Читать книгу Emotion-Image Therapy. Analysis and Implementation - Nikolay Linde - Страница 14

Emotion is “a bridge” connecting psyche and body.

Emotion connects psyche and body; it exists both in psyche and in body at the same time. But emotion is also energy, which becomes revealed in actions. Emotion is felt subjectively but it is expressed in very strong bodily manifestations. They are more frequent or more slow heartbeat and breathing, tension or relaxation of muscles, more intensive or less intensive blood flow in some parts of the body, more intensive or less intensive sweating, discharging into blood some mediators [like adrenalin] and so on. Emotions affect the functioning of autonomous nervous system, which controls inner organism and does not follow the orders of the mind. That is why emotions strongly affect the states of the body and cause psychosomatic diseases.

Wilhelm Reich stated that undesirable emotions are blocked in the body by chronic muscle clamps [25, 26]. The system of these clamps makes up the so-called muscle shell. This shell not only restricts the expression of sincere feelings but also creates a barrier for spontaneous and flexible behavioral reactions. It blocks free flow of energy in the body, the amount of energy becomes smaller, feelings and behavior become limited, their repertory becomes much smaller. A person feels constant discomfort because of too much tension in his body, at times pain, sometimes the feeling of heaviness and limited mobility. Muscle clamp fully corresponds to adapting activity. It expresses the character of a person, that is of typical for him emotional and behavioral repertory with its limitations and stereotypes.

If the muscle clamp relaxes, the person gets back to his initial nature, becomes sincere and natural, flexible and creative. The heaviness of the body as if goes away, it becomes light, as if fresh wind were blowing inside the body. Energy and joy fill the person. He becomes capable of getting real pleasure from living, and his behavior is adequate, it corresponds to the situation, he doesn’t go crazy, on the contrary, he thinks clearly and fully realizes what is going on. We called this state of a person uncharacteristic, this is a new and unusual term requiring an explanation.

The matter is that character becomes revealed in customary and stereotypical ways of behavior, which repeat themselves in various situations, sometimes quite adequately and sometimes not. For example, a touchy person takes offence very often and as a rule when there is no reason to take offence. Touchiness is a trait of character. An anxious person is worrying for no reason; anxiety is his trait of character. A hot-tempered man is often outraged and feels insulted because of some trifle. Hot-temperedness is his trait of character. Any characteristic manifestations of a person are typical reactions excluding flexibility and creativity. A person lives within his character as a turtle in its shell. With the help of his character, he protects himself from his own shortcomings which he faces if he is open to the world. To do it he has to suppress some feelings and limit the repertory of possible actions straining the corresponding muscles of his body in fear of his own unlimited freedom. He is afraid if freedom and doesn’t know what to do with it.

But if he casts off the yoke of his character displayed in the muscle shell, not only his body relaxes but he no longer needs stereotype protective reactions. New spontaneous adequate to the current situation reactions become accessible to him. As he reacts creatively and not in a stereotype way you can’t say what kind of character he has. He is not touchy though but he may take offence if this is adequate to the situation as he really was insulted. But even feelings of offence don’t last long, he easily forgives them and goes on communicating normally. He is not anxious but may worry if future may have in store some unpredictable dangers. For example, if he has to take an important and difficult examination. But his worrying doesn’t last very long and is not pathological, doesn’t prevent from focusing on preparing for the examination.

You can’t say about such person that he lacks in character because a weak-willed person displays weak unstable and dependable character. A non-character person can easily stand up for justice and can’t be easily bent to someone’s will because he has an independent character. He doesn’t live inside his character, his character doesn’t command how he should live, he rules over his character if he still has some stereotype reactions. So he is always different and you can’t say what stable features of character he has. The only suitable term to describe him is “non-character” that is not corresponding to traditional classifications of characters, flowing like water he reacts not in keeping with the character but freely as it is necessary here and now.

Character is stiff and stuck emotions turned to stone in the forms if muscle clamps or ousted and materialized in the forms of emptiness and muscle impotence. Very often current problems of a personality are the result of deeper defects of character. As we have already said people face the problems which reflect our character. The world gives us back our own reflection exactly like it did for the famous donkey Eeyore. As we know he looked at his reflection on one side of the lake, then went to the other side looked again… “Yes, -he said, -I knew, on this aide it is no better than on that. Harrowing sight…” For some reason, people don’t think that it is necessary to change themselves, thinking that it is the world that is wrong and must be changed. But changing the world they face themselves again, fatally facing the consequences of their character, to which they try to adjust the world. The same thing happens when social revolutions take place.

