Sensorimotor psychotherapy journal

[AnotherUser]

The first hour of my day, after I leave the apartment, is devoted to awareness of my feet and lower legs. This is where I started with SP back in June, even though I abandoned the work for a few months after.

I add concentration on other parts of the body as I proceed with this, but awareness of the feet is, perhaps quite naturally, the foundation of the work I am doing on observation of the body.

Maintaining communication with the body in this way is very difficult to explain verbally. The connections which slowly grow as you practice awareness of your legs (or any other part of the body) doesn’t easily lend itself to language.

But if you want to know what the actual practical execution of it is - it is simply that as you walk, and stop walking, and pivot, you maintain consciousness of your feet.

It sounds absurdly new age and kind of ‘hippy’ because the legs are such an obvious metaphor for ‘grounding’. If you actually read Trauma and the Body, you’ll find that the SP metaphor is rather different, distinguishing between the ‘core’ (trunk, hip etc, which act on psychological foundations) and the extremities (arms, head, legs etc) which literally embody both our capacity to act and also to react (to run, fight, etc.).

(SP also involves a great deal of work around orienting and body position, particularly at rest. Your SP therapist will use your body cues as material quite early in therapy, in most cases, and that will be an ongoing process.)

After some weeks of observing my feet and lower legs, I found that I had increasing grace in my walking movements, a phenomena described in the book. This is nice, but it isn’t terribly important as a core objective.

There are many pleasant side-effects of observing one’s body, but as far as I can tell it is a mistake to attach oneself to them as new skills or acquisitions. Maybe they will become permanent possessions later, but that’s later.

There is something else important about body observation which I must mention; I discussed this with my T last week, and she vigorously agreed with me:

Do not fall into the trap of ‘suffocating’ or repressing your feelings, bad or otherwise. That’s the complete opposite of the intent of this work, which is to develop the capacity to observe the body when under pressure.

But we victims of trauma tend to view better periods with suspicion. So when a sustained ‘good’ period of body observation improves our feeling about ourselves, I know that I tend to wonder how long it will be before the next attack. And I want to hold onto it and savour it, because (maybe like you) I get so few ‘breaks’ from my condition.

And I tend to believe that if I am happy for more than a day or two, I have ‘buried’ my true feelings again - ‘suffocated’ them to get a short holiday. And that the pressure is building up again for the next attack.

You have to fight right through this kind of thinking when practising body observation.

It doesn’t matter. The next attack does not matter. Most of us have been cycling through ineffective survival mechanisms for years or decades. The next attack was coming anyway - but this time, the idea goes, we’re doing something that could help give us insight into it, and some practical knowledge to address it.

So the point is to develop the skills to maintain observation and awareness through the whole spectrum of possible arousal.

When that’s achieved to the point of consistency, the patient is at a milestone somewhere early in phase 2 (of 3). I’m nowhere near that. You have a lot of ‘whining’ and self-doubt to come from me, at the very least!

It’s a pretty pleasant day here in central Bucharest. I’m going to cafe-hop a bit more, and hope to post again today with some more specific examples of exercises, experiments and my thoughts and experiences of them.

 

[ladee]

You are sharing the experiences very well... I get it... I understand.... !! Enjoy your 'foot work' today, Looking forward to your next post...
Sending the 'idea' of comfortable shoes for your journey....

 

[AnotherUser]

I'm writing from my apartment for the first time. It occurred to me as I wrote a previous entry in this journal that I engage in sensorimotor psychotherapy practice as soon as I leave the apartment every day. It happens literally on the threshold.

Why? Most of the suffering in my life has taken place in the many, many rooms I retreated to, often for years, longing to engage with the human race but unable to do so. By that logic, I should take the work indoors as well, and I am now trying to.

The reason SP concentrates so much on the boundaries of the body is to literally help the sufferer to begin to feel comfortable in their skin, and in reasonable control of their physical (and therefore psychological) boundaries.

