Foundational to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body psychotherapy approach I founded in 1981, is that our posture and movement habits are related to our health and quality of life.
Starting as soon as we are born, we relax or tighten our muscles, change our breathing, pull away or lean forward, make eye contact or avert our gaze in response to whatever is going on internally or externally. We rarely think about or even become aware of these automatic physical adjustments but nonetheless, they have a powerful influence on ourselves and on others. And over time, repeated actions become habitual.
As Nina Bull (1945) described, a “motor attitude” or “posture of the body” precedes and paves the way for certain emotions. For example, a collapsed posture goes with emotions such as sadness or grief, while a puffed-up chest and clenched arms might correspond with anger. The body continually reveals and even broadcasts our inner state to ourselves, as well as to others, typically before we are aware of it, whether we intend it to or not. For a relationship in trouble, these non-verbal transmissions, which are implicitly perceived and reacted to by the other, are almost always at the root of their distress.
Nell and Harry had been married for five years, and in “talk therapy” (their words) for three years. They came to me for consultation at the suggestion of their frustrated therapist who said she had exhausted her toolbox with this volatile couple. Both therapist and clients reported that their attempts to avoid the “blow ups” that happened sometimes several times a day had failed. Husband and wife were prone to blaming each other. They were easily triggered in their interactions, causing ongoing stress that took its toll on their bodies and well-being.
The plan they had agreed to follow in therapy to calm down when they started to fight (such as “Take 5” or “Count to 10 before speaking”) was typically used by one against the other (“You counted to 10 but then kept yelling” or “You didn’t even try to calm down when you took a time out”). On the brink of calling it quits due to a particularly heated argument the night before, yet hoping for something miraculous to save their marriage, this couple entered my consultation room.
Typically, the focus of therapy is on what clients say. However, much of our communications occurs implicitly through our bodies (Ogden, Minton & Pain, 2006; Ogden & Fisher, 2015) and Nell and Harry were no exception. Bringing awareness to the visible physical indicators of stress, and to the meaning of the body to body conversation that takes place implicitly, can help people find tools they need to reduce the stress in their relationship.
With this idea in mind, I asked Nell and Harry to remember their argument from the previous night, and then to notice what changed in their bodies. All visible movement ceased for Harry — he became very still, alert, and watchful, saying the stillness was a preparation to fight or flight. His sympathetic nervous system was activated. Nell said she felt panic rising from deep within her as she remembered their argument, accompanied by what appeared to be an aggressive motion of leaning forward with arms and hands tensed. When I asked Harry what happened inside him when he watched Nell make this motion, his fingertips lifted from their resting place on his lap, palms facing outward toward Nell in a protective gesture. He interpreted Nell’s movement as attacking, which she realized was her own defense when she felt panic. The implicit communication was clear: their argument, of course, made each of them feel unsafe, and each reacted with instinctive defenses that were not conscious. The stress response was triggered for both.
I asked them to hold the physical stance that emerged when they remembered their argument, and notice this non-verbal conversation. Nell said if her bodily stance could talk, it would say, “Why can’t you….” The sentence was left unfinished, which highlighted that the specific content was less important than the underlying implicit phenomena that drove the content. Harry said he just wanted to pull away and protect himself.
Both patterns, of course, stemmed from childhood attachment dynamics. Nell, who grew up in a large family with several brothers, had learned that the only way she could be heard was to be loud, aggressive and demanding. “Otherwise, I just get run over,” she said. Harry, an only child, remembered trying to “disappear” in an act of self-preservation during his parents’ frequent verbal arguments. The stress of these reactions had been a part of each one’s experience for as long as they could remember, so this information was not new to either of them—in fact, they said they had explored these issues “over and over” in therapy. But still, their arguments continued to escalate. Despite their insight and reflective capacity, the unsafety of the past that was recreated through habits of movement and posture under stress, and these procedurally learned patterns were based on unconscious assumptions that the future would be the same as what had gone before.
Allan Schore (2003) has taught us that the right hemisphere is dominant in governing human behavior, underscoring the powerful influence of implicit emotional and body processing in human existence, in contrast with explicit, cognitive processing. However, the “implicit self” is often in conflict with the “explicit self.” As one client said, “I know I’m safe but my body’s got a different reality I don’t even agree with. It’s always reacting as if I’m in danger.” Similarly, the automatic engagement of the “motor attitude” and stress responses that both Nell and Harry had learned in childhood in response to very different family situations belied their explicit assessment of the current situation with each other, as well as their conscious desire for resolution and connection.
At this point in the therapy hour, I felt we had two choices: One, to delve more deeply into the origins of their interactive pattern, or two, to find a way to change it without exploring their early attachment relationships. I chose the latter. Since Harry had voiced that he did not actually “want” to withdraw, I thought that he could more easily change his pattern than could Nell. At the same time, it seemed to me that Nell’s aggressive stance was really a plea for closeness. So I suggested another “little experiment” (Kurtz 1990) to be conducted slowly and mindfully. I asked Nell to make her gesture of leaning forward aggressively, and to say the words, “Why can’t you…” and I asked Harry to inhibit his impulse to withdraw and instead to lean forward and reach out towards Nell with his arms, palms up in a receptive, non-threatening gesture. Both were instructed to be sensitive to their internal experience.
Nell’s body immediately softened, tears came to her eyes, and she took a deep breath as she reached back to take Harry’s hands. Smiling through her tears, she said that to connect was all she ever wanted from him. Harry reported that the action of reaching out felt strange and vulnerable to him. However, he was delighted at Nell’s response and realized his reaching out to her elicited exactly the response he desired. Underneath their patterns of withdrawal and aggression was a deep longing for closeness and intimacy with one another.
In order to alter their implicit body to body conversation and resolve their damaging relational pattern, one of them had to take the risk to change his body’s habitual actions. Harry did so by reaching toward Nell when they started to argue rather than withdraw. He said he wanted to practice reaching out at home whenever they started to fight; this combined with Nell’s immense gratitude to him for being willing to seek connection with her instead of pull away from her, was enough to change their dynamic. Their arguments no longer escalated to blow ups. They felt they had a concrete tool – something simple to do that helped them connect when they started to argue. A simple physical intervention to change the body-to-body conversation they had been having for years was the exactly what they needed to prevent the escalation of their arguments and lower the stress response.
Dr. Pat Ogden is the Founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
Bull, N. (1945). Toward a clarification of the concept of emotion. Psychosomatic Medicine, 7(4), 210–214.
Kurtz, R. (1990). Body-centered psychotherapy: The Hakomi method. Mendocino, CA: LifeRhythm.
Ogden, P., & Fisher, J. (2015). Sensorimotor psychotherapy: Interventions for trauma and attachment. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., &Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Schore, A. (2003). Affect regulation and the repair of the self. New York: W. W. Norton
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