Things in The Body

The dream refers to the period of 1995, when he broke up with the second girlfriend and felt as if something was also broken inside him. «I fell down on a piece of rebar at the construction site and it punched me through.» Some of his dreams the patient perceived as prophetic, so he stopped diving from a high of 8—10 meters, as he used to do.

His dream was rather old, but since the patient mentioned it today, I suggested to ’check’ where he was at that moment: still on the rebar or had already got off it.

«I’ve got off.»

«Was the wound healed?»

«How many percent?» I often use this question in my work. Its undoubted advantage is that it is completely «safe’. In case, «the wound’ is a hundred percent healed, it makes sense, if not a hundred percent – it makes sense as well.

Clarifying the feeling, the patient found out that his wound was not actually healed yet.

«Is there something about her that won’t let it heal?»

«Yes.»

«What is it?»

«Rust.»

«Much or little?»

«Much.»

«What will you do with it?»

«I will throw it away.»

«Proceed!»

While cleaning his wound from the rust, P. noticed that inside it was full of pus, and outside it was covered with a crust.

«What is the diameter of the crust?»

With his hands he showed a circle of a small plate. There was a crust on his back, below the shoulder blades.

«Do you need it for something?»

«No. It keeps the pus from coming out. If I squeeze it from inside, it comes out only in drops.»

«What will you do with it?»

«Pry it off»

He did it.

«Where will you put the pus: in a bucket, in a hole, in a toilet bowl, or somewhere else?

«The pus is running down my back.»

«Has the wound started to heal?»

«Yes. But there are still white streaks of pus».

«How many percent is it healed?

«65.»

«Shall it go on healing?»

«I apply some healing ointment, a bandage, and cover myself with a warm blanket. I need some rest.»

By the end of our conversation, I asked again about the condition of his wound.

«It’s almost healed,» was his answer.

As a rule, back injuries appear because of betrayal («a knife in the back’). In the case of P., it was a piece of rebar. There are also can be other causes of problems in this zone – functional blocks in the vertebral-motor segments (displacement of the vertebrae). Below we will talk about the non-psychic factors involved in the formation of sensations.

From the story about the events

“Now that you have spoken so beautifully about the events that have occurred in your life, I would like you to continue and describe the feelings that you experience as a result.” It seems significant to me. The patients are invited to make a more complete description of their condition.

From the images

If a jealous woman is “driven crazy’ by imaginary scenes of her husband’s cheating (“I go crazy when I imagine her hands on his neck…") – one can ask what she feels when she sees these scenes. Where is the charge associated with her emotion: in the head, in the chest, in the stomach? Is it big or small? etc. There appear a “black funnel’ in the abdomen. The direct correlation between the brightness, proximity of images of significant persons and the size of internal formations existing in relation to them is obvious.

From complaining about other people

“My mother-in-law bothers me”, a young woman complains with tears in her eyes. “What do you feel?” This question immediately turns the conversation from a useless discussion about the nature of the mother-in-law to a discussion of her state that arises as a result. The poor daughter-in-law finds “iron weight’ in her chest (her resentment). Somatopsychotherapy is the option of working with the results of the experiences.

On orders from the outside

An irritable person says: “I have a feeling that the energies of some people, like tentacles, reach for me, and I feel bad.” At the same time, he jokes at himself: “A false psychic!” “What do these tentacles indicate in you? How are they related to you? Why are you visible to them?” It turns out that these “tentacles’ are the assistants in tracking his own charges.

You can worry less

Wives of alcoholics often have an upset contour of their own feelings. They persistently take care about their husbands, but not themselves. The moment when a poor woman is asked: “In what state do you solve your problems?” becomes a true revolution in the life of their families.

Such women should be suggested to check the state in which they try to solve their husbands’ problems considering them to be their own. It helps to switch to the discussion about themselves. For example, a woman is trying to help her husband to stop drinking alcohol and at the same time is experiencing anxiety. She can feel that her anxiety takes away 90% of her forces and makes her almost unviable.