How many times in the last thirty years have I rushed home to escape the unbearable psychological pressure of the outside world, as if I had no skin and needed the 'skin' of the apartment to fill that lack? Everything that could hurt me was safely beyond those walls. Unfortunately so was everything that could help me participate in life.

I was never in physical danger when I retreated all those times. No-one was attacking me or menacing me, except as I may have perceived it. I could have realized the integrity of my own body as I was out there in the outside world, and that would have been retreat enough - aware that I had freedom to run, to act, to react, and to move in any direction.

I've said before how hard it is to explain work you do with the body in verbal terms, so please bear with me if my analogies are clumsy. But as far as I can tell, one of the purposes of SP is that your body becomes the apartment that you run to - the place of integrity and safety, and you don't have to disengage from society or slam a door behind you to achieve that integrity any more.

So I just wanted to share that I am trying to take this work indoors.

Today I woke up really wanting a Valium. I have a small stash saved for the journey to London next week, since I'm not crazy about flying. But I was curious as to why I have that physical craving at the back of the tongue this morning (haven't had any Valium recently), and it made me aware that I was under stress, and so also made me aware that I save my SP practice for the outside world; and to question that a little.

Tomorrow my step-sister arrives here for a few days. I love her, she's family, but it's going to be a challenge, for sure. Then, after she goes on Thursday, I will be getting ready to leave for London for at least two months.

It would be a nice tourist venture for many of you; for me it's a long walk through a scene of many defeats, and a place where I'll encounter a family I have problematic relationships with, and where I'll be isolated from my Bucharest friends. Also it means sharing a flat with someone I don't know for two months, when I am really used to having my own space (which is really part of my long-term pathological behavior, I guess).

I'll write more about why I'm going there later, but for sure these reflective walks around Bucharest are going to transform into much more challenging material for me soon.

Anyway, am going out to the centre shortly, and plan to post again. We'll see.

 

[AnotherUser]

At some point every trauma sufferer who starts any long-term treatment is going to have to fight a real war with a wooden rifle.

I do know this. If we had control over the frequency, intensity or timing of our battles, we wouldn’t be PTSD sufferers, I guess.

The episodes will come when they want, not when it suits us that they come.

Not only that, but unless they do come, we can’t evaluate our progress; we can’t have any victories that encourage us or defeats that we can learn from under therapeutic guidance.

But it is kind of against human nature to want to go and walk on coals, even in order to learn how to walk on coals.

I feel that today. I am bothered by the prospect of hosting my step-sister for the next few days; she brings up the issue of family and reminds me that it is an issue I am going to be facing much more in the imminent two months in London.

So today my coordination isn’t so good; it’s hard to ‘find my feet’ (see previous entries), and I’m having to battle to keep monitoring the body. I’m agitated, and I can see that reflected back at me in casual encounters. The effort involved at this stage is to keep monitoring and not react emotionally; to let yourself feel whatever you need to feel, but to keep observing, without attempting to ‘correct’ or to suffocate yourself.

It’s quite a trick to learn.

Some of the extra body work I have been experimenting with has become secondary today, as I re-focus on my feet, which is where all the work began.

In the next post I want to list some more of the actual techniques and experiments of the last few weeks.

 

[AnotherUser]

So, is observing your body under stress all there is to this stage of psychorimotor therapy? Must the patient just ‘suffer and report’ to the therapist, resisting all attempts at comfort or remedy?

No. The therapist, having observed you and your body use over an initial period (usually some months) is likely to then address two issues: interesting you in SP and establishing trust. Both of those were hard and long battles with me, but that’s another story.

With those three things finally accomplished (acquaintance, commitment and trust), your T will begin not only to continue monitoring your efforts at body observation, but to suggest specific movements and areas of concentration on particular body parts.

He or she will also be working with you on your physical attitude, and wanting to hear feedback from you about what happened when you tried those experiments; and news about experiments you invent for yourself.

So it’s not meant to be as masochistic or self-flagellating as I may have unintentionally made it sound up to now. It really is therapy at all stages - even the very early one I am at.

