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Out of the blue: how one perceives a danger alert

When describing an episode that led to a disorder, many describe it as “something that hit me mildly on the head”, “it’s like hot water was poured on me” or “like something went through my body”. Shocking information is perceived as something appearing “out of the blue”.

However unusual and even sometimes strange these descriptions may be, they all share the same features. Hundreds of people whom I have worked with in the course of my research claim that at the moment when they got scared, they felt like their bodies swallowed something which has been poisoning their lives ever since. There’s a feeling that this substance moved down to their stomach where one starts feeling an unpleasant sensation whenever the terrible situation which caused this is merely mentioned. In some particularly difficult cases this substance is clearly associated with a poison that infects every cell of the body.

There’s an expression “my heart leaps into my boots” where “heart” is actually your vital energy which moves down to your stomach when you feel frightened. As a result, the top of your head and the surface of your body feel cold. A rapid transfer of energy from the periphery to the centre is taking place.

Vacuum unit

Imagine a vacuum tank that suddenly depressurises. Everything that is around is sucked into it. If this machine was close to the gold bearing river full of golden nuggets, it would suck in all that too, including the sand, and the pebbles. Something similar happens to a person at the moment of confusion: interior space of the body drags down information, including everything that seems to be terrifying.

Fig. 6. When we are faced with something unknown, we often feel at a loss. Such reaction can be seen in the self-portrait titled “Frightened” by Zinaida Serebriakova (circa 1917). The Girl’s eyes are open wide, and her mouth is open too. When there are no reasonable solutions to be found, there is a sensation of emptiness inside. When the “emergency” signal is “sucked into” the area of the solar plexus, the process of “sensibilization” takes place.

When frightened, people open their mouths and eyes widely, make signs of dismay and then sharply inhale.

At the level of our sensations, this is exactly the moment when information is “sucked into” the head, chest and the solar plexus, which could later cause a phobia.

Rely on sensations

I treat these descriptions of the sensations as useful clues which could prove very helpful in the course of healing. They should be taken into consideration within the constraints of their own logic, that is: as they exist. You can hear the following description: “It hit me like a ton of bricks, and the dust from them got under my skin,” because this is actual feedback on the processes that are taking place in the body.

Evidence from spatial perception lays the foundation for further work.

Your bodily energy and wisdom is where your attention goes!

In order to restore the process, you need to establish a back-and-forth connection with it. As soon as this connection is established, you get the access to control the processes which earlier seemed uncontrollable. This includes the processes at the level of the autonomic nervous system.

An important discovery of Psychocatalysis is that when attention is paid to the sensations in the interior space of the body, one is able to establish the necessary connection with the processes that take place at the autonomic energetic level, and thus one gets to control them successfully. More than that, this is pretty much the only actual way to access these processes.

One of the principles of our method says: “Energy and reactivation of regulation is where your attention goes.” As soon as a person starts noticing something in his or her interior space, an influx of energy is directed to it, and the process reactivates. However, there is a second factor that also plays an important role, and it is comparing the actual state with the ideal condition. It is our attention that contains information about our ideal state and to what extent our current state differs from it. Any process in the body, once it finds its reflection in the mirror of our attention, begins to turn itself around. That is why we would like to add the second principle to the first one about attention and energy: “Your attention guides you to the wisdom of the body.”

The two components

In the descriptions given by the people who suffer from phobias two components can be singled out:

• Head (or “cognitive’) component: images, thoughts, fantasies about the traumatic incident;

• Bodily (or “sensory’) component: sensations in the body connected with the danger signal and the reaction to it.

Healing from phobias through Psychocatalysis presupposes careful attention to both levels of our consciousness. Psychocatalysis as a cognitive-sensory therapy differs from other psychotherapeutic schools in the way that it appeals to the processes at the level of the atomistic nervous system and to the sensations and energy as it actively works at the levels of both the central nervous system and the intellect.

What one should strive for and what one should avoid

In our body, the solar plexus has a priority for storing information. As a rule, this is where the information about what to strive for and what to avoid is kept.