«Should you be so much stressed to solve your husband’s problems, or can it be less?»

«Maybe less.»

«How many percent less?»

«I guess it can be a hundred percent less. Whether I’m worried or not doesn’t change anything.»

«Maybe you shouldn’t calm down because in that case you will do nothing and let events take their course. Should you?»

«I think, on the contrary, I will be able to do something worthwhile, only when I am calm.»

«Well, will you calm down right now?»

«Yes.»

«Calm down and watch how your sensations are distributed. We always talk about the reconciliation of proportions of what we spend our energy on.

The method “to add volume” to the therapy process

Primary care for a patient depends on what they attention are initially focused on. The work on the bodily level usually finds a greater response in those people who have got naturally good feeling of their body, the body of their consciousness. They describe their sensations as an important part of their experience without any stimulation from a psychotherapist.

The ability for such awareness of the problems is an indication for the bodily psychotherapy. However, somatopsychotherapy can be also highly effective with other forms of self-consciousness and, in any case, is recommended as an additional means of «giving volume’ to a therapeutic process. Somatopsychotherapy is a good way of activating self- awareness and working out the physical aspect of the problematic experience, regardless of whether it is the main approach to change the state of a person or an ancillary one.

No matter where to start

There are an unlimited number of ways to start the recovery process: from a posture, from intonation, from facial expressions etc. It always turns out, that such manifestations are found in the body structure.

Fine examples of the beginning from gait features and gestures of a person are given by Arnold Mindell (USA)16. He organizes the process of «amplification’ of the movement, which tends to manifest, but is hidden. It is on the «lunar’ but not on the «solar’ side of consciousness. The question of the process-oriented psychotherapy is: what are you doing when you are holding your leg in such a way? The answer is: I am preparing it for a fight! The SPT question is different: where is what makes you so tense to keep your right leg like that? The answer is: there is anger in the chest. Thus, the continuation of the work is different.

N. R. Cape (Brazil)17 offers to pay attention to the characteristics which a person uses to describe the others. His integral psychoanalysis is based on returning to a patient their statements-projections. The SPT interiorization is achieved in a different way. «Is there something that makes you choose such words? Is it at the level of your head, chest, abdomen? What do you feel when you say that?» We move from the projection to the state which is holding it. We talk in a «topographic’ manner, using the question «where?». From nouns and adjectives that are used by a person to define the others, we move to the essence of the «speaker’, to that part of their consciousness, which «invests’ such speech behavior.

Now we will not go into details of somatopsychotherapy «debuts. Let us agree with Jung, who noted that " … in case you want to determine the patient’s complexes, you can reach the center directly from any point of the circle… you can start with the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, with meditation in front of a crystal ball, with a prayer wheel or a modern painting, or even with a casual conversation about a trifling event. In this sense, a dream is as effective as any other starting event.18»

It does not matter which of the rivers will bring us to the lake, and, in a sense, it does not matter what to start the recovering process with. What is important, is how to end it. According to V. N. Tsapkin, we are looking for the «invariant of options.» He noticed that the same mental content expresses itself through the absence of legs in the drawing of a person, made by the patients with clinical symptoms of astasia-abasia, as well as through their dreams, or their behaviors in a group.

In somatopsychotherapy this kind of invariant is the bodily-oriented structure of consciousness. Under other circumstances, a person expresses it in words in free associations (in the psychoanalytic model); projects on the inner screen in the form of «movie’, accompanied by sounds, smells, bodily sensations (in the NLP model); expresses behaviorally (in the procedural model). In a «somatopsychotherapeutic’ situation it appears as an object in the body of consciousness. It is like a book on the bookshelf that can be read, filmed, or performed dramatically (as in the above-mentioned models), but which is now stored in a potential state within its covers.

