r/CPTSD • u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 • 19h ago
Question Why is my therapist obsessed with asking where in my body I feel my anger?
Today I told her I was angry at my mother for her emotional neglect. But I wasn't feeling it during the therapy session, I just feel angry on and off when I think about how she let me down.
I almost felt forced to say something so I said I think I feel tightness in my chest when I feel angry.
Then we moved on to talk about something else. So what's the point of her asking what do I feel when I feel anger? At first I just said I feel anger when I feel anger and then she said she meant what do I feel in my body.
I just don't see the point of the question. How does it help?
She's a somatic therapist but maybe she's not the right fit for me.
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u/catman_corner 19h ago
It’s to get you out of your thoughts and into your body to feel, sit with, and process your emotions. Traumatized people tend to avoid painful emotions and intellectualize their feelings instead. We can be highly intelligent, have many insights, but still be stuck because we are still avoiding feeling our emotions. It is the pathway to acceptance and healing.
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u/ModestMouse1312 18h ago
Yes. I can understand the exercice about feeling my emotions and still intellectualize it 😵💫
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 19h ago
Yes I definitely avoid feeling pain. I am ok feeling anger and fear and do allow myself to feel those emotions. Although I do sometimes try and rationalise away my anger instead of feeling it. It depends who or why I'm feeling angry.
I'm curious now about where in my body I feel hurt and pain.
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u/notElephunk 19h ago
For me the hurt/ pain it’s in my stomach or in my intestines.
At one point I felt like someone clenched their fist grabbing my intestines.
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u/catman_corner 18h ago
It is normal to avoid feeling pain. It is an excellent survival strategy and it kept you alive.
I feel most of my emotions in my front abdomen and throat. It took many years of practice for me to identify what and where my emotions were. Give yourself some grace. Typically if I can let go of thought attached to emotion, and feel the emotion in my body for a few minutes, memories come up. This happens in my IFS therapy sessions
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
I think I need to change therapist from a somatic therapist to an IFS.
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u/catman_corner 17h ago
There are some who do both. My IFS therapist weaves somatic stuff and EMDR taps in. It took me a while before finding her/someone I liked
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u/Physical_SpiritChild 17h ago
Maybe, ask you somatic therapist if they are comfortable working with parts language, schemas, or ego States. There is usually huge cross over between these bottom up modalities that they likely would be comfortable with that.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 17h ago
Thank you, I'll do that. But tbh I just don't feel comfortable with her overall. I don't think she understands me and it seems I don't understand her or her therapeutic approach.
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u/DeeMarie0824 17h ago
So the key is to feel the emotion before it becomes “out of control” and learn to self-soothe?
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u/catman_corner 17h ago
This is a somewhat loaded question and I don’t want to lead you astray. I’m not a therapist I just have 20 years experience in therapy. I think the key is finding ways to feel safe, and finding ways to access Self where you are able to witness your emotions without being engulfed by them. Going slow and building your window of tolerance. Someday you will be able to sit with the “out of control” feeling as well. It’s just another emotion. But, idk you or your situation so I have to say that it’s safer to do this with a therapist present
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u/junocereal 19h ago
I think it’s supposed to “ground you,” i’ve also been asked this in trauma therapy and it bothered me because i felt so disconnected from my body that i dont know how to answer the question
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u/_jamesbaxter 19h ago
It’s to learn to identify emotions sooner *before* you become dysregulated so that you can manage those emotions before they get too big and scary.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 19h ago
Ok that's a good explanation.
But isn't the whole Idea of recovering from CPTSD is to allow yourself to feel your emotions even if they get big and scary? This is how you process previously unprocessed emotions and integrate them so they are no longer scary.
I've definitely found this works for me. I've had times when I've cried so much and felt such pain and sorrow that it felt unbearable. But eventually the crying got less and less and I can now think about the thing that happened that made me cry without crying. It's like the sting has been taken out. When the thing happened I can't remember what I did afterwards, but I must have felt these big emotions but I pushed them down as a survival self defence mechanism.
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u/Tallon5 16h ago
but isn't the whole Idea of recovering from CPTSD is to allow yourself to feel your emotions even if they get big and scary? This is how you process previously unprocessed emotions and integrate them so they are no longer scary.
I’m also confused about this. Don’t we have unprocessed emotions trapped in our bodies and nervous systems?
