bodily awareness

hey guys--i need to gather opinions here! i have been seeing an EMDR-T for awhile now, and it is SLLOOWWW going, mainly because i find everything out EMDR therapy out of my realm of understanding/believing, but I am and have been willing to try, because talking therapy can't get me past some "stuck" place I've been in for a long time. (I still see my regular T too)

I haven't actually gotten to the actual EMDR, but right now we are focusing on trying to make me more aware of my bodily awareness when i am feeling feelings. my T says that our bodies hold memories, even if our conscious mind cant remember them--so if we can get greater access to how "my body feels," it can help us gain greater understanding and awareness of my emotions. Or something like that.

I fail miserably whenever she asks me how i feel in my body whenever an emotion comes up. i always say "i don't know," and shrug. which is true- i feel the same. the only physical manifestations i do notice is when i am nervous.

the question that i am asking is: do you believe that somehow gaining awareness of your body's subtle clues will help processing emotion-or in my case, understanding/feeling emotions other than anxiety. Do you believe that you can get stuck in talk therapy and need to find other ways to access your subconscious? i have little memory from ages 4-10. i have a few scattered about, but am missing a lot. but from all of my memories i do have and know about my life-i am not expecting all these traumatic memories to flood in.

I tend to do much better now than I used to with sitting with my feelings and identifying what was going on in my body but it took some time. I use movement in my therapy as well as somatic awareness and this has helped me reconnect with myself. It has taken a lot of work but I need to do it in addition to talk therapy. I also deal with depression and focusing on my body helps me when I start to numb out. Hang in there!

thanks for answering if you want, can you give specific examples of what you noticed and how it helps? this whole concept truly doesn't make any sense to me. apparently all the scientific information she gives me is something i can't believe

I have had a similar experience - my one and only emotion (or do I mean feeling) has been anxiety. T would just get me every session to notice my body from toe upwards and identify any sensation I had.

We would stick with the anxiety and focus on it - where it was, what it might look like etc.

Sometimes now (2 years later) I get a different sensation but mostly have no idea what it is.

I do believe being more aware of my body and being able to identify emotions is the thing that is going to take me forward with T - I just trust that it will take time and patience.

let me first start out by saying, i worked at a mental health office where a therapist did emdr and saw so many people get better with the help of emdr. i called it a miracle. it did so much to improve people's lives.

next, my T would not do EMDR with me becuase he said i dissociated to easily. i could not even develop a safe place it was too tramatic for me. T would try to get me to identify where i was feeling things in my body too and my mind would be all over the place so i can identify with your lack of not knowing what to say. i too have little memory of my childhood and although i ended up having a major emotional breakdown and worked thru the trauma, the memories themselves have never really come back to me.

so to answer your questions... do you believe that somehow gaining awareness of your body's subtle clues will help processing emotion-or in my case, understanding/feeling emotions other than anxiety......definately. because we do store our emotions in our body. its as basic as being able to recognize when you are clenching your fists because you are angry, being able to catch that, figure out what you are angry about, and process that anger. noticing that you have butterflies in your stomach because you are nervous, determining the source of that anxiety and processing that emotion, rubbing your forehead because you are frustrated, identifying the source of that frustration, and dealing with it. you might bite your nails, tap your foot when you are anxious. grind your teeth when frustrated. notice your elevetion in blood pressure or increased breathing when angry. desire to eat or sleep when sad. so your body has many cues to let you know you are experiencing an emotion, so if you pay attention to them, as you address the emotion, the physical cue will subside. you want to address the anger, which caused increased blood pressure and breathing, you could focus on breathing and reducing your blood pressure and your anger will subside.

Do you believe that you can get stuck in talk therapy and need to find other ways to access your subconscious? Definately.... talk therapy is only one way to access subconscious. but we got this stuff buried in there deep. we have it hidden and dont want it accessed. we are trying to protect ourselves. it needs to be gone after with jackhammers, drills, tnt, snuck up on, direct hits,...the works....at least that has been my approach....but multiple approaches until you find one that works...keep chipping away until you find one that works and sometimes its a combination of many approaches.

so when it comes to how your body feels, see if you can practice by paying attention to how your body feels nomally a little bit each night before you fall asleep. feel the weight and balance of it. how solid it feels. the density. compare the right to the left side. do they feel equal? see if you cant imagine the molecules that make you up moving about you. practice this on a regular basis. get to know you. then when she asks how you feel, you will be able to say " my stomach feels heavier" or "my right side feels lower" or "my throat seems tight".

anyway, i hope this helps...if you have any questions or want to talk, feel free to pm me.....

An exercise that helped me in the past was the Body Scan meditation from the MBSR course. You can find all kinds of download for body scan meditation on the internet.

Also, when I did DBT there was a handout that talk about how the emotions were felt in the body... clench fist when angry, short breath when anxious... it was quite detailed, like everything in DBT I guess.

Yes, I believe you can get stuck in talk therapy and that is why my T is doing EMDR with me. I've had years of talk therapy but EMDR is getting me to feel things on a deeper level. I hated the question: where in your body do you feel it, or what do you feel, because like you, my answer was anxiety or "I don't know" what and where I feel something. I haven't wanted anything to do with my body but those questions and EMDR are helping me.

wow! awesome, awesome answer. thank you!! i have tried checking in with my body numerous times throughout the day, but i truly have no idea what i am supposed to be checking. i mean, its just me...unless something hurts, or i am nervous so i have butterflies in the stomach/heart racing...i feel like...me. i do clench my teeth when i sleep/have bad dreams. though i will say noticing my anxiety (hard to miss) does NOT help in any way. i know why i am anxious most of the time, and then know why my body feels the way it does.

i just don't get how it can really help. my T has used examples, like she said that a woman she knew would "collapse" when she was talking to her about how she knows she should eat breakfast in the mornings, but never can do it. my T noticed her "collapse" (sliding into the couch?) and asked her if she remembers feeling that way in the past...which brought up the topic of how she never was sure she was getting breakfast as a kid due to her childhood abuse.

so she never made that connection until then. but my regular T has asked me a zillion times when i react emotionally to something, that if it felt familiar from something in the past, and most times i can say no. because it is THIS situation i am reacting to. This isn't all the time--when i have way over-reacted to stuff at work, i could definitely see i was being triggered by the past somehow, but nothing specific.

i have only heard good things about EMDR and how it can be transforming, but i can't get past feeling things in my body! i wonder if she's ever had a patient she's worked so long with BEFORE even starting the actual EMDR process. I've been seeing her for over a year now
do you still hate it? can you answer these questions? what kind of answers do you come up with? if that is too personal seeming, i don't mean it that way. like before when she sked you said "i don't know" (my answer)...and now, you can say something like "my stomach hurts" or whatever...??

Velcro: No, I don't hate the questions now because I've made up my mind that I need to "get over" or work through, is the better phrase, my inhibitions. When my T asks where in my body I feel something (the feelings for the EMDR target) I can usually answer. It may be different for you. I usually feel something but I'm embarrassed to say. You posted that you don't feel anything, not that you're afraid to say. Is that correct? Often it's in a sexual place, so I sort of say that and she knows what I mean. I am aware also when it feels like I can't breathe, or it's my stomach, or many times it's all over. She has seen me blush for the last few weeks so I can comment on that too. Last week I told her I thought I had a fever; my face was so hot!

yeah mine is more that i have no idea, not that i'm afraid to say--though if it were anything ever close in your realm, i could never say it!! you are so brave.