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Embodying Relationship The action of pushing allows the body to extend fully, and Sam had been finding the pathway to unfold out of his curved, fetal posture. Fully embodied pushing naturally leads into whole-hearted reaching out and into relationship. A game of pushing with his feet against my hands to roll over the green ball and reach with his outstretched hands towards Lianne, who sat in front of him, became a favourite; he was embodying the necessary task of separating from mother in order to come into relationship with her as a separate individual. Alternating with the pushing games there evolved lots of affectionate embraces and cuddles, their bodies learning to mould together, to bond. Cuddling had formerly involved Sam being very clingy or hurting Lianne, and Lianne drawing away; now they were finding a way to be together in intimacy. Sam was learning through his body to negotiate the complex relationship with his mother, and she was now able to respond. Stern claims that an infant must first develop a sense of core self in order to relate to and experience merging with another: ‘[T]he infant’s first order of business, in creating an interpersonal world, is to form the sense of a core self and core others ..... [T]he capacity to have merger- or fusion-like experiences ... is secondary to and dependent upon an already existing sense of self and other.’ (Stern 1985: 70) With a clearer sense of himself, Sam was now able to enter into intimate moments with his mother without the fear of being swallowed up. The pushing games Sam now loved to play were usually high energy activities, and in time Sam came to know when he was tired and in need of rest; he was learning to self-regulate his levels of activity and rest as his nervous system came into better balance. He learnt to throw, catch and kick a ball, which he had been unable to do before. Ball games demand full externally focused attention, quickened reflexes, challenge eye-hand-foot coordination, and require alertness of the body extremities, all of which Sam needed. This could help him release held energy and the tension created by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, and support fuller engagement with his world. After the birthing process Sam needed to create his own play, and invented games which helped him to deal with difficult feelings, acting out inner dramas and finding his own creative solutions. He evolved a game of ‘piggy and wolf’ where I was the bad wolf-mother and had to try to catch him, the baby-piggy; Sam was able to work out this transference in a safe and enjoyable way through the game. He created four ‘safe houses’ in the room where he could not be caught, and would spend a long time in one of his houses before tricking me to look away or running very fast to another place of safety. With slight variations, we played this game for many months as he learnt to deal, at another level, with his need to separate and protect himself from the devouring wolf-mother - first physically through the pushing games, and now symbolically through story. Eventually he learnt to symbolise the safety; now he could run freely about the room but if he was forming a letter T with his fingers, he was safe and could not be caught. On one occasion Sam became very upset and left the room; I followed and sat with him until he could articulate his feelings. He was angry because Mummy had rescued a ball from under the cupboard when he had wanted to get it himself. Every child must go through this development, but it may have had special significance for Sam because of his forced delivery at birth. With support he was able to tell Lianne of his anger; he was learning to differentiate and express his chaotic feelings, and this incident led to them finding ways to negotiate boundaries together. Sam developed a passion for drawing and this became an integral part of our work. In the drawings, too, he was expressing and resolving difficult feelings and dynamics within the family. His first drawings were of black monsters, robots and devils. One day he surprised us by producing a flower; I was touched to see this and, perhaps recognising that it was meaningful for me, he offered it to me at the end of the session. I later had an opportunity to compare it to a Little-Red-Riding-Hood doll that transforms into Grandmother-and-the-Wolf, which he had been fascinated by; I told him it reminded me of his drawings, the black monsters transforming into the beautiful red and yellow flower. He gave me a long and focused look which communicated to me that he felt seen. He was emerging from his dark inner world into a world of colour and light. After this, colourful and inventive stories began to evolve through Sam’s drawings, telling the story of his inner emotional life. Sam was now seven years old, doing well at his new school, had made many friends, and was growing into more independence. A new level of separation was occurring as Sam looked towards a wider world of school and friends and activities that took him away from mother; he was also ready to end therapy. His drawings showed he had internalised a good and nurturing mother and learnt to mediate through his creative play the difficult and frightening feelings that had once overwhelmed him. Persona and Shadow Embodied Working with early wounding and perinatal trauma in therapy with adults will of course look different from therapy with a child, but there are many similarities in the core issues and the process of