Like most people who have experienced anxiety, depression, dis-ease, or just a sense of being lost and low, I have visited many psychotherapists over the past 30 years. Many. 

That’s what messed-up people do, don’t they? Get a therapist.

Therapy helped me to cognitively process and consider feelings, behaviors, and my history; but often reinforced the stories I told myself about being a victim of challenging circumstances. This either led to lavishing in self-pity or shutting down entirely. 

I frequently left sessions feeling even more overwhelmed than when I had arrived and wondered how I was to approach all the topics my therapists suggested we discuss. 

They would often utter foreboding statements such as: ‘if you don’t speak about this topic then…’ All the while I continued to rely on starving, drugs, alcohol, and codependent relationships in an effort to feel safe, to numb––anything other than the aching discomfort that seemed my natural state.

The more I discovered in therapy the less, in fact, I experienced relief when it came to major sources of pain from the past. I felt increasingly encumbered by it and confused by my subsequent reactions. 

Why didn’t I feel better even though I seemed to be processing and analyzing so much?

In hindsight, I was trying to treat and erase my memories whilst neglecting my body’s wisdom, not realizing that this was where all the compressed trauma––a term I had not yet understood–– was held. Anorexia had been my means for disconnecting, disassociating, and trying to control my body, and thus the pain.

I thought the intense frustration and dis-ease having a body caused me to feel came down to my body being ‘bad’, and if I could make it ‘good’ I would feel better. And I spent a lot of time trying to shift the balance. I hadn’t yet come to understand the depth of the body-mind connection. Or that how I felt internally would only be reflected by my external projections.

By the time I discovered body therapy in the form of “Somatic Experiencing” I was desperate for new tools having exhausted those I’d developed as protection and learned in 12 step rooms. I found myself in an endless cycle of highs, lows; panic, exhaustion, and confusion all of which had become intolerable. 

My first session with a healer was nothing short of earth-shattering. As I sat down a kind, this gentle woman offered me blankets and cushions to make me feel safe and comfortable. 

When she asked me why I had come to see her, I began listing off all the things that were wrong with me and I what needed fixing. After several minutes of this, the practitioner looked me straight in the eye and said:

“Natasha, stop talking for a moment.”

(Silence)

“Now breathe.”

I did as I was instructed even though it felt deeply unnatural to interrupt my self-analysis to do something as ordinary as breathe.

And then it began: My body convulsed and I released a noise from within that was neither crying nor whaling —it was pure stagnant pain and it was terrifying. It seemed as though giant waves were looming and crushing me relentlessly. I was afraid it wouldn’t stop. 

My guide told me to keep breathing through the discomfort, and after a minute or two, the wave receded. My body relaxed. 

After releasing some of that pain into the ether (a pain for which I had no words, and for which no analysis was required) I felt a periodic release.

For that moment, the physical release in my body was enough. Accessing the breath cracked open the door to freedom. It would take a long period of practice before I was able to push that door open enough to see what existed beyond the dark. Nevertheless, I had been invited on a new journey, one which would finally offer the medicine I had been seeking.

 

*Resource for trauma healing:

-Ashley Neese: “How to breathe”

-Peter A. Levine: “Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma”

-Bessel van der Kolk: “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.”

-Gabor Mate: “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” 

 

Originally publish: Jun 1, 2019