Rear view photo of person with long hair wearing long sweater and headphones walking along path in yellow grassy field “Mindfulness” is a popular buzzword in therapy and personal-growth circles. Mindful.org defines mindfulness as “the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.” In the vernacular, it essentially means “being fully present in the moment.”

Sounds good, right? Well, it’s trickier than it seems. As Peter Levine points out, trauma robs us of our ability to be in the present moment. The threat response in our nervous system gets stuck on “on,” and so we find ourselves automatically preoccupied with the past, or else projecting the past into the future.

Some people do this to such a degree they are not even aware that they are doing it. They have lost track of what it’s like to slow down and pleasantly be in the present moment (or they never learned in the first place). It can be amazing to witness when they learn to just be, to feel the sensations of simply being alive in a living, human body instead of constantly worrying and anxiously scheming.

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The power of somatic therapy is particularly apparent in working with this issue. I define somatic mindfulness as the ability to step back from what your nervous system is telling you. You step back, observe it, feel every bit of it. Then you consciously decide what you want to do instead of automatically falling into long-standing patterns and the behavior they dictate.

Here’s an example, representative of many people I’ve worked with: Bernard grew up in a rough and unforgiving environment. There was no one around he could trust. Many people around him got what they could by whatever means were available to them. He realizes this way of life left its mark on him, so he started working with me and eventually we settled into a productive therapeutic relationship.

One day, not long after we started working together, I rearranged the chairs in my office. I was preparing to start a new group and I needed more comfy chairs. At the beginning of Bernard’s next session, I noticed this caught his attention, so I encouraged him to take in the environmental changes and notice the sensations in his body. His body started to brace and his face became hard. He asked me if I made these changes simply to “screw around with people, you know, to get a rise out of them so they can get their money’s worth out of the session.” He looked as if I’d tried to pull something over on him.

Bernard was projecting his past onto his present, and he was also quite likely using this to make predictions about his future—or at least the future of his therapy with me. Both my training and my humanity encouraged me to be transparent in these matters, so I disclosed the reason for the changes in my office decor. He immediately softened, relaxed, and started to backpedal.

Somatic mindfulness creates mind-body integration where it had been lacking. It allows us to use our somatic responses as one source of information without letting them run the show.

Now we had something to work with: His body had sent out an exaggerated “danger” signal when there was no actual threat, either in my office or in his relationship with me. Had I not been prepared to calmly hold this, it could have unnecessarily ruined the relationship, as well as any benefit he could have obtained.

When we discussed it, he said he felt disoriented as he came in. As I encouraged him to notice his physical sensations, he said he felt a jolt of energy in his body, movement impulses in his arms and fists, a burning in his chest, and anger. In the future, if he can “catch” this automatic body reaction, to sit with it and question it, he’ll have mastered somatic mindfulness. He’ll have developed active control over this threat response. Over time, as his nervous system gets better at distinguishing when the threat response is necessary, it will soften.

These automatic bodily and behavioral responses can occur in any situation, in countless different ways. Somatic mindfulness creates mind-body integration where it had been lacking. It allows us to use our somatic responses as one source of information without letting them run the show. This kind of therapeutic work softens and reduces the hypervigilant threat response and hyperarousal in the nervous system. These old traumatic residues can stress the body and cause burnout. They are also thought to contribute to many physical health problems.

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Full embodiment in the present moment can be a truly wonderful experience. There’s no way to explain it if you haven’t felt it. I’ve watched it occur many times in my office. Time spent in nature or with animals is often helpful in this quest. When developing this skill, it is essential to work with a therapist or other trusted mentor who has somatic mindfulness training and a stable nervous system.

References:

  1. Levine, P. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
  2. Mate, G. (2003). When the body says no: Understanding the stress-disease connection. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
  3. What Is Mindfulness? (2014). Retrieved from https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness

Top view of boots next to white and purple flowers“I don’t know why, but every time I start dating someone new, I lose interest after three or four dates—even if they are really cool.”

“This time of year just makes me miserable. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me drink more just to be able to stand it.”

“I’m so discouraged by these panic attacks. I never know when they’re going to hit. They’re ruining my life.”

“I’m 30 years old, and I haven’t ever seriously dated anyone because of my social anxiety. It just gets in the way, all the time.”

These are a few of the typical complaints I hear when I meet with someone for the first time. These problems all sound pretty different, don’t they? Chances are, however, that they share an underlying process. We can credit Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, for clarifying this process for us. His life’s work synthesizes vast amounts of research, therapy practices, and worldwide cultural traditions with his own original contributions. [fat_widget_right]

Dr. Levine calls this underlying process “over-coupling.” Over-coupling takes place when trauma energy sticks two things together that shouldn’t be. Our brain perceives some stimulus, one that could be innocuous to others, and then has this lightning quick reaction based on its learned history: “If there’s this, there’s also going to be that—and that is really bad, so let’s rev up the fight or flight energy!”

How Over-Coupling Works

Over-coupling involves the parts of the brain known as the limbic system, or our emotional/threat response, and the reptilian brain, which is in charge of body regulation. When these systems perceive a potential threat, they go into a stress response. Trauma can occur when that threat feels overwhelming or bigger than our ability to effectively cope with it, and the energy from that stress response gets stuck in our systems, under the surface. The unconscious layers of the brain and body want to avoid any situation like that ever happening again. So when something feels similar to the big, bad thing that happened in the past, our reptile brains lock into the same threat response as the previous time. This happens whether or not the logical mind is aware of any similarity between the previous and current situations.

That is over-coupling. Like a creaky old suit of armor, it’s meant to protect us, but what it really does is get in our way, preventing us from freely living our lives.

When our limbic, or emotional/threat response, and reptile, or body regulation brains perceive a potential threat, they go into a stress response … The unconscious layers of the brain and body want to avoid any situation like that ever happening again.

Over-Coupling Examples

Let’s explore the above examples with this new awareness of over-coupling.

Since these conditions usually involve the body’s unconscious trauma energies, which can be tricky and powerful, treatment is best left to someone with specific training in this area. Personally, I will always be grateful for my own continued training in somatic psychotherapy and for Peter’s contributions in the area of coupling dynamics.

In a future article, we will examine under-coupling, which occurs when something feels so overwhelming that the body numbs it out. Under-coupling is even more tricky, as it usually takes place beneath the level of the person’s conscious awareness and shares a special relationship with over-coupling. In the meantime, I invite you to start having compassion for any over-coupling you might notice going on in your own system. As frustrating as it might be, it is trying to protect you!

