Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode Eight One

Making Meaning and Writing Toward Posttraumatic Growth with Lennie Echterling

[00:00:00] I met Lenny Echterling in 2009 when I entered the graduate program in Counseling Psychology at James Madison University. In fact, Lenny's work in crisis intervention was one of the reasons why I chose this program.

[00:00:12] Lenny has more than 40 years of experience in promoting resilience, particularly during crises and disasters. He's worked with landmine survivors in the Middle East and has served as a crisis counselor, consultant, and trainer following some of the world's biggest disasters, including hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the tsunami in India, the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon, and the shooting at Virginia Tech just to name a few.

[00:00:36] Yet despite the heavy work he's done, Lenny has remained a light-hearted, gentle, and compassionate man who's as quick to tell a joke as he is to sit with you through your darkest time. During the three years when I worked with Lenny, he supervised my graduate assistantship and Ed.S project and served as my mentor.

[00:00:53] Like many of the people who graduate from this program, I'm also honored to call Lenny my friend. To learn more about the numerous things Lenny has done around the globe to promote resilience, please see the show notes. Before we get to our conversation, I have a few questions for you. 

[00:01:11] Have you ever been a victim of toxic positivity or felt like people have dismissed your pain? Has being dismissed made it more difficult to trust others? Have you heard the term posttraumatic growth and wondered what it means? In what ways have you grown because of the challenges you faced?

[00:01:29] I hope you'll ponder these questions as you listen along. Now let's get to my conversation with Lenny Echterling. 

[00:01:45] LISA: Well, hello, Lenny. I am so glad that you are here on the Writing Your Resilience podcast. Welcome. 

[00:01:51] LENNIE: Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad to see you. 

[00:01:54] LISA: Me as well. It is such a gift to be in your presence. And just before I hit the record button, we were talking about how long we've known each other and we met in 2009, which is 15 years ago. I can't believe it. 

[00:02:08] LENNIE: Yes. Well, you worked for me too. You were a student, but you were a graduate assistant, and then working with you on your Ed.S research project, which was a pleasure to read and to work with you on. And so, it's been wonderful to keep in touch over the years.

[00:02:30] LISA: Well, and you know what? The work that I did on my Ed.S project, and since people are now going to be wondering, A, what is an Ed.S project? And B, what did you do? An Ed.S project is an educational specialist degree project, kind of like a dissertation. I’d say dissertation light. Does that sound like a good way to describe it?

[00:02:49] LENNIE: Well, probably not when you're in the middle of doing it. It doesn't feel light at all. 

[00:02:53] LISA: That is very true. It does not. So, I was working on that to get my degree and I worked on some suicide prevention walks and we were looking at how do you build these in a very resilient way, and you know a lot of the work that I did for those walks and as a part of that program really serves as the foundation for everything I do now and for this podcast. 

[00:03:19] LENNIE: That's wonderful. That's great to hear. 

[00:03:22] LISA: So, I bring everything I did at James Madison University right with me. 

[00:03:27] LENNIE: Yes. Well, I was also a student of yours. 

[00:03:32] LISA: That is true. And I think we're going to talk about that in a couple of minutes because I was reviewing some of the things I sent to you along with the questions and I'm like, oh, this was happening at about the time when you wrote this. So, we will get to that soon. But for now, what would you like to tell people about your relationship with both resilience and thriving, which is something that you teach? 

[00:03:56] LENNIE: That's right. And you put it in the present tense, and I'd like to point out that while I am retired, I still fill that teacher role. I have dreams about it all the time, and there are plenty of opportunities that come up with strangers, or friends, or relatives, where I'm doing volunteer work, where I'm recalling my teacher skills once again. So, it's there, and my current research is being used to revise a book on crisis intervention that I had written that was published before the pandemic.

 We have so many incidents of mass violence in our society now, as well as the pandemic, and natural disasters, hurricanes, and fire, and so forth, that I wanted to update the material in the book to be much more current and relevant. So that's what I've been doing now. 

[00:05:00] LISA: I am so glad that you're doing that because I have that book. Here’s my old copy, which anyone who's watching the video can see. The title of the book is Crisis Intervention. And, yeah, so much has happened. It feels to me like we have a crisis just about every other week.

There's so much going on, and it can make your heart so heavy. I just want to point out that while we were working together and beyond, you didn't just study this academically. You were out in the field, working with people, experiencing crises, like the firefighters taking care of people during 9/11, people who had experienced hurricanes.

You worked with landmine survivors in other countries. What have you learned from all these people and your research about resilience and about dealing with crisis? 

[00:06:01] LENNIE: Well, I've learned so much, and it's been really a blessing to me to have those encounters over the years with landmine survivors.

