Can the body and Eugene Gendlin’s idea of the ‘felt sense’ help the psychotherapeutic process?
This is an essay I wrote for my Psychotherapy studies, hence the formal style. I wanted to publish it so that people can see how common trauma is and that it is okay to say you have been traumatised. Its not something that it is only reserved for war veterans or the severely abused. We are all walking around with wounds and there is support out there for you if you want it.
Traditional forms of psychotherapy have mostly focused on healing the minds of clients. Additionally, most academic theories attempt to demystify the workings of just the mind by separating them into sections, such as Freud’s theory of the ego, superego and the id (Freud, 1923). These approaches may be robbing the client of the chance to recover fully as they ignore the issues that lie outside of the mind. A person also has a body and this body can be a useful tool in treating the emotional part of the person. The body could be used as a gateway to areas of healing that the mind cannot or will not go. In some cases, it may be essential to begin working with the body to free the client up to go further into the emotions and the mind. Eugene Gendlin was a big proponent of the body as a tool to aid mental health. In his research he was struck that so little attention had been paid to the body in psychotherapy that he had to coin his own term, the ‘felt sense’, to describe the processes held in the body. A meta-analysis by Rohricht supports this notion by showing that not enough clinical research has been conducted into body-psychotherapy (Rohrict, 2009). Whilst a greater emphasis on the body is useful, it may not be the panacea to cure the mental health problems of all populations. Before Freud came along with his focus on the mind, there were philosophers, such as Nietzsche, who believed that there was “more wisdom in the body than in your deepest philosophy.” (Nietzsche, 1885.) Long before that, Eastern healing practices placed this bi-directional communication between the mind and body at the centre of their treatments. A reversion back to this holistic approach may be beneficial and Gendlin’s ‘felt sense’ concept is a step in that direction.
Gendlin describes the felt sense as:
“A kind of bodily awareness that profoundly influences our lives and that can help us achieve our personal goals. The ‘felt sense’ is not a mental experience but a physical one. It is an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time” (Gendlin, 2003, p 32.)
He believes that it is more than just an emotion as it includes factual information as well (Gendlin, 2003). When you are utilising the ‘felt sense’ you are able to access so much more information about a person or a subject than you can when you just try to use the mind. All of this information provides a much greater basis to heal (Gendlin, 2003). Unlike Freud, Gendlin does not try to separate the mind from the body as he believes every part of the body is in some way involved in living (Gendlin, 2003). By treating the person as a whole you have a much greater chance of making progress. It is startling that Gendlin had to coin his own term to describe this sensation, but he was not the first modern, Western psychologist to incorporate the body into psychotherapy.
Wilhelm Reich was one of the earliest people to focus on the body as a psychotherapeutic tool. He was part of the second generation of psychoanalysts following Freud and he published several books in the mid-1930s. Bioenergetic Analysis is a psychodynamic form of therapy still used today and it is based on Reich’s work. His idea of ‘armouring’ is one of its most enduring. This is the idea that muscular tension is caused by neurosis. An idea that has subsequently been backed up by research (Babbel, 2010). Gendlin believes that ‘armouring’ happens because, as children, we are socialised and taught to repress emotions, and this leads to a disconnection from our bodies and subsequently, our happiness. Bioenergetics links physical pain, muscular tension and postural disorders with the state of the client’s mind. Gendlin agrees that this can be bi-directional and that physical distress can be caused by suppressed emotions, unhappiness and anger (Gendlin, 2003). If this is true then some people who go for treatment to physical therapists, doctors and chiropractors for chronic physical problems may be wasting their time and would be better served by addressing their emotional issues.
A bodily approach to psychotherapy could be useful for chronic pain as it is often linked to trauma. According to some research, approximately 15-30% of patients with chronic pain also have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Peter Levine, the creator of a type of body-mind psychotherapy called Somatic Experiencing, asserts that trauma occurs when our ability to respond to a perceived threat is in some way overwhelming" (Babbel, 2010). Although there are disagreements over the exact definition of trauma most experts agree that responses to it include both physical and psychological symptoms. Equally, ignoring the physical symptoms and only intellectualizing the matter would not be the best approach.
It could be said that the traditional psychotherapeutic approach is to intellectualise the client’s issues. This tactic has come under attack from various experts, including Reich. He went so far as to say that human language was actually getting in the way of healing as it could be used as a defence against feeling the biological core. He stated that psychoanalysis had “become stuck in a pathological use of language” (Reich, 1933, p67). Perhaps Reich’s observations of clients getting stuck were actually patients who had experienced severe trauma. Trauma victims are often in a state of hypervigilance and if the brain is perceiving a constant low-level threat then no amount of insight is going to help quieten it (Van Der Kolk, 2014). Another approach must be implemented with these types of clients.
The right approach could be Gendlin’s ‘felt sense’ or other body-mind therapies. Alexander Lowen is a student of Reich and a critic of the mind-centred approach. He postulates that there is a difference between just talking about your feelings and feeling your emotions and your body. He believes that when you don’t feel your body you go into “a little bit of an insane world” (Lowen, 2012). He insists that the first steps are to help clients to feel the sensations in their bodies and utilise the ‘felt sense’. Staunton believed that this is necessary because core beliefs are embodied. Therefore, we must experience the pain held in them directly through our bodies. If we do not, they will continue to run our lives. Simply, understanding them mentally is not sufficient (Staunton, 2002). Babbel believes that physical pain could actually be used as a warning to people that more emotional work needs to be done and that there is still more trauma trapped in the nervous system (Babbel, 2010). These are good arguments for working with the body but there needs to be clarity on where talking therapies are not being effective.