References:

  1. Levine, P. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
  2. Practitioner training manual. (2007). Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute/Foundation for Human Enrichment: Boulder, CO: Foundation for Human Enrichment.

Young adult with short hair and facial hair, hands clasped under chin, looks into distance thoughtfully“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of us.” —David Richo, PhD, MFT

“Everyone is down on pain, because they forgot something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.” —Jim Butcher, author

“The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.” —Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and author

According to Sigmund Freud, we’re all pleasure seekers; it’s our fundamental nature. He said maturity is the ability to postpone desire for comfort and pleasure in order to deal with reality. Despite ongoing controversy about some of his more unusual concepts, I think he was right about this one. Humans have come up with an astounding variety of ways to change pain into pleasure. Here is a partial list of things I’ve heard people talking about just in the last week or so:

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As always, these things aren’t inherently bad; many are wonderful. Like anything in life, it’s all in how these things are used, especially over time. Are we using them to avoid difficult emotions? Or are we using them to create something in our best interest?

When it comes to dealing with pain, though, there’s another approach. In meditation and 12-step recovery circles, we are often told to “just sit with it.” What does this mean?

In psychology, affect tolerance basically means this: how much of your emotion can you tolerate? Sit with? Feel? That is, without needing to take action to shut them off.

In psychology, affect tolerance basically means this: how much of your emotion can you tolerate? Sit with? Feel? That is, without needing to take action to shut them off. There is no way to precisely measure emotion or someone’s tolerance of it. However, it’s useful as one indicator of mental and emotional health.

Why would anyone want to hang out with their lousy feelings? This is a valid question, and having a clear answer in mind is pretty much a prerequisite for doing the work. Drawing on my clinical (and personal) experience, here is why I believe feeling one’s difficult feelings (and increasing one’s affect tolerance in the process) is useful:

In some cases, it may take a while to get to where you want to be emotionally. The cultivation of affect tolerance and a rich inner life is, I believe, a lifetime practice. But, really, is there anything more important in life than feeling truly healthy, good, and at the top of your game? Wouldn’t you rather look back five years from now and be glad you started the work then? What do you have to lose?

References:

  1. Azar, B. (2001). A new take on psychoneuroimmunology. Monitor On Psychology: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec01/anewtake.aspx
  2. Maté, G. (2003). When the body says no: Exploring the stress-disease connection. New Jersey: Wiley and Sons.

Couple walks along beach, holding hands. “If you try to lose weight by shaming, depriving, and fearing yourself, you will end up shamed, deprived, and afraid. Kindness comes first. Always.” —Geneen Roth

Fat.

Adipose. Flesh. Avoirdupois. Chub. Paunch. Flab. Corpulence.

It’s difficult to think of an aspect of the human body more complex and controversial than fat, aside, perhaps, from sexuality. During medieval times, when famines could and did occur, corpulence was valued because fat symbolized wealth, or the possession of resources that conveyed invulnerability to life’s ups and downs. As such, it was seen as if not desirable, then at least neutral (Vigarello, 2013). For peasants and members of agricultural societies, obesity was practically unheard of.

In modern Western culture, however, the tables have (mostly) turned. Today, for the most part, wealthier people tend to have access to healthier, more nutrient-dense foods. The higher nutrient density keeps total calorie intake much lower, since more nutrients and fiber satiate the body quickly with fewer calories (Furman, 2011).

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Less economically fortunate people, on the other hand, tend to not have much fresh, healthy food available in their neighborhoods. Even when fresh food is available, they may lack sufficient income to purchase it. Social justice activists have coined a term for when a community lacks access to healthy food: “food desert”. With fast food or junk food being much more economical and widely available to people living near or below the poverty line, it may be easier for people living in poverty to put on pounds.

The issue remains complex, with many different variables. As far as modern social attitudes towards extra fat go, many dislike it, even loathe it. Certainly, many people don’t like it on their own body, but some even become angry when they see abundant adipose tissue on someone else’s body. For some, fat is part of a truly vicious cycle of self-loathing. Geneen Roth writes that when she was in her twenties, she hated her fat so much, she wanted to slice it off with a knife. Then she would have been standing there, trembling and bleeding, but at least she would be thin.

As far as modern social attitudes towards extra fat go, many dislike it, even loathe it. Certainly, many people don’t like it on their own body, but some even become angry when they see abundant adipose tissue on someone else’s body. For some, fat is part of a truly vicious cycle of self-loathing.

Others passionately defend fat and its hosts. The fat acceptance movement has risen to defend people from fatphobia, or the unwarranted ostracism, contempt, and bullying frequently experienced by heavier people. Still others may fetishize fat, forming a subculture around the care and feeding of those too large to get out into the world and fend for themselves.

Medically speaking, fat tissue has been implicated in its associations with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other inflammatory diseases. Some people debate the validity of these assertions, pointing to research showing that in some cases, being what’s considered “slightly overweight” may in fact lower mortality rates. Further, movements such as the Health at Every Size movement point out that body shapes and sizes are diverse, describe the harm restrictive dieting can cause, and work to promote health without focusing on weight loss.

The Issue of Fat

As you can see, the issue of fat is very complex. In this article I am emphatically not taking any position as to the goodness or badness, nor as to the beauty or ugliness, of this embattled tissue. Rather, I want to explore: What is fat, and what is it doing for us? There are high levels of vehemence, vitriol, and medical admonishment against fat, yet many people carry what is considered by current medical standards to be excess poundage. There must be some function or functions powerful enough to override the tremendous social forces against it. What is going on here?

First, let’s look at the overall somatic context. The human body consists of multiple types of tissues, which tend to occur in layers.

Muscle tissue comes in two types: smooth (usually involuntary, like intestines or uterus) and striated (voluntary skeletal muscles that move our limbs and support our core).

Bone, though often ignored or underrated, is an amazing part of our bodies. Living bone has a pinkish tinge and is more flexible than the rigid, white bone that comes more readily to mind. It gives structure and support, and provides “spacers” for the muscular system (without it, the muscles that attach to and move the bones would contract into tight little balls). The marrow of bones produces blood and immune cells.

Our skin (which itself comes in several layers) is a vital part of our sensory system. It blocks water loss, UV rays, and germs; regulates temperature; and provides a boundary between our bodies and the greater world.

