Bio
David-Garb.bmp
David GarbEarly years
School was easy for me initially. I liked our close community of Linksfield and in our part of Meyer Street, how we moved fluidly from one neighbour?s house to another as the games unfolded, and the plethora of available adults to care for us; parents, nannies and assorted relations.
There were two profound changes in my life. The first was around age 9, when my father was gravely ill and close to death, and as a 9 year old I was excluded from information about what was happening and not allowed to see him in hospital. The result was that I lost all confidence in my abilities. School work, which had always been simple, now was a struggle, and from achieving A grades without effort, I now became a plodding middle C student. I also lost my ability to see at this point, and from that time on, had to wear glasses, which I hated. This lack of self confidence shadowed me throughout my schooling. It was not till thirty years later, being helped to recall this incident that my eyes returned to normal vision for a few hours and I understood the profound effect of emotional impact on physicality.
The second event was the sudden death of my father at age 15. Being the only male in my family (and a pretty unconfident immature one to boot) there were huge expectations on the role I was now supposed to play. School became even more bizarre. I felt like a complete alien, with few around who had any experience of death, and nowhere to process anything that was happening. Consequently, I became more insular and guarded, and lived through the last two years of school in a fog of numbness and despair.
Post school
The army, immediately after school, consolidated the numbness and unreality, and it took many moons to recover from that harsh and cruel sci fi craziness, mainly with the help of cigarettes and dope.
Shortly after this, my mother remarried, and my new stepfather catapulted me into an even crazier form of life. The family moved to Cape Town. I had never dealt with alcoholism, violence, sadism and extreme irrationality before, and the first year proved to be an extremely vertical learning curve. Only in retrospect, could I see how all these pieces were preparations for later work. From beginning with a commerce degree, I quickly switched to psychology, which turned out to be a huge disappointment, as it seemed to have nothing to do with the psyche, and lots to do with stats and behavior. I bullshitted my way through the degree, as it was an easy way to really live life to the full without having to work ? much partying, experimenting on all levels and running wild. I was so embarrassed when I finally got through that I asked them to post the degree, as attending a graduation seemed too much of a farce.( I have consequently done that with all further degrees and have still not attended a single graduation ceremony)
Swaziland
Not knowing what to do with my life, I went travelling. The short version is that I ended up in Swaziland, fell in love with the country, and became a teacher there for two years. I discovered how much fun it was to be able to teach without guidelines (I had no training). I was working in a Catholic mission school. The headmistress, as nun, summoned me to her office at the end of my first year, and demanded to know what I had done to these students. I reminded her that I had warned her from the beginning I was just making it all up, and asked what the problem was. It transpired that all my students (local slum kids) had passed their British English exams, and the other classes had not. When I asked what was wrong with this, she said I had been given the dumb classes, and the bright kids hadn?t got through. I apologized, saying I hadn?t realized that my students were supposed to be stupid. It was my first real experience on the power of expectation and young people matching that. The following year I was made head of the English department.
Teaching
Life was too easy in Swaziland. I had a wonderful cottage on top of a hill, fantastic friends, a job I loved, and suddenly saw myself living out the rest of my days there. Another part of me knew I had a whole lot more to learn and experience, and I hadn?t come here for a holiday. I resigned, travelled through Europe for some months, and then went to study Waldorf education at a college in England. After a wonderful two years there, I went back to Cape Town and began teaching my first class of little ones, age six, and we worked, played, learned, laughed and cried together for the next 7 years. I am still in contact with them and involved in their unfolding lives.
I went back to Cape Town Uni to study special education. Completed the training, and knew it was time for new adventures. I randomly chose countries that were unknown to me, and applied for any kind of jobs. I ended up in New Zealand by chance, and have used this as my base ever since.
Working with Adolescents
My work in the area of adolescence began with my own dismal teenage years, where the basic skills of communicating, dealing with conflict and learning relationship skills would have been considered a foreign language. Struggling with my these areas led me to discover ways that worked for me, forced me to confront edges of fear I would not have thought possible to deal with, and helped me to realize that we don?t have to wait until we have stumbled through a dozen relationships and heartaches to learn how to feel seen and loved.
I discovered the value, challenge and enormity of group work when I began directing summer camps in Canada with a Canadian psychologist. I was teaching in a Waldorf school in South Africa at the time, and would fly out to Canada each summer. Our first year was geared for children between the ages of 6 and 12 years old. Every picture of idyllic camping possibilities were quickly blown out the water when children began chasing each other with firewood axes or discovered pyromaniac tendencies. After vowing not to EVER do that again, requests from campers for more the following year led to expanding the age limit, and after 7 years, we had campers from the ages of 6 to 20 years old. By balancing artistic, physical and fun activities, we soon discovered we had an enormous family in which everyone?s needs were catered for. Teenagers did not have to be ?cool? all the time, and they would often have little ones on their laps in the evening when stories were told. The final camp was geared to teenagers in particular, with focus on communication skills.
I had now moved to New Zealand, and was taking my second class of children through the seven years of Waldorf education. Some high school teachers approached me to help them with a particularly difficult Class 9. We arranged an afternoon to do some basic communication games. After the session, a group of students grabbed me and asked when we were doing more of this. I told them that this was it, as I was teaching full time with the little ones and there was no time allocated for it. As a safe aside, I suggested that the weekends were the only possibility, feeling smug in my belief that no teenager would give up weekend time for school activities. I was then asked what time and where, and the first group was born.
I met with this group of 15 students every Saturday of that year, culminating in a weekend workshop at the end of the year. Big shifts had taken place in their group dynamics, confidence and ability to express themselves. The following year, students from other classes began to demand workshop time. We began holding workshops every second weekend for students between the ages of 15 to 18, covering topics such as family dynamics, conflict, dealing with anger, depression, grief etc. The group sizes varied between 20 to 30 students. These workshops were free to students, and I considered them a wonderful learning opportunity for me. With merely having a psychology degree, a Waldorf training and special education training, I began further counselling and psychotherapeutic study in the next few years, ending with a Masters in counselling and a four year psychotherapy training in Gestalt psychotherapy. My role as school counsellor began to expand, and workshops were gradually introduced to all high school classes as part of the curriculum.
The demand for workshops gradually spread to other schools around New Zealand, and then into Australia, the USA and South Africa. I visit certain schools regularly each year in these countries, and have designed a program for each year group, focusing on specific themes relevant to that age. There are also workshops for parents and for teachers.
Now
I now have a private practice as a psychotherapist. I still travel extensively working in different countries, and the focus in the last few years has been working with teenagers with cancer. We run grief groups and various other trainings to skill them up to dealing with tough living circumstances and ways of facing and working with death. I love my work, and feel such profound gratitude to be one of these people on the planet that can feel excite