When people come to therapy, they’re naturally curious about what therapy is going to look like as it always seems to look different from therapist to therapist since we all practice different modalities, have different personalities and experiences, and see different priorities to start with. I find with friends as well that they have their own conceptions of what therapy looks like and may be curious to hear more about how I do therapy, especially when they find out I do things like EMDR, IFS, or somatic work. A lot of what’s represented in media and in a large part of the field is more talk therapy and cognitive work, so what I do takes some explaining. Here are some ways I’ve explained it to friends:
At the foundation, I think we all have the answers to our questions internally. When you wonder why you can’t find motivation to do something, why this certain person makes you feel so anxious or what would make you happy, I believe you have those answer already, but they’re hard to access. Why?
From birth we’re fully authentic. We have survival needs and the way to get them met is very instinctual. We cry, we look at our caregivers, we smile, we scream. From this moment, we unfortunately start to lose touch with our instincts as we learn new ways to get our needs met. This process occurs all through our upbringing. We learn how to get love from our caregiver and what makes us feel isolated from them. We learn what emotions are safe to express and what will push others away. We learn to push our instincts further into a hole, covering them with layers of inauthentic behaviors, avoidance strategies, and cognitive distortions created by the people around us.
Deep in that hole lie the answers to your questions, but digging them up isn’t as easy as getting a shovel and starting to dig. From the moment you break ground you’re met with memories that tell you what you’re doing is unsafe, shocks through the nervous system, and maybe the belief that you’re not capable of or worth doing this for. As you get deeper, those reactions can get even stronger.
Your nervous system learned how to deal with that anxious feeling this person gave you because you may have met someone like this before. That’s the whole reason you feel something in the first place. As a consequence, your nervous system knows what to do and will push you into action without you getting a chance to even notice. They’ll enter the room, you’ll stiffen up, your thoughts shut off, you’ll smile when you think you’re supposed to and will make way for their opinion, creating a nice space around them that keeps you inoffensive and keeps them happy.
Some of you might read that and feel disgusted by the fact that you relate to it, and this too is your nervous system responding to you breaking ground. Awareness isn’t necessary for unconscious automatic responses to occur and, in fact, it can slow it down. If you see a bear in the wild, you don’t stop to say “How do I feel about bears? What am I feeling in response to this massive animal staring me down?” Instead, your nervous shuts that down and acts because that’s what will keep you alive. So, naturally, your awareness of this survival response that has been triggered when this person entered the room feels wrong. This is magnified by your own beliefs about yourself and your mental health, by your parents telling you a long time ago that you should “Get over it,” or by your friends glossing over your discomfort in the past. Not to mention the feeling is uncomfortable, so your nervous system is naturally driven towards making the feeling go away, not sticking around with it to ask it questions.
So digging, building awareness of these instincts and choosing a new way requires tools. That’s the work that I try to do as a therapist.
Pendulation is a great example of how we do this and it’s something that I lean on a lot in what I do. The principle dictates that we should create a grounded, safe state for us to exist in and return to so that when we explore the uncomfortable and distressing, we know where to go. This is a lot like how a child with a secure attachment to a caregiver will run into a playground and investigate all of the cool things they see, but will come sprinting back to their caregiver if they get hurt or scared. We want the pendulum of our emotions and awareness to have somewhere to swing back to when we start to go beyond what our nervous system can tolerate in that moment. The more you do that, the longer the pendulum can stay in the discomfort, the more you can learn and the weaker the emotional response becomes.
So I work with people to build this secure base within ourselves. Maybe that’s remembering a person or pet in your life that made you feel safe, looking at something around you that brings you a sense of peace, touching an object that creates a soothing sensation for you, or coming back to your breath and slowing it down while relaxing your muscles. From there, we connect with why this person makes you so anxious, who they remind you of, how you responded to that person and how you feel about all of this. We then bring those feelings and thoughts with us back to this secure place, in essence acting as our own caregivers to validate what we just experienced and then give us room to soothe.
In short, I try to give people the space to have the restorative experience that comes with being authentic in how they feel and the tools to be able to comfort themselves for doing that hard work. It’s the best job in the world and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.