The fascia is a connective tissue that penetrates all other tissues and binds us together. Muscles slide over its smooth surfaces, and it prevents our organs from sloshing around inside us like a big bag of goo.

Our nervous system (brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves) controls the body via nerve impulses and signals to release hormones.

Our fluid system includes blood, lymph, digestive fluids, and interstitial (between-cell) fluids. It transports oxygen, cellular wastes, hormones, glucose, and other nutrients.

And then there is fat.

Fat does many things for its host organism. As most people know, it can be considered a kind of “energy savings account” in case of famine or illness. Fat provides insulation, particularly against cold, and padding, so our bones don’t grind on the surfaces we sit or lean on. Fat forms part of the breast tissue, allowing mothers to feed their infants, and is also involved in hormone production

Some believe fat stores toxins in a way that makes them inert, or prevents them from damaging the vital organs, though I must point out that I don’t know whether this claim is backed by scientific evidence. I do recall a long-ago evening in which a friend and I took a long walk (of about three hours) to the beach. He had recently quit using marijuana and hadn’t used any at all for several months. The walk was long enough that metabolically, we both switched from running on blood glucose to primarily burning accumulated fat stores. By the time we got back to my house, he was, as they say, high as a kite—without having taken a single hit of marijuana.

And then there is another function of fat, one that’s not so commonly discussed. I don’t know whether or not it has been demonstrated in any medical literature, but eating disorder therapists (and many who overeat, binge eat, or experience a related type of disordered eating) will know this one: Fat is an emotional insulator.

How Fat Can Help Insulate Us from Emotions

Having extra fat on the body can help protect against feeling the intensity of unprocessed emotions. It’s like a thick coat of insulation on an extremely high-voltage wire. In this regard, it helps keep us in some semblance of balance, able to exist and function without becoming completely obliterated by our own emotional charge.

We have to live life on life’s terms, and these terms are not always kind. At any moment, even when we are young and vulnerable children, life can hand us events that are just too big for us to deal with in an efficient or comfortable manner.

We have to live life on life’s terms, and these terms are not always kind. At any moment, even when we are young and vulnerable children, life can hand us events that are just too big for us to deal with in an efficient or comfortable manner. The emotional aspect of our survival energies tends to be unbelievably strong. Repression may cut us off from old, unprocessed emotions, but blocking or repressing emotions may only work up to a certain extent.

What might happen if a person carries such large emotional charges without insulation of some sort, or other cut-off strategies such as substance abuse? I have heard many people making statements similar to these:

Still others have talked about the sense that their experience with psychosis or other mental health issues began in part because their systems just couldn’t contain the terrible traumas they had experienced. I believe this sheer intensity is the true meaning of the word overwhelmed and, in my experience, sufficient to explain why some people find themselves overweight.

These days, many people are talking about the Adverse Childhood Experiences study. A physician treating obesity at Kaiser noticed that his most successful patients—those who had lost the most weight—were dropping out of his program. Intrigued, he arranged for follow-up with the ex-participants, who shared that their weight loss brought up old traumatic emotions from childhood. It was easier to live life with morbid obesity, despite any pain and inconvenience it might cause, than it was to face those old feelings.

That is testament to the power of old trauma, and of fat as a semi-conscious strategy to help contain it.

Certainly, the issue of excess body fat is very complex, and so are the people who carry it. Genetics undoubtedly play some role in a person’s predisposition to weight gain. Others may live in food deserts or, out of choice or necessity, fall into habits that support weight gain. Athletes who get injured and don’t change their food intake are prone to gaining weight. Some people also tend to overeat as a way of bolstering their overall energy when tired (Dr. Judith Orloff calls this “energy defensive eating”).

In short, if you have a lifestyle where you are constantly running on fatigue and overwhelm and/or neglecting your own needs for the needs of others, it can be easy to gain weight—particularly if you have a “sit-down” job. Researchers and medical experts have begun to point out that sitting for long periods of time can negatively impact health. Some have even called it the “new smoking.”

Society exerts tremendous pressure to conform to a thinner body standard. This social pressure often contributes to internal pressure. But all people, regardless of their size, deserve compassion and kindness—from themselves as well as from others—not judgment or ostracism. If someone is insulating their feelings with a layer of fat, then the more cruelty they experience, the more entrenched their defenses are likely to become. Even if their size causes them distress, they may find it all the more difficult to lose weight.

Our bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and we cannot completely control the way they look. We really never know what life will end up bringing us, and to some extent, we must accept what life has already handed us. As with any aspect of the human condition–there but for the grace of luck, circumstance, and the genetic lottery, go all of us.

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Those who struggle with difficult emotions and/or overwhelm and desire to lose weight but haven’t been able to (in other words, if this article speaks to you) might consider working with a compassionate therapist trained in helping people increase affect tolerance and move gently into and out of old feelings.

“Fat-bashing in all its varied forms–criticism, exclusion, shaming, fat talk, self-deprecation, jokes, gossip, bullying–is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice. From a very young age, before they can walk away or defend themselves, women are taught that they are how they look, not what they do or what they know.” —Robyn Silverman, Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It

References:

  1. Afzal, S., Tybjaerg-Hansen, A., Jensen, G., & Nordestgaard, B. G. (2016). Change in body mass index associated with lowest mortality in Denmark, 1976-2013. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.4666
  2. Brown, H. (2015, November 17). The obesity paradox: Scientists now think that being overweight can protect your health. Quartz Media. Retrieved from https://qz.com/550527/obesity-paradox-scientists-now-think-that-being-overweight-is-sometimes-good-for-your-health
  3. Furman, J. (2011). Eat to live: The amazing nutrient-rich program for fast and sustained weight loss. New York, NY: Little Brown and Co.
  4. Gerstacker, D. (2014, September 5). Sitting is the new smoking—7 ways a sedentary lifestyle is killing you. The Active Times. Retrieved from https://www.theactivetimes.com/sitting-new-smoking-7-ways-sedentary-lifestyle-killing-you?utm_source=huffington%2Bpost&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=sitting
  5. Roth, G. (2011) Women, food, and God. New York, NY: Scribner.
  6. Scutti, S. (2017, September 22). Yes, sitting too long can kill you, even if you exercise. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/health/sitting-increases-risk-of-death-study/index.html
  7. Vigarello, G. (2013). The metamorphoses of fat: A history of obesity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Group of children around campfire at beach, one child in center staring at large fire but from a distance“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” —John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

There’s a lot more to trauma than meets the eye—or the general public’s awareness—and it’s deeply related to love and connection.

