The man who slept in an earthenware pot by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

November 2014

I was looking for a tube of toothpaste the other day and I found 11 of them. I also found 14 toothbrushes. I realized, with a start, that I have become like my father. Kept in a storeroom was his stash of toiletries: lots and lots of toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste, soaps, and such things. My brother tells me he hoards stuff as well. Certainly my mother hoarded (I found loved objects hidden away in the linen cupboard, and dozens of tinned food and bottles of lentils after her death). Our Estonian aunt and uncle collect used butter containers and endless milk bottles. Our accumulation of  useful stuff is a intergenerational product of knowing scarcity. My mother grew up in the very uncertain times of Russian/Estonian upheaval and my father was born into poverty in Sydney, and then, of course,  were the wars. I was a post-war baby, and I guess, following my parent’s mindstuff,  never quite believed that supermarkets are perfectly good at storing things.

Collecting on the scale I live with is not a pathological problem (I can and do give my things away), but some levels of hoarding is a serious problem.  At the extreme end is a very nasty condition called Diogenes Syndrome, often associated with the elderly, but not always. Diogenes Syndrome is characterized by extreme self neglect, anxiety, social withdrawal, apathy, living in squalor, and collecting random stuff in a disorganized manner. It’s also noted in people who refuse help, preferring to suffer than accept assistance.  

Diogenes? Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher, circa 412BC, and one of the founders of Cynic Philosophy. He  made a principle of  living a life of poverty, begging for his living and sleeping in a  large earthenware pot. He had rejected his father’s profession of minting coins and  a lifestyle of wealth, seeking the simple and, as he thought, a life closer to nature.

Cynicism is a school of ancient Greek philosophy based on the idea that the purpose of life is to live as nature intends it. Happiness could be gained through rigorous training and rejecting desires for wealth, sex and power. They advocated abnegation of accumulation of possessions, and preached this principle around Greece.  Certain branches of early and later Christianity adopted this idea, and some of us know practitioners of this today. It’s ironical, l then that the extreme syndrome of hoarding should be named after Diogenes. I suppose, though, in the extreme rejection of collecting things, as much as the extreme desire to collect there is a similar energy at work. Fear of destitution and rejoicing in it has a strangely similar compulsion to it.

Those with Diogenes Syndrome are described as aggressive, stubborn, suspicious of others; having unpredictable mood swings, emotional instability and a skewed perception of reality. Linked to frontal lobe brain impairment, this Syndrome is an extreme one, but collecting things is usually quite normal.  For sure, there are the crazy cat ladies with 50 felines and the tea pot and coin collectors with massive barns to house their collections, but many of us gather things around us that give us pleasure. When such preoccupations tip over into chaos, then mere collecting becomes a problem of hoarding.

Television shows that make a drama out of hoarders and their mountains of stuff help and hinder hoarders. Piles of years of newspapers and paper napkins and plastic bags and cardboard and polystyrene boxes and children’s toys and shopping never unpacked and 70 pairs of underpants and socks and so on littering entire houses that the occupant and visitors have to crawl through to get to somewhere else, might make good viewing, but how the television therapist deals with it may not be useful for others. 

What television doesn’t do well is make shame feel better. Nor do they help the person with their intense feelings of pain and anxiety. Yes, the mountains of junk are removed, but what then? The cry of, “You’re throwing away my entire life” isn’t adequately heard.  Unless the underlying psychological issues are addressed, the problem wont go away with the truckloads of bits and pieces. As a researcher into hoarding put it, “It’s not a clutter problem; it’s a perception/thinking problem,” and it doesn’t have single cause. Contributing facts or stressors have been identified, including the following: being raises in a chaotic home or one with a confusing family context, or moving frequently (lots of stuff acts as a sort of anchor), cognitive processing issues that affect decision making and problem solving, attention-deficit disorder, anxiety and/or depression, feelings of excessive guilt about waste (Diogenes felt this), intergenerational and genetic history (because hoarding runs in families), and may be associated with dementia, schizophrenia, and OCD, but not exclusively.

