After the Storm
(A collage essay I wrote last year)
I am sprinting as fast as I can down the sidewalk in my Sorel snow boots in the middle of the night, the freezing air entering my lungs until I can barely breathe. It’s dark, and I pass people on the sidewalks that appear as faceless shadows, and I'm wishing there was somewhere to go where I could just scream. There's absolutely nowhere I can think of to go where I could just scream. Isn't that horrible, when you think about it? Doesn’t that make you feel trapped?
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
her shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
her wings are clipped and her feet are tied
so she opens his throat to sing.
-Maya Angelo
In 1970 at the age of 43, Dr. Athur Janov developed Primal Therapy, also called “scream therapy.” He believed that often we experience emotional pain but are not able to express it, which affects us by imprinting that pain on our bodies. After exposing his patients to traumatic events similar to the ones they experienced in their lives, he would allow them to react fully and physically, usually by screaming and crying. He believed that only by doing this could they could finally heal, because if we can fully express our pain, then we can let it go. He believed that his patients could “scream away the pain.”
I wonder what these patients felt like walking out of his clinic, their throats raw and sore.
John Lennon was one of these screaming patients. Back in 1960, before they were even called the Beatles, he would scream out songs on stage in Hamburg every night until he lost his voice. Later, he always had to preform “Twist and Shout” last, because it would just destroy his throat. He wrote songs about his painful past and one song that said “Help, I need somebody… won’t you please, please help me,” and if that wasn’t a shout into the void then I don’t know what is. And then he went to a therapist who made him relive everything and scream some more.
He said in 1971 that after the scream therapy he stopped believing in God.
A Norwegian painter in the late 1800s by the name of Edvard Munch fascinated me when I was in middle school. He once said: “Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life,” which I wrote out in my journal because at the age of fourteen I found it thrillingly sinister. His most famous painting depicts a sharp red sky in messy waves above a screaming man, reduced to a simple skull-like face clutched by large, shapeless hands. He was inspired, he said, by the “enormous, infinite scream of nature,” which he heard one day while looking at a blood-red sunset. He said that after painting The Scream he had no hope of ever loving again.
"For love is unworldly
and nothing comes of it but love
falling and following endlessly
from her thoughts."
I want to be that girl William Carlos William wrote about. I want to love endlessly and always.
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." I used to repeat that to myself during panic attacks, blind with fear and unsure of how to convince myself not to be. My heart would race and I’d struggle for air as I worried that something would happen to a loved one. Maybe I don't know how to love, I'd think. If I could only love more perfectly, I wouldn't be so afraid.
Screaming and running- both are fear-based responses. The flight response is “a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.” We run to escape, or to pursue. Similarly, Harold Gouzoules, an Emory University psychologist, said: “the ability to belt out a scream is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, and is no doubt critical to our survival.” But why? Some say that it is to hurt the ears of our attacker, while others say that it is to warn others of danger, or to call for help. One source even postulated that we open our mouth, eyes and even nostrils wider in order to better sense whatever has surprised or scared us.
For so long fear has been written out on my nerves, on the synapses in my brain. I run through forest paths chasing the dying light of the sun slicing through the trees, and I run on treadmills, hard and fast and flat and steady, and sometimes at night I sprint down the sidewalks of Provo, sucking in the frozen air until I'm choking on it. I don't think Dr. Arthur Janov could cure me of this useless fear, not even with a nice big room to scream into. Screaming didn’t help John Lennon, and he had the whole world to scream into. I've never experienced trauma. I can't scream away my fear, or run away from it. I can only try to teach myself not to want to anymore.
Dear Dr. Janov,
Screaming is not a cure for fear; it is a response to it.
And maybe, like Edvard Munch, a person could scream so much and so long that they could drown themselves in fear and never hope to love again. And maybe love is the cure for fear.
Sincerely,
I want to erase my fear in love. I want to run towards instead of away.
I have a new mantra, taken from the words of a Mumford and Sons song:
"There will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears,
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears
get over your hill and see what you find there
with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."
