From Hulp To Hope

Do you ever feel the urge to cry out, but swallow it back down instead? That specific, lonely feeling when you want to howl but it feels pointless, so you gulp it down instead — and there's no one to reason out your sadness, your guilt, your fear with.

This episode maps the journey from that swallowed feeling all the way through to hope using the unexpected power of poetry to witness, name, and navigate what we're really going through.

In this episode:

• Why we need our own vocabulary,  and how making up words can be the first act of self-understanding
• The Frustration Triangle: the three places we instinctively go when change gets hard: blamer, self-shamer, or up-you-gamer
• What's really underneath blame 
• How writing your shitty first draft of emotions can unlock the vulnerable wound hiding behind the vitriol
• What happens when someone who harmed you never takes accountability  and how we end up turning that inward
• Why the blank page is the perfect therapist: it doesn't answer back, doesn't charge you anything, and never fails to witness

Creators and Guests

Host

Jacky Power

What is Words in the Wilderness?

Words In The Wilderness is a podcast for changemakers, cycle breakers, and anyone tired of flatlining their existence with "fine." Hosted by Jacky Power, the Therapeutic Poet, each episode uses poetry as a foundation for exploring the wobbly, lonely terrain of becoming — of unlearning and unlayering — whether you're leaving a relationship, finding your voice, or simply learning that "I matter" is a truth, not an opinion.

Sometimes with guests bringing professional insight or lived experience, sometimes raw and personal, this isn't a podcast about five steps to fix yourself. You're not broken. Your feelings are wisdom to decode. It's about having a cheerleader in your pocket when the path gets lonely and everyone else is questioning your choices.

for brave souls who've
awakened to their truth
and are now navigating the
wilderness of
transformation

Jacky (02:17)
Welcome to Words in the Wilderness. I want this place to be a bit of a soft landing for you as you're encountering change because all change can be a bit of a bumpy ride and I'm calling this episode Help to Hope not just because I am a ridiculous fan of alliteration but also because I think

When we're making changes in our lives through decisions that aren't always popular, through terrains that can feel bewildering, it can be hard to keep going. It's important to have something to be focused on to help you have that motivation to keep on persevering, to have hope.

So I'd love to share with you today a time when I made some changes and it didn't work out as planned and how I used words to help me not only put a sense of shape and meaning around what I was experiencing, but also to find a pathway through by using words to help reflect, get honest with myself and reframe what I was going through.

to move as Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy say in their book, The Gap and the Gain, to move from the gap to the gain. So you know, nowadays there is so much of our experience that has been reduced to this shorthand that we hear of, it's bad for my mental health, which really doesn't tell you much about anything.

And I think we need vocabulary to help us make sense of things, to find meaning in what's going on. And that's why I invented the words hope, howl gulp combined. That feeling when you want to howl out, but it feels pointless. So you gulp it down.

and there's no one to reason out your sadness, your guilt, your fear with. So you feel incredibly lonely. And I love this idea of mixing words together to really reflect our feelings because the truth is when we feel something, it's rarely one linear feeling, but often a mixture. And my experience is that this is true for other people too, because when I've run workshops, they've come up with their own words to name their experience, like shrie, a shout and a cry, or.

or shrage, a shout and rage, or tremiver, tremble and shiver.

So already this is how words can help us by making up our own to reflect our own unique human experience and I think that's what poetry is really doing, helping us transcribe our human experience as closely as possible so others can hold our experience in their hands, in their minds and turn it over, explore it and understand it.

So I'd love to share a poem with you that I wrote to help me work through some things. I wrote this poem after being in a situation where someone was upset with me, understandably. I knew that they were upset. I knew that I had reasons for doing what I'd done, but that my justification was of no interest to them. They just wanted to blame me for feeling the way that they did.