When many people think of trauma, they tend to think about shock trauma: a single, overwhelming incident that’s larger than our ability to cope. Examples include natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, sexual assault, animal attacks, and war.

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On the other hand, developmental trauma comes from something that happens improperly during childhood. It is often subtle and may happen over a long period of time. It involves not receiving the necessary supports for the young nervous system to mature and develop in the way it needs to. Some of these supports are material, of course, but many are relational: having to do with the overall quality and nuances of important relationships, especially with parents.

You can think of it like incorrect or missing ingredients in a recipe: The cake is baked, but it hasn’t risen all the way. Of course, a cake is pretty much finished after it comes out of the oven. The good news for us is, unlike the cake, our nervous system is always primed and waiting to recover what it needs. Thanks to neuroplasticity, our growth and development are lifelong.

In developmental trauma, the biggest and most common missing “ingredient,” by far, is that of deeply and consistently feeling love and connection. I’m not talking about watching your parents behave toward you in a responsible and self-sacrificing manner and then deducing they must love you. No, I’m talking about feeling it deep in your bones that you are loved—indeed, treasured. This bodily felt sense allows us to sink into a sense of safety and well-being. It is truly traumatic to not receive this basic ingredient; we need it to develop and maintain a stable sense of ourselves and of safety.

With love being so basic, how is it so many of us end up without enough of it?

It’s been my experience that:

Long the fodder of songwriters and poets, our desire for love also has a deeply biological basis. It goes beyond simple reproduction (which is accomplished in reptiles without a shred of sentimentality, as far as we can discern). Basically, the physical origin of love lies in our mammalian biology. We are not lizards! Think about our fellow mammals: puppies, rabbits, hamsters. They are warm and cuddly, and many, if not most, of them prefer company.

As Dr. Stephen Porges explains, reptiles have slow metabolisms; that’s why they are cold, and why snakes can go weeks without eating. Mammals have much faster metabolisms, so we need to eat more frequently. This need to extract more nutrients from the environment requires a more complex survival strategy—and that’s why most of us tend to stick together. It is part of our most essential survival wiring to stick together and form deep, satisfying bonds with other humans.

For us humans, being (or feeling) alone is biologically stressful, and may lead to poor health outcomes including earlier death. Consider:

Despite the growing body of literature to the contrary, some people convince themselves they’re okay alone or mostly alone. Some even feel they’re better off that way. Others make do with surface-level interactions, but they don’t share any of their private or intimate feelings very often. Men especially tend to be socialized into the idea it’s not okay to share their deeper feelings (this idea tends to cause them great suffering, which they then have to disconnect themselves from).

In my experience, the reason some folks teach themselves to “make do” with relational crumbs is because they have experienced unbearable pain in their attachment relationships. Such experiences create an unsolvable bind: the person must deny themselves this vital “nutrient” in order to survive. Being alone might be lonely, but at least it feels safe. And so they bury the deep need for love and connection, or they find bits of it by caretaking others and then fleeing when the relationship becomes too intense. However, as Jeremy McAllister notes in his brilliant article Ending the Anxious Avoidant Dance, Part 1: Opposing Attachment Styles, “The most avoidant among us, while perhaps giving up on the possibility (or dissociating from it most of the time), still desire connection outside of self.” It’s in there, somewhere, behind those seemingly impenetrable defenses.

This strategy of forging a life mostly or entirely by oneself often requires some kind of addiction in order to stay disconnected from these intolerable feelings. Common examples include addiction to work, sex, various mood-altering substances, and physical exercise. None of these activities are inherently bad, of course; it all depends on how one approaches them.

The corollary to “love is dangerous” is often “and I’m not allowed to have any needs.” This is because “having needs makes me vulnerable” in that needs are potential pathways to even more intolerable pain: the pain of punishment, disappointment, rejection, or of having to revisit and feel the old, buried, unmet needs. McAllister refers to this as “self-sufficient, unsupported life and its accompanying sense of scarcity and fatalism—a frozen mix of giving up and hanging on, not taking chances.” These are defenses against pain that is truly intolerable. Those of us who have ever loved an avoidant person would do well to keep this in mind, regardless of the outcome of the relationship: they are suffering from the ghosts of old, truly intolerable pain.

A dear friend of mine struggled with love and connection throughout his life. He likened his struggle to being alone on a cold beach in wintertime and approaching a campfire: “You’re cold and lonely and you look down the beach, see the light and warmth, hear the conversation and laughter. So you approach, and then you’re in the warmth and the laughter, and it feels wonderful. But then you get too close, or the fire flickers, and the light and the heat burn you. So you retreat back into the cold, where it’s lonely and quiet but at least things are calm and they don’t burn you. But then eventually, the loneliness draws you back in … and you approach again, cautiously … and the whole thing starts all over.”

So, it seems that human love and connection are vitally important but intensely complicated. No one ever said it was easy being human, and I believe deep relational difficulties are a major cause of human struggling. So, then, what on earth do we do about all this?

Life isn’t forever, and a common regret at the end is that of having bypassed some risks that could have really paid off, especially those related to connecting with others. It’s a missing out on what could have been but never was. So why not take that risk?

My thought is, the same trauma that harmed us can also be a window into deep healing. It may feel easier to stay in avoidance, but we have to start taking the risk to be more vulnerable, even if only in baby steps.

At the time of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Southern California, I was living in West Los Angeles and working as an in-home supported living counselor. Wanting to be of service, I drove carefully around the city to my clients’ houses a few hours later. Aside from the obvious rubble and other physical disruptions, I remember one thing very clearly: people were wide open to each other. It was really beautiful. On the streets, in the grocery stores, people of disparate ethnic groups, gender, age, everything—they were all hugging each other, asking each other if they were okay, telling their earthquake stories. The difference was dramatic: the traumatic event had cracked their usual defenses.

Relational issues can be just as powerful. For example, I’ve long felt grief cracks our hearts wide open. I am never so deeply appreciative of my friends as I am after I’ve lost one.

In my years as a clinician, I have seen that, in a strange and unpredictable way, the very trauma that injured us can also be the doorway into a deeper healing and happier way of life. Now, this requires courage—so much courage. I’ve never seen such bravery as I see in the trauma survivors who come to work with me. Every day, I sit with them and they discover things that feel bad in their experiences, in their bodies. I ask them, “That tightness in your chest, that pit in your stomach: can you sit with that and feel it? Can we sit with it together? Let’s see what it has to say.” This is the stuff many people spend their lives avoiding; yet here these folks are, staring it right in the face. Their systems learn to tolerate the trauma, metabolize it, and then organically move into a much happier state of being.

