You are most likely already aware of the way your emotions affect your body such as butterflies in your stomach or stress headaches. But did you know that by tuning into these sensations and getting curious you can unlock your body’s power to heal itself?
Where do emotions come from?
The body, reacting to external stimuli, is actually the place where emotions originate. When we’re with loved ones, we might feel something inside of ourselves, like a warm, relaxed feeling in our abdomen. When we hear a loud noise outside late at night, our heart starts pumping faster. Then a split second later, our mind interprets these physiological sensations to be joy or fear. After this assessment, we act. Being able to track this process and slow it down opens up new options for how we respond to our emotions.
How the body can become a source of support
We include the body in psychotherapy because it’s actually one of your greatest resources. Have you ever taken the time to really notice and sink into experiences like these:
- Snuggling with a pet, feeling their fur on your cheek, noticing a warm feeling in your chest
- Logging out of your computer on Friday and noticing that your shoulders really do feel lighter!
- Taking a deep breath during a meditation and noticing the way your legs start to relax
Really anchoring yourself to these positive experiences gives you the stability to experience more of the difficult emotions. This anchoring is an important first step in unlocking the body’s power to heal itself.
3 things to know about the Autonomic Nervous System
To understand the way the brain and the body are connected, and the reason the body is so essential to pay attention to in psychotherapy, it’s essential to have a brief understanding of the autonomic nervous system. This system:
- connects the brain and the body.
- is in charge of many involuntary processes such as heart rate, digestion, and breathing.
- is made up of three parts: sympathetic, parasympathetic and enteric:
- The sympathetic nervous system manages the fight or flight response (among other things)
- The parasympathetic manages the rest and digest processes (among other things)
- The enteric manages the gastrointestinal system
Essentially your nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for safety and danger and you are reacting to it, whether you’re aware of it or not. Tuning into the messages that your body is giving you around safety and danger can help you get clear on boundaries and become a better advocate for your needs.
Somatic therapy can help you notice when you’re feeling sympathetic activation in your system or when you feel most safe. This is important because there are a lot of things logically we know are not threats, but our nervous system may code something as a threat based on past experiences and we act accordingly. A huge goal of Somatic Experiencing is to be able to have the dual awareness to notice when we are triggered yet remain in the present moment. By listening to the body and starting to understand what it needs, you are learning to regulate your nervous system
Sensation and Memory
The sensations in your body are also sometimes connected with your memories. As you talk about a recent fight with your partner, you might notice an emptiness you feel in your stomach. We can slow you down and get curious about it, watching if the emptiness moves or changes.
As you focus on this sensation, you might remember another time that you felt that hollowness in your stomach, maybe when you were young, and an opportunity arises for healing. Or this recognition of the similarities between your partner and past relationships may create options for you to respond to your partner in a new way – from your adult self instead of from your wounded, child part.
We already mentioned the fight/flight response above, the automatic response that occurs when we are faced with danger or stress. Sometimes, when fighting and fleeing aren’t options, our system can freeze. Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing therapy, observed that animals in the wild don’t seem to be traumatized by this experience – there is a process in which animals shake off the freeze, discharge the activation and run to safety. Human bodies know how to do this too – but the discharge of all of that activation can be scary, and sometimes we stop it. But that means there is an enormous amount of energy inside of us that we must manage. To explore more about this, click here.
What happens though when we don’t come out of freeze and the body holds on to this trauma? Sometimes people carry this around with them for years. They may feel depressed or numb, zoned out or dissociated. Sometimes they even develop aches and pains, migraines, or chronic illnesses. One of our goals in somatic psychotherapy is to give people a safe place to discharge this energy – and it comes out by allowing the body to do what it wants to do, oftentimes shaking and moving and releasing heat. When we aren’t focused on tamping down that energy, we have access to more of our life force, and we can engage in life in a new way, having the opportunity to experience more joy and excitement.
Final Thoughts
You can see how therapies that are just cognitive i.e. “talk therapies” may not be able to help you access the healing you need. Mind body therapies can help you slow down, get curious, and open up new options for how to respond to triggers in the present moment. Inviting the body to move in the therapy room gives it the opportunity to discharge energy it may be holding onto from old traumas.
References
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/feeling-our-emotions/
