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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back. I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast, You Can't SAY THAT. Welcome back for part two of my conversation with psychodrama therapist Anath Garber.

[0:16] Anath Garber: Yeah, probably if he would just, if anybody ever acknowledged what they borrowed, or if they were genius, if they stole, uh it would be nice. But he was really such a generative person that people have one idea in their lifetime, make a fortune out of it, but you have 10,000. Um, then you give them away. Give them away, and people take it. And everybody knows what Gestalt is, right?

[0:44] Tonya Pinkins: What is Gestalt?

[0:45] Anath Garber: Oh, it's Fritz Perl's developed a method of therapy that he called Gestalt. It's it's a hole in German. Uh, but basically took one technique from psychodrama, the empty chair. The empty chair is a huge technique because you can project anything on the empty chair and face it. He decided there will be on this side protagonist, and here is antagonist, and they fight it, and that's it. That's it. It's easy to teach, it's you cannot do much damage even if you're not too good. And that was the whole thing. It that it's well more known than psychodrama, because it requires incredible skill, tons of studying. You have to have certain, you have to be a director, you have to be in a psychologist, you have to be in tune with a lot of stuff.

So, and like anything, a knife can do surgery and can do butchery. And the more sharp it is, the more dangerous it is, but at the same time, it's the more healing. I think this is a potent method, but one of the things that always terrified me in an open session, people would come, would see, I would run it at a very good psychodramatists. It's looking very simple. You put people on the stage, you tell them what to do. And then people, they would go back to college, direct something, and turn off the students forever. Just because they forgot to warm them up.

[2:12] Anath Garber: In the beginning of my career, I was working in New Jersey with a psychiatrist who I was very honored that I was running the group with him. I was like 20 something. And he could understand why when I run, everybody does what I asked them. When he runs, people don't do it. He just didn't notice the warm-up I was doing. So you be your mother. Well, she doesn't want to be a mother. If she sits there, she says, but why when I say, because by the time she gets up, she was already warmed up to be a mother. He couldn't see it. And you couldn't tell him. It took a lot of explaining. Like it wouldn't take much explaining to you. But warm up, why warm up? He's a psychiatrist. He says you do. That's how it goes, especially if he's a male.

Why? And you're a woman. You do it. And if you don't do it, it's called resistance. So you have a problem if you're not doing what he says. Not he didn't do what was required to get you to do. And then you call it a name, it's resistance. Now we'll work with your resistance, right? And there is a whole new development here, right? Well, if there is a resistance, you have to ask yourself what's happening. The deparation, it's not right for them to do it. There must be another way. And come here comes the spontaneity, right? Or you can go over and upload this is the most ridiculous direction you gave me. Yeah, and then they will tell you what's the right direction. People usually, if they if you warm them up to that state, the healing center, there's like a healing center in us, opens up and leads.

[3:58] Tonya Pinkins: It sounds like this kind of warming up that you talk about could be useful for some directors who don't have a sort of natural facility for that. Though I will say sometimes I've been directed by uh directors who are, you know, fresh out of grad school and they want to come in and do all these exercises, and I'm like, you know what? I'm a professional, I could do this job in my sleep. Why are you like treating me like a child? So I I I'm on two sides of it. On the one hand, I can see, okay, you know, this warm-up can help some people. And then for me, it was like, come on, this is not hard for me. I can I can drop into this. I don't, you know, I I can do it. I live, I can turn it on and off. I've been doing it for so long. That structure for me to step out of myself has been built over 50 years of doing this.

[4:44] Anath Garber: Yeah, so if he was more tuned in, he would say, Okay, you and you, you probably don't need it, but I think maybe other people, or if you feel that you need to join us, that would totally resolve your resistance. Maybe you want to do this exercise, but don't treat me like I really need it, and it's mana from God, you little schmandric.

[5:06] Tonya Pinkins: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be tuning into you, and you feel much more inclined to take the direction from him. But to be like that, it takes maturity.

[5:17] Anath Garber: Oh, oh, just some some people are natural tuner in. Uh maybe not. I I'm not so sure. I I I agree with that. Well, you know, one of the things that one of my guests I had yesterday, uh, Calindi E, who's uh a psychonaut, um, he explores entheogens and goes into other realms, and he was talking about how fear is the thing that gets in our way all the time. And I think a lot with directors, you know, if they don't feel like they know what they're doing, rather than just being able to admit, I don't know what I'm doing, they try to take command when they don't have it and don't recognize that we can see that you don't know what you're doing when you're pretending, you know. We see that I I think the way in which people are disrespectful of anybody, but particularly actors, is treating us like we're blind, that we aren't intuitive, that we can't read you no matter what your words are that you are saying. That we we can read what you what's going on no matter what the words are that are coming out of your mouth. That's what our gift is, that's what we're trained to do.

[6:24] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. Well, she just really brought this incredible point in such a beautiful way, because really theater should be the theater of truth. And if that person would come from a point of truth and say, you know, guys, you know a lot. I'm an obvious and I'm really scared, so I need your help. And then we want to help.

[6:47] Anath Garber: Yeah. And so the same thing with the therapist. Of course, it's easier when you um in the beginning, I used to smoke, so if I didn't know what to say, I listened. And God was gracious and gave me, you know, the next thing. But when I stopped uh smoking, uh, it meant I had to take a breath, take time, feel okay over not knowing until I knew. And I could actually say, you know, hold on, I really need to think this. Oh, wait a second. No, I think that will be better. Let's scratch this. Just it's actually truth is always the best. We just aren't raised to that, especially culturally today, you know.

[7:33] Tonya Pinkins: Totally. This is the the moment of deny, deny, deny. Oh lie. Call things something different. I mean, I I say, you know, they they call people of color minority people when we are the majority people on the planet. Um, even in the sort of BDSM context that the dominatrix isn't understood to be the servant. There's so many words that we use in our vocabulary that mean the exact opposite of what we're referring to.

[8:00] Anath Garber: Well, part of it, and then I want to say something because today it's the Martin Lodin King, but part of it is I don't know about anybody else, but I'm afraid to expose my vulnerability unless I'm in a safe environment. And I don't always feel everywhere safe, and I'm not even the most discriminated against person.

[8:22] Tonya Pinkins: No, that's true. I think we all are afraid to risk being vulnerable.

[8:25] Anath Garber: Yeah. So I put this corset, and I don't enjoy my life as much as I can. So it was time I preferred to do psychodrama than live my life. This is really bad.

[8:36] Tonya Pinkins: I find for me that um when I value a relationship with someone, I'm willing to risk being radically honest with them. And most of the time when I'm radically honest with people, I find out that they're not interested in that kind of relationship. So I know that these people are going to, I'm gonna have a very sort of artificial relationship with them because that radical honesty it shuts them down, it scares them, it offends them. Um and so, oh okay, we're not gonna have that kind of relationship. And then I know that when they ask me a question, I just give them a superficial answer of what I think they want to hear, because that's as deep as they're willing to go with me.

[9:19] Anath Garber: I actually don't know what exactly you mean by radical honesty, so I don't want to.

[9:24] Tonya Pinkins: Well, let me tell you what I mean. It's say, for instance, um, you and Nath asked me to do something, and um I like you and you're my friend, and I would like to do it for you for that, but it just doesn't feel right for me. And um I would just go, you know, it doesn't feel right for me. I can't, I I I I I can't, I can't, I can't do this. I understand I I could do this for you, but I can't do this thing you're asking for me. I can't do it.

[9:56] Anath Garber: That sounds like truth.

[10:00] Tonya Pinkins: Well, but uh the the other thing I could say is, oh gosh, thank you so much for asking me. I am so busy that day, but thank you for asking of me. Think of me again, okay?

[10:13] Anath Garber: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the polished, that's the polished answer.

[10:17] Anath Garber: A white lie that gives me the creeps, and it's really because there is dissonance between the verbal and the undertone, and it really is I can read that on anybody. That's for me. That was almost formulaic. But there are better versions of it. The only thing is, why do I when I get up, why do I feel like ah slimed? Do you feel slimed when someone does it to you? Something is like that. Which is really like when you want to understand the difference between spontaneity and impulsiveness, because how do you know whether it was a spontaneous act? Now, the way you said it was spontaneous. It came from within. You really, I could see you were sensing this. I'm ready to do this, just does not feel right.

Just it I could sense it, it tends to came from, and I almost want to say that's okay. There is no problem. I want to okay, so it and I in my spontaneity was there. An impulsive thing is unfortunately, you know, after the fact. Um, because after the fact you don't feel good. Because you did it only with part of yourself, so the other part comes to attack. I look at you, suddenly it's like a slight slimy little thing, or something like that. So that is the difference. And I think that's a big a big thing for actors. Um one of the things that I I try to do when I'm teaching my students, I feel like my my teaching is often a lot of psychodrama. And and and a lot of parenting um is, you know, until you get to college, and if you get the privilege of going to college, like a lot of people don't get that privilege, like you are somebody's property, and and you have to do what they want you to do, and your tastes are their tastes, because you don't have a choice.

If you get the bridge of college, college is this time where you get these training wheels where you get to go, oh, I don't have to do it the way my parents did it. I can see how this works. Ooh, no, don't like, and you get this training wheel period of trying to figure it out for yourself. Because then you gotta go out into the world and you gotta define your day. And how do you define a day when there's no rules, no structure, and you could do whatever you want to do? I think most people just follow the rules that they learned all along rather than being brave enough or even having the consciousness enough to know I can do it anyway. I can do it ways I don't know how. Most people don't even take that stretch in their consciousness to think I can do something that I don't even know how to do, or that's never been done before in my family or that I've never seen.

I, you know, I wish that for people that they could have that kind of Yeah, well, I think that most people don't even have the freedom to be themselves. They just actually don't know what it is to be themselves. Actually, it takes a lifetime to figure out who you are. So this like baby step, what you freak. Well, some people are lucky to come from a family that encourages it. Not too many. You know, but I have to say, I encouraged my children to be themselves. I didn't ask them to be anything, I didn't give them a religion. And when I tell my son things like, you're a genius, he gets mad. He gets mad. I said, Why are you getting mad? Why does it make you so upset for me to say because I like reality?

And I'm like, Well, why is your reality more real than my reality? In my reality, you're a genius. So why do you want your reality where you're not? But is it a question or an accusation? He takes it as an I mean, like me calling him a genius is an insult. It's an attack. It's like I'm trying to gaslight him or pull the wool over his eyes. Because I'm kind of wondering why would that upset him? Is it that then you have such expectations and you such an accomplished person that wow by Kong Genius, now I have to live up to that. Oh God, give me a break. I want to be normal. Maybe, maybe. But that would be a nice psychodrama. Right. What do you mean when you say a genius? Is there an agenda there?

You know, in your vision. And does he have sense some agenda that you don't even know that you have the agenda? It now it is, it be, you know, at the end you'll think, oh my God, I didn't know all that about my son, and he didn't know all that about me. Oh, yeah. I really always felt that actually psychodrama is the mostly needed for actors. Because they have this part used for this, the part used for that. But who they are outside, it's usually they don't know who they are.

[15:08] Tonya Pinkins: For me, I used to always, I couldn't sing unless I was in a character. For me, singing was the most naked and vulnerable thing that I did. And so I needed to have a character or role to hide behind to do it. And if someone just wanted me to get up and just sing as Tanya, I would try to get out of that in any way I could because that was just too naked and vulnerable. I mean, over time I've gotten to the point where I can do it sometimes, but it's still a very naked thing for me. And I don't like to do it very often. Like it is uh it is an effort for me to come and sing as Tanya. Yeah. Um it's you know, it's funny, I was thinking years ago. Um, years ago, I used to get all these cases, nobody wanted to treat, and I was very excited because it was like breaking my head.

And it was the guy who started. I wrote a paper about it, it's still, it's 30 years later, people still use it. Of course, people don't stutter when they sing. They never started when they sing. But in the course of the when he he stopped stuttering, but the pivotal session was when he discovered what was what stuttering, what function stuttering was for him. He he was hiding himself behind his stuttering. So instead of speech being a communicative thing for me, all the the way he was frustrated, he kind of ingeniously put it on you by frustrating. You know how frustrating it is. So once he discovered that from then on, he could recover. So I'm thinking, okay, there is some drama about the uh that your own voice cannot, the beautiful singing voice can come from a role, but from you no, there is something behind it. There is a drama behind it.

[17:04] Anath Garber: Yeah, there is definitely something behind it. I probably will not find it out in this life. I mean, like you may. Someone taught me this uh the Spanish song Llorona, and I love to sing it, but I'm singing in Spanish. Yeah, you know, I love to sing this song. I'll sing the song anywhere for anyone. I love it. It it it is it it feels like it's me, but of course it's a character. I'm not in my language, in my my native language. Yeah, that's that's really so interesting because I speak several languages and I'm a different person in each language. And people are different, traditionally different parts of you um get stirred up by the language I love English because I can curse in English otherwise I have this inhibition against cursing because I was a kid so you can't curse in Hebrew very very Hebrew is a little bit better Polish is totally not you can't you can't curse in Polish I would bet the Poles would have some good swear words oh god they do like incredible give me some swear words in Polish kurva what is that slot slot that's about how how much oh no I know another cholera you got that cholera yasna it's a white cholera but it could be also a black cholera cholera yasna what is that cholesa chola cholera cholera you know the the sickness cholera cholera yeah cholera yasna which is the white one and the chana is the black one and I don't know which is worse and what are you calling somebody when you say that to them when they know you you know because it would be deathly right so you're just wishing them death you're like cursing them yeah basically but that's about as much my vocabulary goes not you know my cursing vocabulary it's such a freedom in English to say fuck you I don't want to talk to you is there a fuck you in Polish in Hebrew?

