My colleague, Ron Soderquist, Ph.D, LMFT trained with Bandler, Grinder, and Milton Erickson in the 1970’s. I have used several examples of his wonderfully creative work with clients in my blog posts over the years; my favorite is “Meryl Streep Calling.” Here is another example:

Grief Resolution

Recently a long-time colleague shared his concern for his oldest daughter who had been stuck in a deep disabling depression for most of a year. She had been longing to have a child, finally became pregnant and then at 2 months was plunged into despair when the fetus aborted. Obsessed with grief over her loss, she had even become estranged from some family members. She had been to several conventional talk therapists with no positive results.

I suggested that I could help his daughter via Skype, though I hadn’t done a Skype session before. She was willing, and I immediately devised a way to utilize her Anglican upbringing as a resource. After establishing rapport by commiserating with her for a while, I asked her to close her eyes.

“I wonder if you can imagine that there is a special place in heaven, a special place for tiny angels, a lovely place where tiny angels play and sing, a place filled with God’s warm love, a place reserved for special sweet little ones, whom God welcomes when they arrive there unexpectedly. You have a little angel in that special place, do you not? And she is warmly wrapped up in God’s love. Maybe you can imagine her there. I wonder if it would be all right to lift your eyes to heaven where tiny angels sing, instead of dwelling on the tragic loss. You can ask your inner mind, your wise inner mind if that would be all right. And if that is all right with your wise inner mind, perhaps that inner mind will signal yes by letting one of your hands begin to feel very light, almost as if balloons were tied to the fingers and wrist, and start to float, as a way of agreeing about the place where your tiny angel lives embraced in God’s love.”

As tears rolled down her cheeks one of her hands began to float. I could see her breathing soften and deepen, her shoulders relax and her eyes were turned upward. She began to weep, and sigh—the kind of weeping that expresses emotional relief. Then she said, “But I have this sadness in me.”

I said, “Just place your hand where the sad feeling is,” and she placed it on her abdomen. “Now that sad feeling naturally travels upward, does it not?”

She said, “Yes,” and moved her hand to her chest.

“As it travels upward, perhaps you can feel or see it rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise—which is it?” With her hand she indicated clockwise.

When I said, “Now just reverse the rotation,” she gave a big sigh, and said, “I feel better already.”

“If that sadness comes back just do what you just did; you did it very well the first time.”

Follow-up. She sent me a note of thanks, and her father later sent several emails reporting that she is doing great, once again her happy self, reconciled with family members, enjoying her marriage. It has now been about three months since our session. As the anniversary of the abortion approaches I will contact her and suggest that on that day she will find a special way to focus on her tiny angel in heaven.

Announcement

Ron has developed a mental skill called the SLEEP CIRCLE, which he has found to be highly successful with people who want to get control of their sleep without depending on drugs. He is looking for therapists nationwide who want to learn how to teach this skill to clients. You can learn more about this here. If interested, e-mail eldaronquist [at] gmail.com or call him at (805) 796 5027.