Sitting With Pain | A Trauma-Informed Spoken Word & Soundscape
The New Year has rolled in and I’m getting ready to go back to work. I imagine therapists and clients across this frosty country are preparing to resume work together. Other than one day set aside for vulnerable clients, I have been grateful for some downtime over the holiday period. Usually I go away in my van, but this year decided to stay at home, which has meant finally finding time to work on Ricochet, another poem from the Therapy Sandwich Anthology.
This poem wrote itself over a decade ago, after a particularly “full” therapy workday, where my heart broke for a client with a very high trauma load. Words were used like a battering ram to defend against sitting still with pain and meaning. Beside a swelling heart, I had intrusive images of her as a child, desperate for her own attention. I also adored her in all her defences and wished she could offer herself this love.
This behaviour is recognisable as a common client presentation in the therapy space. With time to devote to this, we wanted to make an audio version of the poem that tries to convey some of the stress of the client’s inner process as well as that of the therapist as they try to hold space.
I deliberately wanted to stress/repeat the words to underline the meaning and reflect the feeling of intensity of the therapy session. Dave McKeown has cleverly built sounds using a wide range of things found around the house. These include spinning coins, singing bowls, and even a cigarette lighter. The images have been chosen/made very deliberately. It may not be comfortable viewing, but I think it reflects something of what it is like to invite someone to sit with their pain and slow down, whilst holding a loving space for them.
The original poem is below:
Ricochet
Your words
Tumble out of your mouth
With a ricochet
Whilst all the time
You try so hard
Not to stay
With the painful moment.
We circle each other a while.
Wild gesticulations,
Eyes everywhere
But meeting mine.
Your words
And a land slide of story,
The tools you use to push past
The open heart,
To all I know
Underneath them
That is gory,
And abandoned,
And utterly sad.
“Shhh, little girl”
I want to say.
Though in years
You have advance on me.
But perhaps it was easier for me
To shed those tears
My own wounding made.
“Look, sweetheart!”
I want to say.
“There is a little girl
Stuck on a harsh rock, crying.
She needs you to take care of her.
She needs you to be still.
She needs you to rock her gently,
Back to loving herself.”
And I know you will.
When the standoff
With frightened wild horse-words has bolted,
Run out of steam,
And come back through the open gate.
When you can both invite and respond to yourself.
And when you can trust
That I really do love the little girl I see in you.
Sometimes, Trauma... 
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