Despite some common misconceptions regarding hoarding as an obsessive compulsive disorder, it is now thought that the anxiety associated with this isn’t the driving force. Some hoarders may experience distress and anxiety because of the death of a loved one, or the loss of important things in their life, or perfectionist thinking, and hoarding calms their minds, but for others something else is at work. Hoarding may produce a sense of identity and continuity with the past, a dynamic that is understandable. Other factors may also be at work, but we can only know those when we talk with specific people. People are not all the same.

The life of a hoarder becomes increasingly difficult, but it is a condition of being that can be effectively treated with counselling and other healing modalities. At least with television shows highlighting the issue of excessive collecting people are now more willing to talk about their own problems in this regard and seek the help they need.

An equilibrium and a good life may be found between the abundance of stuff and an earthenware pot. Home doesn’t need to be a storehouse in order to offer stability and comfort.

The Magic Glove by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, BA, BA (Hons), M. Couns., PhD, Dip CH

Oct 2014 
 

Imagine wearing an invisible glove that, when you touch a really sore part of your body, diminishes the pain, or takes it away altogether. You can look at the glove, and yes, there really isn’t anything there, but yet you can feel it, sort of. There is a  sensationless sensation covering your hand. It’s the magic glove of anaesthesia.

The anaesthetic glove is a technique used in clinical hypnotherapy that is profoundly effective in changing the experience of acute and chronic pain.

What occurs in this hypnotic process is not yet fully understood, but the effect is measurable, just the same.  Brain-imaging studies show a significant and consistent change in how pain feels experientially as well as the reduction in  firing around the associated place in the brain where pain is felt. How successful this change is depends on how receptive to hypnotic suggestion a person is. 75% of people studied in experiments investigating this show a substantial improvement, while some receive moderate improvement; very few are not responsive at all. For evidence based proof, if this is important to us, these are very good odds.

The repeated and prolonged use of pain relief medication in chronic pain conditions such as arthritis, fibromyalgia, headaches, backaches, temporal mandibular disorders, etc is sometimes not advised. Sometimes such medication significantly damages the gut, or causes others reactions that are very unpleasant, like nausea, vomiting, headaches, etc.  Hypno-analgesia decreases a person’s sensitivity to pain when the strength of such pain is interfering with every day life. Pain, obviously, is useful in telling us something is wrong, but too much pain is debilitating. On-going pain also lengthens the amount of time a person stays in hospital. Reducing it, allows natural healing to occur more easily.

The magic, or anaesthetic, glove may be taught during the course of  hypnotherapy sessions so that it may be employed whenever the patient wants to control their own level of pain.

What is going on in the brain, as shown by brain scans, demonstrates that hypnotherapy actually produces a physical effect, and that it isn’t just a psychological technique. We are, after all, whole beings (mind and body united). 

Brain scans have certainly been used interestingly in the observation of what is going on neurologically, but the measurement of hertz levels also shows very interesting things. A paper I read a couple of years ago illustrated how, under hypnosis, the person’s brainwaves showed a dominance of theta, delta, and a  bit of alpha patterns. Theta brain-waves are associated with healing, strengthening the immune system,, creativity, intuition, enhanced concentration, and increased memory. Theta brainwaves are found mostly in sleep, meditation, and hypnosis, as well as deeply relaxed states. The heightening of theta brain-waves in hypnosis points to the especial value of such techniques for sleep disorders. Delta brainwaves are associated with deep sleep, where a person’s heart rate slows down and a deep relaxation occurs. Alpha are active in visualization, daydreams and fantasy. It is said that alpha brainwaves are like the bridge between beta’s wakefulness, acuity, and the analytic mind, and theta’s relaxed state. Interestingly, the same paper said the hypnotherapist’s brainwave pattern exhibited a similar one to the patients, but with one exception. The therapist also showed beta brainwave patterns. The layout of brainwave patterns for the therapist is something I literally experience every time I do a hypnosis with a patient. I can “feel” the different levels of awareness while I shape my language, organize the structure, decide how many times I need to say something, which metaphors to use, observe what is going on for the person (all processes in which beta brainwaves are dominant). At the same time, I, too, enter a state of relaxation, shape what is to be visualized, and feel it in my own being. For instance, the image of lying in a boat might be evoked. I will feel its gentle rocking, even while I speak of it and invite my patient to enjoy it, or not. Sometimes, being with the person as they enter the healing space, I feel it too. It is as though I am sharing their dream. 