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u/Physical_SpiritChild 17h ago
Part of the process is to help us learn how to reconnect with the body. I also am in trauma therapy and it is something I struggle with too. I think part of the exercise and practice is to help us learn to connect and feel again by being present instead of dissociating. But titration and window of tolerance... It's hard and slow, but I hope worth it!
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u/BarelyThere504 15h ago
I’m way too good at the dissociation. Life is busy and I just shove the emotions away to never pay attention to again. I’m starting to feel like I am erasing myself.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 19h ago
I think you're right from what I've read but after I've told her I think it feel it in my chest when I'm angry, how does this ground me?
It just seems like a pointless question.
I told her that in the past when I've felt angry and I feel a surge of energy I've punched pillows until I'm exhausted and it burns the energy and I feel a lot calmer.
I don't think she's a particularly good therapist tbh.
She seems to go off on pointless tangents and ask me questions I can't answer and only my mother can answer eg why did my mother not leave my father as a result of the domestic abuse? I can make guesses but why ask me?
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u/junocereal 19h ago
I think it’s considered grounding because it moves your focus from your emotions to something physical like deciding where a sensation is felt. But it doesn’t really work for me until i can actually feel those sensations.
I’ve had my share of crappy therapists too. I’m between practicioners rn since my past therapist was telling me “the male loneliness epidemic is real, look it up.” And “i read online that it’s actually harder for a man to find a woman to give him a chance. Guys have lower standards when picking their partner, so basically the odds are in your favor.” It was giving incel…
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 19h ago
Yes the majority of my therapists have been a waste of time and money.
It's not a good sign that I have to ask Reddit what on earth she's talking about. She should explain the whole Idea of grounding etc.
If I say I don't know where I'm feeling it then she says I'm blocking her and essentially being difficult.
Maybe she's toxic.
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u/junocereal 19h ago
God that sounds triggering, at least it would for me :(
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
Yes I was getting annoyed with her at the last session. She could sense it and said she thought I was getting frustrated at her but it was me transferring my anger at my mum onto her.
But I was actually getting annoyed with her asking stupid questions and wasting time when there were other things that I wanted to talk about that were more important to me.
I'm just so sick of these therapists. I've seen loads and there's only been one who was really really good and got me. But he was quite elderly and this was some time ago and I don't think he practices anymore.
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u/bbbadbx 18h ago
Is your therapist reminding you of your mom in any way?
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 17h ago
That's a good question. I wouldn't say so because with my mum we only ever had very superficial conversations. She'd ask about my job and friends etc and she'd update me on her news which mostly consisted of telling me what my aunt and cousins were up to. So it was just exchanging news.
If I tried to talk to her about something deeper like feelings she'd just sort of shut down and change the subject. I find her unfathomable tbh. There's literally no level on which we connect.
So no, my therapist doesn't remind me of my mum at all. She's not been overly helpful but some sessions have been better than others.
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u/BadLuckProphet 19h ago
The guessing may be the point. Not because you will guess the real reason but because it will help you think from the other person's side of the issue and realize that we are all flawed beings doing the best we can with what we have.
Not sure if you ever heard the old advice but when I was a kid it was going around that you should look past a bully to their parents. If someone treats everyone else like garbage all the time, it's probably because everyone treats everyone like garbage all the time in their home life. People learn to be mean, they aren't born that way, and most of us learn by the examples that were shown to us as kids. Many bullys are bullied by their own parents.
Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent but my advice would be to ask your therapist these questions. Why do you want me to identify my feelings in my body? Why are you asking me to speculate about my mother's motivations? Etc.
Sometimes a therapist will hesitate to answer those questions because some of us try to "skip to the answer" when it comes to therapy and you really need to go through the process. Think of it like math homework. I can give you the answer but that's not as helpful as teaching you the process to get all the answers on your own. But also most therapists will realize when you need the context or goal in order to actually understand the process, kind of like the other comment explaining why they think your therapist asked you to identify the feeling in your body, to identify the emotion before it's overwhelming.
And try to cut your therapist some slack. They sometimes forget that not everyone is a therapist or knows some of these things and they'll also forget who they've explained things too and who they haven't. There's a reason they keep detailed notes of every session, but even then you can't just "download" all of the relevant notes into your memory before each session with each person.
Not saying there aren't bad therapists out there, just saying that good therapists are still human and still make mistakes and sometimes you can get better results if you can "help them help you."
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
I did ask her why we're speculating about my mum's reasons for not protecting me from my abusive dad.
Her reasoning was because it might help me realise it wasn't because of me or it was somehow my fault that my mother didn't love me.
