Regina Sewell, LMHC, PCC, TEP
PhD Sociology
True confession: My original plan was to become an academic because I wanted to save the world and believed that if I could gather the right data and write the right paper, I could make a difference. I thought the only way to make a difference was focusing on the macro level, targeting laws and systems
And then I had a student. I’ll call her Vanessa. Vanessa changed everything. **Trigger warning……..
Vanessa called me from the hospital to tell me that she needed to make up the mid-term. She said that her father had “kind of gotten mad” at her. Per university protocol for make-up exams, I had her bring in the medical paperwork. I can still feel the kick in the gut I felt when I read the report. She’d been sexually assaulted by her father. I didn’t know how to respond. I talked to my advisor. She had no clue what to do or say to a human being who had gone through that sort of trauma. Academics, at least in my department, did not “do” feelings. She told me to refer her to someone else. And that was the beginning of my journey.
I called the local rape crisis line to make sure that it was safe to refer them to Vanessa and they were wonderful. I had already started feeling disillusioned about the efficacy of research to change much because politicians, bureaucrats, and CEO’s don’t often care about research findings. The kindness expressed by the volunteer at the crisis line made me realize that being able to hold other’s stories and help them work through their wounds was the way we actually save the world — one person at a time.
I don’t know if Vanessa ever contacted them**, but I became a volunteer. I answered the rape help line, facilitated rape education and prevention programs at schools, colleges, and in the community and worked on fundraising to keep the crisis center’s doors open. And then I got an opportunity to be an intern with the self-defense instructor and was able to teach feminist based self-defense. It was awesome. I was creating a space for people to talk about their experiences, teaching them how to set boundaries, and most importantly, helping them empower themselves. I felt like I was really able to make a difference in people’s lives.
And, I also began to see the limitations of teaching self-defense. There’s only so much you can do in a class focused on self-defense and some of my students had traumatic experiences from childhood or adolescence that haunted them and prevented them from moving forward in life.
I wanted to do more but didn’t have a clue what that might look like. I was in a Playback Theatre Troup at the time. Playback Theatre is a form of improv theatre developed by Jonathan Fox and Jo Solas in which the actors play out real-life moments and stories shared by members of the audience. One day in rehearsal, the co-director of the company shared about her experience with psychodrama. As she described psychodrama, I began to see how it could help people work through the emotional blocks that keep them stuck by putting their stories into action, giving them a chance to experience their stories in a safe space, and having a chance to practice doing things differently.
It turned out that Jonathan Fox not only did Playback Theatre, he was also a Psychodrama trainer, so I signed up for a workshop with him in New York. I love Playback Theatre, because it builds community and shows us how the similarities between us are greater than the differences and provides a lens to savor even the smallest moments. Psychodrama does that and it is deeply healing. Just the process of group building helped me feel connected to others in the group. The warm-ups provided me with nuggets of insight. And I got a lot out of watching or playing a role in other people’s dramas. I was stuck in a job I hated, tortured by memories from childhood, and stuck in a relationship that I later realized was toxic. The roles I was cast in encouraged me to make dramatic changes in my life. I particularly remember being in someone’s drama and the message to the character I was playing was, “You can do it!” I still hear that line echo in my head as a way to cheer me on when things feel difficult.
One of the things I love most about psychodrama is that its action oriented. Rather than talking about things, you act them out. As a participant, this helped me cut through the defenses that kept me stuck, process my feelings in a safe, supported way and find new ways to get my needs met. I continued to go to Psychodrama workshops and I realized that to truly empower people, you have to help them heal from the past, connect to their resources and supports, and practice doing things differently.
Another thing I love about psychodrama is that to learn psychodrama, one must do psychodrama. In trainings, participants can experience what it’s like to be a protagonist – the person playing the principal role in an enactment, an auxiliary – a person who participates as someone or something in the protagonists’ life, and an audience member. In the process, participants can work through wounds from the past, explore relationship dynamics in the present and imagine their way in the future. By observing other group members work, participants can connect their unique experiences to the larger, human experience and see different ways of responding to shared problems.
Now I’ve come full circle. Not only am I using psychodrama to empower my clients, I am training therapists how to use psychodrama to better empower their clients.
**I did see Vanessa several years later. She was a brown belt at the martial arts dojo I attended and seemed to be doing well.