Dr. James S. Gordon: “Here Are 5 Things You Need To Do To Become a Great Author”

The main empowering lesson is that trauma is going to come to all of us sooner or later. If it doesn’t come early in our lives, which it does to so many of us — so many Americans, and not just marginalized or economically disadvantaged people, but also middle and upper middle class people, have experienced what we now call “adverse childhood experiences” or ACES; and as many as one-quarter or one-fifth of US children have been sexually abused. There is this early life trauma. Then, there’s the trauma that comes from our families’ histories, especially if we’re members of groups that have been marginalized or discriminated against — which includes most of us here in the United States — where we’ve all come to escape from some kind of tyranny or famine, or, most benignly, to “find a better life.” We have to deal with the injustices our ancestors have experienced and how they may have inhibited us or made us ashamed of ourselves. Then, there’s the trauma of just living life — of feeling left out or bullied, of disappointing love affairs, rejections by colleges and jobs and our peers. Then, later in life there are divorces that come to at least half of those of us who get married, and the serious and potentially fatal illnesses that may come to any of us. And, whether or not we’ve faced these challenges, trauma will come toward the end of life as we deal with the inevitables of physical frailty, the loss of others dear to us, and our own impending death. All of us will experience trauma.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing James S. Gordon, author of The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma (HarperOne; September 2019). Dr. Gordon is the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, former researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, Chair of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, and a clinical professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

I grew up in New York City, and I was the kind of kid who, when somebody who was old and disheveled — now we would call them “homeless people” but we didn’t really have a name for them back then — would say to me, “Hey kid — want to hear the secret of the Universe?”, or “Let me tell you my life story”, I would say, “Sure!”.

That interest has continued and in some ways has been really important to my work as a doctor and a psychiatrist.

I discovered early on that these stories were not only interesting to me, but that my listening to their stories was helpful to the people who were telling them to me. Later, when I was 16 and read Freud’s Introductory Lectures, I understood that this was pretty much what psychiatrists did: they listened to people, helped them understand the stories of their lives, and used this understanding as a basis for helping their patients find solutions to their problems.

And that sounded really good to me. I wanted to be a doctor so I could help people on a physical level when they were going through crisis, and I loved the idea of specializing in psychiatry so I could focus on the stories of their lives.

The wonderful thing has been that, over the years, I’m still interested in these stories. I love meeting people and seeing that what they tell me and our relationship is helpful to them.

Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

The thing about doing the work that I do is that everyone’s story is interesting. That’s why I became a doctor and a psychiatrist — because I was interested in each person’s story and had learned that listening to people’s stories could be helpful to them.

Some stories, however, are such clear examples of what is possible for human beings — and those are the ones that affect me the most and stick with me the longest.

One of these stories — which I also tell in The Transformation — is of Azhaar, the 9-year-old girl in Gaza who lost her father in the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel. When Azhaar began a group with me and the Palestinian teachers we had trained, she did drawings — which we always do in the first group. In the drawing of her “biggest problem” Azhaar drew her father’s bloody body on the ground, and her two uncles next to him and her aunt a little bit further away — all 4 of them had been killed in the war. She drew her house with stones falling off it, while overhead there were Isreali planes flying. Azhaar drew herself as a tiny stick figure in a lower corner of the page with a turned down mouth.

When she drew the “solution” to this problem of loss, she drew herself in the grave with her father. “The only answer to my problem,” she said, “is for me to die and be with my father.”

After 9 groups, learning the techniques that I teach in The Transformation and that the teacher who led her group in Gaza taught her and the other 7 children who had lost their fathers, Azhaar drew another set of pictures. This time, when she drew herself she was a big girl in a skirt with curls and a smile on her face — and there was an arrow coming out of her chest going through a heart; and on the heart it said “I Love Nature” in English, a language she was learning in school. In this drawing, the arrow was heading to this big beautiful green tree. Then, in the next drawing, the one of who she “hoped to be,” she drew herself as a doctor with a stethoscope around her neck and its resonator on the chest of a “patient” on her “examining table.” “I am a heart doctor,’’ she said, “and I am taking care of Gaza patients whose hearts were hurt in the war.”