Neurological investigations are interesting, but this is only part of what’s going on in the hypnotic process. The bottom line is that what happens in each session needs to be relevant and useful for the patient, as well as how committed they are in their own healing. Without this, there is not much point. Commitment and relevance is the critical thing. While I can write of magic gloves and all that, the intention of a person with regard to their own healing matters more than any magic. 

One session is rarely ever enough. Most responsible hypnotherapists recommend at least three sessions. The deepest change occurs when three sessions are committed to, and participating with the patient in these, I see actual healing taking place and the person’s reports feeling much better.

Re-landscaping the Self through Dream Work by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

Sept 2014

Years ago, when I was briefly married to a Jungian analyst, I had a recurring dream. It was a strange dream because it happened on the 10th November every year and involved me reaching for the  moon and flying there. Because I was a Jungian analyst-in-training and not then Narrative Therapy oriented (this was before Narrative Therapy had been formulated), I looked for symbolic meaning and not emotional intent. I never truly understood the dream, until recently. It finally dawned on me that my dreams were nothing but wish fulfilment and that I desired to move beyond my somewhat limited and limiting circumstance. I did not fit marriage to this man and needed to leave in order to re-landscape myself, that is find myself.

When I left him I entered a rather dark, dank swamp land and wandered from plains to projects, through religious ideas, to scientific endeavour (I was briefly enrolled in medical school), to research and editing projects, to academic study in university and its very verdant, colourful, lush and exciting landscape. I engaged in my philosophical and psychological doctoral work, tutored and lectured, rented houses and built gardens and fish ponds, and started knowing who I was. (I finished my PhD, coincidentally, on 10^th of November, 2001!) And then my interest perked up again and I trained, once again, in the tools of the trade as a counsellor, psychotherapist and then clinical hypnotherapist.

These were intense years of personal change. I went from being a scared, timid sort of woman to quite fearless, ready to experiment and explore and confront almost anything. I scuba dived out at sea, talked to people – roomfuls of them, sang in groups of three, performed on my cello, hanged up on telemarketers and other nuisance makers  and I learned to listen to and speak my truth, even when I was the only dissenter in a group.

I did not do this alone, all the way, but had the assistance, when I needed it, of courageous fellow travellers in the form of therapists, friends, and seers. The “reading” of dreams remained a most valuable tool in my self discovery.

Recently, I have begun thinking about what I learned those years ago at the (Jung) Institute for Analytical Psychology in Zurich in the 1970s, and before that, from a mentor and teacher of mine, at Curtin University, Perth, and from even that husband of mine, and books, and films, and thoughts over the years, and I realize that I was trying to understand Jung’s ideas as dogma, and not as emergent ideas that Jung sought to make sense of. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and a shaper of many ideas we continue to explore today: the collective unconscious, archetypes, dream work, personality types, and so on.

Most of those I’d listened to had taken aboard a dogma without much examination, nor critique, and it felt cozy and comfortable. Germans have a word for it, Gemütlichkeit, which means, a situation which induces a cheerful mood, peace of mind, comfy-ness, belonging and social acceptance, coziness and unhurry. In fact, what I had tried to take in was a trance state. A voice of disquiet hung around me for many years and I was afraid to speak it aloud.

The other day, I watched an early documentary on Jung’s explorations among peoples in Africa and the Native American Taos pueblo in New Mexico where he listened to and asked questions and kept asking questions through letters with the people he’d spent time with, of their dreams. He spoke with Black American patients in psychiatric hospitals and listened to their retelling of their dreams. He asked a question nobody else had, “Are the dreams of diverse people similar or dissimilar across cultures?” He came to realize we all dream rather similarly. It was from this observation that he began formulating his concept of the collective unconscious.  He noticed patterns emerging among the dreamscape materials and identified personalities, personas, events, figures, and forms that seemed to be consistent among all people. These, he identified as “archetypes”. 

Archetypes are not set but patterns in process. They are potentials only, and while Jung identified a few: archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites, archetypal figures: great mother, father, child, devil, god, wise old man, wise old woman, the trickster, and the hero, and archetypal motifs: the apocalypse, the deluge, and the creation, there are probably thousands more.