Useful information usually makes its way to the solar plexus gradually: it is absorbed from the exterior, concentrates in the forehead, then it moves from the head to the chest, and then finally goes down to the stomach. This is how a person enriches him or herself and becomes more competent. At the moment when a person feels lost and confused, unchecked information makes a meteoric decent within the space of our mind. Such unbalanced “competence” turns into a curse for a person.

Imagine there is a man who is going on holiday in a week’s time. He watches the news about a plane crash on TV. This is a tragic event; however, it has a very remote connection to his trip. Anyone would feel sorry for those who lost their lives in this plane crash and for those who would bear the burden of the guilt for this happening; this is a moment to pray and to sympathize with the relatives of the victims. Nevertheless, life goes on, and one needs to move on, too. Every trip has its risk but an adult person usually feels ready to take it.

What happens to a person if he or she is made unstable by such of information? This person will feel confused and with that “vacuum” feeling inside. Fragments of the burning plane will get “sucked into” the solar plexus. The state of shock passes, but the person seems completely different: a “black substance” remains in the mind. The topic of air travelling becomes a sore spot, and reason, having lost its ground, cannot restore its power. Arguments like “planes are the safest kind of transportation, and millions of passengers land safely in their destination points” are no longer convincing. Moreover, it’s doubtful if this person with the plane “debris” stuck inside can really enjoy his or her holidays when there’s a plane home to keep thinking about.

This is how information about danger, whether it is real or imagined, begins to play the main part in the life resources management centre at the moment of instability, and that completely changes the life of a person.

I would like to show an example of a practice which demonstrates how this can be cured.

Highwaymen

Boris was on his way to the countryside when he was falsely accused. As he was changing lanes to the right, he heard a strange noise. It was unclear what exactly happened. A black car, which had been moving behind him, started signalling with its headlights. Boris stopped.

Two people got out of the car saying that Boris had scratched their vehicle and broken a mirror. Boris got out of his car. He saw a small scratch on their mirror, but it also looked rusty and old. While Boris was talking to one of the men, the other made a couple of steps along the car and made a mark with sandpaper on the side that Boris had allegedly scratched. Boris thought that they must have thrown a plastic bottle at his car earlier, and now they were falsifying the rest of the evidence.

One against two; both men were wearing black leather jackets and definitely looked like veterans of the Afghan war.

He tried to phone friends for help but they didn’t pick up. Moreover, Boris was a thirty-minute drive away from the city. He couldn’t even say where he was exactly. Even if anyone could have helped him, that would have taken time.

Intimidated, Boris made a decision to buy them off. After some negotiation, he paid them $300. His troubles were over, and he was able to continue his trip, but what were the consequences?

During the psychotherapeutic session Boris feels that some “darkness” has entered through his spine, at the level of kidneys. Something that looked like a saucepan full of dark beetroot soup. It was then when Boris realized that he stopped enjoying going by car to the country.

In the process of self-regulation Boris let this “dark soup” spill out away from his body. His spine become “whole” again.

He also created a backup plan for possible similar situations. Should he carry a gun? That would be too much. Should he call the police? Sounds much better. Should he call the authorities or should he just deny all the demands of these racketeers? While Boris was considering his options, he went back to his feelings. In his inner vision toads and crocodiles begin to jump out of his back. These were his fears which he had been accumulating about meeting strangers on the road. Then there were numerous pictures of corpses coming from the back of his head. These were the words of eyewitnesses, coming mainly from TV programmes. During the “tough” nineties in Russia one heard endless stories about highwaymen. Their trick was to use falsified evidence as an excuse to intimidate their victims.

Closer to the end of the session Boris made a sensible decision:

“If I ever meet such people again, I will be firm, write down their number plate, call the police and tell them that my insurance will cover it.”

These words are the evidence of the reverse process: that “dark soup” was pouring out of his kidneys, those “toads and crocodiles” were coming out of his spine, and the “pictures of corpses” were “flying out” from the back of his head.

After the session Boris felt like a new man.