(And if you are put off by how abstract what I am doing seems to you, reading the later parts of Trauma and the Body will explain why I consider this work worth a go. Taking my work out of context of the much more ambitious context of the entire SP process is likely just to bore and confuse you, I think)

Legs

In early body-monitoring work, the legs are emphasised. With increased work on them, they become both the weights that stop ‘storm traumas’ from blowing you straight out of your body and into the unanchored winds, and the reminders that your current experience is taking place here and now.

Many of us wanted to run during our traumatic events, but could not. Perhaps we were frozen, physically restrained, held back by terror. Increasing concentration on the legs, apart from other benefits, makes you aware of your power to move in the world. To move forward, hold your ground, or retreat as necessary.

I did not know this feeling was missing or weakened in me until I felt it strengthen.

After some weeks or months of work with them, you may find as I do that your legs automatically ‘walk’ you into interesting places that are safe but novel. The other day they walked me into a museum in Bucharest which I was otherwise not attracted to because of some people sitting outside. (It was an excellent museum, by the way)

Your legs give you freedom of movement in the world, and paying attention to them connects you with the power you have to control where you are. At least, that has been my experience. Once again, it’s a connection that is hard to verbalise.

Position of legs

Early on your T will draw attention to your gestures and bodily posture. Eventually you will start observing them yourself.

My standard sitting posture is with my legs tightly crossed, protecting the groin and inner thigh area. Observing this has given me food for thought, but leave that to another time.

The point is that I started to experiment with new sitting postures, the more I became aware of my feet and legs.

I also started to observe how others around me sit - particularly those that looked rested and reposed. And to invent my own new leg postures:

Two feet flat on ground, legs apart (weird); legs very loosely crossed with ankle almost resting on knee, wide stance (comfortable and nice, and now what I consciously put my legs into, particularly when feeling stressed); up on the table completely, all the way up to the rear thighs (VERY nice! But strictly for home).

The point is to test the effect of physical disposition of the body on the mind - to challenge the usual idea that the body just reflects the mind.

There’s a lot of biofeedback involved in body monitoring: therapist>patient, patient>patient and patient>world. SP begins its work here.

Arms

Two weeks ago my therapist suggested I add work with my arms to the extensive work I have done with my legs.

I haven’t been able to, and that’s something I am likely to return to with her.

Your arms express out from the core of the body; if they’re not moving, the core may not be able to start that movement, and working directly on the arms may not be the best place to start.

There are many examples in Trauma and the Body of patients being encouraged to use unfamiliar arm movements in therapy and home work, and they are remarkable stories.

Arms embrace, reach out, defend, help set limits, invite; they create connections, and they sever them. If your legs move you to where you want to be in the world, it’s the arms that accomplish (or try to accomplish) your aims once you are in that location.

I cannot connect with my arms; with action - with the prime impetus to play, touch and explore.

So for the moment, arms are kind of on the back burner for me. Sometimes I make experiments with them, but it’s like trying to get a clear radio signal from Greenland.

In the next post I’ll write about my experiments with the back/spine and facial muscles, as well as how increased awareness of my legs has increased my understanding about my own trauma.

 

[AnotherUser]

First real test of what I have been practicing all these weeks.

So I'm standing in the middle of freezing grey Bucharest at midday with my step-sister in tears and mounting hysteria. We're both advocates of a good cause, but I made (what I guess is) the mistake of criticizing her for (a month or so back) publishing a social media post featuring an identifiable member of the public with their face not blurred and containing what I considered to be derisive or abusive language about that person. She's done so much good work, the right way, for a good cause, that I feel she had lowered herself on that occasion.

I could have expected an argument, I suppose. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it.

But now things are spiraling out of control; she's turned my criticism into some fictitious attack on her and everything she's ever done for this human rights cause. She wants to go back to the UK immediately. Her mother will be frantic. My father will therefore be frantic. Everything I say makes it worse, and there seems no way back.

All my more recent grounding experiments disappear under this stress, but not my feet. If ever there was a moment to see if the work I have been doing with my feet can stand up to stress, this is the first of them.