Life isn’t forever, and a common regret at the end is that of having bypassed some risks that could have really paid off, especially those related to connecting with others. It’s a missing out on what could have been but never was. So why not take that risk? By which I mean, be the change you wish to see in the world. Take the risk of offering kindness where anger wants to jump in. Open your heart to the widest extent you can. If it won’t open, get yourself some kind of support with that: attending therapy, meeting with a spiritual leader, obtaining a volunteer job, a dog, even a garden. We’re all in this together, and life is too short to keep our hearts closed and later regret it.

And in the end, love is worth it.

“I give thanks for life. I honor life.” —Peter Levine, World Trade Center 911 survivor video

“Sometimes reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it’s allowing another to take yours.” —Vera Nazarian

References:

  1. Abrams, L. (2013, April 24). How people and animals in isolation die sooner. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/how-people-and-animals-in-isolation-die-sooner/275071
  2. Heiss, J. (2015, July 2). Solitary confinement isn’t punishment, it’s torture. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/02/solitary-confinement-isnt-punishment-its-torture.
  3. Helper, S.S. (2017, August 5). So lonely, I could die. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkhelper.com/2017/08/05/so-lonely-i-could-die
  4. Levine, P. (2002). Sharon: World Trade Center 9/11 survivor video. Summarized at https://traumahealing.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Demo-Descriptions-2016.pdf
  5. McAllister, J. (2017). Ending the anxious-avoidant dance. Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/ending-anxious-avoidant-dance-part-1-opposing-attachment-styles-0518174
  6. Ornish, D. (1995). Dr. Dean Ornish’s program for reversing heart disease: The only system scientifically proven to reverse heart disease without drugs or surgery. New York: Ivy Books.
  7. Porges, S. (2011). The polyvagal theory. New York: Norton and Company.
  8. Scheff, W. (2001). Personal communication.
  9. Trudeau, M. (2010). Human connections start with a friendly touch. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128795325
  10. Ware, B. (n.d.). Regrets of the dying. Retrieved from http://www.bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying

Leafy pattern from trees casts shadow over face of person looking out windowAs a therapist who specializes in treating complex posttraumatic stress, I am often asked whether my practice is “depressing,” or whether it brings me down. It’s an obvious question: Along with the victories and the moments of fulfilling interpersonal connection, I am in vicarious contact with intensely difficult situations and stories. Also, practicing somatic psychotherapy develops one’s sense of empathy: the ability to sense what another person is feeling and to also feel it. So I often literally feel, in my own body, the sensations and emotions of the distress experienced by the people I work with in therapy. This is a good thing, as it is a fairly reliable indicator of what a person in therapy may be experiencing. Fortunately, my training affords me the capacity to feel others’ distress without getting stuck in it.

But no, my practice does not bring me down. I am deeply grateful for my training and my entry into this field. I can’t imagine doing anything else, because I believe increasing humans’ capacity for self-regulation is the most important thing in the world.

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That’s a big statement. I don’t make it lightly.

You might be wondering: why self-regulation, of all things? After all, most people don’t even think about self-regulation or how it relates to our individual or collective lives. The topic doesn’t even cross most people’s minds.

As I noted in a previous article, “The term self-regulation means ‘control [of oneself] by oneself.’ It refers to a system taking the needed steps to keep itself in balance.” Specifically, somatic therapy helps people learn to self-regulate the balance of the fight/flight response in their nervous system. This balance can (and should) change moment by moment, depending on the current situation and environmental demands upon the person. In other words, it’s a dynamic balance—and it has to be accurate or there will be problems!

According to Stephen Porges, we have four basic states (like “gears”) in our autonomic nervous systems. Our thoughts and behaviors at any moment are hugely influenced by the relative proportions of each. These are physiological states in the autonomic nervous system. They are:

  1. Social engagement. This state is controlled by the ventral vagal (10th cranial) nerve. In social engagement, a person remains calm. They are truly available to be present with others. They can experience empathy. They are able to hold good boundaries, cooperate with others, and maintain a sense of humor. The key concepts here are calm, flexibility, and empathy. This state is vitally important; it forms the foundation of good self-regulation and, generally speaking, should be the most predominant “gear” in daily life. However, it’s often overlooked, as the public doesn’t tend to have much education about it.
  2. Fight. Usually experienced as anger, irritability, or rage, this state is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). It comes online when the person’s midbrain structures perceive a threat. The more predominantly the person is in a fight response, the more the prefrontal cortex goes offline and the less the person is able to experience calm or empathy.
  3. Flight is usually experienced as fear, anxiety, or restlessness. Also controlled by the SNS, the flight state includes the same loss of cortical function as with fight.
  4. And then there is freeze, which is usually experienced as passivity, low energy, amotivation, dullness, foggy-headedness, and reduced capacity for cognition and emotion (other than fear). This state is also mediated by the vagus nerve—but an older, more primitive portion of it, the dorsal vagal system. Basically, freeze is a death preparation state, and it shows up when the body “thinks” social engagement, fight, and flight would be ineffective.

As Peter Levine writes, previous traumatically stressful events that have not been fully resolved in the nervous system will disrupt a person’s self-regulation, biasing their response to present-day events. Specifically, unresolved trauma causes the person to respond with excessive fight, flight, and/or freeze response relative to the current situation.

Self-regulation supports cooperation and healthy group norms. I wish we could wipe out 25% of our fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, replacing each of them with a free somatic therapy clinic.

Here is a thought exercise to illustrate the vital importance of self-regulation and how it impacts just about every situation across our human lives—on small and large scales. Imagine each of the following common scenarios. Then, imagine how each scenario could be different if at least one person involved was able to maintain calm social engagement.

Each of the above scenarios illustrates the ripple effect of dysregulation and how it lies at the core of most human problems. There are many, many other examples. Imagined the other way—that is, with the influence of a self-regulated person or people—these scenarios can also illustrate the powerful positive impact of self-regulation: it has a strong tendency to stop conflict and exploitation (due to the presence of empathy). Self-regulation supports cooperation and healthy group norms. I wish we could wipe out 25% of our fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, replacing each of them with a free somatic therapy clinic.