For example, when Ann Stewart (one of Lennie’s colleagues at James Madison University) and I went over to Beirut, Lebanon, to work with survivors, our focus was on resilience. It was not to see these people as poor, pitiful victims, but instead to see the 28 participants as resources for their communities who would go back to their villages and to their different countries in the Middle East and begin to design programs to assist other landmine survivors. I can't remember a workshop where I laughed so much and had so much fun, in addition to sitting with the pain. You know, we weren't going to deny the horrific experiences they had, and I cried very often as they told their stories and shared them in our group.

At the same time, they felt a powerful sense of community that they were sharing this with fellow survivors who had been strangers to them before this workshop. I learned the power of storytelling from them, and I watched your previous episodes where you talk about storytelling a great deal and the immense therapeutic power it has stays with me.

And I noticed that I'm touching my heart as I do this because they did touch my heart. 

[00:07:43] LISA:  I remember that you went on that trip, and it may have been that trip or a different one with a similar theme, right before a crisis intervention class I took from you. You had this exercise where you had us create these hearts. Do you remember the heart exercise? If so, could you share a little about that? 

[00:08:07] LENNIE: Well, I don't know. It varied so many times. What was the version that you got? 

[00:08:12] LISA: I think we had to write down something that we were carrying with us that made us feel cared for or loved, so we could be reminded during tough times that we were not alone. Does that ring a bell? 

[00:08:31] LENNIE: Yes, that was one of the versions. That reminds me that my wife's birthday was two days ago, and so I arranged for friends and relatives from all over the country to call her that day. She wasn't aware that I was doing that. In fact, it was obvious that it was a surprise, because when I sent all these messages to people, I forgot to add her phone number.

So, then somebody asked for it, I said, “Oh, well, you can tell that Mary Lou is not a part of this, because she would have said maybe you should put my phone number in. I'm talking about this, because when we went to visit our son and grandsons and daughter-in-law who live next door, they gave Mary Lou a birthday card and a gift. Our older grandson is in a wheelchair and has multiple challenges and only speaks with his eyes. He loves to read, so when Mary Lou showed him the card, he turned the page and asked her to read it to him again. Mary Lou must have read it to him about 20 times, and he would keep turning the page, wanting her to continue. Eventually, she passed the baton to me and said take over. So, I read it to him 20 or 30 times, and the message stuck with me. It was happy birthday and then our second grandson wrote in the card Happy Birthday Mimi, that's his name for her, number 75. So, it's like she's a football player or something. Then it said, “May you be surrounded by all that brings you joy.” 

[00:10:28] LISA: Hmm. 

[00:10:29] LENNIE: May you be surrounded by all that brings you joy. And I can repeat it because I know it by heart. 

[00:10:35] LISA: I'm sure you do. 

[00:10:41] LENNIE: That's exactly what we were talking about in that exercise with the heart. You know, what do you carry with you that brings you joy, that reminds you of your support? I call it my triggers for resilience. I know that you have trigger warnings in your material, which is wonderful, but I also think we need to consider that we also have many objects or messages that remind us of resilience, about who cares for us, and so forth. So that's what I always have with me. 

[00:11:23] LISA: I love that you said that, and I'm going to bring this with me to AWP, which is the Association for Writers and Writing Programs Conference, where I'll be speaking in a couple of weeks.

One of the pieces of wisdom that I received at a conference, I can't even remember who said it or how long ago it was, but they were talking about going back and writing about difficult material and they said, don't go back alone. Carry a backpack filled with the things that fill you up and bring a flashlight, so you know what you are illuminating and why you're going back. I love that your triggers for resilience were embedded in this exercise. It's such a great physical reminder that we are not just dealing with the difficult, we also have people around and triggers that can support our resilience.

One of the things that I learned from your book, Crisis Intervention, that has stuck with me is this concept of posttraumatic growth. We talk a lot about PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder, and trauma, but this was a game changer for me because it helped me know what I wanted to do as a writer. So, could you define that for us? 

[00:12:53] LENNIE: Yes. Tedeschi and Calhoun are the two researchers who developed multiple studies around it. In fact, there have been studies done all over the world with survivors of different traumas and crises–and it's not immediate. It's not immediate. We're not talking about right afterward.

It might even be two years later with follow-up studies where they and other researchers and us, we did this with our landmine survivors too, and we all found posttraumatic growth, which is evidenced by a deeper appreciation of life and recalling a sense of wisdom and perspective about their encounters.

They now have a deep sense of appreciation for every day, normal kinds of experiences that they can now savor with such tenderness. They also have closer relationships with others. So those are the highlights of posttraumatic growth. Other aspects people will report include being better able to cope with it, and I don't want to individualize it, because it's part of being a community, part of a family or family-like relationships that they have created with volunteers, relatives, neighbors, fellow members of their worship group, and therapists, and counselors who have helped them to travel this journey, not alone.

