THE BODY PROCESS IN HEALING INJURY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Healing trauma requires direct contact with a living, feeling and knowing organism

P. Levin

Bodywork is an important and integral part of the therapy for people who have experienced a traumatic situation. Focusing on the bodily process is especially important for victims of sexual and physical abuse, whose trauma and pain were predominantly physical. This does not mean that bodily life can be neglected in relation to people whose trauma is predominantly emotional; the body first of all adapts to any situation.

In this post, I will refer to Igor's story, which I already mentioned in my article The Last Hope - to pretend to be dead. Igor's initial complaints are excessive shyness, inability to communicate, difficulties in interacting with the opposite sex, mental emptiness and disconnection in work situations, forgetfulness, inability to stand up for oneself.

Igor, like all his bodily expression, expressed separation, aloofness, isolation. Closed, being in a state of hypoexcitation, Igor avoided eye contact and often seemed to be completely absent (later Igor said that there were moments during therapy when he did not see me at all; avoidance of eye contact on the part of the victim in the face of a dangerous predator is observed in throughout the animal kingdom, at the beginning of therapy I was one of the predators). These are typical markers that make you think about a person's experience of violence. Studying Igor's life history confirmed my assumptions. As a child and adolescent, my client was brutally bullied on a daily basis by his older stepbrother (since adolescence, several of his friends have taken part in his brother's violent games). The victim of regular bullying (details of bullying are omitted for ethical reasons) learned to clamp down, hold his breath, disconnecting from his abused body. The situation, in which little Igor was blocked all possible attempts to escape and fight, required turning to the most ancient strategy of survival - immobilization. Igor did not realize that his current difficulties and state are the result of the use of an immobilizing defense reaction, which was transformed from a reaction into a way of life and a response to any arising tasks.

At the beginning of therapy, bodily life was not something Igor wanted to deal with, even minimal attention to the body led Igor to a greater disconnection and blocked his work. The temptation of a quick cure in such cases should be postponed, instead, a delicate balance and a thoughtful approach is needed, answering, first of all, the question of what kind of work with the body will be effective at this particular moment. Bodywork requires the formation of new reactive patterns and should begin with a slow dive, neither extreme nor too shallow. The selection of exercises requires that they be somewhat unusual for the client, but doable and still arouse interest.

In the initial phase of therapy, body-oriented methods included:

- keeping a body awareness diary, in which Igor recorded bodily sensations during the day (awareness of temperature, level of tension / relaxation, movement, vestibular feeling; physical pain; vision, hearing, smell, sense of taste, etc.); bodily experiences (scanning the body for emotions of anger, shame, fear, suffering, guilt, sexuality, joy; concentration on the associative processes associated with bodily scanning - the color scheme of the selected body contour);

- work with tactile and gustatory sensations (some of Igor's homework - rubbing muscles, touching soft and velvety surfaces, contacting with an ice cube, drawing with fingers, a contrast shower, the adoption of which was later supplemented by an exercise proposed by P. Levin, his description presented below; testing food and drinks for calming, mobilization, "inclusion");

- metaphorical work with the body (exercises "dismembered", "mandala of my body", "map of my body" and other related techniques);

- work with breathing (breathing is an easily accessible and quick way of regulation, both during and between sessions, the question "How do you breathe?" is directly related to the question "How do you live?" relaxing the legs to revive them, expressive work - kicking, hitting, hitting, dodging, shouting);

- games with prosody (buzzing, humming, singing);

- work with boundaries in partnership (options for exercises "stop", some of them are described below).