And the thing is, we could—if only there were enough aware, self-regulated people to make it happen.

Until then, I’ll hold off on my occasional daydreams of being a barista, or a nature guide in a sustainability program. Instead, my colleagues and I continue to support self-regulation, one nervous system at a time.

References:

  1. Porges, S. W. (2001). The polyvagal theory: Phylogenetic substrates of a social nervous system. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 42:123–146.
  2. Porges, S. W. (2003). Social engagement and attachment: A phylogenetic perspective. Roots of Mental Illness in Children, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1008:31–47.

Person sitting on end of pier at lake reading a bookLet’s sit down and have a conversation, perhaps over a cup of tea. You know, the way people used to connect. We’ll sit together and enjoy the taste of the tea, the afternoon gently gliding by into the golden light of early evening.

How’s your life going? I’ll ask.

As you mull this over, I’ll continue:

How much of the time are you aware of feeling happy?

Are you in charge of guiding your life? Or is it running roughshod over you?

Do you feel your life is flying by quickly? Are you savoring it?

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If you could live in any way you wanted, how would you live?

Are you living in tune with your natural rhythms? (If not, how long have you been putting that off?)

Like many of my writings, this article is about the interplay between internal and external: how our inner selves respond to the outside world.

As a somatic psychotherapist, I have spent thousands of hours tracking and supporting the innate rhythms of the human autonomic nervous system. In our natural state, our bodies (and entire beings) move in rhythmic waves.

One well-known example is circadian rhythms: the daily biological cycle of wakefulness and sleep, highly dependent on interaction between the environment (sunlight) and our nervous system.

On its own, a well-regulated nervous system will experience more subtle ebbs and flows throughout the day. There will be gentle cycles of expansion and contraction. Expansion involves experiencing more energy, more outward focus, a sense of alertness and/or well-being. Contraction involves feeling less energetic, our focus turning inward. During the normal, gentle periods of contraction, the body can rest, digest, and repair. (Harsher periods of contraction may indicate grief, depression, or the freeze response, usually reactions to traumatic circumstance.)

These cycles are reflected in many cultures’ practice of the afternoon siesta, in which businesses shut down for a few hours. People relax, nap, eat a leisurely lunch, or talk quietly with loved ones before returning to the afternoon’s work. This practice is an outward reflection of the dynamic interplay between sympathetic (fight and flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) branches of the autonomic nervous system.

Changes to this internal rhythm of ebb and flow often come from the environment. Jet lag is a disruption in our circadian rhythms, in response to our day/night clock being reset by long-distance air travel. Another largely nonthreatening example is that of a friendly neighbor knocking on the door just before bedtime, asking to borrow a cup of rice. This requires a small amount of energy to respond to, but is not a crisis.

On the one hand, it never hurts to help someone increase their resilience and capacity for joy. On the other, therapists do people a disservice if we “patch ’em up and get ’em back out there” without examining all the factors that contributed to their symptoms in the first place.

Other events are more demanding, particularly those perceived to have a direct or indirect threat to our well-being. Of course, it is normal to have our natural rhythms disrupted by environmental demands. That’s why we have a fight-or-flight nervous system. Animals go through these threat response cycles every day in their eat-or-be-eaten world, but they tend not to be traumatized by this. The question for us, as humans, is this: How often and intensely is this threat response happening in our bodies? Are we allowing ourselves to go gently into those down cycles of rest or leisurely enjoyment as we are biologically designed to do? It’s easy for the nervous system to become stuck on “on.” If we are disconnected from our bodies and their needs, we burn out eventually, and our health or emotions crash.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, I remember watching a futuristic cartoon called The Jetsons. The cartoon depicts a future where people have more leisure time because machines take care of everything. Robotic maids bring food automatically dispensed from the wall. In our reality, though, people have become busier than ever. In your daily life, you might notice some signs of this acceleration:

In therapy, we spend a lot of time supporting the cognitive process, the meanings we make of our daily experiences, to become better adapted to external conditions—even if current conditions are undesirable. Or, in somatic therapy, we support the resilience of the nervous system to deal with challenges.

On the one hand, it never hurts to help someone increase their resilience and capacity for joy. On the other, therapists do people a disservice if we “patch ’em up and get ’em back out there” without examining all the factors that contributed to their symptoms in the first place. Sometimes in life, you have to “just get through it,” but sometimes the healthiest thing to do is find a better, more supportive situation. Some circumstances simply are not healthy to continue living in. So, part of therapy is helping people sort through what they want and don’t want for their lives, and how to self-advocate to steer themselves in a more desirable direction.

And so I ask, rhetorically: Are you living in accordance with your body’s needs and your natural rhythms? Do you listen to what your body is telling you? If you were really, radically committed to supporting yourself and living a life of joy and meaning, what steps would you take to get your life into better alignment with what you want? Would you be willing to defy convention, or other people’s expectations, in order to get there? What is stopping you?

Reference:

Circadian rhythms fact sheet. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/pages/Factsheet_CircadianRhythms.aspx

Young adult in jeans and hoodie sits against station wall, hands covering face, knees up to chestHumans are complex creatures. We operate on many levels simultaneously, and not all of these levels are in our conscious awareness. Therein lies the potential for internal conflict, which can sometimes feel impossible to resolve. We may not even be clear on what is causing the internal conflict in the first place:

“Why do I get so angry?”

“Darn it, why can’t I sleep? I have to get up in four hours and I’m going to be exhausted!”

“Why can’t I stand up to her? I argue with her in my head all the time, yet when she’s actually there, I just can’t stick up for myself.”

“I know it’s dangerous to tailgate; why do I do it?”

“There I go, overreacting (or under-reacting) again!”

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These internal battles are difficult to fight. They can create a profound lack of trust in ourselves. Exasperated, we might shrug and say “it’s just my personality” or “it’s genetic; my father was just like that.” These statements create an air of inevitability, as though we’re just going to have to learn to live with this aspect of ourselves. I’ve noticed “genetics” is a favorite fallback for when we don’t understand the threat response cycle, or the formerly adaptive learning that now contributes to our self-created troubles.

Of course, every person is unique. We all have cultural, familial, genetic, and individual components of our characters and behaviors, as well as unique histories. In this article, we are looking at a major portion of the equation that is often overlooked: the underlying psychophysiological (mind-body) “engine” that drives these responses. If the cortex (our “thinking brain”) is the road map, then the autonomic nervous system is the engine. (Might I note few cars go to the mechanic for GPS problems!)

