Several weekends ago, a friend and I presented a learning seminar at Bastyr University for practicing and aspiring healing professionals entitled: The Art and Practice of Narrative Medicine. We began the weekend by driving home two points repeatedly. The first was an extended discussion on the importance of safety in seminars such as ours. We identified the importance of collective vigilance throughout, since often environments that start out with high levels of safety, over the course of time (think: any of the famous social psychology experiments on obedience to authority), can frequently morph into being something else entirely (for a detailed look at the safety items we presented, check out this link: How to Know When Safety is At Risk). The second point we spent significant time addressing was the need for co-creating an environment where it was safe, important, expected and welcomed to ask Grand Questions. What’s a Grand Question? I have a definition: anything you feel the slightest urge to ask, especially if you’re feeling any bit apprehensive about giving voice to it.
Make One Change
As a way to stress the importance of asking questions, we read this passage from Dan Rothstein’s and Luz Santana’s book, Make One Change: Teach Students To Ask Their Own Questions:
This book makes two simple arguments: 1) All students should learn how to formulate their own questions. 2) All teachers can easily teach this skill as part of their regular practice. This inspiration for the first argument came from an unusual source. Parents in the low-income community of Lawrence, Massachusetts, with whom we were working twenty years ago. They told us that they did not participate in their children’s education nor go to their children’s schools because they “didn’t even know what to ask.” It turns out that they were actually pointing to a glaring omission in most formal and informal education. The skill of being able to generate a wide range of questions and strategize about how to use them effectively is rarely, if ever, deliberately taught. In fact, it has too often been limited to students who have access to an elite education. Our goal is to democratize this teaching of an essential thinking and learning skill that is also an essential democratic skill.
So, that’s one piece – we should ask Grand Questions so as not to become compliant citizens, buying in to all kinds of BS simply because someone in authority declares it to be so. That’s one small step in unlearning the helplessness that is often an unintended learned consequence of early education.
Surprise Test
So, it was most gratifying when later, after I read this quote – attributing it to the Talmud – “We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are” – and immediately a hand went up. “I know that quote. Is it really from The Talmud? I always thought it was by Anais Nin.” Well, that was the first I’d ever heard that attribution. I preferred that it be from The Talmud; it seemed so historically wiser, somehow. Nevertheless, the truth was, I didn’t really know. And I said so. Even though I initially felt embarrassed for not immediately knowing the answer – or that I might have actually mis-attributed it to the Talmud – I promised to find out. At the break we went looking and discovered both Anais and The Talmud are often referred to as the original source. Finally though, we discerned that Anais did use it, but without attribution, thus many readers understandably attribute it to her. Question answered.
Please Ask Questions – Not
A preponderance of the courses I’ve taken in public and private school didn’t really want me to ask Grand Questions, or any questions for that matter. No teacher ever directly came out and explicitly stated that, of course; usually they stated just the opposite. But by the process of neuroception, it becomes clear to students that there are lots of reasons why asking questions is not a very good learning strategy in many so-called learning environments. And I have been guilty of this as much as anyone.
Neuroception, you may recall, is “threat detection without awareness.” It usually operates below conscious sensory experience and often is delivered through subtle feelings in the body. So, for example, in our Narrative Medicine class, when the attendee posed the Anais Nin question, first I thanked them. I did that because I know they’re very likely taking a risk. Next, I ever-so-slowly moved toward them as I did my best to respond (which can be difficult when you don’t know the answer). When I ask my own questions of teachers and they move away from me, I don’t end up feeling all warm, fuzzy and welcome inside. Finally, I told the truth – which in this case was I didn’t really know – while simultaneously addressing my stress by mindfully switching to awareness of my breath. Much of skillful teaching, for me at least, involves a lot of time spent consciously modulating arousal to insure that it doesn’t spike into hyper-arousal.
Ultimately, apart from whatever information anyone is seeking, how I respond to the questions people ask plays a profound role in whether or not they will continue to keep risking asking them.
My share on Facebook: “I can’t say enough about this post by Mark Brady, translator of social neuroscience. There are no words just now, simply “thought unknown” yet extremely appreciative, grateful, etc. …” felt sense.”
I resonate strongly with comments by Sandy & Kate and your replies.
All this is so critical in the mental/behavioral health field. It’s not uncommon for behaviors of people who use publicaly funded services to be labeled “learned helplessness.” I’m heartened when privileged to witness or to co-create environments for learning/practicing empowerment.
Recent inspiration and feedback cued me to the value of introducing the concept of inter-dependence as part of the continuum: dependency – co-dependence – independence – inter-dependence – one is all & all is one.
