Learner therapist (35)…… Spaces for feelings

Torrey Orton

May 2, 2013

Partial out-of-body experiences…

Getting to, creating, or discovering the experiences I describe below is one of the first concrete steps in objectifying the inner dynamics of the chronic trauma which affects patients’ lives. The feeling of these dynamics held at a near distance to themselves is a kind of self-outing, but in the privacy of therapy. This is what a safe therapeutic place supports. For instance…

 

… I’ve recently seen a guy who I first saw 4 years ago whose injured inner world was so close to the surface that he could barely stand being looked at, couldn’t bear to hear his name used or himself to be referred to, even indirectly – in short, he was a raw, exposed wound. He always sat on the edge of his chair, posed for a quick departure. He could also acknowledge that this is how he was – poised for a quick departure in life. Speaking to the presence of his demons was a pathway to keeping him in the room…but the speaking was often somewhat indirect.

 

Another guy could put the black hole of his depression aside just to his right, roughly parallel with his shoulder. It was just on the edge of his peripheral vision, but easily accessible through my pointing, gesturing or even nodding at it … bringing its fullness back into the control of his awareness, without dropping him into its endless decline. So he was having the experience of keeping the threat under control, without denying its existence or blocking it out with palliative self-medication.

Often another patient pulls herself down out of the grip of her demons just there in front of me and I can ask where did they go, are they still in view, can you feel them? And she may say ‘Yes, just here or there’ (gesturing to one side or the other) and usually a bit in mid-air (even a figment is real, after all). While in their grip, she has been contorted in her chair, drawing back and up into a partial ball, while slightly patting/massaging herself on the forearm…with glimpses of scratching or pinching herself…

And then, in all three cases we can discuss the ‘treatment’ of the demon(s). Questions like: Do you want to go there now (pointing at the suspended traumatic contents)? Is there a part you want to look at now? How is it to have it just there? Can you keep it there? And, often, early in the therapeutic engagement, this amount of direct attention riles the demons and the patient begins to fall back into their black hole. The pointing may itself rouse the demons, making their presence more aggressively felt again, more gripping than when observed or sidelined by their relegation to the space. This is something I’ve felt before akin to action at a distance, like gravity, but immediately perceptible to the other like a virtual hug offered across the therapy space without touching but my arms held in an encircling pose…

Holding their demons within reach is also an enactment of the patient’s internal disconnect between their injured and well parts… between their competent and incompetent selves…recovery from which requires slowly increased ability to shift back and forth between the split parts, progressively integrating them. A kind of internalised exposure therapy perhaps?