According to Dr. Stephen Porges, the human nervous system essentially has the following “gears” available to it:

All of these gears are responses to the environment and are designed to help ensure our survival.

Unlike a car’s gears, these human “gears” aren’t mutually exclusive. We can be primarily in social engagement, but feel the beginnings of the fight response begin to stir within us. Or we may be mostly frozen and immobile, but feel anxiety (flight) creeping up.

If we are in a safe and generally supportive environment, the healthy, well-balanced nervous system is in social engagement most of the time. In other words, it’s not wasting precious life energy by revving up into anxiety or anger when there is nothing actually threatening at the moment.

If something does start to go wrong in the social environment, a well-balanced nervous system will go to that social engagement option first: it tries to solve problems via discussion or negotiation, not jumping right into fight or flight. It uses exactly as much fight/flight/freeze as the situation warrants, and no more. All four responses are freely available, and our automatic perception of safety/threat, called neuroception, makes a snap judgment about which one to go to.

However, our previous learning comes into play. Our system goes to what has worked in the past, and it avoids what hasn’t worked. So if you grew up with a very angry parent, when you encounter stress as an adult, you might:

Your automatic, default response in any given situation depends on what your autonomic nervous system found most helpful in previous situations of high stress.

Implicit in this model is the fact the more we drop out of social engagement and into a threat response, the more our survival energy is running the show and the more our frontal cortex (reasoning, socialization) goes offline. This explains why, under stress, we can engage in behaviors we really disagree with later.

The freeze response is closely related to tonic immobility, a state in which the body becomes motionless (like a possum). It’s also related to dissociation (disconnecting from one or more aspects of our experience). When it becomes chronic, it is also closely related to depression.

Let’s take a moment to focus on the freeze response, which generally tends to be the least understood of all of our “gears.”

The freeze response is closely related to tonic immobility, a state in which the body becomes motionless (like a possum). It’s also related to dissociation (disconnecting from one or more aspects of our experience). When it becomes chronic, it is also closely related to depression. The freeze response comes up when the organism decides whatever is facing it is overwhelming, too much to cope with. Fight or flight won’t work. Therefore, it “decides” the best strategy is to hold still, be uninteresting, and see if the threat passes. Young children, who lack capacity for fighting or running away, are particularly prone to getting stuck in the freeze response.

In terms of self-regulation, the freeze response arises when the charge in the sympathetic nervous system climbs too high (fight/flight isn’t working!) and thus the parasympathetic activates at the same time, effectively buffering the high SNS charge. (For explanation of fight, flight, and freeze charges, please refer to my previous article.) People in freeze response look like they’re in a low-energy state, but it’s really a well-camouflaged high-energy state. It’s very costly to the body, especially when it sticks around longer than it needs to. And the nervous system can be slow to come out of this state.

None of these responses are a conscious choice. Many police officers, firefighters, and other first responders feel guilty when they freeze under stress, but it is neither their fault nor under their control. It’s been my consistent experience that these states can indeed be re-regulated, at least partially, so the autonomic nervous system adopts a healthier balance and more adaptive responses. This happens over time, with consistent work, and you have to be able to “speak reptile brain”—that is, know how to access and work with the unconscious part of the body-mind. I have generally not found it effective to work with these states via cognition alone, because cognition becomes unavailable under high-stress states. Somatically oriented psychotherapy, yoga, art therapy, and psychodrama are among the solutions many have found helpful when wrestling with the question of how to bridge the gaps within.

References:

  1. Arnsten, A.F., Raskind, M.A., Taylor, F.B., and Connor, D.F. (2014). The Effects of Stress Exposure on Prefrontal Cortex: Translating Basic Research into Successful Treatments for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Neurobiology of Stress, Vol. 1, January 2015, p. 89-99. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352289514000101
  2. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Water pouring into glass from above and overflowing down the sidesSomatic psychotherapists often use the informal metaphor of a “container” in describing a person’s state of overwhelm or resilience.

It’s a simple concept: If Janelle is experiencing a lot of stress, and/or her system isn’t very resilient, then one can say her container is overflowing, or close to it. On the other hand, if she successfully deals with her feelings and the external situations that cause them, she would create more “room” in her figurative container and she wouldn’t be so vulnerable to becoming stressed out. She could also work with a therapist in order to develop affect tolerance and self-regulation. She would then be making her container larger and less brittle, increasing her resilience across many life situations.

The container can be filled by our response to events earlier in our lives that we’ve repressed and not dealt with. Researchers and clinicians working with intergenerational trauma believe our containers hold the trauma passed down to us from the experiences of earlier generations. Such experience includes but is not limited to systemic racism and oppression. The field of epigenetics looks at changes in gene expression (which pieces of our DNA strands are being expressed, and which aren’t). These changes are thought to be responses to the environment, either current or historical. On the other hand, our containers can also be filled by present-day, acute stressors that we’re all too aware of. In practice, it’s usually a mix of both, and they can be interrelated.

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Sometimes it isn’t immediately evident how full the container is becoming, because we are experts at hiding this from ourselves and the world. When talking about this with a person in therapy, I’ll often use the metaphor of my coffee cup. It’s a metallic travel mug, and when I hold it up, you can’t immediately tell how full it is. It could be nearly empty, or it could be close to overflowing. (It’s just a visual example. No fair trying to gauge my mood in order to figure out how much coffee is inside me rather than still in the cup!)

If the level inside the cup gets too close to the top, it overflows easily. This overflow would represent having a “meltdown”: panic attack, relapse into addictive behavior, major depressive episode, etc. Sometimes this surprises the person, as they hadn’t been consciously aware of the rising level in their container.

Psychology is the study of human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It shares some overlap with sociology, political science, anthropology, etc. However, most clinical psychology focuses on the individual and their cognitive, developmental, marital, or family dynamics. After many years in this field, I would guess that the majority of what’s discussed in therapy rooms does not focus on larger cultural, sociopolitical, large-scale economic, or environmental factors. Or such factors may be acknowledged, but therapeutic interventions usually focus on the micro (person/family) rather than the macro (environment). In that sense, therapy can be a bit myopic at times.

If the level inside the cup gets too close to the top, it overflows easily. This overflow would represent having a “meltdown”: panic attack, relapse into addictive behavior, major depressive episode, etc. Sometimes this surprises the person, as they hadn’t been consciously aware of the rising level in their container.

