Psychotherapeutic Session In The Integrative Approach "Working With Fear"

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

Tell me how you were born, and I will tell you about your main strategies in life - achieving goals, forming preferences, affection, relationships with others and the world, possible addictions and preferences

In the concept outlined by S. Grof, our psychic experience is layered on the perinatal experience and the process of birth, the so-called BASE OF PERINATAL EXPERIENCE is formed, which subsequently passes into the BASE OF CONDENSED EXPERIENCE / S. Grof /, as the basis on which to "lays down" emotionally - sensory perception and certain needs are formed (in more detail everything described in his works BPM1, BMP2, BMP3, BMP4).

The difference between my work and the work of S. Grof is that my clients pass these perinatal levels without the use of LSD and Holotropic Breathwork.

BPM-I or "amniotic universe", refers to the static stay of the embryo in the womb, which represents the whole world for the embryo. joy. In this case, BPM-1 may contain the experience of the absence of obstacles, identification with aquatic life forms, and being in space.

In the event that there were certain pathological abnormalities during pregnancy, negative elements may be added to the content of BPM-I. It can also be influenced by placental insufficiency, fetal restraint in the uterus as it grows, the threat of miscarriage, poisoning with toxins, including alcohol, nicotine. Negative experiences can include feelings of isolation, paranoia, hatred, and alertness. There may be feelings of poisoning, polluted water bodies, an infected or dangerous nature, bloody apocalyptic visions, a person may identify with suicide bombers in gas chambers, soldiers exposed to chemical weapons [3] [4] [9].

BPM-II

BPM-II "space absorption and no way out". It corresponds to the first phase of labor, that is, contractions. The biological basis of this stage is associated with periodic contractions of the uterus, in which the cervix is still closed. The fetus at this stage can no longer receive enough nutrients and oxygen. Feelings of claustrophobia, fear, anxiety, resentment, anger, helplessness, betrayal, or worthlessness may be present in regressive therapeutic experiences. Perhaps identification with prisoners in the dungeons or in concentration camps, sinners in hell, archetypal figures associated with eternal damnation [3] [4].

BPM-III

BPM-III phase of the struggle between death and rebirth. This phase corresponds to the second phase of labor, in which the uterus continues to contract, but the cervix is already open and the fetus can gradually pass through the birth canal. The passage through the birth canal becomes for the child the first experience of consciously overcoming the path. To the limitations and problems that are already present in BPM-II, new ones are added: asphyxia can only increase, there is a possibility that a child being born will come into contact with amniotic fluid, blood, mucus, urine and even feces. When regressing to this stage, there may be feelings of struggle, shock, pain, movement, and progress. Head movements typical of the movements of an infant moving through the birth canal may be repeated. The BPM III pattern can include experiences of a titanic struggle, sadomasochistic and scatological elements, sexual arousal, archetypal images of mythological and cultural heroes, a meeting with fire, and so on [3] [4].

BPM-IV

BPM IV This phase refers directly to the birth and the first minutes and hours after it. The biological basis of this stage is associated with the final rupture with the mother's body, the onset of breathing, as well as the child's reaction to a cesarean section, anesthesia, obstetric forceps and other new sensations. As with other matrices, regressive therapeutic experiences can contain sensations of specific physiological and biological events, as well as sensations of various symbolic and archetypal images and other phenomena. Feelings of liberation, love, acceptance, salvation, and atonement for sins can be interspersed with feelings of outrage, rejection, bewilderment, collapse, emotional ruin, defeat, and eternal damnation. BPM IV can be saturated with archetypal images associated with death and rebirth, heaven and hell, the sensation of bright light [3] [4].

Fear is a basic emotion derived from the fear of death, the other side of which is the instinct of self-preservation, which prevents us from knowingly getting into situations that are dangerous to our physical existence. That is why any new activity (!) Is associated with internal resistance, our brain first "scans" all our negative experience, and only then gives "the go-ahead" for changes. It is clear how to work with objective fear (for example, bitten by a dog - I'm afraid of dogs; robbed on the street - I'm afraid of thieves), it is more difficult with irrational fear when there is fear, but there is no conscious reason. The feeling of fear is accompanied by the release of certain hormones and, if it is very simplified to consider, that there are two opposite-polar vectors - fear = numbness and impossibility of action, this is "paralysis" and "anesthesia" of the victim and fear 2 = energy = run = move / run away. These two vectors lead to different approaches to dealing with fear.

An example of a psychotherapeutic session in an integrative approach (transpersonal symbol, dramatic, artherapeutic approaches and analytical psychology of C. G. Jung were used)

:

A 27-year-old client with complaints of alcohol addiction, depression, loss of energy and inability to take action in her life.

