Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 18
16
Practices of externalization and naming helped her to start defining and
advocating for a counterstory for a preferred life, but admittedly, “SelfDestruction” was viciously dangerous and opposed every small step she took
towards choosing her own way.
Joanna wanted to work on a life story of Self-Care, but “Self-Destruction” fought
against her and raged for weeks on end, commanding her to mutilate her body. I
found her suffering unbearable to witness. She was hospitalized, sutured,
shouted at by hospital staff for harming herself, medicated, given
electroconvulsive treatments, and discharged with a bag of psychotropics. Then
once again, we would resume our therapeutic conversations.
It was nightmarish for me to witness. I cannot imagine what it was like for her to
live through this horror. I was witness to a slow and dedicated destruction by a
set of societal belief systems that brainwashed this brilliant woman and convinced
her that she was as useless as a discarded rag doll on the ash heap of life.
This was the period in which SS was revealed: her true nemesis. SS is self-sacrifice.
Somehow, SS even demanded sacrifice from Joanna for the historical deplorable
treatment of fellow South Africans before Apartheid. Many South Africans of my
generation and the younger ones, like Joanna, still feel this residual guilt about
the atrocity that was Apartheid. SS used our guilt and shame against her,
accusing her of being worthless and a failure and an idiot to still be alive while so
many of her country members suffered and were still suffering. A “New South
Africa?” BAH! Hundreds had no food to eat; how dare she eat to satiety? She
should sacrifice herself and preferably starve to death.
SS would whisper in her ear: “You know as well as I do, Joanna, there will be a
lovely funeral with flowers and candles and holy songs and a beautiful eulogy and
then it's over. Then it is you and me forever.”
There were these low times, when I was on the brink of losing hope, when
Joanna’s creativity took over and challenged SS in expressions of art and poetry to
express her belief in her right to live.
“I am not going to roll over and die!” she’d exclaim.
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 5-44.
www.journalnft.com
