Training Concluded

[Above photo: Dogs draped on the stairs of the Doi Suthep Mountain monastery (at 1650 meters) after a hot day. Were they straying monks in a past life?]

16 April 2023

I have concluded the course. I had a fine time and learned a lot, as did the students. During our final wrap-up, one of the students said it was the happiest two weeks of her life. Others expressed their appreciation and desire to continue learning about working with children and families. Yet another noted that my opening exercise, in which I asked them each to sequentially make an animal sound for a minimum of 10 seconds, helped her to relax and join in the emerging group formation. I also asked each of them say something about who they were and requested that they write for 10 minutes about what they wanted to get out of the two weeks. I howled like my daughter’s dog, Oscar, when he’d hear a siren. Everyone participated amid mild embarrassment and laughter and we were off.

We developed into a safe and supportive group. For me, it was akin to living in a sorority house without the anxiety and backbiting competition. Women wandered around in pajamas, bathroom doors (and we had, I believe, 8 bathrooms) were open while faces were being washed and teeth brushed. I maintained good boundaries and everyone seemed pretty relaxed.

In a bit of good luck, we secured a Burmese woman who was concerned about her 8yo son. Complicating the relationships were that the father is in the military, the mother is in strong opposition to the military coup, and they are divorcing. The boy and mother came 4x; the father is still in Burma.  One of the students saw the child in play therapy while the other interviewed the mother. Both did remarkably sophisticated work. We set up a phone-camera and live-streamed and recorded the play sessions via Zoom with a computer upstairs where we all watched. The morning following each session we spent a couple of hours discussing the parent and child interviews, the latter assisted by the video-recording. It was a crucial addition to the workshop and provided wonderful teaching/learning moments. And the mother noted on the last day that her son’s aggression had decreased markedly; he really melted into the relationship with the therapist.

One of the activities of daily living I enjoyed was to refill our 6 litre jugs at the Asia Water Reverse Osmosis machine on the road just 50 feet from our entrance. For 5 Thai baht, about 1¢, I could quickly and conveniently refill 2 of them, sparing the world from the plastic junk caused by drinking from large numbers of small individual bottles. I bought a funnel for a few pennies so we could easily refill the small bottles.

Because of recent Thai visa restrictions for the Burmese, half of the participants departed for Myanmar on the morning following the last day of training. I took the others for a cool drink that afternoon at Fern Forest, a lovely, tree-shaded patio restaurant. The owner was a pastry chef, so we ordered 4 deserts to split, along with our passion fruit/mango smoothies or whatever. The deserts were so good we ordered a few more and then we all skipped supper!

In the spirit of being flexible, I have re-routed my trip. I’ll now visit my friend Kelly in Laos for 5 days. I’ve never been to Vientiane and am told it is small and lovely, set beside the mighty Mekong River, with wonderful coffee and French-inspired food. Then I’ll fly to Mai Sot on the Burma border, as planned, to help 2 therapists work with some refugee-camp children and their parents. Finally, I can change my plane ticket at no charge and may go to the Similan Islands for snorkeling for a few days before returning to Chiang Mai to house- and animal-sit for Jose and Irene through May while she looks for an apartment to buy in Glasgow and he returns to Pittsburgh to see his 90 yo father who has Parkinson’s Disease and seems to be on the verge of passing.  While I want to get home and see everyone there, they are in a quandary about how to care for their dog and 2 cats for 3 weeks. Their place is lovely, there will be a new motor scooter (with helmet) and a swimming pool, and I can enjoy the area as the air clears from the rice and corn-field burning.

