sang as we call her, directed the Prescriptive Role scene, the Assistant Leader helped bring in the rest of the group that was picking up on the projections of feelings that were clearly NOT being owned. The AL, Professor Deng of Nanjing NOrmal University and I found many people crying and feeling the sadness the protagonist could not. We had them go to the opposite side of the stage to gather all the feelings in one place. There were about 40 women together, each hugging each other and crying with a reciprocal role so they were not alone. As Sang brought the protagonist over to them to claim her feelings, she touched each of their faces, she embraced them, she cried with them. 

As she was doing this, I noticed that 5 of the 8 men in the group were on the stage watching this healing. I was overcome by the fact of the men witnessing women's healing. I said to them.....this is your mothers, your daughters, your grandmothers, crying for the pain of the world as women. I cried as I said it. "waterfall" of tears as I call it. 

Then I asked Deng to have the men make a movement showing their witness role. He led them in a beautiful slow Tai Chi movement that showed them opening their hearts and offering their arms in embrace. I stood back at my supervisor's desk and cried at the beauty of the drama and the skill of my students to produce such a healing between the genders. It is a drama that will go down in my heart always. 

The second drama I wanted to share is one where the TSM team of 5 did a THREE protagonist psychodrama!!!!! It was a group of about 60+ people ( a small group in CHina, smile). They were all teachers who have had some psychodrama training in Chongqing China through Shulan, the first certified Team Leader in mainland CHina. It was the second drama on the trauma day of the workshop. We had worked all weekend with the TSM Trauma Triangle roles of Victim, perpetrator and Abandoning Authority. So when the group sociometrically chose for the protagonists the split was within two people for all three protagonists. I looked at SHulan and my team and stopped to ask god for help and said...OK let's direct three protagonists....only in China I mumbled. 

As we took a wc break before we started I realized that the three people were actually stuck in one each of the Trauma Triangle roles. So I had them stand on the triangle to begin. I first gave them each a COntaining Double and let the doubles do the work of connecting to them individually but all at the same time. All I had to do was sit and witness as they connected. The person who was suicidal and stuck in the Abandoning of Self role began to cry. The victim self to dissociate and the perpetrator to have difficult time connecting. So I asked the group to come and offer people strengths for the role that they were most connected to. Immediately 5 to 10 people came around each protagonist and put thier hands on them. Shulan and I went back and forth between the three asking the group members to share what strengh they brought to the drama. Soon the woman who was suicidal was deep in grief but staying present and connecting with her CD and her strengths. I remembered a psychodrama structure i learned at St E's. I had the small group around her lace hands so they could catch her as she fell back into thier arms. I directed her with her CD holding onto her hands, to fall as deeply into her feelings of not wanting to live and find her way back up. As soon as she fell, she immediately said I want to live. The small group graduallylifted her up in a cradle, swaying and singing a lullaby to her. a rebirth. I turned that scene over to a auxilary to direct the integration of the strenghts and went to the victim role.

The protag in this role was really struggling with dissociation so we worked to help her truly role reverse with her strengths and find her spontaneity...along with a good amount of cognitive intervention labeling her continuing to fall back into her attachment to the victim role. After she had become connected to her self-confidence and spiritual guide, I thought...well the fall worked for the other protag so why not try it with this one. We did the fall again with it being the victim feelings she was falling into. She needed 3 tries before she could get up out of the victim state and fully embrace her self-confidence but she did it.

Meanwhile SHulan was directing the protag in the perpetrator role to do the TSM anger dance that we do rather than bataca work. 

Each protag got the release they needed, but even more importantly connected to transformation and repair so they could stay out of the trauma roles in the future. Abandoning Self turned into Commitment to Self and Happiness. Victim turned into Embracing Self-confidence, Perpetrator turned into Righteous Anger and fighting for self. It was amazing that we could handle all three at the same time with such a large group so we know that god, and also Zerka for me, was there with their help. 

The final moment was when they all came back to the triangle again and anchored their right brain learnings into the left brain with one sentence of how to stay out of the trauma roles. Then the group shared in small groups based on the role they have the most trouble staying out of. 

I felt truly blessed to be part of the healing in both of these dramas and look forward to my 7 months in China next year!

I hope you will get a chance to meet Sang and SHulan and maybe even Deng at the ASGPP conference in St Louis. 

Thanks, Kate

Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP

Clinical Psychologist
Director of Training
Therapeutic Spiral International, LLC
ww.therapeuticspiral.org
drkatetsi at mac.com

Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP

Clinical Psychologist
Director of Training
Therapeutic Spiral International, LLC
ww.therapeuticspiral.org
drkatetsi at mac.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20081201/86498627/attachment.html>