[00:14:35] LISA: I think that community aspect is so important. One thing that I read in the book, because I was just reading through it again, and also because it was something that I have said in the past, is that at least for me, posttraumatic growth is being able to look back at these really tough experiences and seeing the gifts in those experiences, and being able to say, “This was hard, and this was something I wouldn't wish on anyone. But it was such a gift to my life.” But I think one of the things we must do to get there is to honor the very tough feelings we might have about a situation.

[00:15:18] LENNIE: Exactly. Just because somebody might now experience posttraumatic growth doesn't mean that they didn't have posttraumatic stress disorder too. They can overlap tremendously.

Part of the resilience that we have as human beings is being able to emerge from that hell and create a whole new heaven for us. 

[00:15:44] LISA: Yes, absolutely. It’s the ability to be with yourself wherever you are. I think one thing that can get in the way is toxic positivity, which you had recently written about on Facebook.

I can speak to my own experience of being a person who had had Lyme disease and was sick for several years. I found myself being a victim of that in the beginning because A, I didn't want to be sick, and I felt like, well, if I just imagine my recovery and focus on getting better, it will happen.

The reality was I was in a state of hell. I was miserable. On top of the misery of the disease, I was experiencing shame and guilt, and I was stuffing my feelings about the disappointment I had about being sick at a time when it felt like my life was supposed to open up for me. I think it can cause so much damage.

What have you learned about positive toxicity and how are you personally working to combat it? Not only are you this learned person who knows all these things, but you are walking your talk because you are also a cancer survivor. 

[00:17:07] LENNIE: That's right. I had forgotten just how long that's been going on. I think the earliest diagnosis was about 2016. I was in treatment earlier, but they weren't definite about the diagnosis of cancer. The phrase toxic positivity is one Mary Lou brought to my attention because as she's been dealing now with breast cancer treatments, she’s found that so many times people who are wanting to be supportive are saying things like, “Oh, you're so courageous and you're my hero, and just stay determined and keep positive. You can do it. I know you can.” 

They're acting more like cheerleaders than they are as friends who can empathize and understand the anguish and pain and the fear engendered by the cancer.

So, that was one of the reasons why I've put that in the new edition of the crisis book. It’s something I wanted to make sure we included, because while we might want to highlight someone’s capacity for growth, we don't ignore their pain. Yes. I tell my students you empathize with the crisis, but you're curious about the potential for thriving that you're picking up on as you go along. But you can't deny that this is also painful and difficult. I think a lot of people do the cheerleading thing, because it's easier to be off the field and not deal with the painful feelings that are going on with somebody that you dearly love.

Mary Lou's been a great mentor to me while dealing with my cancer. She doesn’t do any of that toxic positivity. I hope that I'm doing the same for her, and being a partner in this, but not being off the field as a cheerleader when she's going through a lot of pain.

[00:19:19] LISA: Yes, because you're both dealing with cancer diagnoses. 

[00:19:22] LENNIE: Yes. I'm dealing with a form of cancer that my oncologist said there's no cure for, but we can manage it. So that's our goal, and so I'm continuing with some treatment and medication as well as follow-up sessions and so far, so good.

My last appointment was very positive, and I find it wonderful to be celebrating that at the same time that we also honor the suffering people are in. When we deny the suffering, that's when positivity becomes toxic. So, I don't want to take away people's hope for a better future. There's a positive psychology movement, and a lot of research that I find very fascinating, and it can be overdone. 

[00:20:22] LISA: Absolutely. And I love how you put it. Be with the pain, honor the pain, and be curious about the healing and the growth that can happen. But don't negate the pain. One thing I’m sensitive to is what I call “bright sighting,” which is one of the things you were talking about, which really is that toxic positivity where, “We’ll just think about the good things or be positive.” But when you do that you, especially if you do it to someone else, or even if you do it to yourself, you are unconsciously sending the message that the challenging feelings you have are not okay. That's where the shame and the guilt come from.

I think probably one of the best experiences that I had with you, where you were showing up with it all, was back in 2018, right before you wrote the article I'm going to put in the show notes. I was teaching a class for James Madison University on writing to heal, and it was with a bunch of counselors and therapists and school counselors.

We were looking at different strategies people could use, and I had everyone do some writing exercises. What you brought to the table was a story–it wasn’t a story, it was really an essay because it was true–about an experience you had with your students. Because, you know, you had this initial diagnosis and these treatments in 2016, but in 2018 you got the diagnosis right before a class, and you were talking about what you did with that class, which I'm going to give you a chance to talk about in a second. Then we processed it again together and there were tears and we were holding space for you and it was so beautiful. So, could you talk about what happened? 

