Dr. Kenneth Silvestri
Psychotherapist | Certified Homeopath

We all think about making changes, whether it be dieting, new year’s resolutions, relationships or a myriad of desires to alter life's challenges. This brings up the proverbial question; how did the consequences of your efforts relate to what you wanted to change?

Pushing back when one is pushed is a cultural habit that stops us from recognizing different ways to minimize conflict. Gregory Bateson described this process as "schismogenesis” which means creating a division. It can take a “complementary” form or behavioral one e.g., the arms race resulting in escalating outcomes as each side attempts to improve their advantage. 

We all agree that there are mental and physical benefits from attaining happiness. Don’t get me wrong, being happy, awestruck, optimistic and positive has real value. Yet, it is important to start by recognizing that the word e.g., "happiness" is not the "thing," like the map is not the territory. If this is not understood, it can lead to frustration or happiness interruptus.

In honor of April's designation as Poetry Month, I would like to share what I have experienced using poetry for my own solace and with others in my practice of psychotherapy. Poetry is an aesthetic segue to sharing personal narratives beyond certain cultural constraints. There is always a tension between our natural abilities of intuitive thinking and how we are forced in many instances to deny that capability.

I would like to share a process from my forty years of practicing systemic therapy that has enabled me to help those who want to create “differences that make a difference,” as the late anthropologist Gregory Bateson would say. It is not a model or map, which lacks context, but a guide to better experiencing traveling your unique journey.

Life is full of paradoxes, the source of humor, enlightenment, and, unfortunately, unenviable double binds. As an example, Partner A asks Partner B, "Do you love me,?" Partner B responds, "Yes," Partner A says, "Why do I have to ask you?"

A commonly held belief about being mindful in our relationships, attributed to Zen philosophy, is to have a "beginner's mind," especially when dealing with conflicts. This is no easy task, given that we are dealing with a multitude of increasingly adversarial standoffs threatening us and our world. Most individuals try to avoid conflict, or at the least view it negatively.

My poem at the beginning of this article was motivated by the inspiring Unpsychology magazine’s summer 268-page issue about warm data. I highly recommend it (free download: https://www.unpsychology.org/). Included in this issue is an article of mine that is a response to the shared concerns of many families I am counseling, as well as my own social networks.* It addresses the many hurdles facing us regarding the intense polarization in our society, for which there seems to be little solution.

"IF YOU CAN RELATE TO OUR WORLD being an ecological process, one

where we and all non-human entities are interdependent, then it makes sense

to view the totality of nature as more than the sum of its parts — all have a

role in supporting our planet. Yet at Public School in Paterson, NJ, I was

taught that the whole was merely equal to the sum of its parts."

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Anyone who wishes to download (for free) the whole 268 page issue, please use the link below.

In the mid-1970s, when I was a doctoral student in Columbia University's graduate program of Family and Community Studies (Anthropology and Psychology), my original research proposal was on how mindfulness and creativity can enhance relationships.

After 50 years of facilitating communication as an educator, therapist, and community organizer, I have witnessed many contexts where people merely maintain and/or sabotage relationships. Being a systems thinker interested in helping make a difference, I look for the relationships between those in any social system that may be experiencing discord.

I am currently seeing an increasing interest with friends and those I work with to revisit family narratives. In my practice for the past forty years (which I recently figured out consists of over 50,000 sessions with several thousand individuals), I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to be part of facilitating many profound family narratives.

In this collection of poems and images, Cat Weaver, Ken Silvestri, and Natasha Rabin explore the enchantment trains can bring. Trains share in the big and small events of people's lives, and remembered moments in them are depicted here as haunting, bittersweet, quietly nostalgic, and gently comic.