«Dont go to him, dont go, hes got a granite stone in his chest.»
Here is an example from a novel: «A young woman is standing in a dark and cold hallway, near a tepid stove, warming her hands, waiting to be called for dinner- and, having pursed her dried up lips, thinking about what? About Rodion? It is all nonsense, that she has poisoned him, nonsense! But what if she really has poisoned him my God! What must she feel? What tombstone is lying on her secretive soul!8»
There is no need to add to the list of excerpts because the reader will be able to recall such collocations, used to describe sensations in the body during the experience of various emotional states.
Snakes in the head is not a sign of schizophrenia
Being a student of the clinical school, I used to perceive the evidence of patients about their feelings as a part of the information needed to help establish the diagnosis and verify the effectiveness of the treatment. If patients told me about the daggers in their backs, the devil on their shoulders, worms in their heads, I thought about senesthopathy, and schizophrenia.
Today, while working through «a given energy structure rather than an innate genetic one, I often met the descriptions of «strange feelings experienced by my patients. For me, the style of such descriptions is important. It can be epileptoid-photographic, cycloid-colorful, or schizoid-abstruse, or organically flattened. Knowledge of the patients character remains essential, but no less important is the fact that there is practically nobody who is unable to describe what is felt. The body experience, (or «experiences of the body) is a phenomenon which is quite natural to people of any constitutional and genetic type and culture.
Bodily experience, conscious or unconscious, is constantly presented in the normal human sensory system. The only real «strangeness of descriptions of body sensations in the somatopsychotherapeutic process, is that they are made in the form of describing objects, which was not done before. It will be discussed below.
Sometimes patients can be surprised by the nature of their perception when referring to their feelings. They even ask in embarrassment: «Do you have a lot of crazy people like me?» The perception of what is felt in images is not a sign of mental illness. On the contrary, the ability to perceive indicates mental health. If we talk about diseases, it turns out that «snakes in the head are more a sign of pre-stroke than schizophrenia.
During the observation of the object descriptions of experiences it was found that the results of self-examination of the body sensations can serve, firstly, to activate the processes of natural self-regulation in the body (through the inclusion of the feedback mechanism) and, secondly, to organize accelerated changes in the mental status of the patient through focusing on this process.
An overview of the work with sensations
If we talk about the main issue of psychotherapy, it is, in my opinion, as follows: to get quickly to the mental charge which is «knocking down the patients energy circuit and decide on what to do with it.
There are a number of approaches to solving this issue, e.g. psychoanalysis with its method of free associations and catharsis while understanding the «primal scene; gestalt therapy, which aims to modify the expression of feelings through finding a «formula of constructive appeal to the «addressee, etc.
SPT implements a specific approach. In the diagnosis, it suggests turning to body sensations, finding unresolved experiences by their «mass (the technique of «objectification of sensations), and in the therapy calming downwithout preconditions, (the technique of «zeroing). The special issue is obtaining new experiences.
Phases of work with sensations
Diagnostic phase
1. Where? (Sensations, associated with the experience at the level of head, chest, abdomen?)
2. «What?» (Is it something big or small? Light or dark? Heavy or lightweight? The image of what is it?)
Evaluation phase
1. Can it be bigger or smaller?
2. What parts of the body are «de-energized?
3. Did it emerge recently or long ago?
4. Under what circumstances?
5. Was it brought from the outside or formed inside?
6. What condition does it correspond to?
7. Does it solve problems or complicate them?
8. Do you want to continue living with this feeling or do you want to part with it?
9. What percentage of your forces is concentrated on it?
10. Would these forces be useful for anything else?
11. Other issues
Therapeutic phase
1. Calming down
2. Suspending
3. Testing of secondary formations
4. Application of the forces to new areas of activity
Psychocatalysis of body sensations
The essence of the work can be described as follows: the sensation in the body, corresponding to a certain experience, is objectified from questions about how much it weighs, what volume takes, is it light or dark? After that, a decision about this sensation is made. It is either preserved, fed, applied to life in an unchanged or modified form, or, on the contrary, a person chooses to calm down and observes the resorption of this sensation.
After a short conversation, a patient is invited to turn to inner sensation and determine its nature. Where is there an accumulation of heat sensations or gravity? Where, on the contrary, is there a lack of filling?
When the location of the experience is revealed, there is a discussion about the evaluation of this formation which has been subjectively felt inside the body.
If the feeling has a negative impact on the health and way of life of the patient, the therapist invites them to take a decision on this formation or somatic structure. The correct outcome of this part of the work is considered to calm the patients. It is accompanied by the observation of the process of resorption or «shrinkage of the specific formation.
At the end of this process, the diagnostic phase is repeated. The key question of this phase is: «What is left in the place of the previous structure?» As a rule, it is defined as something scanty in size, volume, weight, something like a dot or a speck. Then it is specified once again: «Do you need it for something?» If it is not necessary, the patients observe the cleansing of the body from the rest of the experience that has spoiled their condition. Usually it is done by absorption,evaporation, washing out, etc. In some cases, «the dot simply «flies away.
The result of this part of the work is the restoration of the balance of sensations in the body. A program of actions for the future is formed based on this state. A new style of behavior is developed for a problem situation to meet what caused a failure in the patients condition.