Blame is one of the places that we go to when we're frustrated, often when we're making change, right? And I'll explain the frustration triangle in a moment. But first I want to share what I wrote because where we're left jangling with the emotions that blame brings, having somewhere to put it matters. And the great thing about poetry is that it activates both sides of your brain, the left logic, language, structure, and the right emotion, imagery.

sensory experience. So writing a poem is a great way to integrate and narrate our experience and it can give language to the confusion that we can have and when we name it we can regulate it. This sounds like a Blue Peter episode, name it to regulate it. So this is what came out. I woke up

with a war in my head about something I imagined that someone said and it felt so unjust. I was misunderstood. Could they not see that I just meant good? I imagined that they said to so-and-so about how I did such and such a while ago and wasn't that wrong and wasn't that bad. It didn't that make them just plain mad. So I wrote down to write about these terrible happenings that happened to happen in my morning imaginings.

Now I'd love to say that writing that poem cleared everything up neatly, but it didn't. But what it really did was show me something. Because when I read it back, I could see that I was busy being wronged and I felt that sort of sense of injustice, but also kind of how the details didn't matter.

that really being able to write it within a poem, it wasn't about fixing anything, it was about witnessing, just witnessing how I felt. And I think that that is a really rare occurrence nowadays.

So I've mentioned the frustration triangle. Let me explain a bit about that because I think it's really useful thing to understand when we're through change, when we're going through change, we're likely to meet with frustration. And when we're frustrated in a situation, we can move to one of three positions. And of course, these positions rhyme because it's easier to understand. We can be a blamer, a self-shamer or an up-you-gamer.

Now, I don't have time to talk through all three today, but I do want to tell you about the Blamer role and specifically about a time when I was very much in that position and I didn't even really realize it. And that's when a few years ago, I went to a literary festival with my short stories called Fake News Fairy Tales, where I'd taken traditional fairy tales and told them from perspectives of characters that you've never heard of, like Mattress Mick, the mattress seller in Princess and the Pea.

I was really enthusiastic, I was really under-researched, and I went from agent to agent. I went to three agents. First one said they were too confusing, second one said they were too unoriginal, and the third one said that they were just not worth the bother, and to go back to my day job. And at the time...

I did all the right things. I smiled, I thanked them, I was very professional. But on the train home, I felt really that sense of injustice that often is underneath when we blame people.

So I decided to write a poem because my first reaction was one of blame and indignation. And I love what Anne Lamott says. You know, she says about writing your shitty first draft, but she's talking about the first time you write something and just let it be rubbish. And I adapt that to emotion. So write your shitty first draft of your emotions.

So this is the poem that I wrote. I get it. You're clever. Well done. Whilst I swing my way through an obvious rhyme, your deep meaning, brain-steaming, prize- gleaming poems last and last and last on published paper.

approved by agents and editors and maybe a reader or two. I didn't want a book deal anyway. Now writing that poem

let me be non-accepting, let me not have perspective, let me just be bitter and vitriolic and full of jealousy and self-pity. And that's the gift of poetry because I could write that, I could let that part of me really write it all down and through doing that I could witness it and realise that the blame that I was directing at other people who did have it

all together who were getting success was really about the wounds that I had underneath, how those agent rejections had hit a shame wound of mine, an old wound from the past where I'd learned that my voice didn't matter, that shame, my creativity was risky and that I needed to be perfect to be acceptable.

It was like the blame, this vitriol was standing guard at the door, keeping me away from that real vulnerable feeling underneath. And this is how the frustration triangle works. When we're frustrated and something isn't going the way we want, we instinctively move to one of these three positions. The blamer saying it's their fault. Those agents didn't understand me. The system is broken. If only they change, everything would be fine. And the self-shamer, no, it's all my fault.

and the up your gamer, I just need to work harder and then I'll get it all. But underneath that, underneath when I was in that blame position, was really this vulnerability of wanting them, the agents to take accountability for seeing my potential and championing me. I wanted them to help me feel like I mattered,

Blame shows up when we want someone else to take responsibility and sometimes that is absolutely well founded but sometimes the responsibility is ours to hold. On writing that poem I realized what was going on and I realized that actually I wanted to write poetry but I hadn't allowed myself to be accountable enough.

to say that to other people, to write my poetry, because I was afraid that my poetry wasn't proper, it wasn't serious enough, and my achieving part, the part that needs that external validation, had dismissed doing what I love, because it wasn't necessarily going to win awards. And only that I've been trying to fit myself into a box.