The difference between the two sets of drawings — the one in the first of 9 mind-body groups where she learned the techniques I’m teaching, and the one at the end — was simply amazing. Azhaar had gone from being killed by Israelis and joining her father in death as her only hope, to becoming a doctor and helping the people of Gaza. The girl with a broken heart had become a heart doctor, helping others heal from their pain and loss.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I’m not exactly sure what a “mistake” is. There is a wonderful quote from the great trumpeter Miles Davis. An interviewer asks Miles a similar question,“What happens if you play a wrong note?” And Miles looked at the interviewer, and says, “I’m not so sure what’s a wrong note or what’s a right note. In fact, it’s the next note you play that makes it a wrong or a right note.” As I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate this.

But here’s one I remember, more a well-struck blow to my pride than a mistake. During my first rotation as a 3rd year medical student in psychiatry, I thought I was really hot stuff. Unlike the residents who were so preoccupied with diagnosing the patients and weren’t really listening very carefully, I felt I was really tuning into them, entering their world respectfully.

I remember this one woman who was hospitalized and diagnosed as bipolar who didn’t want to talk about her problems at all. I learned that she was an illustrator by profession and encouraged her to communicate with me through her drawings. My resident thought that by not forcing her to speak in words about her problems, I was allowing her to “resist” psychotherapy. I thought he was being a dogmatic jerk. I was very proud of myself for communicating with her in the language that she preferred.

After a week or two, it was time for a senior psychiatrist to interview my patients and I thought, “Well, he’s not likely to do any better than I have done.” And lo’ and behold, he not only found out that she was an illustrator, but also discovered that she was a tap dancer! He was an older black man, one of the few black faculty at Harvard at the time, named Charles Pinderhughes. He said to my patient, “Well how about showing me a few of your steps?” So the two of them got up, and they danced together and the woman totally came alive! And I realized, “Yeah, I was doing a pretty good job, but that, obviously, doesn’t mean I’ve cornered the market on expertise or wisdom or on the ability to connect.”

I try to keep that lesson in mind — that I can always learn as well as teach.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

In recent years, the work we’re doing at The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) has become better known. The research is impressive, and so are the articles about our work, in places like The New York Times. What many people have come to see is that we at CMBM have the capacity to work with whole communities and to help them heal from massive psychological trauma — whether from war, climate-related disasters, or school shootings.

What’s really exciting is the growing understanding that the self-awareness, self-care, and group support we offer are not just for individuals or small groups of people but are appropriate for entire communities; that this is the basic education that everyone needs.

This growing understanding has opened the door to many new programs. One is in Broward County, Florida, where we were invited after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in February 2018, not only to work with the 3500 kids, and the teachers, and parents at MSD, but also with the whole county. And that’s what we’re doing, one step at a time — developing a program of trauma healing, stress management, and resilience building which we hope will eventually serve 270,000 kids and 30,000 employees.

And in Broward County and everywhere we go, we also create an opportunity for people who ordinarily don’t work together or don’t even trust one another, to come together to learn from us, and in the process grow in their understanding and appreciation of each other.

That outcome has encouraged countries that are going through terrible turmoil — for example, South Sudan, where warring factions are trying to form a new government and Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan where they’re dealing with returning ISIS fighters and their families — to invite us to come and help them. They are inviting us not only to work with individuals and groups, but also to help people understand each other better, maybe even to discover some measure of peace.

It’s this expansion of our work that’s especially exciting now.

What is the one habit you believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer? (i.e. perseverance, discipline, play, craft study) Can you share a story or example?

Well, it’s very generous of you to say I’m a great writer! I do believe I’m good and I’m getting better, and that’s what people who know me, and know my work, have told me. And that itself is an important understanding — that if I practice something, if I really work at it, I can get better.