Request: starting a family

Anamnesis - has been ill for 6 years, the last 2 years of which have been observed by a psychotherapist and receives medication (antidepressants), the reason for treatment is a deterioration in the condition, an increase in alcohol intake, and the appearance of a feeling of fear.

Hypothesis: Codependent relationship with the mother, violation of separation, and as a result, the impossibility of creating partnerships.

Session WORKING WITH FEAR.

T.-. What are you most afraid of?

K.-I'm afraid to live alone, loneliness.

T.- If you imagine your fear right now, what will it look like? Any image.

K-Spider, at the thought that a spider will appear in my apartment, I am afraid to move there (the apartment is paid for 1, 5 years and is empty, the client lives with her parents, sometimes she is in the apartment with one of her relatives).

T.- I suggest you draw a spider.

K- at the thought of this, everything inside me turns upside down, and I do not know how to draw.

T.- is there paints, paper in the house?

K. - yes

T. - Then maybe an experiment?

After 1, 5 hours, Figure 1

T.- how do you feel now?

K. - Nauseous, and I look at him without looking up.

T. - Shall we continue?

K. - yes, I'm ready.

T.- part 2. You draw on another sheet of the Hero, who is able to defeat the spider.

After 1.5 hours, Figure 2.

T.- how do you feel?

K. - Easy and pleasant, joyful both from the process of creativity, and from the contemplation of the heroine.

T. - We combine 1 and 2 drawing. What's happening?

K. - "hair" stood on end, then fear simply paralyzed, it seemed that the spider would devour the lioness, "swallow", even saw his teeth, and how he covers her with his mass! Nausea in the throat and the whole body "shakes". Then I consciously returned myself to the fact that the girl must fight and win, and suddenly I felt sorry for the spider and there was a feeling that I would not let him go anywhere. The fact that the girl would pierce him with a sword was somehow obvious, and by default. There are two options left - to run or transform. Since there was a feeling of pity and that "I will not let go", the spider began to turn into pink - into a flower, but this causes alarm and does not allow it to happen! Several times there was an impulse to cover the spider's drawing on top with the girl's drawing, but when I try it, the hair "stands on end" again, now it even seems that someone is crawling through the hair. I also want to tear up and hide the drawing with a spider, or sketch from above, at the thought of sketching, I understand that it will not work, there is too much dark paint, although when I combined the drawings for the first time, there was an idea to paint in pink, pink is not scary, because it is not real. The fight didn't work out.

T. - What is with you now, when you understand that the fight did not work out?

K. - Now, for the first time, the "light" (she marked it with white paint), emanating from the girl, caught my eye. From this light, the spider began to turn into white, light and even luminous in his thoughts. Its "hairy" structure has become like New Year's tinsel - the kind that is light white with sparkles. Now I was able to cover the drawing with the spider with the drawing with the girl. From this it became calmer, although some strange feeling in the head area began to ache for some reason on the right side. But this "script" with a white spider, I "scrolled" even before I combined the sheets.

T.-what do you feel?

K. - loneliness, and a terrible emptiness. It's like a concrete wall between me and the world.

T.- try to get closer to her, get closer.

K. - It's scary to walk, legs are like cotton.

T. - do not fight your fear, live and watch, watch your breath, breathe evenly and deeply.

K. - I get closer, the closer I get, the less I am afraid. When I put my hands on the concrete wall, the wall collapsed. And behind it turned out to be a huge - gigantic in size from the landscapes of the island - a spider. The dying spider. Formless and motionless. I felt that I needed to get through it, although it is terrible and disgusting. But on the other side, fenced off by him, there is my "other half". I worked my way through the "hairy jungle" and soft nasty mass. I found myself in a beautiful reservoir between the mountains. There we were with "him" in the boat for a split second, and then I found myself in this reservoir lying on my back. There was a feeling that I needed to lie and swim that way before I could team up with him. It was easy, comfortable and not scary, it is surprising that the water easily and effortlessly kept it on the surface. And suddenly I realized that the spider was not dead, but pretending or sleeping. He began to draw in water from the reservoir and I "shamefully" ran …

T.-How are you feeling now?

K.- I want to go back and continue.

T- come on (the client herself (not through the heroine) tries to interact with the object of fear-spider).

K. I found myself near a spider and paint it pink, and then into a soft shining light and send it to guard my island … Not even from outside interference, but as a symbol of some kind of higher wisdom from harmful parasite thoughts or influences. That he was at the source of their origin and caught in the net like flies.

