Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples

Category: Body Wisdom

Articles on Body Wisdom

Depth Enquiry and The Memory Hole
Depth Enquiry
We’re pleased to announce a new page on the Therapy Duo site that discusses Amanda’s Depth Enquiry technique. She’s been developing this technique for several years now, and has achieved some remarkable results with clients.
Depth Enquiry (DE) is an extension to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). DE can take clients to a deep level of remembering and reprocessing past traumatic experience. The gently supportive space provided by the therapist, in conjunction with the technique itself, serve to release natural healing. Clients experience significant relief, and in some cases are not quite aware of how this has been achieved. The process does not feel like hard work!
The Memory Hole
Then, with a movement that was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
– Winston’s action, in George Orwell’s 1984
Orwell’s description of discarding a message (memory), followed by the internal notes about that memory, is a useful metaphor for what people who have experienced traumatic events (either recent or in childhood) attempt to do. There is evidence, however, that these memories become locked into an ongoing traumatic memory system, rather than being truly forgotten. And where they need to be is in long-term memory, so they can be experienced as being in the distant past.
Depth Enquiry unblocks resistant traumas and negative beliefs using a gentle, supportive process.
From the traumatic memory system the events relentlessly take their toll on the happiness and health of the individual. Despite Winston’s action with the message and the notes, all might not be turned to ashes, as he might have hoped.
The ANP and the EP
Recent researchers suggest that a traumatic event splits the healthy personality into these parts:
- An Apparently Normal Part (ANP) that continues to adapt to the demands of daily living, and is motivated to appear normal in order to remain connected to the social world, and
- An Emotional Part (EP) that holds the sensory perceptions of the trauma in the form of reliving the experience.
Negative symptoms occur when the experiences of the EP become known to the ANP. The ANP tends to deny the experiences of the EP. The person has flashbacks and an associated sense of low self-worth, and is confused and defensive about the intrusions of the EP. It seems not possible for the trauma to be “devoured by the flames”.
Yet a sense of freedom, of the trauma being truly devoured by the flames, is possible for people undertaking a process such as Depth Enquiry.
Working with Amanda in Depth Enquiry
Amanda delivers Depth Enquiry as a short program of 4 to 6 one to one-and-half hour sessions. (These can be undertaken in parallel with other therapeutic work, if necessary.)
Please contact her if you’d like to have an experience of this work as a client; or if you’d like to train with her, to provide Depth Enquiry to others. (Training is available to accredited therapists only.)
September 14, 2016
Our New Sexual Intimacy Program (SIP)
Our Sexual Intimacy Program (SIP)
We’re please to announce our Sexual Intimacy Program (SIP), which we’ve been thinking about and developing for a while now. We’re excited about this program, not only because it has some great ideas and practical exercises that couples do at home, but because we now have enough evidence to know it really works for our couples.
What is It?
SIP engages couples at a physical, sensual and sexual level – to explore new ways of relating and new levels of intimacy. How a couple communicates is often reflected in their sex lives. SIP breaks barriers in a significant and often surprising way, letting both in the relationship experience deeper levels of intimacy and trust – experiences that feed into all other areas of their relationship.
SIP builds over a 7 to 10 week program, which couples either commit to up front, or alternatively can try out week by week.
So we encourage you to take a look at our new Sexual Intimacy Programme page, and to contact us if you’d like to know more.
November 27, 2012
Beyond Narcissistic Wounding
The Barbs and Wounds of Intimate Relationships
Often couples come into therapy recounting an argument they’ve had. Each partner valiantly tries to get us to agree that their own position is correct. Well, it won’t work. We’re not there to be adjudicators. Actually, we’re not even there to resolve conflict (which may sound strange, but more on that later).
What the couple is usually experiencing is repeated bouts of attack and defense, to-ing and fro-ing between the protagonists until exit and/or exhaustion of one or both parties occurs.
Our approach is to stop the conflict immediately (both in the therapy room and as a strong suggestion for elsewhere). We suggest a number of simple approaches such as:
- Only using “I” statements (“I feel…”, “I need…”)
- Staying with feelings and sensations (feelings being characterised by being able to be described using a single word, such as “sad” or “worthless”; sensations being actual data received from the body)
- Using the microscopic truth about what is going on inside us
- Looking at the meanings we make in our interactions with our partner: see Staemmler’s model of interactions.