Let's call the spirit back into the body (exercise by P. Levin). Take a light, pulsating 10-minute shower every day. Using cool or lukewarm water, place your body under the pulsating jets. Concentrate your awareness on the part of the body where the rhythmic stimulation is concentrated. As you rotate around your axis, encourage yourself to move from one part of the body to another. Press the back of your hands, palms, wrists, face, shoulders, armpits, etc. against the shower head, as you do this say, "This is my head, neck, arm, leg, etc." Variants of the Stop exercises. The therapist moves away from the client to the maximum distance, after which he begins very slowly, in small steps, approaching him. The client is asked to be attentive to his feelings and experiences. The client's task is to feel the moment when the therapist enters the zone where he does not want to be allowed in, and to stop the therapist. Stop methods are at the discretion of the client. The therapist follows his feelings - if the client's attempt to stop him is unconvincing, he continues to move. Further, there is a discussion of how far the “protected” border is located from those boundaries that the client feels as his own - in other words, how far the “border violator” has managed to go from the moment when the client first felt this violation. The client must then try new, effective ways to protect their borders. We practiced this exercise with Igor quite often, and each time we noted new opportunities for understanding what happened to Igor, and what possible strategies could be used by him in protecting his borders, in general, this is one of my client's most favorite exercises, each new experiment lived by him in different ways and expanded the range of possible strategies, as well as weakened his frozen pattern of defensive response. The next option from the series of exercises "Stop", which was also repeatedly used in Igor's therapy, is that the therapist informs the client about the procedure. Then he places his palm on the top of the client's hand, applying some pressure. The client says “Stop” after 2-5 seconds, by an effort of will, without waiting for the impulse to do it. This exercise allows the client to have a “deep in body” experience of the right to say “Stop”. It should be noted that at about 6-7 months of therapy, I had a wonderful helper, and Igor had a friend, in the form of a cute dog, with whom you could play, which you had to take care of, and, as it turned out, from whom you can fully learn breathing. The dog that Igor took from the shelter was approximately 6 months to a year old and, apparently, its doggy life was also full of drama before meeting the new owner. In addition, during the same period, Igor began to visit the pool, it is known that during swimming, almost all the muscles of the body are involved. These two circumstances I see as extremely important milestones on the path of my client's healing.

By the end of the first year of therapy, Igor managed to come into more complete contact with his body, revive dead areas on his body map for a long time, experiment with movements and maintain a rather optimistic attitude towards therapeutic work. Igor kept the positions that he took thanks to constant work, self-development, finding for himself new options for self-regulation and “telesification”.

Towards the beginning of the second year of therapy, we began experimenting with more energetic and more dangerous methods of working with the body, if we begin to practice them at the start of therapy. Working with the body of Igor and people with similar histories helps restore reflexes that have been lost, dissociated, or abandoned due to trauma. The natural reflexes of struggle and flight are suppressed in such people, since the person could neither fight nor escape (by this stage of the work, the client must fully master the methods of grounding). Restoration of the fight and flight reflexes through careful bodywork and psychotherapy will provide the trauma survivor with the bodily anchor of the restored instinctive response. In order to release the flight reflex and regain the ability to "escape", it is very important to include in the work the real movement of running.

The client physically "runs" on the mat, imagining how he moves in space and time from a traumatic situation to a safe place to those who are able to protect him. In the therapist's office, the client feels safe and is asked to lie down on the mat. The therapist asks the client to remain in a real situation in which he can work through the trauma with the support of the therapist, while simultaneously imagining that he has returned to the traumatic situation. When the client enters this imaginary reality, bodily memory of the posture and stresses associated with the traumatic event is actualized. As soon as there are signs of impending immobilization reaction, the client is asked to "run" on the mat in order to relieve muscle "frozenness". The client is asked to imagine how he escapes from a traumatic situation to a safe place for him. As he masters the practice of escape from the situation of danger, the client trains in the strategy of struggle. When the client achieves a central experience of the traumatic situation, he is asked to force himself to fight in order to get out of the state of immobility that occurs at the peak of the traumatic event. At the final phase of therapy, Igor, first with my help, and then independently, practiced the focusing method according to Y. Jendlin.

By the end of our work, the integration took place, on which we worked for so long, the muscles acquired a normal, "healthy" amplitude of response without fading and refusing to fight for life. The tasks that life sets before Igor also receive an adequate, “healthy” response range. Growth and self-development are never complete, but today they are not centered around violence. By the way, many of the exercises that Igor performed, rather quickly from exercises aimed at healing, passed into the category of exercises aimed at pleasure. These include, for example, the exercise proposed by P. Levin, which is described above. Igor's personality, reactions and life are no longer determined by his past traumatic experiences.

I am grateful to Igor for the opportunity to refer to his therapeutic story, "as much as I see fit."