The problem is that when we speak about changing the character practically any client demonstrates strong resistance. The matter is that he views himself as his character, he identifies himself with his character and is afraid of losing himself as a result therapeutic changes. Character is also connected with main life values and scenarios, supported by some inner philosophy, profound convictions, individual life experience. At the background of character there is some basic emotional fixation from early childhood, but the client is reluctant to change it in justified fear that he can lose the whole customary system relying on which he lived all his life. He fears to be unprotected in the face if unpredictable life.

If we manage to change some basic emotional fixation, the client may feel disoriented, as if he got into absolutely different unusual world and doesn’t know how to behave.

Example 3. “A new world”

Once I succeeded to help one student to get rid of bitterness that overfilled him. He had every reason to feel bitter he had to go through very much, but bitterness interfered in his life and studies, made all he was doing more difficult. I recommended him to go to the forest and shout there letting his anger go out. To my surprise he followed my advice he was shouting for two hours and kicking something in the air. And after this process he came somewhat soft and light.

– How is life? – I asked him.

– Excellent. Very calm. So many problems went away! I have enough time for everything, it is easier for me to study, have far less conflicts. But I just don’t know how to live this way?

– Why, isn’t it better?

– It is, but I don’t know how, I can’t live this way, it is sort of unusual…

– And what is wrong, give an example?

– My dad yelled at me and I don’t know what to tell him. Just sitting saying nothing… But actually he also got silent…

– Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?

– Yes, it is. But I don’t know how to live this way! These days on my way home I see two men fighting. In the past I would interfere in the fight, and now I think: What are they fighting for, fools and fools… I just passed them by. But I don’t know how to live this way!

I had to explain to him for a long time how to adapt to the new reality. He really began to study well, later entered a postgraduate course, though he had been a very poor student before. But I still had to work with him a lot.

Now let’s get back to the Wilhelm Reich theory. He discovered relatively independent segments of the muscle armor. Each one blocks some emotions. We use this information in EIT to diagnose what caused different psychological problems.

1. Eyes. Protective armor in eyes area reveals itself in brow immobility and “empty” expression of the eyes. They look as if from behind a motionless mask. You can achieve relaxation by opening your eyes as wide as possible [like you do in great fear] to move eyelids and brow to an enforced emotional state, as well as by rolling your eyes and looking from side to side fixing your look on either wall.

2. Mouth. Oral segment includes muscles of the chin, throat and the back of the head. The jaw can be both greatly compressed and unnaturally relaxed. This segment keeps the emotional expression of weeping, yelling, anger, biting, sucking, grimacing. Protective tensions can be relaxed by imitating weeping, making sounds engaging lips, making biting movements, throwing up movements and directly working on muscles.

3. Neck. This segment includes deep muscles of the neck and tongue. It controls mostly anger, yelling and weeping. It is not possible to directly affect deep muscles in the neck, so important means to achieve relaxation are yelling, screaming, vomiting movements and so on.

4. Breast. Breast segment includes broad muscles of shoulders, shoulder blades, thorax, arms and hands. This segment holds back laughter, anger, sorrow, passion. Holding back breathing, which is an important way of suppressing any emotion, is mostly realized in the breast. The armor can relax if you work on your breathing, especially by full breathing in. Arms and hands are used for hitting a target, for tearing, suffocating, beating and passionately achieving something.

5. Diaphragm. This segment includes the diaphragm, solar plexus, muscles of the middle part of the back. Protective tension reveals itself in the bent of the vertebral to the front, when a client is lying there is a big space between the lower part of his back and the couch. Breathing out is more difficult than breathing in. The armor mainly holds back anger. It necessary to first relax the first four segments before you begin to relax this one. You do it by working with breathing and vomiting reflex [people with strong blocks in this segment are practically unable to throw up].

6. Abdomen. The segment of abdomen includes broad abdomen muscles and back muscles. The tension of the waist muscles is connected with the fear of falling down. The protective armor on the sides of the body arouses the fear of tickling and is connected with suppression of bitterness and enmity that is strong dislike. Relaxation occurs easily if upper segments are already open.