The direction of asking questions

Two spaces

The somatopsychotherapy questions are topographically structural: “where and what?” at the first stage, and “where to and what?” at the second one. The psychotherapist aims to help the patients find their sensation, associated with the certain experience, in their special internal space – the space of sensations. It is different from the one with the realities of the objective external world. The table which I am sitting at, the tree which I can see in front of me, the sky above me are outside my space of sensations. The space of things and the space of sensations complement each other. Both are parts of the reality of our consciousnesses. The reality associated with the external space can be called “the reality of open eyes’, whereas the internal one is “the reality of closed eyes.”

Psychocatalysis of awareness of the space of sensations reveals three areas of this «psychogenetic’ world which is parallel to the material world.

Three areas of self-awareness

The world of phenomena that opens up when referring to the “reality of sensations’ is rather rich. It consists of in-body sensations, sensations of an integral body, the “landscape’ sensations.

We will mainly be talking about in-body sensations. To begin with, we will mention the «boundary’ and «over boundary’ sensations, for example:

Someone is holding his shoulders up.

«What do you have on your shoulders?»

«A stone.» (or «a bag’, or «a log’, or «a pole with two buckets’, or

«my mother’, etc.)

(This is a state of neurotic, psychopathic responsibility, or concern.)

One more dialogue with another patient – a young woman.

«Who are you?»

«A pineapple.»

«Where are you?»

«On a plantation.»

«Is everything all right?»

«The peel’s damaged».

These are some more examples:

A man stretches his arm along the sofa, which he is sitting on, as if embracing someone invisible. You should ask him:

«Who is there?»

His answer can be:

«A cat. (or «my friend’)

«What for?»

«For calmness.» (or: «to reinforce my position.»)

A man is walking late at night. His right hand is clasped.

«Is there anything in your hand?»

«A gun.»

«Will you shoot it?»

«No.»

«What will you do with it?»

«Throw it away.»

He throws it away and starts to observe “an arsenal of weapons, both modern and ancient, including axes, etc., falling out of it. How about his left hand? Quite primitive tools like cudgels and stones are falling out of there. Disarmed, he continues his way under the highest protection with his hands lightweight and free.

The subjective space of each person, as it is described in this book, is saturated with different things and essences. Each of the elements of this internal world is «alive’ only because of a certain energy current, formed and fed by its carrier.

Perhaps, that is what Jung called «the semantic field19», Menegetti – the psychosemantic field, Arnold Mindell – «the field, the area in space, within which the force lines operate20», Vasily Nalimov – «the Semantic Universe21.»

This work is focused on the phenomena of a person’s self-consciousness of their own mental space, namely, their in-body space. Knowing about the possibility of talking about «hallucinations’, somatopsychotherapy prefers to be interested in what «subsidizes’ their being, what charge is in the body consciousness. «Where is the feeling that makes you get armed?» (The feeling of fear in the stomach). «Where is the feeling that makes you shoulder the burden?»(The feeling of guilt in the chest).

Correlations

Here are some examples of correlation between a person’s awareness of the ‘body composition’, their own holistic image and “landscape’.

A woman feels that the cause of her deathly fatigue, which she complained of initially, is her greed. It comes out in the image of her gnarled hands with claws running into a bag, tied on her wrists, which turns out to be empty. She realizes herself as a rat, carrying everything into her hole.

Another woman has not left her house for fear of peeing in public for about eight years. In her stomach there is the sensation of a hot heavy lump, pulling together all her forces. The rest of her body is completely devastated, cold, and trembling. She feels like a fluffy animal-marten, locked in a cage.

A young man of twenty years old, suffering from inability to satisfy his sexual needs and experiencing failure in dating girls, feels on the hand a bracelet with spikes inside it which hurt him. It is the image of the painful circumstances that do not allow him to obtain the necessary warmth. He says, «I’m freezing, I’m cold!» In his chest there a is a black cloud with the solid black ice in it.