Now she's walking away, a vulnerable and increasingly hysterical woman in a foreign city where I have promised she will be safe and accompanied at all times.

As the argument came into focus, as I began to realize how serious it had become, how much worse it could suddenly become...the more the pressure piled on, the more I concentrated on my feet; feeling them become heavy, anchoring me to the present moment, this time, this problem; no other time, no other problem.

After forty minutes of trying to keep her from running into a strange city in tears, my feet now weighed about sixty pounds each, it seemed.

Wow, did I ever really think these exercises might be just 'repressing' emotion? It's not so, when you come to use the technique under duress. It's completely different. All your emotions and fears fly around you, same as ever, like whirling dervishes, but your feet, this time, are nailed to the deck. Neither her storm nor yours can pluck you up into chaos. You can keep your head, think and reason.

It's like Ed Harris says in Apollo 13...it gives you a chance to at least 'work the problem'.

So there's no escalation. An hour later, she has had a good cry and admitted that maybe ostracizing members of the public on social media (instead of the larger figures who've chosen to put themselves into the public arena for scrutiny and criticism) was a mistake on her part. I'm conciliatory, genuinely sorry to have upset her.

But when, earlier, she asked me to take it all back, including my criticism of her for that act, I couldn't and didn't - the criticism was a valid one, for me, and I stood by it, even though it seemed complete retreat might have saved me.

Tea, coffee...finally I get her off the cold streets into a cafe. I stand down, let her jab at me psychologically as she needs to do, every five minutes as she calms down slowly, until she comes back to equilibrium again...somehow we make the lunch appointment with my friends.

By the evening we are both watching some films together and having a great time. When I leave, she says I should meet her friends in the cause when I am in London.

Grounding worked for this crisis. That is not the way I am normally able to handle such a volatile situation.

But this is for sure her holiday, not mine!

(Will post about spine and leg work after this visit is over)

 

[ladee]

Thank you for sharing !!! To remain 'grounded' while in the midst of that. and you stayed with it, believed in yourself, did not compromise your self and your ideas and ideals for the sake of making someone else feel better.... and she figured out how to calm her self down... What an awesome exchange. I am very visual, and could see this happening.... and for her to get to the place to see that her intention was misguided was huge....
I have 'stood my ground' about many things thru my life. But can't say that I was grounded in my body at the time... I'll have to try and look back over this long life and see ..... Thank you for sharing this.... makes absolute sense to me... and truly appreciate the way you share what happened...

Am truly looking forward to more of your experiences.. tho hope future ones are not as emotional... for you or the other person.... did you feel drained afterward or because your feet weighed 60 pounds, did that in itself help? I'm sorry if I am asking stupid questions.. tho I personally feel there are no stupid questions, because I want to learn... thanks for being patient... possibly another time to see how much your feel weigh as you are answering questions...:rolleyes:

 

[AnotherUser]

Thank you so much for the support and interest, ladee :)

I have much more of this coming up from Monday, in London until at least early January - and sharing a house with a woman I do not know. Also seeing my T in person again for the first time in four months; attending social events through groups (this is severe work for me - work that I completely failed to do in Bucharest, which led me to return to my therapist in September); and coping in general with the Christmas run-up, the biggest seasonal trigger of my year...

But grounding is such an early technique in such a long process that is intended to take one through to later progress - such as facing (in a less catastrophic way than CT) and confronting recurrent fear triggers and central traumatic reactions, through to learning to manage them and then, later, to achieve better integration into society...so I am very circumspect about early successes. But I have learned one 'karate move', and I can see that it works, and that is encouraging.

I will happily answer questions, if the opinion of a lab-rat is worth anything!

 

[AnotherUser]

She is a wonderful person with a good heart (which is all you need for the highest epitaph); her activist passion for her humanitarian cause is something to admire (she converted me); she has so many wonderful qualities. She is spontaneous in a way I will have to work on for years with my therapist in order to approximate. And she is family, so I love her and take care of her as best I can in her short visit to me.