in writing in a certain way that wasn't mine, it allowed me to sort of give myself permission to do what I really loved. And from that, I went on and wrote one one woman show and another show that I then took to Edinburgh and then a third show, which I did last year. None of that would have happened if I'd stayed in blame. Now, so far,

I've shared how we can use poetry to reason out when people blame us and we're left jangling with the emotions that brings and when we're frustrated and we blame others when it's not really their fault. But what happens when someone has acted shamelessly and they do need to take accountability and they don't? Because this actually can lead to our own self-rejection, which sounds a bit crazy, but

If we think about it right, we care, we care about the way that we've been harmed and we want that person to take account, but they don't. And so we turn it in on ourselves and think, if only I could be okay with this or, you know, I I really despise myself for caring when they don't care.

And if this is the case for you, I hope you can understand this dynamic a little because I think a lot of people, particularly people who've had to leave situations, relationships, families that were doing harm to them, carry this. They got out and they're still somehow carrying the weight of it. They're still circling and looping. And I want to share with you a poem that I wrote as a way to witness.

Like I said at the beginning, you know, this idea of a hulp is when we've had those painful moments and then the worst bit is that they are not witnessed by someone else. And that is when we can feel incredibly alone. But we can come back to a poem. Come back to our writing as a way of witnessing ourselves.

And this is a poem that I wrote for myself. I actually wrote it on Christmas morning after I had left important relationships that still left me jangling. And I was not wanting to blame anymore.

because it doesn't get you anywhere a lot of the time when people aren't going to take accountability or responsibility. So where do you put those feelings? I put them into a poem and this is it.

When you wake up and lay in bed and part of your heart is as heavy as lead, not for the loss of what was, but for what could have been if you'd have felt heard and honoured and seen and that gap in your mind that gets left behind that circles and loops to try and find the alternative route, that different way that possibly could have helped you stay.

as the could-nots and should-nots that fill your day as they circle once and they circle still as they loop and they turn against your will.

Hear this, you tried and that truly cannot be denied. Although they've labeled you ill or cruel or just plain mad or stupid or brainwashed or just plain bad. And as you pulled away, felt the increasing stranglehold as you fought to escape the family fold that folded you and split your soul. Have pride that you, you're you.

would not be denied and how in leaving you found a way to bring yourself home.

So that's what this episode is really about. It's an invitation. The next time you find yourself in blame, whether it's pointed at you, whether you're the one pointing, I'd love you to pause and get curious. What is it that you're wanting the other person to take accountability for? And is there any part of that, even a small part that is yours to hold? And then if you're willing, pick up a pen.

Let yourself write from that bitter place, that judgmental place, that angry place. Don't censor it. Don't make it nice. Write your bitterness poem. Just let it come out and then let it sit and percolate. Get curious about what other vulnerable parts are longing to be seen within.

And to help you get started, here are a few places you might begin with. So just pick whichever one, I don't know, just feels most aligned with you today. if you're in that jangling, having been blamed place, maybe start with, I woke up with a wall in my head. If you've been the one doing the blaming, start with.

and another thing. And if you're carrying something that was never witnessed, start with, I tried. Just let it all out. What are the younger, more tender parts of you there waiting to be seen?

The blank page is always there waiting to witness. Don't see it as something an invitation, like the perfect therapist. It's not answering back, doesn't charge you anything. It's a perfect reflection, a perfect container. And I think that through that witnessing,

it helps us to gain clarity, clarity about what we want, clarity about what needs have gone unmet. And when we have that clarity, we can start to have more of a goal and the goal is the cornerstone of hope. And when we have that goal and that understanding about

where we might need support, we have more of a chance of going out there and asking for it or finding it within ourselves. And when we have that, then we have agency. So then we have a goal and we have agency and those are two components for hope. the third component

by Charles Snyder, this is the hope theory, is a pathway to get there. And I think that tuning in through poetry, through writing, through expressing all of the parts of you is the pathway from hulp to hope. Thanks for listening. Until next time, take care and I'll see you soon.