Archetypes are not actual anything. They describe only a clustering of ideas around events in stories (literature, movies, dramas) and dreams. Furthermore, the aim of identifying archetypes is not the purpose of understanding stories, however interesting that might be, and however much we, as a culture, have formalized such an activity; we need, I believe, to pay attention to what actually matters to us, what emotional climate there is in the dream, what the dream evokes for us, and how the dream may help us unleash unexplored parts of ourselves. This means paying attention to the dream and the stories we live by (and each of us do this), and not flipping open a dictionary of dreams to hunt down archetypal images. We are called to our own self actualization and potential, not to a doctrine of ideas. This means bringing conscious attention to our uniqueness, in the landscape we individually occupy, while certainly giving interest to our social belonging. We are born individually, and so are called to be the best version of ourselves we can be. To come to know this is a conscious process and thus it very useful indeed in understanding what stories we’ve constructed around ourselves and seek to move into landscapes of our minds that truly nurture rather than limit us.

Changing how we listen to noise By Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

If the noise bothers you, listen to it.  (John Cage, 1912-1992)

      We live in a world of confusion: lights, colours, engine sounds, voices, ideas – a multiplicity of ideas, signs, symbols – a rap dance of images, people telling us what to do and what not to do, smoke/don’t smoke, drink/don’t drink, get a job, get an education, be true to yourself/follow the crowd and don’t be too different, stay with an abusive family, because they’re family; noise, so much noise. What to do, how to be?

     In the noise we seek solace and sense. Some seek solace in the arms of someone else, anybody else, and a whole lot of them. Some look to security in substances and food that allow them to bliss out, at least temporarily. Some gamble on the horses and dogs and coins and leaves fluttering to the forest floor.  Some watch television, show after show. Some run and cycle frenetically, till their muscles melt. Some read books, book after book, till their eyes burn. Some meditate for so long they lose touch with the ordinariness of the world. Some play video games, day after day, night after night, and so on. None of these things are wrong in themselves, but when done to extremes, then there is a problem.

      Noise. We humans are really challenged in the face of noise.  We hate it. Confusion is so unsettling that we seek a solution to clear it up, or at least  find something, anything to stop it.  

      Clinical hypnotherapy uses this propensity as an amazingly valuable tool.  We practitioners use confusion to elicit a hypnotic state, to deliberately create a dissociated condition in which the client’s unconscious is able to respond with a greater capacity of autonomy than their usual waking state.  In this state, the unconscious mind is more amenable to hearing alternatives – and hopefully more healthy helpful ones – to the problem choices the client was making previously.  

     Milton Erickson (1901-1980), the father of  modern clinical hypnotherapy, used this technique beautifully. Consider the following, 

[…some family member or friend] … knows pain and knows no pain and so do you wish to know no pain but comfort and you do know comfort and no pain and as comfort increases you know that you cannot say no to ease and comfort but you can say no pain and know no pain but know comfort and ease…

      There is a play on the words, “no” and “know”, as well as on “you cannot say no to ease and comfort,” but “no pain” and “know no pain but know comfort and ease.” Just in these words, focus is shifted from a focus to ambiguity and in this shift, the locus of pain dissipates, for these are not just words, but a physiological perception as well.  

      I recently was asked to do a hypnotic session on a woman about to have surgery on her foot (very damaged in a horse riding accident). She’d had several surgeries under general anaesthetic and the surgeon wasn’t keen on giving her more general anaesthetic if it was possible.  I used a confusional technique and shifted her awareness from her foot to noticing how her hips feel when she is dancing (for she is a dancer), and so she imagined the dance. She got through the whole surgery without needing a general anaesthetic and was, in fact, not aware of her foot at all.

      I use confusional techniques often because they work so brilliantly and quickly. There are several kinds of confusional techniques (humour, surprise, amplifying polarities, double-binds, paradox, etc), and all are designed to shift awareness, and in a long term way. All serve to break the current problem story, and facilitate healing. In fact, clients say to me, after I ask them on a follow up session how they’re getting on, “What problem? I haven’t got a problem.” This is sometimes quite disconcerting for me, but nevertheless I see they’re right, they really do not have a problem any more, and it feels to them that the problem has never been there.

