Describing Physical Sensations In Therapy

[Lola345]

My therapist will often ask me to pause and describe what physical sensations I am feeling while discussing something. I find it really hard to do as I can't ever figure out how to put words to them, or even recognize them at all. I usually fumble and say something stupid like, "my heart is racing."

Does anyone else's therapist ask them that? How have you responded in the past? Is it bad that I'm not able to describe it, or worse, not feeling anything at all?

 

[Deleted member 39333]

If it is, I'm right there with you. I can't even feel physical pain; I "switched" that ability off when I was a kid in order to survive. I do not feel hunger, or fatigue, or cold, or really anything at all. He is trying to change that, and will at some point--usually multiple points in each session--ask me to describe what I am feeling. I always stop to think, and try to feel something, but after 6 months of once a week therapy, the answer is still "nothing." So I can't help you, but I understand you.

 

[kilted]

This is normal. Even if you don't feel stuff or find it hard to put words to..... the process is about becoming aware of your sensations and developing a vocabulary around them.
Therapy is often about building a shared language so that you and your therapist can communicate verbally about emotional "stuff", deepening the therapy.

It is quite normal not to feel and/or not to have words for this..... particularly true for men who are taught not to feel from an early age.

Once there is awareness of sensation and a vocabulary around this, mutually informed discussion with the therapist around appropriate cognitive choices can happen.

This process aims to interrupt the instantaneous divert to fight/flight reflex and prioritise the slower pre-frontal cortex where things can be thought through.... in words... hence the importance of the "naming" process.

This can be rehearsed in the therapy room and then taken into safe enough spaces outside. We think in words..... so getting the client to use words to describe sensations, emotions and feelings builds a vocabulary that keeps the process in the pre-frontal cortex.....rather than the amygdalic/hippocampal areas.

Gestalt has the useful concept of the 3 zones of awareness......
1) Inner Zone - the sensations within our body
2) Outer zone - what we sense about our environment using our 5 senses.
3) Middle zone - our interpretation.. the meaning we make of the information from the other 2 zones.

What the therapist is doing is working with Zones 1 & 2 and probably staying away from Zone 3.... so that you sense the sensation with minimal interpretation..... which can be difficult. Over time, client and therapist develop a shared language for all 3 zones.

For example.... I have a mislabelling thing around anxiety/fear. I get the sensations, but didn't label them as such because for me they were "normal". In conversation with the therapist I became aware of sensations... eg elevated heartrate, sweaty palms, environment scanning, cognitive fog, and together we joined the dots to say.... these are indications of anxiety... when they happen you need to pay attention to your environment.... is it an emotional flashback or are you picking up something in the here and now.

Over ( a long) time I discovered there was "stuff" happening in the here and now that I DID need to pay attention to....so even though the sensations may have been higher than I would like because of my past.... they were pointing toward issues in the present that I needed to pay attention to..... this has been IMMENSELY useful!

 

[Frenzy3674]

My therapist will often ask me to pause and describe what physical sensations I am feeling while discus...

My T asks me that probably every session. I feel like an idiot because I really don't know. Hang in there.