Like everything else in the world, there are trends in therapy. The generation before I was born focused on the search for the authentic self, the question of “who am I?” and bringing the unconscious into consciousness, often through images, dreams and free association.
When I was a teenager, everything was about memories, unearthing repressed memories and making sense out of unwanted behaviors from what was found there. That and caring for the inner child.
In my 20s, it was empowerment. How did society indoctrinate us into specific sets of behavioral patterns and how do we break those patterns? Like if we were trained to make ourselves small, how do we learn to take up space and stop apologizing for ourselves, or if we were trained to be stoic and strong, how do we learn to be in touch with our emotions?
Later, there were trends of skill building, like breathing techniques and direct communication, active listening, intentionality.
These past few years, trauma and the nervous system is trending.
There’s nothing wrong exactly about any of these trends. Our psyches are made up of all of this: image, sensation, conscious, unconscious, behavior, emotion, energy, meaning. What bugs me is the proselytizing. It bugs me in the same way my friends bug me when they have writers block, and they flagellate themselves for not being as good a writer as Hemingway or Octavia Butler, and I’m just like, sure, strive for greatness if that’s fun for you, but we don’t really need more Greats. We need more people grounded in purpose, and holding the depth and breadth of what is already known, with humility and curiosity and simplicity. We don’t need Groundbreaking, we need more people shoveling, planting, tending.
One of my supervisees mentioned this week about people wanting hacks for the nervous system, and I started worrying that the little exercises I outline in my posts might look like hacks. But they’re not meant to be that way. They are meant to be bridges to a next thing, your next thing, whatever that is.
So say that exercise I described in my first post, about pushing one foot into the ground and then the other, like a slow motion run, when you’re feeling trapped in a meeting or whatever. It can get expanded on to bring in image, sensation, meaning, emotion.
You expand on it like this:
When a being feels trapped, it triggers the threat response in the nervous system. If you’ve been trapped and had harm done to you, the feeling of being trapped can trigger the body memory of that harm too. So a way to help your body and brain when you are doing something that feels trapping but doesn’t really require the threat response is to send the nervous system a message that you heard it and are responding. Moving the feet one and then the other does this. It mimics flight. It speaks the language of sensation to the nervous system. The nervous system responds really well to moving the head too, so look around a little if you can.
And then this is a visualization I like to do, not in a meeting, but just in non-threatening times, to help build the neural pathways for believing in successful escape and relative safety. First you push one foot into the ground and then the other, like walking, you can close your eyes, or if that doesn’t feel right, invite your eyes to soften your gaze. Then imagine walking out of wherever you are, out the door, into the outside. And then once you’re outside, you get on a magic conveyance. It might be a long, arched magic bridge, it might be a flying carpet. Whatever it is, you get on, keep the feet moving, one foot and then the other. You look to your right as you travel, take in the surroundings passing you by, turn to the left, let your eyes take in what you are leaving behind as you move towards a place that is a place for you of relative safety. It might be your home, the Dollar store, the woods, an ocean, a rocking chair. You walk slowly up to that space, and land there. You let your body take it in. The images, the sensations. How does it smell, what is the feeling of the air on your skin? What emotions arise (common emotions are sadness and a trepidatious relief, or for some people a simple happiness). What happens in your body when you get there. Successful flight. Successful safety or relative safety.
So not hacking a code to tweak an existing program, but instead gathering with tender care the stuff of creation. A bed of soft moss to rest into. The graceful stretch of sinews. The hum and thrum of attunement. The weaving of life.
Love this one. "gathering with tender care the stuff of creation. A bed of soft moss to rest into. The graceful stretch of sinews. The hum and thrum of attunement. The weaving of life." ❤️