I am sprinting as fast as I can down the sidewalk in my Sorel snow boots in the middle of the night, the freezing air entering my lungs until I can barely breathe. It’s dark, and I pass people on the sidewalks that appear as faceless shadows, and I'm wishing there was somewhere to go where I could just scream. There's absolutely nowhere I can think of to go where I could just scream. Isn't that horrible, when you think about it? Doesn’t that make you feel trapped?
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
her shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
her wings are clipped and her feet are tied
so she opens his throat to sing.
-Maya Angelo
In 1970 at the age of 43, Dr. Athur Janov developed Primal Therapy, also called “scream therapy.” He believed that often we experience emotional pain but are not able to express it, which affects us by imprinting that pain on our bodies. After exposing his patients to traumatic events similar to the ones they experienced in their lives, he would allow them to react fully and physically, usually by screaming and crying. He believed that only by doing this could they could finally heal, because if we can fully express our pain, then we can let it go. He believed that his patients could “scream away the pain.”
I wonder what these patients felt like walking out of his clinic, their throats raw and sore.
John Lennon was one of these screaming patients. Back in 1960, before they were even called the Beatles, he would scream out songs on stage in Hamburg every night until he lost his voice. Later, he always had to preform “Twist and Shout” last, because it would just destroy his throat. He wrote songs about his painful past and one song that said “Help, I need somebody… won’t you please, please help me,” and if that wasn’t a shout into the void then I don’t know what is. And then he went to a therapist who made him relive everything and scream some more.
He said in 1971 that after the scream therapy he stopped believing in God.
A Norwegian painter in the late 1800s by the name of Edvard Munch fascinated me when I was in middle school. He once said: “Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life,” which I wrote out in my journal because at the age of fourteen I found it thrillingly sinister. His most famous painting depicts a sharp red sky in messy waves above a screaming man, reduced to a simple skull-like face clutched by large, shapeless hands. He was inspired, he said, by the “enormous, infinite scream of nature,” which he heard one day while looking at a blood-red sunset. He said that after painting The Scream he had no hope of ever loving again.
"For love is unworldly
and nothing comes of it but love
falling and following endlessly
from her thoughts."
I want to be that girl William Carlos William wrote about. I want to love endlessly and always.
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." I used to repeat that to myself during panic attacks, blind with fear and unsure of how to convince myself not to be. My heart would race and I’d struggle for air as I worried that something would happen to a loved one. Maybe I don't know how to love, I'd think. If I could only love more perfectly, I wouldn't be so afraid.
Screaming and running- both are fear-based responses. The flight response is “a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.” We run to escape, or to pursue. Similarly, Harold Gouzoules, an Emory University psychologist, said: “the ability to belt out a scream is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, and is no doubt critical to our survival.” But why? Some say that it is to hurt the ears of our attacker, while others say that it is to warn others of danger, or to call for help. One source even postulated that we open our mouth, eyes and even nostrils wider in order to better sense whatever has surprised or scared us.
For so long fear has been written out on my nerves, on the synapses in my brain. I run through forest paths chasing the dying light of the sun slicing through the trees, and I run on treadmills, hard and fast and flat and steady, and sometimes at night I sprint down the sidewalks of Provo, sucking in the frozen air until I'm choking on it. I don't think Dr. Arthur Janov could cure me of this useless fear, not even with a nice big room to scream into. Screaming didn’t help John Lennon, and he had the whole world to scream into. I've never experienced trauma. I can't scream away my fear, or run away from it. I can only try to teach myself not to want to anymore.
Dear Dr. Janov,
Screaming is not a cure for fear; it is a response to it.
And maybe, like Edvard Munch, a person could scream so much and so long that they could drown themselves in fear and never hope to love again. And maybe love is the cure for fear.
Sincerely,
I want to erase my fear in love. I want to run towards instead of away.
I have a new mantra, taken from the words of a Mumford and Sons song:
"There will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears,
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears
get over your hill and see what you find there
with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."
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