The Limits of Talk Therapy
Budding by LJAmlie
What a blessing it is to find a mental health counselor who can really see you & hear you when you are in a time of deep distress. And how healing it can be for those who feel isolated & alone, or those who's early life was so traumatized that they were never able to really trust a human being enough to bond. These are times when a psychotherapist can be a life saver & I am deeply grateful for the compassionate ones who helped me up out of the mud at different points in my life.
Yet sometimes, there comes a point in ones life where we have talked & talked & we see the same frustrating patterns & behaviors showing up in our lives over & over. If we are fortunate enough to be able to perceive the recurrence of these circumstances, we may reach a point when we finally get tire of talking about it & realize that it has only gotten us so far before we hit what feels like a dead end. Often times a person has also explored other avenues of healing like body work or spiritual practices of some kind. They too can be deeply beneficial in helping the person to reach a certain place of "ripeness" as it is often called.
But when, after an extensive search for mental, emotional & physical healing, we find ourselves staring into the face of similar behaviors & circumstances once again, we cannot help but feel as if all of our effort has been in vain. It is then, often at a point of deep surrender, that the hand of serendipity may help us see that it is time to turn & face inward & accept that we still don't know how to live a life of fulfillment. It is also a time when we may finally be willing to ask the deepest of questions such as, who am I & what is the true nature of reality. And this is when the teachings of self inquiry can become the most fruitful, not as a new religion to follow, but as a beacon pointing to something, some presence that has been here all along. Something that has never been tainted by trauma or distorted by conditioned views of reality.
And in my experience, after exploring such a diverse path as I have laid out above, the one thing that assisted me in this self inquiry was neurological & somatically based processes that helped the nervous system & the body let go of these distorted patterns willingly from the inside out. I have worked with so many people who have such clarity & insight from the neck up about all that they have been through, sometimes even from other lifetimes too. Yet the cycles of reactivity & unhappiness remain, because the body does not often respond to insight when the imprint was created at an early age or the conditioned beliefs of a culture convinced us that it just wasn't safe for us to be ourselves. And that is why I have finally settled into simply guiding people into their bodies & nervous systems, with the aid of a few little neurological tricks, to observe with curiosity where they "store their war". For the tissues hold these vibrational imprints & eventually express them in various unpleasant ways in the hopes of getting our attention.
One can have a bodyworker release their psoas muscle again & again, each time feeling relief, until something reminds it to contract once again in self protection around an old and often outdated belief. But when this process is witnessed from within on a neuro-somatic level, often together we can simply watch the sensation shift & move & even run off to another part of the body to distract us. Sometimes we find a deep emotional wound hidden within the tissues. This is when the blessed equation of "when two or more are gathered" allows us to combine our compassionate witnessing and simply attend to what is calling out for attention. I have had the honor of holding space for a person discharging the held energy from being struck by lightening years ago & for numerous women who have never before, despite years of therapy, been able to let go of the tension in their pelvis & face from early sexual abuse.
So I now often think of my role as helping the body to catch up with the enlightenment of the mind. And often times there is the experience of a new level of embodiment never known before. Is it a quick fix that takes away all of the pain & makes your life happy. No it is not. But it is the opening of a doorway here-to-for locked & impassible. The deepest phases of this transformational work asks much of the person seeking healing. It asks them to be willing to let go of every last belief they have about who they think they are. It asks them to accept full responsibility for their life and their condition without blame of self or others. And it asks them to turn & face into that which they have spent years, decades or lifetimes trying to evade or repress. This is the gift, the gem that has been held within us all along, with every twist & turn in the road leading us back to the same doorstep & beaconing us "come in".
Yet do not think I mean to say you must relive these personal or collective horrors. On the contrary. This is where neurological & somatic research has been such a blessing. For by focusing our attention on the body's sensations & stimulating the nervous system in various ways, the emotional & mental anguish of the original experience often simply fades or becomes blurry or distanced. Then we know that the experience has been shuffled into its rightful place in our long-term memory, rather than staying activated & experienced in the present moment. For me, this approach was able to take a traumatic repressed memory from the time of my mothers death & release the energy of the experience once & for all. No therapy, affirmation, discipline or spiritual practice of any kind had defused it before. From that moment on I could look directly into that most painful of memories & simply feel the love that was there all along. It was as if my painful reaction had simply dissolved.