But today, I needed drugs to survive any more of her.

She never stops talking. Never. If a thought occurs, she will say it five times, six times, seven times...in a row. If she suspects the message did not penetrate, the repetition will return like a news update throughout the day with no new content.

Who was it that never listened before, that now she can never stop speaking, and repeating what she speaks? Who knows?

She has learned to ask questions over the years, and to wait long enough to hear the answers, but not to reflect on the answers; she is broadcasting all the time, not interacting.

I walk her round the peasant village museum in Bucharest in dark grey rain as impressive monuments to Romanian architecture loom by us. She talks through it all about the cause, the cause, the cause, her philosophy, an anecdote repeated three times, the cause...

The marvelous old buildings bounce off her like wiffle balls. I feel so lonely looking after her. Far more lonely than when actually alone.

In the course of the day I eat into half my flight-home Valium stash, making it a non-counting day in terms of my progress with psychorimotor therapy. What's left is genuinely for the flight. My feet were not enough for a second day in the almost-exclusive company of my stepsister.

It's okay - once the Valium is gone on Monday, I'll seek no more until the next flight in two months. I'll let myself off today.

When the last 5mg of Valium wears off, it is time for the vegan dinner with the other people from Internations that I haven't met yet, and I let the drug dissipate. My time alone with her is done, for the moment. Now I pray to God no-one ruffles her political feathers at this dinner - a very real possibility for a very bad evening.

 

[AnotherUser]

Someone ruffles her political feathers at the vegan dinner. My step-sister launches into the offending guest, who I met just five minutes ago for the first time, with real invective; no wit, no psychology, just straight, unprovoked abuse at hearing her core political beliefs casually challenged by a complete stranger who finds them (some would say, not unreasonably) extreme; or at least, extremely expressed.

My day's Valium is walked off now. I engage my feet again. Feel them get heavier. I imagine this small group exploding away from each other only five minutes after we all first met, thanks to my step-sister.

But it's okay - it's all still a science experiment for me. Just another day (or evening) in the lab, with my feet.

I smooth it over, smooth it over, make my jokes; some hit, some 'meh', some flop - but mostly they ease the way, they help to get us into the restaurant onto a friendlier basis.

The woman seems to like me - early forties Bucharest architect, not unattractive. The comprehension of this growing social bond over the table between the two of us goes down to my feet. If some romantic flurry enters, I remember myself in the ER ward not eight months ago, with the angiogram wire snaking from my wrist up to my heart, naked and vulnerable, with over a litre of scotch in me. This time, this period, is about 'finding my feet' in a way the inventor of the aphorism perhaps never intended. And every success and every failure is relative - all that matters, for now, is the continuing, vigilant observation - and the present moment.

My step-sister launches into the weird guy again, and now she's really on the attack. He can't defend himself. He has what I has, but much worse than I now have it; he has it as bad as I had it at sixteen - his legs will take him to the place where change happens, but he cannot act once he is there. We ask him what he does for a living, and it is a different 'clever' answer each time; spy; head of InterNations; etc etc. If he would only pick one and run with it as a joke, but he doesn't know how to do even that yet. I do what I can, but I cannot keep him in the centre of the group. He even physically places himself outside of it.

Is he working on these barriers? He can't be less than forty. He's quite good-looking, no worse than most, better than many. Slim, slightly greying, a wiry Wal-Mart George Clooney. But what issues out of him undoes it all. What is stuck in him undoes it all. And I know it so well...

I wait for my step-sister's attacks to subside, let my feet go heavier. Let the world unravel as it must; let her storm out, angered by this poor, lost man, who was trying to be funny, and trying to connect, without any ability to do so, like he was guessing the procedure from a Russian manual written in 1942. Let it all go wrong - it's in the cause of science. My heavy feet will follow my furious relative out, and I'll follow them. It's okay.

But it's enough to feel your feet there, weighing you down to this strange dinner table, keeping you from flying into the winds. So you wait, comforted.

