» The path of healing requires body and mind integration «
When I was growing up, I did not have an adult person in my life who offered emotional attunement, let alone provided the needed permission field to express my emotions. I know I'm not alone in this fairly typical developmental experience as a child, and I state it here as an acknowledgement of how many of us were shaped by our family environment, and how we necessarily distorted our true perception and behaviour in the world in order to survive.
Essentially, I learnt, emotions were not ok. This created some adaptive behaviours on my part to fit in, and to feel ... acceptable (strange, I was going to write 'loved' but I'm not sure I did feel that... 'acceptable' feels like the bodyfelt synonym for 'love' growing up). In my childhood, so long as I didn't show my upsetness, I would be accepted. My world view, perception, behaviour and body shaped around these beliefs.
There's a new term I'm playing with here; supported distortions. I coined this phrase while discussing with Mondi, (an integrative bodyworker who works primarily with the myofascial layer of our body), how we hold memories within our body.
That's not new information in the field of somatics, but what's super interesting, I learnt, is that the myofascial architecture in our body has connective nerve-endings and a highly adaptive response mechanism built into its modus operandi to store and reshape around physical and emotional pain. Under-scoring here, our body architecture has the ability to store our pain, and muscularly shape around it, until such time as it no longer needs to. That's super interesting when it comes to trauma release work and repatterning our bodymind* intelligence.
Meanwhile, while we still need to protect ourselves from ever feeling that pain again, our body literally supports a distortion in order to continue holding the pain at bay.
For decades even!
So circling back to my own supported distortions that I grew up with (not expressing my emotions), and given all the mindful psycho-somatic work I've done subsequently through Hakomi, I can quite confidently name my compensatory strategies, or adaptive behaviours, even as its presenting. Yet the new piece for me is to acknowledge my body and how much she holds and supports my physical distortions.
We all have a unique creative response to coping with our own acute or developmental traumas, and also, there are commonalities that present as certain character styles or strategies. In the spirit of recognising each other in our own Self, I'll share a few of mine... maybe these might be familiar to you also.
Adaptive behaviour #1: Somatizing my emotions
Firstly, just to understand what 'somatizing' is... it is when a psycho-emotional issues is converted into a physical sensation, in a way bypassing the emotional processing, such as unexpressed anger being felt as chronic fatigue and/or lethargy. In lieu of not having the safety, space or permission to feel our emotions, this adaptation is an incredibly creative solution in order to package up the feelings.
I am a feeling type person. A pretty fricken sensitive feeling type person when I was growing up at that, and with no 'language' to express the feelings, I ended up using my body to store and process the many feelings I was picking up (mine/theirs).
Yep, my body found ways to store panic (not very well), shame (very well), anger (moderately well) and grief. Interestingly, grief became my 'safe and acceptable' doorway into the landscape of emotions, through poetry and dance at first, and then just simply being willing to feel the raw emotional state.
I've journeyed well with Grief, and ventured into anger and shame and fear, gaining a greater capacity to trust my ability to be with big emotions, but what's really interesting for me as I write this, is that this somatizing 'skill' I have still kicks in.
The uncertainty of this year/life/the world has really pulled on my nervous system, stretched my emotional landscape, and excavated some deeply sensitive pains. My body is taking the toll. My breathing is hampered, my muscles inflexible-as and my joints clanky. Everything feels contracted and tight. I can feel the echoes of sadness and regrets in my body; it's like I'm waiting for the energy to pop, but I can't access it.
What's apparent is that even with the awareness and willingness to heal I need to complement and support my psycho-spiritual work with a bodymind* integrative modality. I need to physically repattern the strata of my body that only knows how to support my distortions. A process of remembering my authentic self at the body level is needed, hence I'm really excited to be working alongside Mondi and his unique trauma release offerings.
As the myofascial layer releases the energy of yesterdays, there will literally be space to reshape and repattern, and more significantly, to integrate all the monumental trauma work that I've shown up for this year.