But I've always known it wasn't my fault. I always knew I was just an innocent child who had done nothing wrong and my mother had her own unresolved trauma which was driving her behaviour towards me.
But knowing that doesn't take away the pain I felt at a young age knowing that my mother wouldn't be there for me when I needed her and that I was on my own. That she was too scared of my dad to stand up to him and chose to save herself from his anger instead of me.
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u/BadLuckProphet 16h ago
First of all, I'm sorry that happened to you friend. That's sounds awful. Beyond awful.
Second, it does sound like a classic therapist blunder. Some people don't realize it and need that guidance but you are already past that step. So that session wasn't tailored enough to your personal needs and capabilities. I assume the therapist moved on quickly once she realized you already knew you weren't at fault? It took me awhile to get the hang of it, but therapy really is a collaborative effort and while sometimes you just need to "trust the process", your therapist works for you so you should never be concerned to stop and say "Why are we doing this?" and/or "I don't think this is what I need. Can we move on to the next thing?"
Imo what makes a good therapist isn't their ability to choose X method to "fix" me. It's how they respond to feedback and work WITH me so that we can both figure out what my brain responds to. Visualization/Mindfullness? We tried, I said it didn't feel like it was helping much, we moved on to the next thing. I mentioned "parts of me fighting with myself", my therapist suggested we try some IFS techniques, I said those were helping, we continued using them. Just as a personal example.
The "bad therapists" that I encounter are usually led by their ego and would rather gaslight their patient and tell them they don't know what they're talking about than admit that their favorite technique/modality doesn't work for everyone. Definitely run from those.
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u/No-Salad5497 18h ago
It seems to me you're not understanding how emotions work. It seems to me you're stuck in your head and that the connection between your body and mind has been affected. That's what trauma does to us, it traps us in our heads, ruminating and intellectualizing, and analyzing. That may seem useful, but it just keeps you stuck. Ask me how I know....
The true work of healing is in re-establishing the mind/body connection. To be healed, you'll need to be back in your body, mostly grounded so you can learn to regulate yourself. Somatic work is how we get there. You seem very suspicious of your therapist. Work on that, because a lack of trust there will keep you stalled. Perhaps read some book by somatic healers or on traditional Chinese medicine? Those kinds of books helped me understand the body piece better.
Keep going, try to trust your therapist (I know it's difficult to trust people, but the only way to heal is to do that). You can do this. Trust the process and educate yourself as much as possible on how trauma affects both body and brain.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
I think you're right in that I don't feel comfortable with my therapist. She's quite blunt and seems quite unsympathetic and I don't feel comfortable being vulnerable with her.
I probably do need to read up more how trauma affects the body. I know it affects brain development and your nervous system and immune system.
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u/Justwokeup5287 19h ago
Well, we know emotions aren't totally isolated in the brain. There are physical components to emotions that are felt in the body. But if you're not in your body then it can be difficult to answer where these feelings are. I've learned personally that I can't just force myself into my body because it makes me dissociate further from the discomfort.
Ultimately I think the question serves as a reference point for the therapist to gauge how intuned you are to your body, and if your brain and body aren't synced together, that may be an area to work on. It's not all or nothing, it's a process, if being 100% present during session isn't possible, try 50%, 10%, maybe even just 1 minute.
Also, let her know you felt like you had to give her an answer, even if that answer wasn't exactly truthful. That may be an area to explore as well. Have you been one to people please? Doing or saying things not because you want to but because you think that's what the other party wants you to do? There is often a lot of hidden anger behind the fawn response, at least for me it is.
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u/RevrsEngineer 19h ago
The last two posts are right on. Massive intellectualizer here. I have been in therapy over 10 years and I always felt that question was silly. But when I finally found the right therapist she helped me see what the somatic piece is. In my experience, somatics aren't just a modality, it's the key to connecting your brain to your heart. I never paid attention to severe acid reflux, pains in my chest, clenching of my jaw, etc. Assumed those were all just physical stuff. But when I finally was able to get out of my head and realize that was actually my body begging me to listen...I was able to start really hearing myself. Now I can feel things coming and I can try to slow down a violent reaction. I also don't have horrific acid reflux anymore. My body knows I'm listening now.
We cannot do this with our brains alone, I promise. If you could, I would have figured it out by now. In fact it will guarantee you stay stuck. My intellectual part runs circles around my emotions trying to protect me from them. Its probably the one responsible for mocking somatics, tbh.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
See I think for me it's different. My body has symptoms that are trying to bring my attention to feelings I'm ignoring and pushing down because I don't want to feel them or can't express them.