The architect and I chat for hours, as my step-sister and the man-who-cannot act sit in dull repose, despite my efforts to get them into the circle of conversation.

On the walk to the metro, the architect and I swap phone numbers, email addresses, agree to meet at the weekend. She is into me. After she leaves us, my step-sister gets very excited, as girls do when they see an opportunity to cast a guiding hand in a potential pair-bonding process. My step-sister doesn't understand, and she is not someone I can confide in about what I am trying to do with this period of my life.

There is no other entity out there - not this attractive architect, not some new country I can fly to, not some great new job...there is nothing out there for me at all unless I can earn, and keep, my feet; and build on that, until I can bear myself and my life, justified as best it can be, in its own terms.

I leave my step-sister safe in my apartment, make sure she is happy and not feeling neglected; the evening was a bit weird, but she wasn't bored at least; and at least (I think to myself) she didn't break up the whole affair with her zealous views. I head to my friends' couch a few stops down. And I can feel my feet moving forward with confidence; very often I look down on them, as if they are strangers in town.

 

[AnotherUser]

She left, yesterday, my step-sister, happy, and talking...always talking! :)

We met in 1993, but in the last few days we finally actually 'met'. I said in a text that it was nice to get to know her after all these years, and she has had a lovely time, she says.

One of her many texts at and after the airport reads 'Thanks so much for the hostility! :D'. She's social and bright, but not super-literate, and though I toy with the possibility of making a joke about a Freudian slip, I just say that she's welcome.

In his short text WhatsApp message to me, I can feel my father's gratitude, and that he knows how it has been for me in these days.

But yes, we are friends now, my step-sister and I. And if I am the one who has to get out and push in the friendship, that is clearly the way of things, and the template followed by the others who love her. We will see each other again, sometimes, and now I know what to expect, what the parameters are, and the locations of the major mine clusters.

In a few hours, the date with the architect, at an Indian restaurant. And at some point, the smoothing over of a discord with the lady who rents me this apartment, as I leave it for a few months.

It is another day in the lab, with my feet. And still no time for the post about the exercises with the spine, and the other things I wanted to write about. Perhaps later.

 

[AnotherUser]

Two hours into the date with the architect, and my feet have kept me grounded and conversational. We have had a lovely time in a great Indian restaurant in a part of Bucharest I had not seen before, near Timpuri Noi metro.

What more could I do with my feet today, since they have proved increasingly reliable in keeping me in the present moment, and in a calm and fairly playful mood, even under situations (i.e. a date) that normally cause me so much stress?

At the two-hour mark, the 'template' kicks in: You did well, don't push it. Make your exit and be thankful you didn't get hurt!

So the obvious thing is to break the template - if she is willing, let's see if we can extend our time together, something I never. ever do in that situation. Let's see how long my feet can last under this kind of pressure.

'Yes,' she agrees. 'I am enjoying our time together!'

It comes to a record 8 hours of conversation in walks and cafes. Much smiling, flirting and fun. We talk about the deep things, the funny things, the ordinary things. As the night draws in, a freezing fog starts to descend on Bucharest, and she shows pleasure as I move closer to her, in order to be close to the (strangely useless) fire device in the outside seating area of the nice cafe/bar.

This is someone I could kiss tonight, likely as not, it seems, and I have not had a kiss in three and a half years. But in 48 hours I will be in London, for a planned stay of two months. There are higher things at stake - my life, literally. If I do not keep fighting for my ability to own my body and what it does and where it goes, after 40 years of being unable to control it, I am a dead man, and not in a metaphorical or whimsical sense. These are very, very early days for me.

As she exits my carriage on the Bucharest metro to Tiniretului, she leaves with many compliments and engages my eyes, and I keep them fixed on her with warmth and clear attraction - honest and easy to maintain. We had a lot of fun, and perhaps we will have it again, and perhaps we will not see each other again. It is okay either way.

It was a good day for science experiments. They won't all be so agreeable in the months ahead, but I must proceed. I must know that I tried.