So, this is what I actually do in psychorimotor therapy every day in this period (my life is in a state of transition at the moment, so when I refer to my 'regular life', it's a relative term!).
You'll find me this week in the streets of Bucharest, showered and in clean and recently-bought clothes, walking around, usually alone. Maybe I'll stop at a series of cafes to read and/or write. Maybe I'll go to the huge public library in the centre of town and read or study there. Or mooch around shops, visit a museum or two, etc. Maybe I'll have a chat with a friend or a Couchsurfer I might come across.
So from the outside I'm a lone tourist milling about the city.
If it was quite as dull and aimless as it sounds, it would be pretty damned intolerable for me. I'm not much for the idle life. But in fact my entire day is a science experiment - every encounter, every reaction, and every step. I'm teaching myself, under instruction from my therapist, to notice how my body reacts to things, encounters, people and feelings that are prompted by events.
I'm learning a lot, and discussing the most noteworthy things with my therapist, and receiving further suggestions from her to develop and advance this 'research' (soon I'll be returning to London for a while, which is going to greatly amplify the challenge!)
As far as I understand, there are two good motives for this early practice; one is to develop 'grounding', where you re-establish the physical boundaries of your body, will and freedom of movement that were violated by trauma (even trauma where your physical body was not violated).
Attention to the body fosters this, and keeps you in the present moment (but grounding is a long-term goal for someone who has felt at the mercy of trauma-induced episodes for years or, in my case, decades).
The second reason is to make observation of the body so habitual, so utterly automatic, that it will 'kick in' automatically under increasing amounts of stress (including all your usual trigger events), the more you practice it.
It's intended to eventually become an 'amygdalan' habit, not a conscious choice. And that's why you have to practice it a lot, far as I can tell - and as far as I am doing, really, all the time now. I practice it most when I'm out because 'out' has been a life-long battlefield for me.
Does it work? And if it does, would it work for me, if I put in the time? One interesting thing happened the other day...
I was paying my credit card online, but the payment was declined. An event like that taps straight into my fear of financial desolation and abandonment, I can tell you! Had someone stolen my money? Was I here in a foreign country without means..? And usually the heartbeat goes up, chest constricted, stomach clenches...
This time the shock of the event, which hit me in the lower abdomen, passed straight through to my feet, the focus of my attention in recent weeks; observation kicked in immediately, and I was so interested to have a chance to observe myself under pressure that I began taking mental notes of my body's reaction. And the wind that usually swept me off my feet just 'blew me sideways' for a moment.
(I had put in the CRC number from the wrong card; the payment went through fine when I corrected this)
I had better pause and repeat that I am not an evangelist for psychorimotor therapy; I only committed to it a couple of weeks ago. If you're sitting there with doubts about it, that makes two of us. I have had such bad times from my PTSD for so long that I don't believe I will ever be 'cured'. There is a strong possibility that my PTSD will win.
But I allow there is also possibility for improvement; I don't know if I can achieve that improvement, or if it will be 'enough'. But I guess I can add that to the ever-growing mountain of things that I'm aware I don't know, as I grow older!
But I have done research, been persuaded by the mechanics and account of the theory, and initially encouraged by small indications of how it actually manifests in real life - with some application. That's tempered by my awareness that I am only in the early stage of a multi-stage process.
But even if it fails, and I finish (literally) back in ER...at least I tried.
I'll write more about the experiments, advances and setbacks in this journal. Right now I have some other thoughts about this stage of the process:
Spending hours in the present moment through these practices of mindful attention can induce a very pleasant meditative state, and a sense of peace, well-being and oneness with the world. Very nice. But that's actually a bit of a potential pitfall, because the point of these exercises is not to have a good or pleasant day, nor necessarily to over-challenge your triggers into a catastrophic state. It's to develop, by endless and often tedious repetition, that observation mode' response that gives the patient, at last, a chance to intervene in the automatic fight-or-flight response to a trigger. If you don't do it when you don't 'need' it, you sure won't be able to do it when you do need it.
Time spent doing this is to be considered as hours spent in a gym; except that you're working on the amygdala, not your glutes. And, as in the gym, there won't be any 'overnight' results that are anything but temporary. The time I spend doing this every day is, in my view, a few more quarters in the piggy-bank.
These early entries are long because I'm 'catching up' on where I've been until now. Soon it'll get a lot more anecdotal, I think.