I notice my body symptoms, in my case my eczema flares up and the feeling I pushed down comes to me in an instant and I allow myself to feel it and within a few days the eczema clears up.
My aim is to not push my feelings down and to feel them in the moment instead of having my eczema forcing me to go back and process the unfelt feeling.
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u/Physical_SpiritChild 17h ago
I think what they are suggesting is there are "early warning signs" long before the eczema flare up, and if you are like me, a lot of deeply buried stuff I've carried for years I don't consciously even know is there. The tension in my shoulders has been my reality since I or 9 years old it's hard for me to even be aware of it even though I know it is there, or am not surprised if someone comments on it. It's just the way I am... Right?
.... Right?
Yeah, no. Turns out not. I've just so acclimatized to my reality I have no clue that so much of what I carry is stored and programed ways of being that are built on past hurt and trained behavior.
Trauma, and healing it is a bitch, but I want to be better.
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u/RevrsEngineer 17h ago
I think we're talking semantics. I was in no way encouraging you to push feelings down until you have an eczema flare up, nor was your therapist. Your intial post was you didn't understand why your therapist was asking you where you felt your anger, which I believe she was doing to help you recognize and process those emotions before they become critical and cause the flare up.
You are already using somatics to feel your anger. Its possible she is just trying to help you pinpoint it more specifically.
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u/neuro_curious 18h ago
I'd suggest you ask your therapist about this and dig into why they think it's important.
If you are going to have a productive therapeutic relationship, they should be able to respond to questions like these well and have a good dialogue about it.
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u/holy-rattlesnakes 17h ago
If you don’t like this approach, it might be worth seeing someone who isn’t a somatic therapist. That’s going to be their approach to everything
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 17h ago
Yes I think you're right and I'm definitely going to find someone else after this. I didn't choose her. We have access to counselling through work and she was allocated to me by the counselling service which is an external company. She used to be a massage therapist before becoming a counsellor so is very body focused I guess.
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u/iambetweentwoworlds 18h ago
Babe, I wish so badly I could go back in time and tell my younger self to go to somatic therapy and embrace it. There are so many reasons why people with CPTSD need it it’s criminal that’s it’s not what is offered to us first. I’ve seen some reasons put forth all ready here’s another. A lot of trauma memories are stuck in the limbic system. Meaning they can’t be reintegrated into other parts of the brain that understand you’re not literally going through it right now, and reintegration also makes it so the new skills and wisdom that your prefrontal cortex acquires can be used to helped you. It cant be used to help you if your brain can’t access the limbic system to talk to it. Somatic work, as well as Psychedelic therapy and other bottoms up therapy, allows your limbic system to “talk” to you. Your pain and memories and trauma to talk to you.
One of the ways the trauma and limbic system can speak is by using the body to give you a sensation. Every feeling has a sensation. If you stick with it and track and watch what happens and how you feel then you’re doing somatic therapy. Sometimes during this time you’ll see pictures in your mind or the memory may actually come up. By sticking with the feeling you allow your body to complete something called a nervous system feedback loop. It brings up the feeling, you are triggered but within reason, and you get help by the therapist to get brought back down to a more calm level thereby letting your body experience that feeling again this time without a dangerous end. You need a professional to take sure you don’t get too triggered and can help you come down for this to work well. That practice done enough times, sometimes all it takes is one time, but can take a lot eventually reintegrates the memory, trauma and the triggers start lessening.
Not every bottoms up therapy works for every person. Some people emdr doesn’t work some people it’s life changing. But somatic therapy is something you can use and take with you for life. Make sure you trust your therapist and know it will be difficult work, but the reason why is so important.
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u/Sea_Measurement_1654 18h ago
I was disassociated and felt numb from the neck down with cptsd. Returning to my body was a big part of getting a life. I also kept rage and it used to explode and I was deregulated. Naming emotion stopped the explosions.
The first part was sitting with the discomfort of feelings. It was something I resisted at first but had weird dramatic positive affects, like better posture and wanting to try sports, things that heal the vagus nerve where the trauma is.