[00:22:12] LENNIE: Yes, it was a great experience for me. Well, first, it was a shock because they did an analysis of a growth that they had taken off and a biopsy that I was sure was okay. I was sure they weren’t going to find anything. It would be benign. No worries. But instead, I got the word, this is malignant. You need to be coming in for cancer treatments. I was reeling from that. Okay, I’m going to digress now, but this is for a reason. 

Every year, Mary Lou and I watch It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic Christmas story with Jimmy Stewart, and Donna Reed. George Bailey is considered the hero of this story, and he's dealing with a crisis in his own life. The whole community comes in to support him, because his wife, Mary Bailey, contacted everybody to get them to come in to help him through his crisis. She is actually the hero of that story. It's not George Bailey. He's the beneficiary of her assistance, and that's what I find going on oftentimes in people's lives is that other people make a difference. So, when I'm working with somebody in crisis intervention, I’m often asking who has been there for you in the past. 

On the day I got my diagnosis, Ed McKee (another one of Lennie’s colleagues at James Madison University) came up to me right before class. This isn't in the article because they wanted it shorter. He said, “I got a call for Mary Lou that you have had this diagnosis, and he was trying to whisper, but Ed McKee, he could never whisper. 

[00:24:13] LISA: No, he could not. 

[00:24:14] LENNIE: I had the door open to go into class, and he said, “Just know, I've got your back.” Before I go into class, I said, “Thanks Ed, that means a lot.”  My students heard him say, “I've got your back.” They also could see me being upset, and that's why I had that choice right at that moment. I could just play it cool, and not bring this up. But I said, “Well, damn, this is a crisis intervention class and I've got people who are in training to become counselors. I'm going to go ahead and share. It was a powerful experience where they were incredibly supportive and empathic. There was no toxic positivity. They were there for me, expressing their own sense of shock and surprise as well as their dedication to being there and having my back too.

It taught me the power of just being there. Teaching and being a student at the same time. 

[00:25:27] LENNIE: I was learning from my students what it means to go ahead and ask for help. Here’s this old crisis intervener who was doing that so long for others, and now it's being done to me, and I’ve got to show the grace of opening my heart up to that.

[00:25:47] LISA: Every time I hear that story, I just love it. It takes so much vulnerability and trust to let people in, and yet when we do, beautiful things happen. Crises often happen when we are alone, and we don’t choose them. There are so many things about them that can create this deep sense of loneliness and isolation. But it is in community that we heal, and I can already hear a question that some people are going to have when they hear this. 

What if you are a person who feels like your heart has been broken so many times you don't trust enough to let somebody in? What would you say to someone who has that experience? 

[00:26:39] LENNIE: Well, I would say, first, I want to thank them for sharing that their heart has been broken and that they are so fearful of trusting. I want to honor that act of courage, because oftentimes the scariest step when people are dealing with counseling is to actually make that appointment and come in and see somebody and begin to share what is so deep and dark in their hearts. One of the descriptions of posttraumatic stress disorder in the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, is the sense of apprehension about fear and being exposed to something that causes fear. But there's also apprehension about being exposed to our shame–even to ourselves. 

That's where writing can become so powerful. When I’m writing and then I'm reading what I just wrote about my shame that I thought I would all keep locked in forever, and now it’s on the screen or on the paper as part of my own self-exploration that's lurking in my consciousness. 

[00:28:14] LISA: Yes. I love that, the honoring of where people are at. And then the invitation that there's more, and writing can do so much of that, because when you write about your experiences, you externalize them. The first thing that can happen is that it’s not living inside you anymore. It lives on the page, and then through the revision process, or just even looking at it, you begin to organize it and help it make sense. Then you can look at what else. 

That's something I really try to instill in people is that whatever you write first is true. That's part of your experience, and you don't have to negate it or get rid of it. But it's this and what else? 

[00:28:57] LENNIE: Right. What you just said brings up two important memories for me.  Ann Stewart taught me to refrain from saying but, and instead say and in these situations. And so, you know, empathize with the crisis, andlook for the survivor.

And, that we're involved in a process. One story doesn't do it. Right. Yeah, that story is true. And especially with crisis experiences, there's this need to retell. There’s been research done with victims of disasters that shows that when people share their stories right then and there, they're very chaotic and impressionistic, and so emotion filled that it's often hard to put into words, and especially with kids, drawing it seems to be a better way to get to the first draft of that story, and then people have a need to tell that story again and again and again and again, and each time they are at a different place, and each time it becomes true in a different way. Each time, their attention spotlights other aspects that at first, you know, they didn't even realize.

[00:30:28] LISA: Yes, I love all of that.  I use this book by Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World. It has these four stages that you go through in the process of forgiveness, and step one is tell the story.