© Jeanette Amlie 2012
Yet sometimes, there comes a point in ones life where we have talked & talked & we see the same frustrating patterns & behaviors showing up in our lives over & over. If we are fortunate enough to be able to perceive the recurrence of these circumstances, we may reach a point when we finally get tire of talking about it & realize that it has only gotten us so far before we hit what feels like a dead end. Often times a person has also explored other avenues of healing like body work or spiritual practices of some kind. They too can be deeply beneficial in helping the person to reach a certain place of "ripeness" as it is often called.
But when, after an extensive search for mental, emotional & physical healing, we find ourselves staring into the face of similar behaviors & circumstances once again, we cannot help but feel as if all of our effort has been in vain. It is then, often at a point of deep surrender, that the hand of serendipity may help us see that it is time to turn & face inward & accept that we still don't know how to live a life of fulfillment. It is also a time when we may finally be willing to ask the deepest of questions such as, who am I & what is the true nature of reality. And this is when the teachings of self inquiry can become the most fruitful, not as a new religion to follow, but as a beacon pointing to something, some presence that has been here all along. Something that has never been tainted by trauma or distorted by conditioned views of reality.
And in my experience, after exploring such a diverse path as I have laid out above, the one thing that assisted me in this self inquiry was neurological & somatically based processes that helped the nervous system & the body let go of these distorted patterns willingly from the inside out. I have worked with so many people who have such clarity & insight from the neck up about all that they have been through, sometimes even from other lifetimes too. Yet the cycles of reactivity & unhappiness remain, because the body does not often respond to insight when the imprint was created at an early age or the conditioned beliefs of a culture convinced us that it just wasn't safe for us to be ourselves. And that is why I have finally settled into simply guiding people into their bodies & nervous systems, with the aid of a few little neurological tricks, to observe with curiosity where they "store their war". For the tissues hold these vibrational imprints & eventually express them in various unpleasant ways in the hopes of getting our attention.
One can have a bodyworker release their psoas muscle again & again, each time feeling relief, until something reminds it to contract once again in self protection around an old and often outdated belief. But when this process is witnessed from within on a neuro-somatic level, often together we can simply watch the sensation shift & move & even run off to another part of the body to distract us. Sometimes we find a deep emotional wound hidden within the tissues. This is when the blessed equation of "when two or more are gathered" allows us to combine our compassionate witnessing and simply attend to what is calling out for attention. I have had the honor of holding space for a person discharging the held energy from being struck by lightening years ago & for numerous women who have never before, despite years of therapy, been able to let go of the tension in their pelvis & face from early sexual abuse.
So I now often think of my role as helping the body to catch up with the enlightenment of the mind. And often times there is the experience of a new level of embodiment never known before. Is it a quick fix that takes away all of the pain & makes your life happy. No it is not. But it is the opening of a doorway here-to-for locked & impassible. The deepest phases of this transformational work asks much of the person seeking healing. It asks them to be willing to let go of every last belief they have about who they think they are. It asks them to accept full responsibility for their life and their condition without blame of self or others. And it asks them to turn & face into that which they have spent years, decades or lifetimes trying to evade or repress. This is the gift, the gem that has been held within us all along, with every twist & turn in the road leading us back to the same doorstep & beaconing us "come in".
Yet do not think I mean to say you must relive these personal or collective horrors. On the contrary. This is where neurological & somatic research has been such a blessing. For by focusing our attention on the body's sensations & stimulating the nervous system in various ways, the emotional & mental anguish of the original experience often simply fades or becomes blurry or distanced. Then we know that the experience has been shuffled into its rightful place in our long-term memory, rather than staying activated & experienced in the present moment. For me, this approach was able to take a traumatic repressed memory from the time of my mothers death & release the energy of the experience once & for all. No therapy, affirmation, discipline or spiritual practice of any kind had defused it before. From that moment on I could look directly into that most painful of memories & simply feel the love that was there all along. It was as if my painful reaction had simply dissolved.
© Jeanette Amlie 2012