I think what contributes to my “getting better” is writing something pretty much every day. Sometimes I’m working on a book, sometimes I’m working on an article, sometimes I’m just writing in a journal. But, pretty much every day I’m writing and I’m reading too, to enjoy and learn from writers I admire. There’s a wonderful quote by Flannery O’Connor who said, “There is no limit to the amount of re-writing that you can do!” I’ve taken that to heart as well.

Writing is a craft — sometimes an art — and you need to work at it. You also need to be ruthless. If I’m going to write, I need to set aside several hours with no interruptions. I leave my home and my office, I go to a coffee shop where nobody knows me and nobody is going to be asking me anything. I turn off my phone, and I just sit there for two or three hours and I do my best to work. And if I’m working on a book or an article, I try to do it every day.

Can you share the most interesting story that you shared in your book?

I think the one about Azhaar really covers this.

What is the main empowering lesson you want your readers to take away after finishing your book?

The main empowering lesson is that trauma is going to come to all of us sooner or later. If it doesn’t come early in our lives, which it does to so many of us — so many Americans, and not just marginalized or economically disadvantaged people, but also middle and upper middle class people, have experienced what we now call “adverse childhood experiences” or ACES; and as many as one-quarter or one-fifth of US children have been sexually abused. There is this early life trauma.

Then, there’s the trauma that comes from our families’ histories, especially if we’re members of groups that have been marginalized or discriminated against — which includes most of us here in the United States — where we’ve all come to escape from some kind of tyranny or famine, or, most benignly, to “find a better life.” We have to deal with the injustices our ancestors have experienced and how they may have inhibited us or made us ashamed of ourselves.

Then, there’s the trauma of just living life — of feeling left out or bullied, of disappointing love affairs, rejections by colleges and jobs and our peers. Then, later in life there are divorces that come to at least half of those of us who get married, and the serious and potentially fatal illnesses that may come to any of us.

And, whether or not we’ve faced these challenges, trauma will come toward the end of life as we deal with the inevitables of physical frailty, the loss of others dear to us, and our own impending death. All of us will experience trauma.

So that’s the first lesson, and it’s a crucial lesson to learn. It lets us know that trauma is not exceptional. It’s not apart from our lives. It is a part of our lives.

The second lesson that goes with this one is that it’s possible to move through trauma, to use the techniques of self awareness and self care that I teach in The Transformation, to learn from the situations that have traumatized us; to learn that we not only have the capacity to move through and beyond our trauma, but also to grow from it — to become better and more generous, and to discover greater meaning and purpose. Azhaar’s story is one of dozens in The Transformation that illustrate this, that show us that what the psychologists call, “post-traumatic growth” is possible.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming a bestselling author? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story about that that other aspiring writers can learn from?

The biggest challenge that I face is sitting down to write every day. And I have to say, it’s always hard! I got a glimpse of this as a kid, reading Letter to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke essentially said, “Only become a poet if there’s nothing else you can do.” And, in a way, I think the same is true of being a serious writer of any kind.

I think that everyone can benefit from writing down what’s going on inside and expressing themselves in words or through drawings or movement. These efforts help us express what’s often bottled up, hidden inside. They can give us clarity and relief. In The Transformation I encourage everyone to do this as part of their program of trauma healing.

But writing for other people is not only a challenge, it is, as Rilke implied, a burden and a mission. The psychiatrist who was my therapist in medical school reminded me of it. His name is Robert Coles, and he’s written 50 books and won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was, in many ways, a role model for me — as well as a lifeline and support in a difficult time. When I said to him, “Bob, I think I want to be a writer,” he looked at me and said, “A writer is someone who writes.”

I only write when I have something that feels urgent to say and share with others. I learned that from Bob, and I took it to heart.

Even with that, it’s still a challenge to get down to writing every day. The great and elegant writer Truman Capote was asked by an interviewer a similar question, “What’s the hardest part of writing?” And Capote said, “Beginning!” And the interviewer said, “You mean beginning a new book, or a story?” Capote replied, “No — beginning every day.” And I’m with him. That’s the biggest challenge.

Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?

I keep returning, over and over again, to the books that were most important to me as a young person.

Above all, I have to say The Odyssey and The Iliad. These majestic poems show, with so much subtlety and energy, a command of a wide world, a love of and gift for storytelling, and a sharp attention to individual psychology. Since I was 13, The Odyssey has been particularly important. It’s a great story about the journey that we’re all on, the journey of discovering who we are, of facing our fears and our losses, of discovering our connection with our parents and our families and finding our meaning and purpose. I go back to The Odyssey over and over.

I also read Dante over and over, deeply moved by his process of “transformation.” In fact, stories of transformation have always been important to me — the Greek myths, Ovid’s tales. I wrote my senior college thesis on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It’s all about people discovering themselves during the great storm created by Propsero, who’s a ruler and an artist, but also a shaman, a healer.

How do you think your writing makes an impact in the world?

Sometimes people tell me that books I’ve written have “saved [their] lives.” That’s so beautiful. My books gave them hope that change was possible, and the techniques that I taught helped them to make it a reality. I’ve heard that enough, so it keeps me writing during times when I’m struggling to find the words that I’m looking for.

I also think my writing and the techniques I teach are useful in particular ways. They help many people feel and accept all of their emotions; gives them meditative and imaginative tools to confront previously overwhelming fears and address and resolve problems that had been insoluble; enables them to discover who they are and to live more fully — more passionately and more compassionately.

I hope people who read The Transformation will enjoy and use and appreciate what I’m sharing. That’s what makes me want to continue writing.

My previous book, Unstuck, was about depression. And readers kept saying, “That’s great for depressed people, but many of the tools and techniques you teach could be useful for all of us. Why don’t you write a book for all of us?” And so, that’s what I hope I’ve done with The Transformation. I’ve written a book for everyone. Because trauma does come to us all.

What advice would you give to someone considering becoming an author like you?

Take a look at some of my responses above. Write if you really must, and if you don’t have anything you have to say, let it go until you do.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

This is a great question! My answer is that, in fact, people did tell me the things that I needed to know in the years when I “first started.” Those people were telling me things that I was beginning to discover for myself, but perhaps I could hear it better through their example or in their words. And sometimes I paid more attention — and sometimes less. And of course, occasionally, no matter how much attention I was paying, I forgot!

So here are five:

1.“You can do anything you want”

This is, interestingly, what my father told me about being a doctor. When I was 8 or 9 years old and he wanted to know what I wanted to be, I told him I wanted to be either a Rabbi or a farmer. And my father, who was a surgeon, bellowed at me in his usual sensitive way, “What the hell do you want to do that for?!” And I said, “Well, a Rabbi helps people — and I’d like to do that. And a farmer grows things and has animals. I like to grow things and I like animals!” And he said, “Why don’t you be a doctor? If you’re a doctor, you can help more people than any Rabbi, and if you want, you’ll have enough money so you can have your own farm. If you’re a doctor, you can do anything.” And in my little 8 or 9 year old mind, I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty good. I can do anything.” So I picked up on that, and I did become a doctor.

2. “Don’t take yourself so seriously”

When I was going through a really hard time after my second year of medical school — my girlfriend and I had broken up and I was feeling very alienated from medical school. I was in psychotherapy with Bob Coles, whom I mentioned before.

One day, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself and I saw on his desk pictures of these little black kids he was working with — Ruby Bridges is the best known — who were braving mobs to integrate the schools in New Orleans. And I said, “Those kids are so brave, and they’re dealing with so much bigger problems than I am.” And Bob looked at me, opened his eyes really wide, and said, “Oh, you have your problems too!”

I had to wake up and laugh at myself too. Why was I comparing? And why was I taking myself so seriously? This understanding broke the spell of my self-pity and self-deprecation.