And what he says is tell it as many times as you need to, because, just as you said, one telling isn't enough. And yes, that idea of it being chaotic in the beginning for all the writers out there, your first draft is always going to be filled with chaos, but when you're dealing with crisis material, coming at it from a different medium, maybe drawing or collage or something else that allows you access to the images can help you find the language that can help make this into something that's more cohesive, because that's part of where the healing comes from. It’s not just that you wrote it down, but that you created something cohesive with it, and then you had a chance to say, “Okay, well, what else is there?”

I'm going to ask you a question, and I don't know is a perfect answer. I always say that when I haven't sent this question to somebody, but it's coming to mind. 

I work with a lot of writers who are working to publish. Some of them are in the earlier stages, and they are writing things that have been absolutely devastating, and they are working to create art from that. But something I see people do that I'm personally trying to figure out how to work with them on in a different way so that we honor the pain, and we also become curious about the survivors is the victim narrative. When I say victim, what I mean is the narrative of powerlessness.

When you just keep revising that repeatedly, just to make that part clearer, you reinforce that piece of the story–not just in your brain, but in your nervous system. What are your thoughts based on your research and the work that you do around how we get out of that loop?Because that’s a different thing. There's the honoring of your story and being present with it, and then there are these loops that we can get into that are not necessarily serving us in the ways we might think. 

[00:33:03] LENNIE: Yes, yeah, and there is some new research that's coming out about neuroplasticity that shows that what can happen is that new neural pathways are created that can give us greater insight and make meaning from this process.

I take care to say make meaning, not find meaning, because we're not detectives looking for clues out there. Instead, we are resolving to explore inwardly and that creates new neural pathways. Just the very act of putting it into words with writing or sharing it verbally helps. I used to get concerned when I was doing more long-term counseling and therapy if someone told the story identically again, again, and again. That is one where we do have to do some therapeutic intervention with to help them begin to understand their story in the ways that you were bringing up, to look at it from a different perspective or to set that aside and instead experience it through art or some other medium in order to create neural pathways that can help them go back and take a look at what is hijacked by that process. 

I see that I'm giving you a long answer when I don't know all the answers to that, which is a classic professorial trick. But I think we're on our way towards discovering some important insights that are not going to minimize our problems or just reduce them to brain functioning, but instead to enrich our understanding by our ability to recognize–hey, you know, there used to be this expression, “Well, you know, that's pretty easy. We're not talking about brain surgery.”

Well, when we're doing interventions of any sort with another person, we are doing brain surgery, because we often bring up our own experience as we hear their story in a way that's empathic and gets at those parts of the unconscious area that we're picking up by how they're saying things or ways that they're presenting them. 

[00:35:44] LISA: That’s such a good insight and such good information, especially around this idea that we are not finding meaning out there. We are looking for meaning in here, you know, and it brings back this idea around toxic positivity that I was reading about this morning, this idea that we're looking for the silver lining, right?

You don't have to look for the silver lining. You need to find the meaning inside yourself. That is something that you can create regardless of what the experience is. When you do this work, you create those new narrow pathways. This is brain surgery. When you do this work, you're doing brain surgery on yourself.

[00:36:25] LENNIE: Right? Exactly. 

[00:36:26] LISA: Without the scalpel. Thankfully. Right? 

[00:36:27] LENNIE: No kidding. Yeah. There's no blood, nothing else going on with this. I think you mentioned in our discussion before we started taping about my brother Denny, who died. I was curious about when this might broadcast because my last conversation with him was five days before Valentine's Day. He had just gotten back from Thailand, and this is where you might see some sources of my humor, because I asked him, well, how many ties did you get? You know that kind of thing. We both enjoy those kinds of stupid puns, and I was talking to him about his experience and what it was like and all the adventures he had.

It was wonderful. He was living out near Seattle, and here we were in Virginia. I began to learn this lesson that, hey, you might not have this moment again. So, I said, instead of goodbye, which I always did before I said, I love you, Denny. Well, those were my last words to him, because, you know, he died, 10 days later. So, I found that to be so important for me that I take the time to look at every single opportunity where I might do an act of kindness or to show gratitude, or to share my feelings of compassion and love for somebody. That's been a lesson I've taken with me.

I've told that story several times, but each time I hope I tell it from a different place. So that I am now someone who's had the experience of being, you know, a patient, and who's been dealing with my partner, who is dealing with a life-threatening illness and who wants to savor every moment and to be kind.

[00:38:42] LISA: That’s so important. And, you know, the fact that we both lost brothers suddenly is something that's created a bond between us.  

[00:38:51] LENNIE: That's true. 

