Not pregnant yet? You bet!. Rimma Efimkina

for ten years. We used psychodrama method in our work with her, which is the way for the clients to play their situation, choosing the group members and staging the scenes from their own life.

      So, Lida told she wanted to become a mother, but didn’t know what else to do, as she had tried everything for ten years.

      – What else does it want? – she exclaimed desperately in tears. I tried to build on that phrase and told her:

      – Ask it.

      Lida chose two women for the role of herself and the baby and talked to the baby:

      – What else do you want? Why don’t you come to me? What haven’t I done? I know everything about it. My poor entrails are cut and wounded, there is not a thing doctors didn’t do with them? I’m so tired!

      – Then you don’t need to talk to the baby.

      – To my entrails then?

      – I think so. Who could play them?

      – I need many people: uterus, tubes, ovaries.

      – Choose as many as you need.

      Looking attentively into the faces of the group members, Lida chose them for a new scene. The four women chosen for the roles of wounded entrails came to the group because they had miscarriages, lost pregnancies, abortions and infertility.

      – Do you know how it all looks like?

      – I’ve learned the anatomy over these years so well that I will make female organs with my eyes closed. But mine are all kinds of different, everything is wrung in and out.

      I automatically make a mental note about the use of the verb “make”, which also has a figurative meaning: “make someone do something”. I just note it to check out my hypothesis: what if Lida’s infertility is a result of her strategy to make people do something? People are free and they don’t like to be made do anything. As well as entrails.

      – Make the sculpture of your female organs of these people.

      Lida puts the “uterus” in the middle, “tubes” and “ovaries” by the sides. The five women who play the roles of reproductive organs join their hands.

      – Now wring like in a child’s game “Jumble”.

      The women make the symmetrical orderly sculpture into a chaos of people while still holding each other’s hands. When Lida sees what happened she wipes her tears:

      – These are my female organs…

      – What is going on with you?

      – I’m sad and I feel pity for myself.

      – Tell me, when you look at this sculpture, does it remind you of something?

      – Yes, it looks like our family: this is how I drag on my mother, my brother, two relatives who are like children to me, although they have their own parents…

      – Now there are two ways: either get your organs or your family members in order.

      – I will straighten it with the family soon just as well; my husband and I are moving to another city. I’d rather talk to my organs.

      – So try to be a baby and get into the uterus.

      Lida takes on a role of her baby and walks around the wrung sculpture:

      – How can I get in… No, it’s not what it takes. I need to talk to my uterus and ask her to let it in.

      – Do it.

      Lida stops talking, it is obvious, something is going on in her mind. Then she stands on her knees and tells to her “uterus” crying”:

      – I’m sorry I did this to you… I thought if I go to doctors and they do some procedures, this would mean I was doing the right thing, nothing else was required. I didn’t take a moment to think what it was what you needed…

      – You can ask it what it needs.

      – It doesn’t need anything at this point, she is used to the pain, so it doesn’t feel anything.

      – That is what you decided for it. Exchange roles with it.

      Lida exchanges places with the uterus and stands in the wrung sculpture, yikes and laughs:

      – Yeah, now I get it!

      Other parts of the sculpture who have been standing in uncomfortable poses for several minutes now are tired of waiting for Lida to understand that she needs to untie the knot.

      – Tell us, what is it that you get?

      – I need to un-wring.

      – Let your stand-in who plays you ask for forgiveness and you listen to it in the role of the uterus.

      The member of the group who plays Lida addresses the uterus and repeats Lida’s words about being guilty and asks to forgive her. Lida listens to these words in the role of her uterus and says:

      – I’m so tired, it’s OK, it’s water under the bridge, I’m glad you understand me now.

      – Now, go out and untie.

      Lida unties the “jumble” and puts the participants in an orderly structure like five Olympic rings: ovaries and uterus are in the front and tubes on the back, all of them are still holding hands.

      – This is how it goes.

      – Now be the baby and try to get into the uterus.

      Lida in the role of the baby crawls as an egg: going between the legs of the women who comprise the sculpture and finds herself in the uterus.

      – Here I am, all attached.

      – Now exchange roles and be yourself again.

      Lida becomes herself, now she walks to the sculpture to metaphorically place the organs and the baby within herself, everybody sits down.

      – What do you feel?

      – I feel good… my back hurts, I need someone to stand behind me… My husband!

      – Choose your husband, let him stand behind you.

      – I need him to hug me. Now it’s warm.

      – How does your baby feel?

      The woman who plays the baby:

      – I feel so good here!

      – Shall we finish? Take the roles off.

      “Jumble”: commentary

      We are invited to take a different view of our symptoms. Our first, natural desire is to suppress them, but we must learn to read them as cues to the wounded wishes of our soul, or as the autonomous protest of our soul over our mismanagement.

James Hollis

      This session with Lida happened seven years ago. Now I would have done it differently, I would have put more emphasis on the feelings of the client. However, what was done was enough to see the psychological reasons for her infertility. The climax of the session happened when Lida realized what she did to her reproductive system and expressed it as: “I thought if I go to doctors and they do some procedures, this would mean I was doing the right thing, nothing else was required. I didn’t take a moment to think what it was what you needed…”

      Now Lida understood for the first time in her life, that, firstly, her health was her responsibility, not the doctors’; secondly, that it was necessary to know the needs of one’s body and to listen to oneself and to one’s body, and not to undergo standard recommendations and supposedly necessary and useful procedures. To do so, it is necessary to redirect one’s energy from the outside