       Re-entering confusion thus loosens and expands a person’s capacity for being present with other ways of being. It is pretty hard to make someone do something they don’t want to do. You can’t say to some smoker, “Give up smoking, or else!” and expect them to follow suit. The old style of hypnosis uses this direct approach, but generally the effects do not last. What prohibition does is set up resistance to the idea of change. What re-introducing confusion does is shift consciousness from the focus on the problem to multiple other ways of seeing, such that the problem is no longer a problem and resistance has been circumvented. It deliberately disrupts clients’ everyday mental set to allow a suggestion in without the client desiring to resist it.

      Noise thus has a purpose. Listen to it, and it will teach you things.

      Some years ago I attended a series of talks, chants and meditations from visiting Tibetan lamas over at the Perth State Library. I’d park my car in the underground car park and then catch the lift to the place the lamas were, sit cross legged, meditate and listen intently. Then I’d get up and go to the lift and down to my car. There in the underground car park was a deafening air conditioning unit. By the 7^th day, I could hear the chanting lamas in the air conditioning unit, in my car engine, and in the wind. I can still hear the chanting these 10 or so years later.  There is no longer noise, but a greater willingness to listen to the layeredness of confusion and seek other ways of understanding things, other than my own story. It’s there in the hum of things, this place of many ways of being. There are many other choices than the one that locks us in.

Dying to Dreams. What then? by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

      Death comes in many forms. We live and we die. All organics things do. We lose loved ones, human, animal and even plants. This is life. We also lose dreams, hopes and expectations. This, also, is part of life, but what do we do then, when we, still very much alive lose things we’d pinned our hopes on that  just don’t come to pass? Sometimes life can be not merely a disappointment, but a desert of despair. What then?

      Desire to die through suicide is very common these days, and much of this desire comes from this empty landscape of despair. Where do I belong, who am I, where is my place? These are some the questions asked. If I do not die, what  then? What happens afterwards?

      The old crone rides a crow in a charnel yard and then, inexplicitly, goes up in smoke. She personifies disappointment, loss, and despair, and around her is frenetic activity, anxiety, and a desire to get away as far as possible from what  is feared: a horrific implosion of nothingness.  The Hindus give her the name, the Goddess Dhumavati. She is shunned, denounced, avoided, like the widows and other outcasts of India and here in our own streets: here in the faces of the mad,  the alcoholic and drug addicted, here is the torment of those  in extreme pain. This is the face of damage; this is literally the deathscape of cosmic collapse.

     What then? Here is the extremely uncomforting call to consciousness. Here is the real reason ours is a call to conscious awareness. Dhumavati has within her transformative powers to unleash awareness that cannot be attained in gentler ways. Here is awareness that many spiritual ideas and practices do not touch.

      I am very moved by Dhumavati and her crow and sometimes evoke and explore what she means with certain clients because she illustrates so profoundly what most of us are terrified of and will avoid at all costs. I have a crow figurine that I use as a symbolic bird to explore grief, loss, and the death of dreams. Together we journey into the Shadow realm to bring consciousness to what we do not yet understand. Riding on the back of the bird we symbolically fly to the very edge of existence itself.  I sometimes do this work using the magic of clinical hypnotherapy, a modality of focussed relaxation and a bringer of profound insight. My clients are well supported by me in this journey. It is work we undertake together.

       Without attempting to go to this  silent heart centre we are too readily whipped around by the high winds of elation and despair, too ready to pin our hopes on the promises and whims of other people who are just as confused as ourselves, too willing to seek comfort from unsafe sex, obsessive hoarding, indulgence in excessive food, alcohol and drugs, and then, of course, there is the attraction of suicide, annihilation and obliteration, but what then? The call to the silent centre is a hard one to obey. It requires staring into the black eyes of this old crone who carries our dreams in bags on her back, requires noticing how these dreams dissolve into nothingness like tracing our fingers in ash, and requires staying present with despair, until that too disappears.

Knowing the delicate interflow of interconnection by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Counselling, PhD

      I’ve known for decades that we are whole beings of body, mind and spirit, and I was, for a time, a member of the International Society for Integrative Psychotherapy, but, strangely, it is only now that this knowledge is dropping down deeper into my consciousness.  What I’ve said before about the interconnectedness of each part of ourselves, is feeling to me more actual.  Why should this be so, I wonder? I suspect that it is only now that I am becoming more aware of how other therapeutic modalities take such knowledge for granted and use it in a beautifully subtle way, in contrast to the heavy handed manner of those promoting self help books on the so-called “mind-body connection”. 