[00:38:52] LISA: That conversation you had, it sounds like it was on February the 9th. Is that correct? Or was it February the 8th? You don't have to do the math. 

[00:39:01] LENNIE: It was close to that.

[00:39:03] Yeah, because it was before Valentine's Day, February 14th. So yeah, February 9th sounds right. It could be the 8th. 

[00:39:11] LISA: Well, February 8th is the anniversary of my brother's death. Every time I hear that story, I think about the piece of posttraumatic growth that I learned. It was something I had to really wrestle with. Before my brother died, we had been chatting on AOL.

This was back in 1997 when, you know, all of this was brand new. Because it was brand new, it would go off a lot, because we were on AOL. You'd get kicked off and try to get back on again and again. We didn't get back on this last time. And there was something that said to me, like, you need to say, I love you. You need to say, I love you, because we always did. I thought, well, there'll be another time. And then of course, there wasn't and that was such a piece of guilt that I had, because he died by suicide. But he taught me so much about how you must make sure you listen to your body, and you say these things and you do this.

For me, anyway, what I would say is that I always try to make that a practice, but if I ever find like there's more to say, or more to do–if I have this tug inside, right, that's like, no, you haven't done it enough, or, with this situation, I never hesitate to go back and say what else is on my mind and in my heart. Every time I hear you tell that story, which I've heard it several times, and I love it every time, it reminds me of that gift that we give to other people and how, you know, even if we’ve had a situation where we couldn't give it before, every time I say I love you to someone or I offer that kindness, I know it repairs what happened before. It's like I'm giving that gift. I'm paying it forward. 

[00:41:06] LENNIE: There was research—I don't know if this is still the case, but I hope it is—that the profession that got the most valentines were teachers.

In fact, there are far more valentines expressing that kind of love than romantic love. And so, I find that just very, very enriching to know that we're looking at all kinds of love at Valentine's Day, not just the romantic kind and that there are so many people out there that would be touched by our communicating how much they mean to us.

[00:41:44] LISA: Absolutely. So, even though this is not going to air on Valentine's Day, which now I wish it could, but the schedule is the schedule. You can make Valentine's Day any day. So, think about five people that you could send a Valentine to that are just people that you care about. You can send it any time, and you have no idea what meaning they'll make from that or how it will touch their day, and how it will impact how they treat other people So it's not just the one drop and a ripple to the next person, but it keeps going on, you know, further and further. 

[00:42:24] LENNIE: Yes, and that reminds me that I want to take this opportunity to thank you, Lisa, for the many, many ways that you helped me in my own healing. You recorded a guided imagery that I could listen to while I was dealing with chemotherapy and the infusion and how it was so, so comforting. And comfort is a word I didn't use much before Denny's death. It’s one that I find means a lot to me now.

It’s not just superficial. It's comforting to be reminded that I am not alone in this moment, as poison is going through my veins to deal with the cancer that's threatening my life. And you were there for that, and your voice was there. And that meant so much to me to know that my former student is now part of my own learning lessons and healing. So, thank you for that. 

[00:43:34] LISA: Well, I'm going to cry now. And I'm going to absorb that, and I'm not going to deflect. I'm going to take it in. Thank you. And thank you for the gift of allowing me in. You know, sometimes people don't. It was such an honor for me, also because when I was sick with Lyme disease and feeling very, very alone, you were one of the people who would just contact me out of the blue and say, “How are you doing, Lisa?”

You know, and that was such a gift, and I'm so grateful that I was also able to be a part of that because I remember you would write to me about the red one, I think there was the red one that was so terrible, and it just was, it was very meaningful to me that I was able to be a part of that. So, thank you. 

[00:44:25] LENNIE: This reminds me of something else that I train people in a crisis intervention you might have only a 10-minute or 15-minute or a couple-hour encounter with somebody in crisis. And that may be the last time that you see them. 

So, you want to, some place towards the end, offer an expression of gratitude to them for taking the risk of sharing with you, perhaps a virtual stranger, this worst experience that they've had in their lives and to show your gratitude by thanking them. I think something in our training of therapists that we've totally ignored is how the therapist can show gratitude, because there's been research on counselors and therapists vicariously experiencing posttraumatic stress where they begin to take on their own symptoms by hearing these painful stories, horrific stories.

And there's also research showing that we can experience vicarious posttraumatic growth by what we've experienced with somebody's resilience as they've shared their stories with us. We can feel heartened by and enlightened by and inspired by them. 

[00:46:01] LISA: So, what I would say to all the writers out there, because we have a lot of people on here who are writing, is that one thing you can do when you are bearing witness to your own story is to just say thank you to yourself for having the courage to come to the page. When you are working with a group of writers in a writing group and you're offering feedback–something I hear people say all the time is, “Oh, you're so courageous. You're brave.” And that's fine. And, yes, those things can be true. But you don't have to say them. Instead, say, “Thank you for trusting me with your story.” 