3. “You can understand anybody”

Nobody told me this. But, when I was in medical school and going through my own difficulties, Bob recommended that I read Frieda Fromm-Reichmann — the great psychiatrist who was fictionalized in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden — and R.D. Laing, who worked with schizophrenic patients without medication. What they were showing me in their beautiful encounters with these patients was that it might be possible to enter anyone’s world, no matter how strange or “crazy” seeming their communications were.

I began to listen through ears that had been tuned up by Laing and Fromm-Reichmann and Harry Stack Sullivan, and others. And I discovered that I too could understand these people who were diagnosed as schizophrenics. Sometimes it was hard. I just had to pay attention, be open-minded, open-hearted, and patient.

4. A line from Bob Dylan — who has so many great lines — “Don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters.”

Dylan seemed to be saying go ahead, discover your own path but, at the same time, be careful and do what you have to do to make sure that you’re not stupid, or irresponsible — that you’re not doing anything that will unnecessarily leave you open to attack, criticism, or destruction.

I heard a similar message when Bob Coles quoted Jesus, “Be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.” It’s a variation on the theme. Don’t be a fool. Be kind but also be aware, understand what’s going on. These combinations — being tough and going one’s own way, and being kind and wise — have been very important to me.

I began to understand that if I wanted to do healing work with people, and expected to do it in my own way, to create “safe spaces” and work with people in respectful, kind, and tender ways, I had to first master the conventional way of practicing psychiatry and understand the science of it, and be good at that. I had to win the trust and respect of supervisors and bosses in order to claim the respect and be granted the freedom to move ahead in my own way.

5. And always there was the example of Victor Frankl whose book Man’s Search for Meaning I read when I was just entering med school. As an inmate in Auschwitz, Frankl had discovered that even in the most horrendous possible situations, it was possible not only to thrive but to become a better person than he had been before, to find his own meaning and purpose. “Suffering ceases to be suffering,” Frankl wrote, “when it finds a meaning.” I’ve tried to keep learning this lesson and others he discovered: that “love is the ultimate good to which man can aspire”, and that we need, always, to “say yes to life, in spite of everything.”

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think if I were 18 or 20 years old, I would probably be working to wake all of us up to the need to preserve, embrace, and celebrate the natural world which gave birth to us and sustains us, and is so terribly threatened right now.

Since I’m 77, I’m going to keep riding the wave of the movement that I have helped to create, one that’s already making a difference. That is, I’m going to focus on giving all the people I can the tools they need to understand and help themselves, and to appreciate and take care of one another. I’m going to keep working to create places of safety and self discovery — in groups and communities — where all of us can understand, without preaching, that we all are, as the Lakota people say, “each other’s relatives.”

I began 50 years ago, and have focused on it since 1991 when I started The Center for Mind-Body Medicine.

We are a movement. And bringing this movement into situations where we’re facing some of our greatest collective challenges — during and after climate-related disasters; after major episodes of violence in our communities; and in the wake of wars, poverty, and historical trauma — is what I want to be doing.

We’re creating the opportunity for large numbers of people to make these discoveries and begin to renew their lives and to share what they’re learning with one another. And as they do it, so many of them are overcoming the barriers — the political, ethnic, racial, age, gender barriers — that previously kept them apart, and isolated, and incomplete.

At The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, we’re leading that kind of movement — for self care and mutual understanding, and group and community support. We’ve trained close to 7,000 people now who, in turn, work with many hundreds of thousands of kids and adults here in the United States and around the world.

I invite everyone who is reading this to join us, to read The Transformation as the guidebook to their own wholeness and healing, to discovering who they’re meant to be and what they’re meant to do, to become part of this movement.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can look for me on social media, where I’m sometimes faithful, sometimes only sporadically present. I’m on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and you can read about what we’re doing at my website and on The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s website. You can also be in touch.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesgordonmd

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesgordonmd/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgordonmd

https://jamesgordonmd.com

https://cmbm.org/thetransformation

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspiring!