Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is not about meth. It is about unleashed destructive forces. That is the common theme in all that Breaking Bad is about.
It is about cancer. It is about the suppression of anger. It is about not stopping in expressing one's destructive forces.
The TV series Breaking Bad has stirred many people, including me. Why does it have such a great impact on so many of us?
Cancer is rampant. So is suppressed anger. Suppressed aggression.
When one lives a life of unexpressed aggression and stifled anger it slowly but surely builds up. The toxic residue keeps building up inside while the outside shows a mellow, subdued, sophisticated surface.
We as a society do not know how to express anger appropriately. We do not know what to do with our aggression and destructive forces. We have no outlets. Some people find some creative ways to allow their anger express itself and some of us are better than others in recognizing fear before it builds up to a level that it evokes anger and tangible sense of aggression.
Most of us have learned to suppress and cover up all these undesirable emotions - fear, aggression, anger.
Cancer is an aggressive force that spreads inside the body until it attacks all areas of the body and destroys it. It is an angry, aggressive force. The series of Breaking Bad followed the implosion of aggression in the form of cancer `and then the explosion of aggression in a person, not unlike many of us.
The degree of destruction that the six seasons followed in the world of crime and drugs, captured the degree of unexpressed aggression throughout the life of a common person.
Destruction went rampant while the person's physical body became more alive than it was throughout his whole life.
Creative self expression and finding a way to not suppress our anger are big tasks in this society that does not welcome expression of destructive forces.

Process groups are one of the few places I have encountered striving towards healthy expression of our own destructive forces. In our everyday life we suffer without being aware what ails us when we are kind and good. Anxieties, depression, anger outbursts, interpersonal trouble keep popping up in our life and we don't know where to look for the solution.
I believe that finding ways to express one's wide range of emotions is a crucial part of a healthy, well-balanced life. Anger and aggression are just as part of that broad palette of emotions as all others. Process groups can create a safe container for us to examine our anger, fears, and aggression and learn to expresse them in a non-destructive way.

My view of the parallel between the body and mind - aggression turning inward in the form of cancers - comes from my homeopathy background. The solution of participating in groups set up with the intention of understanding and releasing our interpersonally stuck expressions comes from my current interest in group therapy.
I believe that the creators of Breaking Bad showed the viewers a very vivid and compelling picture of this process unfolding.

Symptoms emerge in the bigger whole

As I continue my explorations of group therapy, I am struck by my experience of the healing forces and my witnessing the process of what is emerging.
A way I have conceptualized it recently is this: I see symptoms come to the surface of our awareness in the homeopathic case taking, the body, the mind and emotions produce symptoms that we discuss and listen to, in the homeopathic process. The symptoms come to a level of expression where they create a new map of themes. The bodily symptoms and mental-emotional symptom express a similar pattern, one, which we call the vital sensation level in homeopathy. When we arrive on this level of awareness of our symptoms, there is a chance to bring about healing on this level, which, in return will affect the body and mind symptoms.
In group therapy there is a similar phenomena that emerges if we pay attention to the process among group members. As people talk and participate in the group process, their essential themes come to the surface, the force of the group process and the presence of other participants encourage this emergence. Vital aspects of each person come to surface and create the "group as a whole" in which these themes can be looked at and dynamically processed by the help of the others.
My experience as the group leader - or the homeopath - is the witnessing and encouraging the emergence of the vital level description of symptoms or the essential themes in every participant. Once these levels are unveiled, the channels to healing are open. Our natural tendency towards harmony and balance picks up the rest of the work. As long as we are active participants and active listeners to our awareness, and in group to the overarching process and feedback from others, we will experience corrective, healing events and our body and mind will have the chance to regain balance and clarity.
Experiencing the honesty and openness among a small group of people can be extremely healing. The work I   witnessed and called out for in homeopathy, resonates well in the interpersonal matrix of process group therapy. People bring out themes in each other, like the emerging symptoms and themes in the homeopathic process in the individual. The whole of the group resembles the holistic in homeopathy.

Group therapy

In homeopathic treatment we utilize the observation that underlying, essential themes pop up anywhere and everywhere in one's life and we use this fact to explore the person's life, different areas of their interests, fears,  difficulties and find so called global themes of their sensitivities.
In group psychotherapy, the same idea plays out in an experiential way. I have found the power of process among the participants gives a different flavor and angle to look at the very themes that lay at the bottom of one's difficulties  Since we, humans are social beings, our interpersonal communication and relating style accounts for a great majority of the struggles we face in our day to day life. It is just one aspect of one's life but it is a very important aspect. In group therapy these struggles come to surface with surprising ease, as if every relational interaction would be an opportunity for growth and healing. With a skilled and compassionate group leader, the therapy group can be the most personal and experiential laboratory to find one's underlying themes and experience one's own reactions and responses to the outside world as they respond to their difficulties.
This is what I strive to help my patient experience in the groups I lead.