There are also natural correlates of good states that occur at the end of the work. They are usually characterized by a feeling of lightness, loss of body boundaries, merging with space: water, air, etc. BEST, which we have already mentioned, also encourages the identification of these «missing links’ in imaginative perception, both internal and external {«boundary’). («What are you lying on?» – «On the sand.»).

«Who are you?» and «Where are you?» are proven work approaches. But they are not presented in this book. They are additional to the question" What do you feel?». Further we will discuss the approach which I consider to be more effective and shorter. As I will not have the opportunity to illustrate the" Who are you?» and «Where are you?» approaches, I will give one of the examples of this kind of work, not only with diagnostic, but also therapeutic parts.

Escaped from captivity

Patient L. M., born in 1953, hesitates for a long time before starting to tell. “You do not understand… people have this kind of attitude! I fall asleep every time with one wish – not to wake up again.”

She feels as if lying on her stomach with a granite seven-story building crushing her. Her body is flattened, arms and legs do not even move, but her head is able to rotate. What is underneath her? Also, the stone. Her head is in abyss and at the bottom there is a river. The cliff is 30 meters deep. She is in constant stiffness. No medicine can help her.

«When you are clamped down, what do you feel?»

«Complete despair. I have been in this state for several years.»

She recalls the circumstances when she was «crushed by a granite rock’: «I worked at school and always wanted to do my best. (I had studied in a boarding school, and our director who loved and respected very much, used to say: whoever you are – a cleaner, or a minister – you must do your best. I forgot many of her words, but I remember those ones.) With no experience I had to be a class teacher. The result was good. A lot of responsibility. At the same time, I was studying in the university, my daughters were small… and suddenly – a conflict situation. The school has been allocated one place at a seaside resort. My daughter was in the school council. I knew how much she was doing there… Then the question arose, who would go there. They chose the director’s daughter. I started to argue. But the director said to me, «Resign, or we will crush you.» I started to work in a college. I thought it was a promotion. New environment, new job. I was always self-confident. But after some time, I faced the fact that… I must go to a lecture, but I do not remember anything. I was stressed.

After a month I resigned again. Doctors, pills. Even eating was hard. I did not talk. Just slept. My husband was surprisingly tactful. I started talking and smiling. Only a year later I felt better. Since then, as soon as there is a stressful situation, I change my job. I have changed ten places already. I don’t work anywhere for more than six months.»

Back to the actual. It is impossible to stay in the rock any longer, it threatens death. The patient thinks what to do, so do I. Maybe she should call for help.

«Did you try to call for help?»

«What is the use to shout if I know that here people can’t get here?»

«Perhaps, someone will be able,» we continue conversation searching for more real way out.

«My head is over an abyss, the river is roaring, and I hear what’s behind me,» says L. M.

«Should we go in the opposite direction?»

«It’s impossible.»

«Maybe just to relax and to take the weight.» I suggest her (meaning to die and to be reborn, to experience her own death to live).

«This is unacceptable for me.»

It turns out that to get out it is necessary to turn into someone or something, as in a fairy tale. We come to a joint conclusion.

«A stream? A bird? A snake?»

«A stream, going to a mountain river,» decides L. M., but immediately she gets scared. «I can fail to reach the river… But in any case, I start to flow.» She exhales.

«Are you out in an open place?»

«Yes, but my soul remained there. My desire is to take a knife and scrape it off. It is a balloon of some kind… not scraped off. The place, where my body was, is a cave now. My soul is in it, witnessing from above. I cannot see myself. Ball that you have to push, to pull away from those walls. Transparent. It’s like a river of fire down there. I did not notice it before… Maybe my soul is afraid? There is no blue coolness, but fiery tongues of flame, like lava.»

«Maybe you can go right or left, if you change your volume?» I suggest.

«Like whom? An ant!» L. M. exclaims and continues her description. «I get out of this cave (It is a huge space for an ant!) and go right. I see cracks in the ground, on the rocks… A long road. I don’t see any sky, nothing else,» the patient is perplexed.