Adaptive behaviour #2: Emotionally Self-Reliant
So if it's not safe to have emotions, let alone display them to another, then we are going to maladapt to our world as we experience it. Speaking for myself, I adopted a set of beliefs that stated, my needs don't matter (shame says I don't matter), my emotions aren't welcome (shame says I'm not welcome), and so on. In order not to feel the shame and pain of these beliefs, I became very adept at self-soothing and presenting as calm and easy-going, being nice and of no trouble to anyone.
To be honest, I couldn't really sustain that into my adult years, it broke down and I had to learn to be emotionally "messy" in front of others. In the process, I compensated by becoming emotionally "literate" (understanding the function and service and nuance of emotions in general and mine specifically) and developed mindful self-awareness practices, in part so that I could overhear my emotions before they escalated. As such, in my corporate career, I had a reputation for being skilled relationally, a good communicator and reliably professional.
But emotional self reliance has its contortions also. It's hard to trust that someone will be fully there for me when I'm hurting. Or that I can give full permission to express my needs in the moment. I have learnt to carry the heat and coldness in my body, and to shape around not being 'too much' for someone else, while being 'not enough' for myself.
In Hakomi therapy and intensive workshops, I have had the opportunity to repattern these well entrenched beliefs and behaviours, and to lean towards the pain of longing to be met and the intimacy and connection that affords.
Which brings me to another adaptive behaviour - one that heads straight to the heart of attachment needs and the woundings of those unmet needs.
Adaptive behaviour #3: Ambivalent Attachment
This is going to be it's own blog post as it's a big piece and I haven't fully lived into the enquiry yet. Suffice to say, it's hard to move towards connection when the desire to do so isn't there. That's ambivalence!
Ambivalence was successfully learnt because early attempts to connect emotionally were frequently not met. To give up and not care was safer (easier on my nervous system perhaps) than to feel the rejection.
In truth, this attachment style goes back multiple generations in my family, what I have inherited is a propensity to isolate and disconnect.
Any long term consistent relationships in my life have a large part to do with the other persons attachment patterns; if they are secure and willing to step forward, then our connection won't be lost. If they are anxious and need to connect again for their own sense of safety, we play out our drama and come back into connection again, me often feeling bemused at their intensity for reconnection.
But if I'm dancing with another who withdraws and retreats, and ambivalent, likely that connection has a short life-span, nor will we grow through conflict, but rather, putter along luke-warm. I can think of one such friendship where the ache is growing (I'm celebrating the ache!) as is the compassion for our shared human experience.
I find all this interesting, and the question I am dancing with is; how do I move towards connection when the desire to do so isn't part of my 'programming'?. Stay tuned as I tune in.
Trust the inner work
Interestingly, what Hakomi and myofascial release work have in common is a gentle respect for the intelligence of our bodymind, and to support the "distortion" that is being held until such time as our bodymind is ready to open, allow and connect to a more aligned and authentic 'truth'. I appreciate that these modalities are respectful and empowering, while bringing us into contact with the root cause of our wounds, without rewounding us.
We have the tools and awareness to understand our selves more clearly, and to resource our self in ways that wasn't available to us when the pyscho-somatic blue-print of our experiences was being laid down. This is great news!
For myself; I know this psycho-somatic work will repattern the deeply entrenched implicit body memories that seek to keep me disconnected and mistrustful of intimate connection. The readiness and willingness to show up more fully and authentically is already in motion, and the fruits of this are, well ... inevitable :-)
*I use the term 'bodymind' to encompass the interconnected of our body and mind, the two 'parts' operating as a single whole, and moving us closer towards a holistic understanding of our experience of the world.
If you want support in your own healing journey, be it integration and meaning-making, tools for maintaining stability in the wake of trauma releases, or simply to practice the art of mindfulness and self observation, drop me a line, I would love to hear from you.
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