The World of Feeling and Sensations
When we encourage couples to enter the world of feelings and sensations, huge changes can occur. This world was usually already there, hidden from them; and it was usually the yearning of both partners to experience it and to interact from this world; but it’s unfortunately been blocked by the “bubble” of each individual’s defenses.
In the image at the top of this article, the “pool” labelled Feelings and Sensations is shared – indicating that it can potentially belong to the “we” of the relationship, not just to the individuals separately.
The Narcissistic Wound
When we’re wounded by our partner and the barb goes deep, it punctures our defenses, our guarded sense of self. This sense of self has been built to a greater or lesser extent in a healthy way, in order to survive the conflicts of normal growing up. The current view is that we all to some extent suffer some level of narcissistic wounding. (And it can be hard sometimes to decide whether it’s healthy.)
So another powerful approach to working with conflict is for us to begin to get enough resilience to see the way in which our narcissistic wounding is being invoked in our struggles. We wrote in our previous article about the Dark Couple. This couple is fuelled in proportion to the inability of each of the partners in a relationship to see their own wounding.
In other words, if we are unable to absorb the injury of the wound triggered by our partner’s barb, we give the dark couple energy; an energy that becomes redoubled if our partner fails to absorb our wounding of them in retaliation. It’s a vicious cycle of hurt and retribution (like an Old Testament story).
Absorbing the Wound
Absorbing the narcissistic wound comes only by admitting the existence of some vicious and unpleasant qualities in ourselves, without rebelling in defense and accusation. Can we own anything of what our partner is saying they don’t like about us (even 10% or 1%)?
A gradual process of growth and maturity can occur for both partners as they begin to see the existence of the dark couple, and begin to be able to withstand and absorb their own narcissistic defenses.
Understanding the Root Issues
So back to the part about not resolving conflict. Foundational change doesn’t happen in a relationship by learning strategies for resolving conflict. That’s not to say that resolving conflict doesn’t help; it may be an enormously helpful step in soothing the couple, preparing them to do deeper work, and reducing the psychic injuries to others with whom they connect (such as children).
But change really, deeply happens when both partners get an understanding, at the root level, of the unconscious energies that have driven their relationship. With such deep understanding, external changes (such as reducing conflict) happen by themselves – and sometimes even evaporate!
- See also: Attack/Defense versus Mutual Exchange
- See also: An Adult Attachment Primer
May 8, 2012
Gorilla Consciousness
Non-Verbal Communication
We recently posted an article on the trio of Attention, Appreciation and Affection from the recent Art of Love 2011 online series. And here’s another snippet from the series that also caught our eye, from an interview with Gay and Kathleen Hendricks on a common issue for couples: how to break potentially endless cycles of conflict.
Interview Snippet
Gay:
The adrenaline that’s roaring around in your system is a powerfully addictive drug, and many people are actually addicted to the adrenaline of conflict so that they depend on it kind of for a fix and to keep the relationship interesting. And we call that having a wargasm. It’s a big energy experience you have in yourself, but not a very positive one.
“…having a wargasm.”
And so what needs to happen there is you need to shift out of that state of consciousness. One good way to do that, that we teach couples, is to drop out of words at that point and just make sounds. Because it’s more to the point because you’re actually functioning kind of in gorilla consciousness at that moment.
And so you might as well just drop out of human language and just growl. And we’ve had couples that tried that and about ten seconds into it they dissolve into laughter. They can’t keep the conflict state of consciousness anymore.
So that would be one of the quickest recommendations I could make, is just drop the words out, make some sounds and kind of blow the energy of it out so that you’re not kind of sitting on a whole bunch of pent up energy.
And then try to talk about what’s going on in some kind of way that you’re feeling sad about something, or you’re scared about something.
To get out of that anger state of consciousness, it’s good to shift to talking about something you feel sad about or something you feel scared about. Because that takes you down out of the super riled-up state of consciousness with anger.
Katie:
One of the things you can add to dropping the words out, is noticing what you’re doing in your body. Because always when people are in a conflict, they’re doing some gesture, some repeated thing.
It could be poking your finger at your partner, it could be folding your arms and standing there like a sentinel. And we find that people exaggerate what they’re doing. It seems counter-intuitive, but it actually works really well.
“Notice what you’re doing in your body.”
