2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
What to do if you know that there are feelings, that they are beautiful and pleasant, but you do not feel them, do not understand what they are inside. You can tell a lot about them, but there is no filling inside, there is no feeling. You can, of course, conclude that I am not sensitive / not sensitive and go on living with it. You can, but is this a good option and how useful is it? Of course, it is possible and even sometimes convenient to live with dull feelings, but there can be no talk of any fullness of life, falling in love to your fingertips or deep love and intimacy. What to do, let's figure it out, because there is a way out.
Let's start at the beginning and what are feelings?
Feelings are something complex, more complex than just a reaction. This is what is in the body and in the head at the same time. This is what gives us a sense of life, an understanding of ourselves and the people around us. This is an attitude towards them and towards yourself. Feelings are different in intensity and the same feeling is different for different people.
And if you translate into a more specific and conceptual language, then feeling is a person's attitude to a particular person, phenomenon or situation, which manifests itself in a bodily reaction and the perception of this reaction by our consciousness. Those. feeling is not possible without body and head. It cannot arise without movement and cannot be born without awareness of it.
FEELING IS NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT A BODY AND A HEAD.
Feelings are also associated with emotions. According to the theory of A. Lowen, American body-oriented psychotherapist, emotion is always a feeling. But feeling is not always emotion. For example, love, anger, sadness, and joy are emotional feelings, while warmth, coldness, taste, and smell are feelings, not emotions.
There are various classifications of feelings, as well as the concepts of emotions and feelings, but in this article I will stick to the categories described above.
Where do feelings arise in the human body?
I have already mentioned above that feeling is a bodily reaction and its perception. And this reaction is manifested in the movement of the body towards or away from the object.
FEELING IS MOVEMENT TO OR FROM.
The movement "to" expresses a person's desire for pleasure. And the movement "from" manifests itself as fear, in response to pain or expectation of it. Those. waiting for love, the body strives for it in order to enjoy and live, and feeling threatened, it moves away in order to preserve itself.
Digging even deeper, the understanding of feeling at the level of the whole organism concerns the higher nervous activity. Where receptors perceive stimuli from the environment and through the nerves transmit information about them to the brain, where this information is processed with the help of consciousness. And this is how the body can respond to external stimuli. But this information is not accompanied by any feeling. Feeling depends on our reactions. If our response is positive - the stimulus triggers an expanding movement in the body - we will feel pleasure and excitement. If the reaction is negative - the stimulus provokes contraction of the body - we will feel fear or pain.
But feelings arise not only in response to external stimuli and the body's response. They also appear in response to internal impulses of the body. Such as our needs and instincts. The craving for food triggers an impulse to search for food. And reaching the surface of the body, these impulses evoke feelings that the brain perceives, giving commands for execution.
The commands are received by the skeletal muscles and the body moves. In humans, skeletal muscles are controlled by consciousness. And this is where the fun begins.
How is the feeling process disturbed?
In response to an impulse, movement can be induced or blocked by a conscious response. Those. not all impulses reaching the surface of the body are realized. But what's so special about that.
And the fact that if the impulse is suppressed consciously, but at the same time it is perceived and realized, then there is nothing wrong. For example, in response to a rude remark in transport, you want to hit the offender, but you understand that violence is not appropriate in this situation and can harm you and another person, you block this movement. But at the same time, you still realize all the anger and anger that the offender caused and respond, for example, verbally to his actions.
And for comparison, let's take a different situation. Not very good, as you can imagine.
For example, a child, in response to a comment from a mother, is angry and wants to scream in response to an unfair attitude. He does this by expressing his feelings, but in return he receives a curse and censure of what he has done, as well as a verbal prohibition that this should not be done. Threats about what will happen if he shouts at his mother again exacerbate the situation with the expectation of punishment. And the next time a child is in a similar situation, he still feels the same anger and anger and wants to scream, but remembering the words of his mother and threats, because of fear of punishment, he does not do it. Those. deliberately blocks the impulse, but feels anger at the same time. At the level of the body's reaction, its skeletal muscles are tense, but they do not receive discharge, because no scream comes out. Moreover, tension is added because this cry must be contained.