     The clinical hypnotherapy aspect of my work is also allowing me to see this relationship more clearly. What I write of here is more a delicate inter-flow through what we subjectively experience of ourselves in our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts, our stories, and our intentions, as well as the objective manifestations of those things. In other words, we are whole beings, even when we are feeling out of sorts.

      Every psychological state has a resonance and connectedness to how it affects the body, and every physiological state shapes our emotions and thought patterns, and all may be observed by others in some form or another.  A heart attack may be felt as gripping pain, and a sense of impending doom. The darkness of depression may be felt not only as intense undefinable sadness, but also sluggishness, a profound difficulty getting moving, vertigo and a lowered blood pressure. A nicotine addiction may be felt as a craving for more of that chemical, a pleasure in rolling the cigarette and lighting it, and as desire to avoid anxiety, and a hope to fit in with one’s peers.  Anxiety may be felt in relation to certain incidences in one’s social and environmental field, and as tightness in the chest, rapid breathing and the sensation of a racing heart. In anger, blood rushes to the face, and there is an intense surge of energy to the voice and one’s thoughts go over and over the object of one’s rage. So, there is nothing in the human, and animal condition, that isn’t expressed throughout the whole organism.

      Therapeutic modalities tackle the matter of healing in many different ways, but the most successful, in my view, of these are those for whom matters of the mind, the body and spirit are not separated. 

      Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), that subtle craft and philosophy, through its practices of acupuncture, herbs, moxabustion, an qi gong,  realizes that every disorder has a mind, body, and spiritual dimension. The spirit, I am defining as intention, will, and a sense of self in relation to others and the greater environment.

      Western Medicine, is increasingly acknowledging this interconnection in many of its branches, though much of it as practiced is still mechanistic in orientation. In some circles within medicine, indeed, the mind-body connection is seen as a fluffy mystical idea. General practitioners, though, deal with the whole person and are more interested in treating the whole person. Some of my doctor friends belong to the movement known as “integrated medicine”. Such medicine is actively interested in whole self medicine.

      In the field of cardiology, for instance, there is an emerging discipline called “neurocardiology” or “behavioural cardiology”,  in other words a recognition that what is felt and what is done by a person changes matters of the heart and impacts the whole person. 

       Why I’ve chosen cardiology as my example is because it is now well established how stress and belief changes heart function, a useful illustration of mind-body entwining.  There are numerous examples of  how a psychological state affects the heart.  This has been studied extensively since about 1942 when Walter Cannon researched what he called “Voodoo Death”. Cannon suggested that episodes of sudden death were secondary to profound fear or emotion, inspired by superstitious belief. Cannon speculated that death resulted from enhanced sympathetic nervous system and adrenal responses to intense emotional stress and a belief in a power over which the victim had no control. 

This phenomenon is also found in what is popularly called “the broken heart”.  Stress and distress are correlated with abnormalities in the autonomic nervous system.  Medicine even has a name for the broken heart syndrome: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Effectively stress and distress tighten the muscles of the heart, leading to congestive heart failure and sudden death.

      Clinical hypnotherapy is a field I work in, apart from my related practice as a psychotherapist. It is here that I notice profound healing in others at a whole self level which  is contributing to my own better understanding of what it is to be human. Contrary to popular belief, hypnosis isn’t a parlour trick in which someone waves a watch in your face and puts you into a trance so that they can control you. It is, instead, a powerful way to access the mind-body-spirit connection, as it allows one to focus on specific physical, mental, and emotional issues that you may not be able to tackle in an ordinary conscious state.

      Hypnotherapy is beneficial for  your overall health as it allows you to deal with physical, mental, and emotional problems such as stress, anxiety, depression, fear, guilt, pain, weight management, and addiction. It can also lower blood pressure and stress levels and encourage you to make positive changes for a healthier lifestyle.  It is beautiful work and it’s effective.

     We are more than merely a mind, a body, and a spirit in an interconnected state; we are whole selves in which levels of consciousness, awareness, and physiological manifestation is entwined in a delicate interflow, and we live together, work together, and hope together.  This is connectedness.