[00:46:38] LENNIE: Right? Yes. 

[00:46:39] LISA: And thank you for trusting me and opening up. Just say thank you. That's all you have to say. 

[00:46:48] LENNIE: And it's a wonderful for somebody who's feeling isolated and, so shameful to hear themselves being thanked.

[00:46:58] LISA: Yes. 

[00:46:59] LENNIE: What a gift that is that I've offered something of value to another person, and that person's thanking me for being open about something. 

And I want to share something else with you here. I'm reaching for something. Somebody gave me this desktop therapist. She's a dear friend of Mary Lou's, and she sent her a gift, but she saw this and thought of me. So, there's the little Freud looking like a therapist here, and there's a button you can push, and it'll say some cliché, and you can click it. I don't know if you heard that. 

[00:47:50] LISA: I heard noise. Can you say what it was saying? 

[00:47:53] LENNIE: Yeah, it says, “What do you think that means?” Well, I got this as a gift, and my grandson came over, Gabriel, and he said, “what is this?” The cliches started pouring out. The therapist said, “How does that make you feel?” and he goes, well, I feel okay about that. Then one that he found so intriguing was, “Let's bring that back into the room, shall we?” He thought that was so funny. 

So, he'll now occasionally say that to me. We’ll be talking about something, or I'll pick him up at school, and he'll say, “Let’s bring that back into the room, shall we?” The one that really got him irritated was, “What was your childhood like?” He said, “I'm still in my childhood.” 

So, anyway, the scripted clichés on here are funny, and we ought to set those aside, and instead speak from the heart, even if we have difficulty expressing something, and even noting that, saying, I'm feeling myself choking up, or like you said, very touchingly, I'm going to cry. 

All of those are ways that we can really open our shared humanity in ways that really can be so powerfully therapeutic. When you're writing, that's something that you can talk about being a meta-writer. “As I write this, I'm finding that this is going on for me,” and to be writing that as well. 

Pennebaker is a social psychologist who did research on the therapy of writing who found in these classical studies, you know, where one group is randomly assigned to write about the worst thing that ever happened in their lives, and the others are randomly assigned to just write about day to day mundane things, that the ones who wrote about their traumas, their disappointments, their crises, then six months later, their health was much better, and they were less likely to have gone to the college health center, and in so many other ways, by dealing with that trauma. It is therapeutic in and of itself to put your experiences into words. 

[00:50:23] LISA: Absolutely. It takes the chaos of experience and creates sense around it. And yes, I've read Pennebaker's books. I love what he has to say. I always also do like to couch this, because in the writing community, his work is mentioned a lot. All his studies were for people who were writing, and then they did not read it again. It was never for public consumption.

So, I think that's always something I want to say about his work, because sometimes people will think that if they just write it and then share it out in the world, they’ll have the same experience that all Pennebaker's test subjects had, and that is not necessarily the case. 

[00:51:15] LENNIE: That’s a great point.

[00:51:17] LISA: Yeah. Thinking about writing to heal versus writing for public consumption is so important. That’s something that I talked with Laura Davis about, who is the author of The Courage to Heal, for season one. And so, by the time this airs, people can go back and listen to that episode as well.

But yes, I think it's so, so, so important. As we wrap up, I always ask people a series of questions. What is the best writing advice you've ever received? 

[00:51:49] LENNIE: Let's see. I think it's not so much advice as it wasn't taught, but I caught it. It’s the contagiousness of the love of the word. I have a dear friend of mine who sends me, regularly–I get emails from him pretty much every day–in which he will often share a sentence that he came across that he just loved and wanted to share it with somebody. So, he sends it to me and that enthusiasm that he has, has been contagious for me in my writing right now, which sometimes can get a little tedious, and I have to really get myself psyched up to return to this project that's been ongoing for a long time now. And so, it's not so much advice that, you know, was taught to me, as it is the emotion that I caught from his enthusiasm. 

[00:53:00] LISA: I love that. And I want to share the best piece of writing advice that you gave to me, which is a good Ed.S is a done Ed.S. I translate this to my clients’ work all the time, and I'll say, a done draft is a good draft. Just get to that point, and that's how we make progress. 

[00:53:20] LENNIE: Yes. Yes. 

[00:53:22] LISA: How do you nourish and nurture your resilience? 

[00:53:28] LENNIE: I find that as a grandparent, and living next door to my grandkids, that cuddling up to James who has no words, but the most soulful eyes, and when we connect eye to eye, I feel like it's heart to heart. And he’s in his wheelchair, he’ll dance like this, back and forth, you know, with his arms. And he'll play hide and seek with me sometimes, where he'll hide his face, and then he'll show it, a peekaboo thing. 

