Being in a Sea of
Ambiguity by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
I, and a tour boat of travellers,
was snorkelling off Julian Rocks, Byron Bay, the day before Christmas. Around us
were literally hundreds of fish, many kinds, many colours, many sizes. I saw a
couple of green turtles, several practically translucent jelly fish, and two
rays. Some of the other snorkelers saw a leopard shark; I didn’t. I did see, in
one fleeting moment, the fish grow frightened, but they resumed their relaxed manner
quickly. It was like a ripple effect: from full faced gentle swimming to a
rapid streak and then full faced gentle swimming again. Whatever it was, it was
a momentary threat.
I was gathered up into the
schools and could observe the behaviour of each type of fish. There were the
small orange bottom feeders, the sleek mid-swimmers, and the sociable upper
dwellers. These social ones swam around me closely. I watched one of them
apparently feed from a jelly fish: mouth inside the jelly cup, but neither
seemingly getting hurt.
It was choppy that day, but the
sea was glass-like and visibility went down at least eight meters with no loss
of vision. It was fantastic.
In the sea, a place I love most
of all, almost anything can happen. We humans, after all, are merely visitors
here. It is an ambiguous massive space.
Ambiguity is the
quality of being open to more than one interpretation, an inexactness.
Snorkelling in the sea is quintessentially being present in the mysterium tremendum, that is, in an
overwhelming mystery, where some things are identifiable and understood, but
mostly just ever felt. I find this space extraordinarily calming and sometimes
offers an incredible sense of one-ness with everything, but I am aware that
there are many for whom the sea is utterly terrifying. Sharks, millions of
them, fill the space of their imaginations. The terror of a shark-populated mind
gets in the way of ordinary life and sometimes manifests as anxiety and
depression.
Anxiety and
depression may be described as disorders of focus, as Michael Yapko puts
it. The focus is put on what’s
wrong rather than what’s right; what has caused them pain rather than what has
helped them. Sufferers get locked
into a sort of mouse-wheel of hideous thoughts: round and round and round, and
it’s torture for them. This is
where psychotherapy and clinical hypnotherapy really helps. Both reintroduce,
through focussed attention, ambiguity in a safe environment, and thus a greater
flexibility and willingness to experience a wide range of feelings and thoughts
and connections. If something has terrified anxiety and/or depressed people and
caused them to get stuck in their fear, being gently supported, perhaps a
little bit rocked, in a sea of guided ambiguity allows for the possibility of
healing. This is a healing that isn’t imposed, but arises from a person’s own
resources; resources that had hitherto been submerged under iterative thoughts.
A few years ago I
toyed with the idea of offering water therapy. That is, taking a client into
the sea and being with them as they encountered their fears, offering them an
entré
into relaxation and choicefulness in an environment that cannot ever be fully
known. I still like that idea, but maybe my insurance company wouldn’t cover
it. Some hypnotherapy sessions, anyway, have this quality anyway, at least this
is what is sometimes reported to me by my clients.
A hypnotherapy
session begins usually by inviting the client to close their eyes and start to
focus on themselves: sensations (skin touching the leather of the chair,
softness, supportiveness, etc), perceptions (the sound of my water fountain - little
whirring pump and water splashing, faint tinkling of bells, a car going by,
wind, thoughts, the sensation of breath, rising up of imaginary ideas, noticing
what happens when images are evoked, and so on. From this focussed place I can then
introduce ideas of how misinterpretations can occur and then reorient the
person to other ways of seeing.
Depressed and anxious
people tend to see ambiguity in negative ways, but actually ambiguity merely
offers a multitude of possibilities and, like the sea and the rest of life, we
can learn to not fight it, but let go and relax – with awareness -into what we
choose to focus on and act with acuity and right-mindedness, doing whatever it
is that helps us deal with whatever life offers us.