In Touch with Ourselves by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 

      We have a body and we are a body.  Having a body allows us to feel in our body, and being a body allows us to reach out to others and ourselves. Touch is central to being in the world and in touch with ourselves.

      The skin is the meeting-point between self and the world, but it is also that which contains all those feelings of self as similar to and yet different from others. It is critical for feeling supported and safe, and yet able to reach other to others, to touch in skin and soul.  Touch is, though,  more than the process of interaction between touch receptors in the skin and that which is touched; it is also an interplay of body exploring space and places, it is proprioceptive. Interestingly, at least for what I intend to explore in this article, the origins of the word “proprioception”, from the Latin proprius, refers to “own”, and “receptive”.  Thus, we can think of touch as starting from the point of receiving touch from ourselves.

      My purpose for exploring this subject is to reconnect the sensation of touch – our sensation of touch – with the integrity of what we as therapists encounter every day, those who are detached from that primary perception, the primacy of touch.

      It is interesting that when I revisit the literature of much somatic psychotherapy and compare it with the phenomenological literature (the literature of lived experience) I notice one fundamental difference – and this really interests me. In contrast with the phenomenology of embodiment literature, somatic psychotherapy literature only considers touch in one way: touching and being touched by someone else, or a projection of someone else in our own hand. It does not adequately notice that when we touch as a toucher, we also receive touch.  The somatic literature often too quickly interprets touch as something done to another person, or in the absence of another, as something imagined to come from someone else. There are reasons and consequences for this idea. Before I explore those, just bear with me a moment. Consider this:

If I hold my left hand with my right hand, I will have the feeling that my right hand is the subject that holds. When I feel the left hand as held, I notice that left is the subject being held.  In touching and being touched, I am the subject of the experience.  I can experience being the subject (the holder) and also the subject as one who is held. 

      Compare this to my left hand touching the leather of a chair. I can feel, as subject, my hand touching the object and I can feel the object touching my hand, as subject. When I touch my own body, though, I am only subject. My body isn’t object, there is no other.  We can certainly imagine the object as being another subject, but it is not our own subjective self. We can project onto the act of touching us an “other” entity, but this projection is something created by our minds; it is not, and cannot be, our subjective touching experience.  Some of us are really good at creating “others” in our own minds and that’s fine. The only problem comes when all experiences of self touching self are interpreted as someone else touching us.  Phantom touchers are then created and we see ourselves as we imagine others to see us.  We lose our sense of ourselves, quite literally.  The art then, and the therapy, is to reconnect our sensory perception of touch to an awareness that being touched and touching ourselves is our subjective experience. It is to draw into ourselves, the primacy of perceiving ourselves as subject, and not object.

      The consequence of seeing ourselves as objects is that we are not only confused about who and what we are as individuals, but subject to the whims and fashions and styles of other people.

My observation earlier on that there are reasons for much therapeutic literature avoiding the reciprocal truth that touching oneself is a subjective act and feeling the touch of oneself is also a subjective act. Obviously, and I guess most of us would think straight away that touching oneself is a sexual act. I used the touching of the hand very deliberately to point out that most touching oneself really isn’t sexual at all. It is the assumption that self touching is automatically sexual that points to the origin of the avoidance in the literature: religious prohibitions on the self.  The pleasure centres of the body are avoided, and sometimes mutilated, in many places in the world. We, in the West, mutilate our own perception by ignoring it. The therapeutic literature, including much somatic psychotherapy, avoid it by a leap to the pathologization, real or not, of the subjective sense of touching oneself, as though the world isn’t already pathologically disinclined to notice the ordinariness of being a subjective self.  How good it is then to simply reclaim the most basic of senses, the sensation of touch as something received by the self and given by the self.

      Restoring touch as the primal sense is becoming, I believe, increasingly necessary as more and more young people only know themselves through the lens of others, and only knowing themselves thus, to mutilate their own bodies through starvation, cutting, out of control sex practices, and so on. Only knowing yourself as an object of another is to be detached from elemental feelings of being actually here, right now, in the world, feeling able to make choices, being able to identify what this subject needs right now, as opposed to fulfilling entirely the desires of the other.

      Feel the hand touching the hand and feeling the hand being touched and knowing yourself is the beginning of being real in the world and the beginning of non-projected being for self and others.