therapy. In both adult and child the exuberant expansion of energy outwards has been inhibited, and bodily tensions and weaknesses reflect underlying psychological contractions or dissociation. Each has struggled in his or her own way to connect to and express from an authentic and vital sense of self, and been thwarted in this to some degree. There is an infant-self seeking to grow, expand, and engage fully with life, but fear and unresolved trauma inhibit this. As for the child, bodywork and movement can help the adult client integrate a more fully embodied sense of core self, which is a foundation for development in the domains of relatedness and symbolisation through image and language. In working with early disruptions to the sense of self in adult psychotherapy, I might combine work on infant movement patterns with bodywork that seeks to free energy blocked in the tissues and integrate areas of the body that feel disconnected or dissociated. By bringing conscious awareness into specific tissues information can be accessed as to how energy is flowing or blocked within them, and the quality of responsiveness and integration between tissue layers and body areas may be sensed. Memory and feeling held in the tissues might be accessed and can be explored and integrated in various ways. The Body-Mind Centering approach explores the physiological functions and the mind, or quality of awareness, perception and feeling, which each tissue and organ system expresses. Body tissues, and their corresponding physiological and psychological functions, can be thought of as shadow systems when they are not embodied, when there is no conscious awareness and expression in that tissue. For example one person may not fully embody his bones. The bones form the architecture, the bedrock of the body, offering qualities of support, clarity, containment and groundedness. This person may feel a lack of these qualities, or have an uncomfortable relationship to them, perhaps preferring to be ‘up in the air’ than on the ground. Another person may not embody his organs but be well grounded in his bones; he might be experienced by others as a clear and grounded but unemotional person. These are just two possibilities out of a multitude of ‘choices’ we all make about which parts of ourselves we inhabit and express and which are unacknowledged and unexpressed aspects of the shadow. The split between persona and shadow is as much a somatic as a psychological phenomenon. Boundaries and Containment Creating enough trust and safety within the therapeutic relationship to address the core woundedness is the first task of therapy. Bodywork can support other therapeutic approaches in this. When a client with a wounded or undeveloped sense of core self has suffered violation of physical and psychological boundaries this might be approached through mindful touch focused on restoring a healthy sense of body boundaries and containment. Care must be taken with the timing of this; for some clients the body is experienced as an unknown and frightening place and any physical contact may be experienced as invasive. With some it may be advisable, at least in the beginning, to help the client develop their ability to feel their body and ground themselves in bodily sensation without the use of touch; this can also help create boundaries and safety (Rothschild 2000). If the client and I agree, physical contact may be one method we use. When I touch a client I first make contact with the skin, focusing my awareness there; the client’s experience of his psychological boundaries is often embodied in the way he experiences the skin and subcutaneous tissues. For example, he might have no awareness of the skin; this tissue might not be present to him at all. Or it might be imaged as something vague and cloudy, or a dry and brittle barrier, or a too-permeable membrane with holes in it. Going deeper, he might experience the layer of subcutaneous fat as an insulating and protective cushioning, or as something alien and frightening, or again it might not feel present at all. Sometimes there is the feeling that there is no outer membrane to the body, and my hands are drawn immediately into the deep inner spaces of the visceral organs which embody our ‘gut feelings’. The issues that arise might be explored using touch, dialogue, imagework, drawing and movement. Other body systems can help create a sense of boundary, containment and safety. For many the bones, embedded with mineral deposits of the earth, offer support and security; this seemed to be the case for Sam. For another who feels fragmented and dissociated as a result of early trauma, the connective tissue may give a feeling of connectedness, of being a unified and integrated whole. The lymphatic system, an essential part of the immune system which provides protection and defence, can be experienced as a clear support for maintaining personal boundaries when embodied. And we use our muscles to provide feelings of containment and defence. When the skin and other layers are not supporting the embodied experience of boundaries, excessive muscular tension may compensate for this; finding the support of other body tissues can help to release excessive muscular contractions. In Sam’s work, embodying the bones and releasing tension in the organs helped him to release chronic muscular holding and distribute energy more evenly throughout his musculature. Click here to return to beginning of article |
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continued … Embodying a Sense of Self |