After repeating this situation many times, and over time, skeletal muscles, due to frequent tension, go into a state of chronic tension and it becomes very difficult for impulses to break through to the surface. As a result, spontaneous movement is not just blocked, it passes from conscious blocking to unrecognized. The body and brain no longer work in a friendly manner - there is no feeling of anger and anger, and accordingly there is no cry in response to comments, it is silent in response.
And the sad thing about this is that blocking one feeling causes a decrease in the general sensitivity of the body and other feelings are also dulled. We stop trusting the reactions of our body and do not listen to them, or rather even ignore them. And then such questions arise as "what do I feel about him, do I love or not?", "Do I want it or not?" And the main questions, of course, are how I feel now and how I feel.
What to do with dull senses?
To begin with, I need to admit that it is difficult for me to differentiate feelings, it is difficult to understand them within myself and it is not clear how to track. It should be a problem for you to be willing to solve and put in the effort.
Tip # 1 - Recognize that you have trouble expressing and understanding feelings
Start doing something for this today. And this something should be aimed at deepening contact with the body, understanding your bodily reactions, movements and desires of your body. And I will give several exercises of the body psychotherapist A. Lowen, for this.
Exercise 1
Take 5 minutes for yourself, make sure that no one bothers you, sit or lie down comfortably and ask yourself a few questions.
- Do you feel your face? Are you aware of his expression? Can you feel if your lips are tight? Can you feel the tension in your jaw? Can you move it freely forward, backward, and sideways without feeling pain?
- Do you feel any tension in the neck or in the back of the head? Can you move your head freely left - right, up - down? Are your shoulders tense? Can you move them easily back and forth, up and down?
- Do you feel your back? Is it rigid or flexible? Do you naturally hold your chest in the inhalation and exhalation positions? Does your chest move when you breathe? Is your diaphragm relaxed? Are you belly breathing? Are your hips relaxed? Do you move while walking? In your usual position, are they pushed forward or backward? While you are sitting, do you feel your buttocks touching the chair?
- Do you feel how your feet touch the ground when you are standing or walking? Do you feel your feet well?
You don't have to ask all the questions in one go. You can arrange for yourself several times during the day such "attentive to the body" minutes, which will help to distract and relax, as well as pay more attention to your bodily sensations.
Exercise 2
Draw a woman and a man on two separate pieces of paper. And first draw, and then read the explanation for this exercise.
Explanation:
The degree of complexity of the drawings and the similarity to real people indicate the degree of awareness of your body and those areas that you feel best. For example, a drawing of a person can be without palms and feet or without eyes, without any facial expression. And this clearly indicates a lack of sensitivity in these places. Some draw schematically, with straight lines of dashes, which indicates a strong lack of sensitivity in the body: this indicates the difficulty of associating feelings such as sadness, joy or fear with the body.
Tip # 2 - start getting to know your body today
And third, and most important, do it regularly. After doing a couple of exercises, and then a week later and having a short-term result, do not think that it will last for a long time. As long as your body has been developing defensive reactions and dulling the feeling that you are safe, it takes just as long for it to recover. At first you will see the first results if you start working, but if you do not stop and continue, you will be amazed at the lightness in the body that can be, that clarity of feelings and the fullness of their living. Isn't it a fulfilling and vibrant life when the body is in harmony and grace.
Tip # 3 - do it regularly
If you feel like you can't do it yourself, there are many options now to get support in this difficult work. I mean not only individual and group psychotherapy, which are effective in dealing with problems in the sphere of feelings, but also workshops and groups of various formats on dance-movement therapy, authentic movement and the like, related to corporeality and movement.
Based on materials from the book by A. Lowen “ Body psychology ».
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