Talking therapies are also criticised for not helping to change negative behaviours. Whilst talking about a client’s story can provide important information about their past it doesn’t have so much use in treating maladaptive procedural action tendencies in the moment. A maladaptive action is a way of coping with stress that does not increase functioning. It only temporarily decreases the symptom, while the stress remains the same or increases. An example of this would be a person getting drunk to forget about the stress of losing their job, however, once the person wakes up they begin to feel the stress again, with the additional stress of alcohol withdrawal symptoms. In order to help a client utilise adaptive coping behaviours, treatment needs to address the client’s present moment and how the past trauma is affecting it. The focus needs to be the “in the moment trauma-related emotional reactions and body sensations as they emerge” (Ogden, Minton, Pain, 2006, p168). The client can then explore these occurrences in an attempt to change. Exploring the ‘felt sense’ would be one way of doing this.
However, there are challenges with utilising the ‘felt sense’ too. In-the-moment emotions and bodily sensations may not be accessible to some clients. Brain scans of PTSD patients with early life trauma show no activation of the self-sensing areas of the brain. This is likely due to patients learning to cope with trauma by shutting down the visceral feelings and emotions that come with it. Unfortunately, these same areas of the brain are the ones that register the entire range of emotions. So not only are the patients not able to feel the negative emotions they have also shut down the positive ones (Van Der Kolk, 2014). This biological shut-down can manifest as symptoms of alexithymia, which is the inability to describe feelings and emotions (Levine, 2010). If a client is unable to even describe a feeling then neither Gendlin’s nor a psychoanalysts approach is going to work.
There is yet another step that needs to be taken before this. The client needs to be helped to feel safe. This is the approach of Bessel Van Der Kolk, a leading contemporary expert on trauma. He agrees that to release the tyranny of the past a physical self-awareness must be created but that it can’t happen unless the client is able to relax. (Van Der Kolk, 2014). Van Der Kolk is also strong in his assertion that it is not possible for traumatized people to recover until they have “become familiar with and befriended the sensations in their bodies” (Van Der Kolk, 2014, p 97). This is because they have learnt to ignore their gut feelings and bodily sensations in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by them. He backs this idea up with neuroscience research that suggests this is the only way to change the way a client feels. In his research with trauma victims, he has found that during intended periods of relaxation such as a Shavasana, their Heart Rate Variability (HRV), goes down, which is a sign that their nervous system is still preparing them to fight. This complicates the matter, as without relaxation the client and therapist could experience that sensation of being ‘stuck’ that Reich wrote about.
The complications may be due to the severity of the trauma experienced by the client. Chronically neglected or abused individuals are usually in a state of immobilization or shut-down. While acutely traumatized people are much more animated, spending an excess of time in the fight or flight response. They may experience flashbacks and elevated heart rates while chronically traumatized people show no change or even a slowing down of the heart rate (Levine, 2010). It may be that many of the clients that Levine, Reich and Lowen encountered were the more acutely traumatised people, where progress with reconnecting to the body was more easily achieved. Another approach altogether may be needed for the chronic sufferers.
The recent trend in psychotherapy of incorporating the body has been fairly one-directional. Being dominated by mind-focused theories for so long it is natural that the reaction to this is to argue for the prioritization of the body in psychotherapy. Some may be going too far in their rejection of talking therapies. As the body therapies are not fully a part of the mainstream yet there has not been such a vocal argument against the use of the body. Some sort of balanced middle-ground may eventually appear. There seems to be little research or publications that actually deny the benefits of focusing on the body for those less severely affected by trauma. As time goes on it is likely that more information will emerge on what a focus on the body can and cannot help with. It may be that a focus on the body is only useful for those suffering from PTSD or something body-related like an eating disorder and that it is not useful for people suffering from existential issues.
A further question would be, is experiencing trauma in life a given and that it is so commonplace that people don’t even recognise it, as Peter Levine believes (Levine & Fredericks, 1997)? If it is a given, then perhaps the distinction needs to be changed from those who have or have not experienced trauma to those who have and have not recovered from the trauma. It may be that Levine’s belief is biased by the fact that he is a psychologist and only interacts with trauma victims. Those who have not suffered from trauma simply do not go to see people like Levine as they don’t have the need.
When reviewing the various approaches and theories it is striking how many gaps there are in the understandings of the body’s involvement in the emotions and the best ways of treating trauma victims. It is a reminder of how young psychotherapy is as a discipline. Thankfully, with the help of modern technologies like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines and quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) more accurate research can be done to speed up the understanding of psychology. The use of HRV as a measure of the nervous system will also be helpful in understanding the body’s response to emotions and help trauma victims. It is important that with the growth in the understanding of the body in psychotherapy that traditional talking therapies do not get discounted. Either way, it seems that Gendlin’s ‘felt-sense’ and the use of the body is a useful addition to psychotherapy, whilst also not being something to solely rely upon.
This is where the essay ends and if you made it this far then here is your reward… A confession about one of my own wounds. I am publishing this because I have a need to be seen. I know this is a good essay as I received the best feedback I have ever had for it. So, I published it so I can be appreciated and have a hole filled. Knowing that I am motivated by this enables me to be more forgiving and refrain from judging myself for this. I hope that in the process of getting my own narcissistic supplies I can help someone else with their wounds and holes.
References
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