«You’re an ant,» I guess. «So, you can’t see beyond the surface of the stones and the soil!»

«I’ve overcome a small stone,» reports L. M. and exhales. «But it is felt as a huge mountain!»

L. M. does not understand where to go next.

«Back?»

«No. There is a river below. To the right! Yes, to the right… Now I am in my proper person, trying to go right. No people, no one, nothing. But I have the feeling that, if I go this way, I will reach some place. I must find it… I will walk along this path.»

She finishes the session and opens her eyes, now glowing with a completely different light.

Comment. Identifying the «fairy tale’, in which a person lives, can be productive. The contact with that patient was interrupted for external reasons after a short cycle of meetings. It was obvious to me that the neurotic facade was hiding (or opening?) serious constitutional problems: emotional instability, sensitivity. The leading characterological radical was cycloidal, «expressed’ in her appearance (round face, plumpness). Also, L. M. had a thin neck, which questioned her ability to adapt successfully without supporting work.

Four years later I was talking to her again. L. M. testified that, thanks to our sessions, in many cases she was able to stop her anxiety by asking herself: “What do I feel? Do I feed it or not?” etc., And thus, she saved herself from much stress. However, there was no complete peace of mind. Moreover, six months ago she was in the hospital, being treated with amitriptyline, so she gained weight. She did not have any psychotherapy since then. She worked in two other places. In one case, she resigned because of the difficulties in fulfilling a new job, in the other – because of the dissolution of the company. She experienced increased stress because of the difficulties in acquiring additional skills and qualifications at new places of work and because of problems with her relatives with her daughter.

I asked L. M. to describe her present «landscape’ of feelings. She easily continued the description:

«A high steep bank of the river. The sun is shining ahead. There is a thick forest behind, which is hard to go through. I can go left or right. I am in the state of a deep thought.»

She recollects that for a long time she was thinking about the phrase: «You cannot enter the same river twice» until she decided to talk to her husband. Now she wants to enter this bright river, but the cliff is so high and steep!

«What does this river symbolize for you?» «It’s a symbol of the future.»

«Suppose you are already in the river, what happened?»

«If I went into the river, it would, probably, be easier for me.»

«Why?»

«I would feel saved from thirst and heat.»

«So, are feeling heat now?»

«Terrible heat. My soul burns».

«Coals or open flame?»

«Flame.»

«What your state does of it express?

«Anxiety for loved ones.»

«How many such «alarms’ do you have?»

«Five: unsuccessful marriage of my daughter; absence work and fear of work; the relations with my mother-in-law; worries for the husband, for his health, for my younger daughter.»

«How many percent of your force does it take?»

«Fifty, at least. I am thinking about it all the time. When I am talking to someone and thinking about the problems, my fear is amplified. When I have a pleasant talk (I have a neighbor who can reassure), the flame ceases. When I talk to my daughter, the flames blazes.»

Comment. Note that all the experiences of L. M. are actual and real. Her daughter, for example, is unhappy in marriage. She is in the position of a slave with a stingy husband, who is much older than she and blackmails her, threatening to take away their child.

L. M.’s reaction itself is natural. But the intensity of her worries about the unresolved problems harms her own health and the very solution of those problems.

The diagnosis of cyclothymia in this case is not excluded, taking into consideration the constitutional features of the patient.

As a doctor, I was pleased to hear that she had irrevocably left the «cave in the granite rock’. Her hesitation in entering the river of the future was a problem. Working on her «landscape’, it would be necessary to achieve «smoothing of a cliff’, so that she could feel herself close to water, or in the water.

Although the «landscape’ work can be effective, it is, in my opinion, not the best one. The most convenient way to achieve levelling, «smoothing of the cliff’ is by identifying the feasibility of such worries, by redirecting sensations of heat-heaviness inside the body. The landscape will be changed by inner calmness.