In the 1970s a friend supported me through a shame attack elicited by offering, “You can be pretty sure that if you have a question, at least 10 more usually do too, yet they’re too afraid to speak up.” I began to speak up more freely. Being perceived as a fire-brand has a different yet still terrible sting to it. In 2003 another friend supported me through a righteous indignation attack by asking, “Where was that cosmic diplomacy I’ve seen you use so well?” It ebbs and flows with the recognition of unconditional love. (Is that another term for clarity in processing energy and information?)
Blessings!
Hi Mark,
Now I REALLY wish I’d found a way to attend the class you and your friend taught on “The Art and Practice of Narrative Medicine!” I hope you’ll offer it again sometime…and perhaps as an online class?
I’m especially impressed that you began it by focusing on the need to be conscious of creating a ‘safe enough’ environment. I like to say ‘safe ENOUGH,’ because I don’t believe there is such a thing as total safety – learning always involves taking risks. In my experience few teachers understand just how important that is; few appear to have any awareness of it at all.
And encouraging collective vigilance among all the participants is, I think, particularly astute, as it encourages a greater sense of mutuality and shared responsibility for creating an emotionally safe ‘field’ of learning.
I certainly agree that ‘shame is the ANTI-Miracle Gro for the brain and body. I think it would be much less so if our culture were less phobic about even acknowledging the existence of shame, which makes it extremely difficult for anyone who has had shame-affect triggered in a learning environment…as it usually happens unexpectedly, and once triggered, interrupts all learning.
If the environment has ‘normalized’ the experience of shame as just as being as ‘normal’ a feeling as any other feeling, it would help the person experiencing it to process and metabolize the experience and ultimately to learn from it.
Since most environments in our culture rarely even use the word ‘shame,’ when someone does experience it, the lack of support for revealing it usually drives it underground. Sometimes so deeply underground that the person experiencing shame has no idea what’s going on: they just know they feel terrible, and terribly unsafe to reveal that they feel terrible…
I love your focus on keeping the learning environment ‘safe enough!’
Hi Sandy, Thanks for the kind words. I’m guessing you know that much of what I write about, especially in regards to teaching and learning, comes out of my own experience. Hanging out at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford as the maintenance man gave me a chance to observe some of the best and brightest, not only from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, but from many other schools and departments the whole world over. Needless to say, it all got me to thinking. Best, Mark
“Learn to see that it is not people, places or things that bother us, that we go out and bother them. See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and understanding.” ~ Ajahn Chah * Food for the Heart*
On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 10:45 PM, The Committed Parent wrote:
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Dear Mark, another great post! I am the student in class who always almost always asks questions. I am the kind of student that teachers love if they are secure, and hate if they are insecure. Over the years, I have learned to not ask questions so to not alienate the insecure teacher that I like a lot and want to befriend. One year, my sophomore year in high school, I took on several teachers in the school (I went to four different high schools, and this one was very bad and in a rural part of Florida many years ago). I would sit in the back of the classroom and take them apart with questions. It was hard for them and well, I was an angry teenager. When i got into college, my teachers loved me. I never understood why people are afraid to ask questions. I have to sit in my hands so that others will venture forth to ask. I always appreciate those who brave the classroom like I do. And usually, I make fast friends with these other brave souls. Some teachers try to shame me when I ask questions. That works to shut me down. I feel very self conscious. I was very shamed for my audacious self and my deeply inquisitive mind when I was a child. It is so sad. I still have to struggle with this today, at 51. I recently had a teacher tell me that I “have an edge” when I ask questions. I did not sleep that night. But when other students in the class and the co-teacher noticed I was no longer asking questions and the teacher who told me I had an edge apologized to me, telling me he missed my questions, I felt better. Still, I am hesitant in this class. That comment stopped my flow of questions. Shame is so toxic.
Thanks again.
Hi Kate,
Thanks for sharing this experience(s). I’m sorry that you had to encounter this kind of meta-process in school. Unconscious shaming goes on a lot in my experience. It’s the anti-Miracle Gro for the brain and body. It’s particularly disorganizing for immature neural networks which haven’t had the chance to build out robust self-regulatory structures. You might give some thought to how you might work to skillfully restore that which has been compromised in you! Any ideas?
XOXOX Mark
“Learn to see that it is not people, places or things that bother us, that we go out and bother them. See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and understanding.” ~ Ajahn Chah * Food for the Heart*
On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 6:11 AM, The Committed Parent wrote:
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