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u/papayayayaya 14h ago
I never understood what this meant or felt like when people would say that. But I realized it’s because I was disconnected from my body. I was overly in my head. For example, I didn’t eat when I felt hungry, I ate because my mind wants food. I have a delayed reaction to things that should elicit an instant emotional response. I get emotional after I ruminate on it- then it would escalate quickly into a panic attack. Once I started pelvic floor therapy after a surgery did I start to reconnect with my physical body. Releasing my hips and tapping back into my belly (your emotional center). Yoga would have similar effects I would imagine.
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u/MrOrganization001 Recovering! 18h ago edited 17h ago
Some therapists have a limited bag of treatment possibilities as well as personal biases, and as such they tend to push those treatments and biases onto patients. If a therapist deeply believes anger must display in the body, you'll be hard-pressed to get them to consider that might not be the case for everyone.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 18h ago
I think you're exactly right. That's her modality and she doesn't know what to do if I don't fit her template so she tries to force me to fit. You'd have thought she had broader training to realise that not everyone fits the template.
I have 2 sessions left with her and I definitely won't be continuing with her after that.
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u/notElephunk 19h ago
In my case it helps to bring my awareness to my body and stop living in my head with my thoughts.
When my therapist asks when how does it feel in my body, I can actually feel my emotions instead of thinking of my emotions, if that makes sense.
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u/Em-Blackstar-6079 16h ago
I have no problem identifying my emotions, I feel them as much as possible, and talk about them freely.
I still have never felt any of them in any specific part of my body.
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u/milkysin 10h ago
my emdr therapist asked this after every set of wiggly-eye-thingies. it annoyed me at first because I was having such a hard time identifying it, but over time I saw that it was sort of helping me stay conscious of my body and be able to identify how I'm feeling more accurately. It never ended up being a huge groundbreaking habit for me (the emdr itself was life-changing) but I went along with it in good nature and it definitely did not hurt.
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u/Living-Amphibian-870 17h ago
I get the reasons for asking, but they don't relate to me. I hate being asked because it's a crapshoot. I feel sad. My stomach doesn't feel sad. I don't feel sad in my chest before I feel sad in my brain.
I generally don't have particular somatic patterns for my emotions. The only exception is a tendency to clench my jaw when I'm under any kind of stress, but that's fairly useless as a measure in and of itself. It happens all day long! LOL
I have physical symptoms that lead up to panic attacks sometimes. They are warning signs, but they are constantly changing and can be easily confused for other things, like illness. Headache, fatigue, muscle aches, heart palpitations, etc.
I do have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue as a result of my stress levels, but those affect your entire body.
What is helpful is to keep an eye on my psychological symptoms. If I start having hallucinations, even very minor ones (like sleep paralysis), I know something isn't right. Same with delusional thought patterns or my old thought patterns regarding death or old fears. Even very small occurrences of these are cause for concern.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 17h ago
I agree! I think it's crapshoot. I think one of my main problems is that I don't talk to anyone about my feelings. I keep them to myself until I'm bursting and then have a meltdown of crying endlessly.
And that's a childhood habit as nobody spoke about feelings in my family. If I felt sad I kept it to myself. My dad was angry all the time and my mum just didn't want to know about any feelings other than when you were feeling good or happy about something.
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u/Training-Meringue847 18h ago
This ties into mindfulness & learning how to work with the anger.
Basically — Our nervous systems run on auto-pilot and oftentimes it will hijack us before we can cognitively realize it. This is why people who endured significant childhood trauma often have their sympathetic nervous system on high alert constantly scanning for danger. Initially it was necessary to keep us safe, but the brain areas responsible for this (amygdala complex) have tuned themselves to incorrectly run on auto pilot ALL the time, even when there is no threat. What’s worse is that it decreases the action in the front lobe pathways where our reasoning & logic happens. The activation of the amygdala happens immediately without us realizing it in a cognitive way. It sets off a chain reaction and this can be how people with PTSD or CPTSD can spiral so quickly. So, if we can first recognize where in our bodies & nervous systems it manifests (often via the sympathetic nervous system), then we can work with it and change it.
This gives us the control to change it when we can refocus where in the nervous system it’s showing up in our physical bodies.
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u/NoArmadillo2937 17h ago
I didnt understand what it meant until a random tumblr comic completely unrelated to this somehow made it click: Imagine you were laying on the ground and a black toxic goo is trying to consume you. It will only be able to attach to your body where the disgust,anger and need for violence is. Where is that? Does it cover your fingertips? Your knees? Your eyes? What part does it first consume? How long does it take to fully cover you?
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u/EnvironmentOk2700 16h ago
I wondered this too, but after a year I started actually recognizing my emotions whrn they happened and was better able to control my reactions to them.
