A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

[Dr Kate Hudgins]

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



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