Finding the Pulse - Page 4


I remember a client who began a familiar litany of anger about an older cousin, starting, as always, with the comment, "I can't believe he got away with hurting me and no one ever punished him!" This oft-repeated complaint had generalized to her relationships with many other people, as she continually bemoaned what she believed was unfair treatment. This time, I stopped her and asked that she notice what was happening in her body as she thought about her cousin. As she shifted her focus, she was able to move out of the repetitive content long enough to experience something different. Slowly she became aware that her chest felt clenched and tight, and, from this sensation, she began to recognize the fear that lay beneath her chronic complaints. Once she started tracking her physical sensations, instead of just replaying an old tape, she began to explore her experiences with her cousin from a new, and ultimately more helpful, standpoint.

"Lived experience" can be an invaluable resource in helping clients make the distinction between past trauma and their current lives. In one session, I was working with a woman who was reliving painful memories of how her father mocked her when she was young whenever she began to cry. As she talked, the tears began to flow and she looked away, feeling the shame and humiliation she'd experienced years before. But this time, instead of inviting her to revisit her childhood experience of feeling her father's judgment and contempt, I asked her to notice how it felt to be able to look away—to notice the liberating physical experience of being able to break contact and create some breathing space for herself. We shifted away from her memories of her shame and humiliation to the experience of her more resourceful adult capacity to turn away in the present moment without negative consequences. This small act of newfound personal power represented a liberating option: a choice in the present that would have been impossible or dangerous when she was young.

One of the satisfactions of being a therapist is seeing that, as clients resolve the challenges that brought them into therapy, they can spontaneously begin to live more actively. We don't have to teach them how to come alive; it happens naturally when the nervous system feels safe. As clients become less stifled by outdated responses and rigid beliefs, their ability to engage directly with life emerges more and more. Once the nervous system heals, the psyche automatically follows, even in clients who've been caught for years in trauma-based patterns.

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