Somatics and Me
When consulting with new clients, I often ask if they have been in therapy before. If yes, I follow up by asking what kind of therapy it was? “Talk therapy...?” They usually answer hesitantly. “I’m not sure…” they may add when I let the silence carry on for a moment too long. I smile and explain how our work together may look a little different.
As a therapist, I often take for granted that clients know what kind treatment they are receiving. Yet, in our increasingly integrative world, that is often not the case. Despite the proliferation of information on mental health, many clients are left in the dark about their treatment plan. Moreover, even traditional talking cures like psychoanalysis or Gestalt therapy are rarely practiced in their purist form nowadays. However, in the answer “talk therapy”, I can glean that body-based modalities are not usually the entry point, personally or culturally, into therapy. Therapy is seen as a place to talk through problems, not necessarily a place to process and feel. When I tell acquaintances that I sometimes sit for more than half a session in silence, they look at me shocked and perplexed. But it is in those silences that our body is given a chance to speak. In this way, it is a very different form of “talk therapy” altogether.
When I started my journey to become a therapist, I knew very little about what kind of practitioner I wanted to become. I had engaged as a client in psychoanalysis and studied CBT, and I knew that these modalities didn’t align with my worldview, but more than that, they just didn’t feel right. And so, I became a contrarian. Eager to point out what was wrong with these modalities (outdated views of women, an oversimplification of human experience etc.), without an alternative view of my own. That is until I discovered Focusing. Focusing is the foundation of somatic therapy. It pre-dates all other forms of somatic therapy (in the western world) and underlies most of them- either explicitly or implicitly. Usually when therapists talk about somatic therapy, they are in some way referencing Focusing Oriented Therapy and the work of Gene Gendlin. When I met my supervisor as a graduate student in counselling and had a chance to learn about this model, something in me shifted. I knew I had found my therapeutic home.
So, what is Focusing Oriented Therapy? Focusing Oriented Therapy was developed by Gene Gendlin, in the 1960’s. Originally, Gendlin was a philosopher studying why some people improved in therapy while others did not. As part of this project, he reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from master therapists and found that the clients who got better, regardless of their treatment modality, had a natural inclination to turn inward, sit in their physical sensations and move through them. Moreover, with time, Gendlin found that this process followed predictable steps and therefore was a skill that could be taught. From this, Gendlin “discovered” what he called Focusing which became the foundation of Focusing Oriented Therapy.
When I started Focusing on my own, I did not have that natural inclination for it, but as I practiced more and more, it started to click. Often clients, including myself, have one of two problems when they begin using bottom-up processes. The first is over-identification with the feeling. This happens when clients sit too close to their problem and become overwhelmed by the feelings. This may look like crying without end or panic. The second problem is not being able to access their physical sensations at all. This may appear as displaced somatic symptoms (like headaches) when trying to access physical sensations or employing dissociation. Engaging with a trained therapist therefore helps clients find their “working distance”, where they feel safe enough to explore their feelings, without hitting either roadblock.
Focusing was later integrated into the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model by Jan Winhall, which is now my primary modality for working with most clients. The Felt Sense Polyvagal Model marries Focusing practices with more recent discoveries in polyvagal theory, feminist principles, and attachment. While whole books can (and have been) written on the complex interplay of these principles, what is most important to me is that somatic therapy centres the safety of the client. It is a collaborative process, backed by science and informed by the body.
I could write another thousand words on body-based therapy, but at the end of the day, it is best experienced. If you are interested in booking a consult, please feel free to send me a message (jennifer@hombodycounselling.ca).