My additional motivations are to use the time to do some writing and to arrange to speak with people here at Chiang Mai University Faculty of Medicine about how I may be of use to them were I to return here twice a year.  Jose is multitalented, being an entrepreneur, an attorney, and having many years of experience leading humanitarian organizations in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. He suggests that mental health donor organizations won’t give to individuals but are happy to give to someone either backed by a university or who has a private business. The latter is possible, as there is an “amity clause” in Thailand allowing US citizens-only to wholly-own a business here. Every other business must be at least 51% Thai-owned. I might start “Psychotherapy Training and Consulting Ltd” or some such. My interest is covering my expenses and allowing me to run a few workshops a year, training therapists to work with children, adolescents, and their parents. Who knows? It is fun to think forward and to have a project.

My sister-in-law, Susan, and I have been communicating about the extreme polarity in our country. She hit the nail on the head for me when she noted that the Base “feel disempowered, unheard, and helpless to maintain the values they believe are important.” I’ve known that but somehow its truth struck me and how those who have little education and/or few job skills likewise must feel frightened about their economic futures. There are many other, often cultural, elements, as well, of course. “Jews will not replace us.” Negative references to Black, Brown, and LGBTQ persons. And the adulation of someone who seems so unmoored from any commonly accepted morality and for whom honesty isn’t a serious consideration. All of us do have to hold our tongues and try to listen to what is beneath the surface or we’ll further self-destruct, as we seem to be doing currently. Nevertheless, we must regularly confront dishonesty and corruption when we observe it.

Appropos, it did give me some schadenfreude to learn of Representative Cameron Sexton’s deceptions re. his place of residence and charging $90,000 plus change to the taxpayers of Tennessee for a regular commute he never made. He, as the Speaker of the Tennessee House, recently led the effort expelling two Black legislators who disrupted House business in order to lead a call for gun control after 3 children and 3 adults had been killed in Nashville by a shooter with a military-style AR-15. “Our thoughts and prayers” indeed. Politicians are a singular lot.

While there are some conflicting statistics, confounding variables, and strong opinions, it seems pretty clear, and is common sense, that restricting gun ownership decreases the number of gun deaths. We, the only country in the world where there are more privately-owned guns than the number of people (including infants), are in the thrall of some craziness about it.  Gunshot is the leading cause of death of children and adolescents in this country. In 2020 over 45,000 people in the US died of gun violence, surpassing the number dying in automobile accidents, despite the billions of miles driven.  The Vancouver, BC-Seattle gun study offers strong evidence in favor of the restriction of gun ownership. During our prior assault weapons ban the annual number of deaths from mass shootings averaged 5.3; after the ban was lifted, it rose to an average of 25. While the majority of gun deaths (54% in 2020) are suicides, 1/3 of murders by gunshot are of a family member, at times inadvertently. 85% of suicide attempts with a firearm are fatal, whereas only about 15% of suicide attempts by other means are fatal. And on and on. Want to shoot a deer? A 30-30 or a 30.06 is your best companion, not a semi-automatic military-style weapon. You might want to give the Bambis a sporting chance and use a bow and arrow!  

Of course, Armalite, Colt, Daniel Defense, Wilson Combat, Larue Tactical, Ruger, Winchester, Remington Arms, and others are making money hand over fist selling AR-15-style and other weapons and would likely reject (without solid evidence) the entire above paragraph using their industry mouthpiece, the National Rifle Association. It seems to me to be a pretty strange “hobby”, collecting guns designed not for hunting but primarily to kill humans.

After my (and my daughter’s, I confess) dog, Oscar (op cit) died, I continued the walking circuit we’d used for years. It went up and down series of poorly lit staircases in the South Berkeley foothills. I’d do it in the evening before bed, as I did with Oscar. One evening I felt apprehensive since it was dark and there was no one else about so for the following evening’s walk I carried my French Opinel wood-handled folding picnic knife in my pocket. The entire time I worried if I could get it out, unfold it, and twist the metal blade-lock in order to ward off an attacker. It ruined my walk. I realized that carrying it made me think a lot more about being accosted, which I never was. I stopped carrying a weapon. I wonder if those who keep their guns at the ready—For what use is a gun if not at the ready?—trouble their journeys through this life with unnecessary worry.