7. Pelvis. The last segment includes all pelvis muscles and lower limbs. The stronger the protective shell is the more the pelvis is pulled back and sticks out. The pelvis muscles are tense and painful. The pelvis is rigid, it is “dead” and non-sexual. The pelvis armor serves to suppress excitement, anger and pleasure. Excitement [or anxiety] emerges out of suppressing feelings of sexual pleasure. It is impossible to feel pleasure in this area before you release anger in the pelvis muscles. The armor can be undone by straining the pelvis then kicking and pushing the couch by your pelvis.

This classification is brief but with all its limits it helps to see the links between feelings, images and body. For example, practice confirms many times that strong anger including anger at yourself is kept in the diaphragm area and when you touch on this subject a person may feel acute pain in this area. A spasm of the diaphragm blocks natural breathing by “the abdomen” which is characteristic of the newly born. It can also block the normal function of letting out gall.

It is also important for correct diagnosing to know that the feeling of duty is mostly located in the shoulders area and that containing your breathing leads to controlling any feelings. So when feelings are released clients feel something like additional breathing, they say that they have never breathed like this before [see examples].

What is amazing is that when you help the client to get rid of the oppressive feeling of duty, not only shoulder muscles relax but many clients have the feeling as if they had big white wings on their backs like angels in pictures. Instead of oppression they feel an increase of energy and inspiration. It turns out that images can express not only emotional problems, but character and even the old and the new approach to life.

The theory of Wilhelm Reich and his practice are aimed at releasing held down emotions, relaxing muscle armor, and his techniques are meant to work with tense muscles. To achieve this the doctor presses on the tense muscles of the body, making the client breathe deeply and express in sounds the pain he feels. The success is achieved when the whole muscle shell is fully and steady relaxed which requires a long and hard work. Similar effects may be achieved by working with images of emotional states and it may be quicker and easier.

In EIT the task of relaxing muscles is done by working with images, and the task is not only to free the stuck emotions but to remove psychodynamic conflict that generates chronic negative emotional state. The initial negative state disappears. Alongside with this sometimes you may get the result similar to full relaxation of the muscle shell in some areas of the body for instance in the back [see example 2] or even in the whole body [see example 4]. But you achieve this by different means than in body therapy and without painful influence on body muscles [see further].

Example 4. “Live mercury”

A young girl turned to me and complained that at some moment in her life she lost the ability to express her feelings [alexitimia]. She prohibited herself to do it and couldn’t overcome her own prohibition. Feelings overfilled her breast and tortured her from within. She lost contact with her mother and her boyfriend whom she loved very much. She lost her ability to express her feelings a year before when her father whom she loved dearly died. She was afraid to express her feelings because she didn’t want to hurt her mother. In their family, they declared the rule that you must not express your feelings you must restrain them. The father particularly insisted on that and was an example of restraint himself.

I asked her to create an image of these feelings. They were like a moving clot of mercury changing its form. It tried to get away from the breast but some armor like a knight’s cuirass didn’t let it go. Then I asked her to give a permission to this steel cuirass to express all its feelings. This paradoxical method worked and the cuirass melted at once, and feelings started flowing from the girl’s mouth [the client’s subjective perception] so intensively that she could hardly breathe, she choked.

To make sure that the process of liberating will not fail because of her fear, I began to calm her down saying that gradually everything will be back to normal. It is just what happened, little by little her breathing became even, the felt that her feelings go on flowing, but the flow is quiet. But she started shaking all over, she felt cold, her hands and feet were shaking but at the same time she was feeling unusually fine. Her body seemed to be very light and disappeared, and the air while breathing is freely moving through her body from the crown of her head to her heels and back. Such sensations are typical of those who had an intensive course of bodily therapy together with rebirthing [the séance of deep breathing].

In about twenty minutes the process ended by itself, the sensation of cold and shaking went away. Imagining her meeting with her boyfriend the girl confirmed that she no had problems with expressing her feelings, the shell disappeared. Her body seemed to have lost some weight, and the air seemed to freely flow within her body. Her eyes shone with happiness, she thanked me and left.

Ways of working with images are numerous. Sometimes it is necessary to let emotions in and not out, sometimes to transform them, to solve an inner conflict, generating them, sometimes it is necessary to refuse wrong convictions, promoting a ban on natural feelings and so on. The story about different ways of influence is still ahead but the connection between emotions and body is the “red line” of our therapeutic logic. It is this connection that guarantees important results in solving psychosomatic problems.