However, just because we’re repressing something doesn’t mean it’s not affecting us and filling our figurative containers. The emerging fields of ecopsychology and ecotherapy assert that humans have an ecological unconscious. That is, since we are born of earth and our entire existence depends on our fragile biosphere (and the other species we share it with), anything threatening our planet causes stress and anxiety in us. Just about everyone I talk with has tremendous anxiety about the future of our environment, and for good reason. This often invisibly adds to the total “volume” inside our containers; and since people often tend to feel helpless about large-scale events, it may increase their tendency toward immobility and dissociation.

For some people, it might be a useful exercise to write out a list of all the things they can think of that could be impacting their stress levels. However, for many other people, if their container is filling up, then the exercise of looking at everything at once could send them into depression, immobility, or even panic (“Oh, my god, it’s so much worse than I’d thought!”). Somatic therapists are trained to gauge a person’s autonomic stress response on a moment-to-moment basis and intervene as needed, coaching the person in taking on a manageable amount at any one time, and using that experience to grow stronger.

In my opinion, the goal of therapy is to increase a person’s self-regulation, which increases coping, health, joyfulness, and myriad other desirable outcomes. People who are able to self-regulate tend to be more aware of their overall stress levels, including “whole-world issues.” They may be less prone to anxiety, depression, and immobility, so they can engage in effective self-care, including taking action to better their lives and the greater world.

References:

  1. Bell, A. (2016). What is self-regulation and why is it so important? Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/what-is-self-regulation-why-is-it-so-important-0928165
  2. Sashin, J.I. (1985, April). Affect tolerance: A model of affect-response using catastrophe theory. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 8(2): 175-202. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0140175085900089
  3. Shulevitz, J. (2014). The Science of Suffering. New Republic. Retrieved from https://newrepublic.com/article/120144/trauma-genetic-scientists-say-parents-are-passing-ptsd-kids
  4. Smith, D.B. (2010). Is There an Ecological Unconscious? New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html
  5. Weinhold, B. (2006, March). Epigenetics: The Science of Change. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(3): A160-A167. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392256/

Side view of wolf on snowy hill, ears perked, head high, looking off to right side of photoAs we begin, here is an invitation for you:

In your mind’s eye, create a mental picture of a wolf. The wolf is alone; perhaps he is a young male who’s just left his mother’s side, setting out for his first solo adventure. The sun is setting, and our wolf is atop a hill, standing, all four paws on the ground. His head is high, his eyes scanning the horizon. His ears are perked, swiveling to capture sounds from all around. His nose receives all sorts of information from the evening breeze, information that would be imperceptible to us, his human observers. Perhaps his tail is lifted ever so slightly as it curves gracefully behind him. He is fully alive, vibrant, and completely in the present moment.

Now imagine what it would feel like to be that wolf. Feel the pads of your four paws on the ground, the bones and sinews of your legs supporting your spare, muscular torso. Feel your spine elongate as you gently test the wind with your finely honed sniffer. Feel the strength and springiness in your shoulders, your haunches. Imagine you are ready to respond in a split-second to any tiny change in the environment, reacting from instinct before you can even think about it.

Feel the energy that arises in your body as you spend a moment with this experience. And congratulate yourself, because in doing this exercise, you are contacting your felt sense.

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The felt sense is a term coined by Eugene Gendlin to describe our innate sense of everything we know and experience in a wordless, non-cognitive way, from the interior of our bodies. The common term “gut instinct” is closely related, as is the scientific term interoception, the process of sensing inside the body. Dr. Gendlin founded a school of therapy he called focusing. Essentially, focusing involves paying attention to our felt sense, and learning how to work with what it has to say. As the focusing website says, “This sensation in your body is called a ‘felt sense.’ It lies behind your thoughts and feelings and is significant and full of meaning. It is a message from your body to you, and will speak to you when you listen.” As Dr. Peter Levine is fond of saying, its language is sensation.

Much of this non-cognitive, somatic information involves not only our body, but also our reptile brain. As I have noted in previous articles, we are interested in the body and the reptile brain because this is where most mental health symptoms “live.” The felt sense is the place where we can work with painful symptoms to get them to subside. Then, the energy these symptoms used to drain from us becomes available for more joy and more productive engagement with the world.

Although modern Western thought has been quite resistant to this idea, there are other valid ways of knowing things besides our thoughts. In some cultures, people regularly converse about this innate, biological, or instinctual source of knowledge. As owners of living, human bodies, our access to our intuitive felt sense is our birthright! It is where the experiences of pleasure, joy, and liveliness originate.

Our felt sense is incredibly useful when we cultivate a relationship with it. As the focusing website points out, “Your body knows more about situations than you are explicitly aware of. For example, your body picks up more about another person than you consciously know.” Although modern Western thought has been quite resistant to this idea, there are other valid ways of knowing things besides our thoughts. In some cultures, people regularly converse about this innate, biological, or instinctual source of knowledge. As owners of living, human bodies, our access to our intuitive felt sense is our birthright! It is where the experiences of pleasure, joy, and liveliness originate. Unfortunately, there is very little discussion or guidance about the felt sense in our culture.

So, then, how do we cultivate a better relationship with this “interior us”?

Well, some of us have to be careful about it. If we have a trauma history, whether or not we’re aware of it, the felt sense is (predominantly) where it lives. In my experience, this is why some people have a difficult time even accessing any of their interior sensations: They are dissociated (disconnected) from their inner selves as a protection from the traumatic residue.

Unfortunately, shutting down pain inherently involves shutting down at least some pleasure. On the other hand, some people experience emotional flooding, physical pain, or other distressing experiences when they turn their focus inward. Of course, this is not true for everyone. People’s experiences with their inner selves vary greatly, largely depending on their life histories. Many people already have a rewarding and lively relationship with their inner lives—and that is ultimately one of the primary goals of somatic psychotherapy.

For more information about focusing, please refer to the focusing website. For those who suspect or already know that contacting this aspect of themselves can be challenging, I would recommend working with an experienced guide, such as a somatic psychotherapist. The work of Dr. Levine uses the felt sense as one of several fundamental tools for trauma healing. Pursuing such therapeutic support can greatly help in reclaiming access to one’s birthright of joy and vibrant well-being.

References:

  1. Gendlin, E. (2016). What is Focusing? The International Focusing Institute. Retrieved from http://www.focusing.org/newcomers.htm#what
  2. Levine, P. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
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