[19:07] Anath Garber: Oh sure of course do you know what's the fuck it will come with that give me the fuck you in Hebrew in Hebrew uh machimcha that's the male version and the machmech is the female version because it's in Hebrew you is in is different for male and and what is it in Polish?

[19:25] Tonya Pinkins: Fuck you in Polish.

[19:29] Anath Garber: You don't know?

[19:29] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know.

[19:32] Anath Garber: Okay.

[19:33] Tonya Pinkins: Can you imagine such inhibition?

[19:36] Anath Garber: And you think it's with just a inhibition because you were a child and that's but you didn't hear your parents saying these words?

[19:44] Tonya Pinkins: Actually, my parents were very fuck you.

[19:51] Anath Garber: That's Polish.

[19:52] Tonya Pinkins: But how do you say fuck you in Polish?

[19:53] Anath Garber: But yeah, I wouldn't know the word.

[20:04] Tonya Pinkins: I didn't know what the fuck would mean.

[20:08] Anath Garber: Like whoever fucked.

[20:10] Tonya Pinkins: I wasn't born like that.

[20:17] Anath Garber: Can you imagine how that's a little hard?

[20:19] Tonya Pinkins: That's not just it's a very difficult language to pronounce.

[20:26] Anath Garber: Now you were in the military.

[20:28] Tonya Pinkins: Yep.

[20:29] Anath Garber: What is the military for a woman in Israel?

[20:33] Tonya Pinkins: Um narrow the question.

[20:35] Anath Garber: What is what do you do in the military? I mean, like, oh, what do you do in the military? Were you fighting? Did you uh well actually uh I was kind of a whole story. At that time I was interested in theater and I was chosen to be in the theory in the army, but there was not enough money, so in the meantime as usual, and then I was suggested that I'll go to the entertainer troupe. The only problem was there that I passed the test, but then they asked me to sing. I cannot sing. A few years ago I started taking singing lessons because I didn't want to die mouthing the end. But is it just like do Yonatan, Hakatan, whatever? Well, now I'm not afraid. There was no way. I saw the 500 people, there was no way I could open.

So the only thing left for me was to take tests and you could take tests, let's say for psychology or medical school, something like that. And if you pass them and pass the officer scores test, then you could go on a special program in which you were in the army in the summer, and then could use your profession in the army. So you got experience. That was me. So you became a psychologist because you couldn't sing.

[21:57] Tonya Pinkins: Basically, basically you were afraid to sing so you became a technology. And they didn't have money to open the theater, the regular theater, like Shakespeare, like really good stuff. Yeah, you know, basically, we got it right. But uh right now, women are doing just at that time, women were not going to combat unit, but now they do go to combat unit. They really allowed to do everything. The idea was you couldn't afford for women to die because you need one man to pro you need many women.

[22:32] Anath Garber: Right. You got the idea. We only need one guy.

[22:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. But we need a lot of women.

[22:37] Anath Garber: Many womans, basic wombs, right. Yeah. Uh so there is still a little bit of that, but there was the whole thing why women couldn't do it. So, yeah, so you get the training in using RIFO and using all this stuff that needs you need for combat, but really you're in a position to do it. Now, I have heard, and I don't know this, so I'm about to say something. I could be saying something really stupid. I have been told that the Israeli army is the only army in the world that actually has a training program when their soldiers come out of the military that trains them to return to civilization so they can be regular human beings again. Since so much of being a soldier involves behaving intuitively the opposite way that you behave as a human being. Like you hear a loud noise and you're a soldier, you run. You gotta get ready to get your gun. But you at home, you hear a loud noise, it could be your kids playing, and you can't jump to that kind of hypervigilance.

[23:34] Anath Garber: I don't know that, but it sounds to me that there could be a good possibility that there is a unit, there is treatment for people with PTSD, because not everybody who leaves the army has difficult adjusting. There are people who have difficulty adjusting. Actually, when I came here to study psychodrama, that was my idealistic thing. I come and be actually doing working with all these veterans. I'm still in the meantime here, like many people. Um, so that for sure exists. That I know that that exists in the Israeli army. Yeah, but it's not for everybody who leaves. Not everybody who lives is affected. Some people are affected.

[24:17] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, so I I got heard the wrong thing. That wasn't true, but maybe I'm not updated, but um, I I don't it would be just impossible to have that many people to that it just makes sense that there is a unit that deals with that. For sure. And are you familiar with any of this work that's happening now where they're doing a lot of, I just met a bunch of therapists, uh, maps, I guess, and there's all this uh, you know, Michael Pollan's book, How to Change Your Mind. There's all this work now with entheogens and I guess psychedelics where they're using ayahuasca and psilocybin to treat people with PTSD.

[24:57] Anath Garber: I heard of it, just I'm not, I haven't done it. I know a wife of a patient of mine who was very much into it, could swear by it. I don't have the experience. Um, so I cannot talk out of experience. Um there is in a PTSD in any trauma, and we all are traumatized, uh, there is a change in the brain, the way the brain um computes stuff. So you really have to undo that. And the model came from psychotrauma, but maybe it's not acknowledged, because you have to be immersed in the situation, use therapeutic in the presence of somebody that you feel comfortable with, and then get a corrective experience and repeat it several times. Of course, if it's a big trauma, maybe you can take a little bit at a time.

[25:59] Tonya Pinkins: At a time. But again, you have to have somebody who can actually hold you. I'm actually trying to work now on a VR. Tell you about it another time.

[26:08] Anath Garber: Go ahead, tell us now.

[26:09] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I I hate talking about stuff that's in unbecoming.

[26:13] Anath Garber: Okay.

[26:13] Tonya Pinkins: But to deal with post-well, I mean, I had read that the amygdala is where we store emotion and feeling, and that if you want to actually if you want to actually change someone's mind, you can't do it with thoughts. You can't do it with facts. You have to do it experientially. You have to have an amygdala experience. And so that was my idea behind truth and reconciliation of women, that people would come and have an emotional experience of these conflicts between women that are historical, that are present day, and they would experience the conflict and they would experience the resolution. It would do this shift in the amygdala, and they would then have a series of files that would allow them to see the possibility that something could be different because it was experiential. And I feel like theater does that because you are live in the room with people in a different way than you are if you're watching it on a screen.

[27:07] Anath Garber: What you said, Jesus said in one sentence, as you think as with the heart, so it is. What does it mean to think with your heart? It's the emotional. You know, when you say when you it's emotion with the thought is emotionally experienced, then there is a change. Then the mountain can be moved. Without that connection, nothing can be moved. And you just seem like a natural psychodramatist, because you can sense this.

[27:32] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[27:32] Anath Garber: So that's why if you march present that experience, but then allow them a corrective experience, there are connections here being made. No, it's not. Connections in the brain. You're touching your head. You touch connections in the brain, the neural network begins to shift. Begins to shift. Now you can discern that's pass. This is here. Mm-hmm. And slowly few more immersion and few more immersion and it shifts. Frankly, we all walking traumatized people because it's it moves from generation to generation. And where does it stop? That's what I would like to address in that VR. Where does it stop? I mean, every black American carries traumas, particularly to this group, but also their particular family, every Jew, every and and really, even the white Protestant who who who was mean to Indians, what do they carry? There is plenty of trauma there too. Like the Gabel's children, you know, the German uh propaganda. They they decided not to have children. Because if they don't want to pass.

[28:51] Tonya Pinkins: It was created.

[28:52] Anath Garber: How yeah.

[28:56] Tonya Pinkins: So we're wrapping up now.

[28:59] Anath Garber: Okay.

[28:59] Tonya Pinkins: What else did I not ask you that you want to say about psychodrama?

[29:03] Anath Garber: Oh my god. Do we have another three hours?

[29:07] Tonya Pinkins: We don't have another three hours.

[29:09] Anath Garber: Um I think it's elixir of use.

[29:13] Tonya Pinkins: The elixir of youth. Yes. You want to Yeah, tell us what that means, the elixir of youth.

[29:18] Anath Garber: Oh, what I meant was um spontaneity, living in the state of spontaneity and mindfulness just keeps you useful because that's a state of usefulness to be curious, to be present, to be excited, to be interested in the mystery of life. I think that goes with youth. And also when you look at people in that field, it's also true for actress. There is usefulness in them.

[29:46] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you, Anath Garber, for coming and talking to me today.

[29:50] Anath Garber: Thank you.

[29:50] Tonya Pinkins: Anytime. It was lovely. Thank you. Um, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you've been listening to my conversation with Anath Garber, psychodrama therapist, psychologist, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[30:06] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show where you can. I'm Tonya Pinkins. This is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales, edited by Derek Gunther, music by Anthony Norman, available wherever you get your podcast. And visit me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and let me know what you'd like to hear me talk about. For more information, visit BPN.fm forward slash YCST.