T. - how do you feel with such protection?

K. - good, calm, a feeling of being dissolved in space. The feeling of an impending storm.

T.- as an option, if the Heroine could not defeat the spider, then what could help? Weapon or Hero?

K. - Hero. Is it necessary to kill the spider? Conversion is not okay?

T.- transformation / metamorphosis is only suitable if you have emotional pleasure from the new image. Do we continue?

K. - there is no satisfaction, we continue.

Drawing 3 Hero is ready in 1 hour

T. - we interact with all the characters and observe what happens.

K. - the Hero did not have to win, the spider escaped. And in general, standing behind the back of such a Hero is generally of little interest, a spider or something else.

T. - What do you feel? What happens to the heroes?

K. - She removed the Spider under the picture with the Hero.

T. - What do you feel in the body?

K. - for the first time something happens in the stomach, and not unpleasant. Warmth spreads in the stomach associated with pleasant emotions. When I look at a spider, there is no nausea, and there is no fear.

T.- do your heroes contact? What's going on with them?

K. - the girl has a sword in her hand. I would like to remove it from there, it is superfluous.

T.- can you draw a drawing of the interaction of the characters?

K. Yes, I want to do it.

After 45 minutes, Figure 4.

T. What do you feel now?

K. - The feeling of being dissolved in space. And I want to act.

Therapist's comments:

In Figure 1, the central image is occupied by the image of a spider, the web is in the background, the entire volume of the drawing is sketched, the image of the spider occupies a temporary space, 2/3 of which belong to the area of the drawing "past and present" - the left and central parts of the drawing. In the area of the "future" - the right side of the spider's drawing is smaller, but there is a clear immobilizing web, reflecting the client's feelings about the impossibility of movement. The drawing is drawn in detail, volume, the author has a "warm" attitude towards the character, ambivalent feelings and closeness, and disgust, this is evidenced by the dynamics in the images, the inability to "kill" and "fight" the spider with the help of the hero, but in fact - Heroines (Figure 2). Paying attention to the transformation when trying to "paint" the spider into a safe pink light (it is the pink light that predominates in the child before the birth of BMP1 - "paradise"). So, a spider, a cobweb, immobility, the doom of action, the impossibility of fighting big, fatalism - these are the feelings that are inherent in BMP2 “expulsion from paradise”, when the grown fetus feels the walls of the uterus as pressure, without the possibility of movement. The hypothesis of perinatal matrices is also confirmed by the image of the hero (Fig. 2) - this is a young girl with pink hair, thin, placed in the area of the “future” with a spear-weapon directed to the “past”. And … she is not able to cope with the spider, there is not enough resource, a complex ambivalent complex of feelings rises. And, nevertheless, along with these feelings, the Client moves from BMP2 to the area of BMP3 (nausea, movement, it wriggles "through" the spider's body, describes biological mass, swimming as separation from the fusion object), but there is not enough resource and complete transition does not happen. The hypothesis of codependent relationships and violations of separation is also confirmed by the fact that in working with images, the Client himself continues to work with the spider and not the heroine from Fig. 2). suggesting that the image of the spider is the image of the mother, this is the appearance of "moral" filters of border protection in the description of the guard spider. And the heroine2 is unable to cope with the maternal image in the intrapsychic world.

Why is that? Because in order to defeat the maternal image, incl. and prohibitions on intimacy with a man, you need a Hero who defeats the Dragon / Spider / Beast, etc. That is why, even when passing from BMP1 to BMP2 and BMP3 in this session, the transition to BMP4 does not occur (lack of the male aspect), and there is no satisfaction from the transformation of the fear-spider, therefore further work is proposed. In Fig. 3, the appearance of the Hero-male image, strong, muscular, decisive, reliable, in the realm of "real". In the drawing there is no life support, a clearly defined goal for the Hero (the character has no legs), but there is movement (a waving ribbon, a fluttering cloak and a flying helper bird), which indicates the Client's readiness for active transformation. The hero is so strong that with the proposed interaction of all the hero of the drawings, there is no need to defeat the spider (maternal image). The vector of the Client's attention is shifted to the interaction of the male and female aspects (Figs. 2 and 3), it is proposed to consolidate this interaction in Fig. 4, in which there is active movement (the same moving images and mutual embrace of the heroes). In this picture, the area of the "future" - the right side of the picture is light and free, "warmed up" by the feelings and influence of the warm male aspect (the image of the sun). The transition to BMP4 is complete.

Catanamnesis: K. moved to her apartment 3 days after the session, where she lives on her own. We have our own projects, forces for movement. Alcohol intake decreased significantly (from daily to 1p per week), and returned to normal. There was an adequate reaction to the appearance of a spider in the house.