These are ways that I find I'm just celebrating life and then our other grandson—I pick him up from school and he comes to our home to do his homework, and he inspires me all the time. He has spelling words, and I remember having spelling words, well, he has 18 of them. On one day of the week, he's got to write them alphabetically and another day, he’s got to do a synonym, another day an antonym. On the 4th day, he’s supposed to write a sentence with each of those 18 words. Well, he decided, and I think this is good advice for your writers, is that he decided to make a story connecting all those sentences. For example, I remember two words he had were bridge and gravity. So, he started this story, that said London Bridge is falling down, and the next sentence was, and it's not because of gravity. It's because the Germans bombed it. And so, then he goes on to this fantastic story where he's playing with history and making it fictional as he ties together these words.

Then Mary Lou is always doing things that make me laugh, and then I feel connected to her in such a deep way. We've been married for over 54 years now, and it seems that you mentioned earlier how long ago our first relationship was and how it does it seems like yesterday and that's how it feels like with me–that I can share things with her. Nobody else would get that joke except for her. That’s a relationship that's a special heart-to-heart bond that I know that you have in your life too. That gives me more resilience, just to know I'm loved by lots of people. Yes. 

[00:56:25] LISA: And you are very loved by lots and lots of people. I can attest to that. Everyone I know who knows you, loves you. You've just given so much and now everybody is like, “Lenny, I love him so much.” It's true. And I'm so glad that you have that in your life and that you pay attention to it. You know, part of resilience is about where we place our focus.

You know, and again, like we've talked about the whole time, it's not ignoring the tough stuff, but it's also saying these other things are happening. I remember you writing to me in the midst of your chemo treatments where you had just awful side effects at times about how your grandsons would do these wonderful things for you, and they would say all of these very cute things. 

I always love hearing about them and that they would make your day and how it made it more tolerable, easier to deal with the tough stuff that you were also enduring. So, it wasn't an ignoring of that, but that, that where you place your focus can be so important and it works in writing too. Where you place your focus on the page and on the situation can have a profound impact on your readers, but also on you as the writer, and those neural pathways that you are building in your brain. 

[00:57:52] LENNIE: And I'd like to mention something else that for me, writing isn't just something for publication. Writing can be a silly poem that I write to a member of the family, or writing can be the annual Christmas newsletter that we send out. This is the 32nd edition of that where we have parodies of whatever's happening in the news. It's called the North Pole Inquirer, and so, we're talking about the Grinch and Frosty, and Santa, and the Reindeer—all of those come into play here. I think in the most recent one I wrote, Santa decided that his naughty and nice list was getting too complicated, so he had artificial intelligence take over and it decided that only robots were nice enough to be on the list. All the human boys and girls were taken off, because, you know, the bar was so low for them. So, I have found that I want a picture in my mind of the reader, when I'm doing these things as a way of saying, here's what I'd like to share with you that's silly and goofy and also feels heartfelt. 

[00:59:19] LISA: Yes. And I think that's so important because I work with a lot of writers, and they think that everything has to be for publication. I'm putting that in quotation marks for those of you who can't see it, in the sense that it's going to go to a literary journal or it's going to get a publisher or, you know, it's going to become a book. But sometimes writing for the joy of writing and the joy of connection can be so helpful.

I have another book here that you wrote, which I find absolutely delightful. I'm holding up right now. It’s Good Night Jung, which is a play on the classic Good Night Moon. It's so fun to read, and such a nice counterbalance to some of the headier, academic work you do and the work you do in crisis and dealing with trauma. It’s this fun little book about a bunny character who is Jung, and you can look it up online.

Well, if people want to learn more about you, or they want to continue this conversation with you, what is the best way for them to connect?

[01:00:40] LENNIE: Email is fine for me, and you can post that on your notes. It’s an easy one. E C H T E R L I N G at JMU dot edu. Since I'm a professor emeritus, they let me keep the JMU email address that I use. I'd love to hear from people. By the way, I just sent that book to a former doctoral student who just had a baby. Her baby's newborn but got a taste of Jung. 

And one of my former students is from Bulgaria, and I had to try to find a way to rhyme Bulgarian and Rogerian was the one I came up with. So, she thought I was writing it to her. That’s an easy way to connect with me. 

[01:01:36] LISA: Lenny's email address will be in the show notes, and for those of you who might be thinking like, who is Jung and what are you talking about with Rogerian? Carl Jung did psychoanalysis. He is a prominent person in the field of psychology, and so is Carl Rogers.

I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was such a joy to talk with you. Thank you so much, Lenny. 

[01:02:01] LENNIE: My pleasure. This has been wonderful to reconnect.