If you exaggerate what you’re doing and drop the words out, you can actually get some insight into what filter you’re speaking out of. Or what trance you’re in, or what role you’ve taken on in that moment, that has you seeing your partner as the enemy. And so we have people begin to play with that and it works really quickly.
Going Into Feelings
What a way to turn a really tense and painful situation into an illuminating and even humorous experience!
And we strongly recommend this technique on getting out of an anger state and talking about something you feel sad about or something you feel scared about: Three Simple Sentences to change the way we discuss our upsets.
November 22, 2011
From Illness to Stillness
A Rich Book on Illness
We’re excited to hear about a new book From Illness to Stillness due out soon, by Michael Harrington.
From the Introduction
Uncovering your innermost being releases a wondrous diamond. Once it begins to emerge from the layers of conditioning, a realization dawns: you are ageless and timeless. When every free instant goes into this quest, you will no longer experience grace as the happenstance of a unique experience. It will be seen as the constant presence of all that is.
Illness is a blessing that offers a great opportunity. Sickness and dis-ease are catalysts, divine karmas that offer us a chance to pull up our wheelchair, prop up the hospital bed, lounge on the couch and rest under the tree of good tidings. An illness has oriented us towards the inner quest, highlighting the only reality.
A chronic illness was certainly not anything I thought would be part of my journey. I’m the health coach, the guy who climbed the Casaval Ridge of Mount Shasta, rode century bike rides and helped people restore and optimize their health. Besides, it wouldn’t look good on my resume:
‘Health Coach with chronic, undiagnosed illness now accepting new clients’. No, it wasn’t supposed to go this way. I believed that optimal health was in my control. If I took good care of myself, exercised, practiced hatha yoga, did Chinese energetic exercises, ate organic foods & drank organic juices, ingested high-grade super supplements- I’d be well.
After two years of chronic illness, I realized that sickness just happens, like everything else in life. Maybe it stays a day, maybe weeks or months, or it lasts the rest of your life. What if it did last the rest of my life?! Did it really matter if a mass of intense sensations, thoughts and feelings, turned into a story called illness, continued to be part of experience?
When chronic illness hit ‘my body’, it was originally interpreted as a disabling force. It was actually a fire demanding a deeper sincerity. As I began to include and acknowledge everything, witnessing the simplicity of what is, through eyes unclouded with right and wrong, this or that, a more complete recognition came to the fore. From this illuminating, but entirely natural perspective, life cannot be seen as a malicious force holding you down. Instead it is a magnificent orchestration unfolding in the most beautiful ways, helping you to unveil your own authentic, human design. I uncovered and released anger patterns, protective defenses, family & intimate relationship issues, covert and overt depression—all of the things that I had hidden from, spiritually-bypassed and separated from ‘all the rest’. The illness, at first seen as a robber who had kicked the door in and stolen my life, was in fact uncovering what was most dear. The greatest sickness, the only true illness, is forgetting what we are. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our entire lives we are attempting to ‘remember’ what we are. This ‘remembering doesn’t happen through the filter of mind but via the clear space of our innermost being.
Today millions of people are living with chronic illness. A large portion of that group are so debilitated they cannot work and have full time caregivers. Some are on the street, homeless ‘throwaways’, labeled drug addicts, dragging themselves around like zombies in ‘Night of the Living Dead’. One of the main reasons this illness epidemic has come about: We are being systematically and purposefully bombarded with chemical pollutants and toxins- in astronomical proportions. Our bodies are being forced to cope with some of the most deadly poisons man has ever known: through our water, food, aerial spraying, industry and just about everywhere we turn.
It is my sincere hope that if you or someone in your sphere has been given a disease label by the Medical Establishment, undergone a gauntlet of procedures, tests and surgeries, or inhaled pharmaceutical medications that have left you feeling even more depleted and sick, that I may be able to point you towards potential alternatives that are more in alignment with nature, remedies that actually treat the underlying toxicities.
Like a tree in the forest during a storm our body, when sick, is undergoing a transformation. It might have been knocked to the ground but the root is alive. The tree-body has been forced to turn all its energies in a renewed focus- towards the essential – and must find a way to reach the sunlight. We don’t know what is going to happen to our body (the tree); the old form is being rearranged. If you have ever been in a forest at the end of a storm, right after the intensity, there is an unfathomable stillness. It was always there but now you really notice it; that deep recognition is the opportunity encapsulated in illness.
- See also: Depth Enquiry: Gestalt Meets EMDR
October 2, 2011