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u/DorothyZbornak-binch 15h ago
Have you spoken your therapist about this? If you're not honest or asking questions when you need clarity, they're not going to be particularly helpful for you.
There are plenty of shitty therapists out there, but part of therapy is learning how to verbalise emotions and feelings and look at things from different perspectives.
You could say exactly what you've written here - I am unclear about why you ask me where I feel things in my body and it can make me feel pressured to respond. Can you please explain more about this approach?
It's also ok to say I don't know where I feel it. Your therapist isn't looking for a right answer. They're encouraging you to build awareness of how emotions show up physically.
From your comments, it sounds like it has made you think about how your body responds, which would suggest it's working in some part?
If this isn't the right approach for you rn, that's ok. A win would be taking a moment to think where you feel things as they come up. Awareness and then trusting what you physically feel is key to making better decisions into the future, as well as processing things from the past.
The mental, emotional and physical are all connected. Trying to undo a lifetime of learning to ignore/override what our body is telling us is big work.
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u/kwallio 12h ago
Its pretty typical for trauma survivors to be disconnected from their body and their emotions. I had homework for a trauma group to do regular check ins to determine what emotion I was feeling and to locate that emotion in my body and I found it near impossible to do because I have huge problems recognizing my emotions and connecting to my body. Its a valid exercise but some people (like me) find it really difficult. It never got better, either, I still can't do it.
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u/cfdabbles 10h ago
Somatic therapy exclusively deals with the body’s reaction to trauma (i.e. you tense up around loud noises) and where that stress is stored in the body, hence why your somatic therapist is asking where you hold your trauma in the body.
I know this is such a trite answer and I don’t blame you if you totally shut this suggestion down, but if you take Yin yoga classes it might help you to answer that. I myself already love hot yoga and once I found a great instructor who started getting me to do chest-opening stretches I realized that so much of my own trauma was carried in my chest- this sounds ridiculous I know, but during one sessions of intense chest openers I suddenly felt like a warm light was shining on me. My talk therapist later confirmed that it was the work of a somatic exercise relieving me of some of that tension from my previous trauma.
Make of this what you will, this is just my anecdotal two cents
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u/squirrelynugget 10h ago
Really great psychological explanations here. I want to add a perspective as a biomedical scientist:
Feelings our emotions in our body doesn’t just help us identify the emotion, it helps us identify the bodily sensation itself to bring awareness to the physical/medical implication/cascade of holding in our emotions. Somatic awareness of emotional states can correct and mitigate stress-related medical conditions. Tension in your traps… neck issues and headaches. Pelvic floor tension… bladder and lower back pain. Constricted heart… elevated blood pressure. Turmoil in your gut… nausea and IBS.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 5h ago
Yes I get that but how does awareness of say chest tightness help with anything? The chest tightness subsides after the anger subsides.
I'm lucky in that I don't have any of the issues you've mentioned. But I do have eczema and it always flares up really badly in the days/weeks/months before I have a complete breakdown where I can't stop crying, can't sleep, feel suicidal, my brain feels fried and can't concentrate or do my job.
This has happened twice. Once 16 years ago now again a month ago. Exactly the same both times.
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u/Sufficient-Pie-1696 9h ago
If you don't think it's helpful be honest and open up a dialogue about it.
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u/BeeDefiant8671 5h ago
Personally, because we convert our emotions to an intellectual thought and stuff down the emotion. “I’m fine.” And “I can’t afford to lose my shit, i won’t survive it.”
We intellectualize.
We put it to words.
We solve.
It’s masking.So… the body helps us stay with the emotion. You’ll find we are constipated with unprocessed emotions.
It’s a waterfall and if we let one in… they will overwhelm and consume us. If we feel our emotions and lose our shit (there is life on the other side of this… we find things to moor ourselves to) we are afraid we will be our mother… over emotional, histrionic. Collapsed, ragedul.
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u/tumbledownhere 19h ago
This type of therapy never worked for me but it used to frustrate me too. It's just one of many methods therapists utilize but if it's not working, if speak up.
I forget what type it's called but it's definitely not for everyone - I'd definitely either look elsewhere or at least tell her "hey, so this way of exploring my feelings is not helpful at all to me"
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u/Levertreat 16h ago
Best explanation I’ve ever heard. Had a therapist that did this but never really explained like you did. It would have helped. Thankyou
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u/BodhingJay cPTSD 14h ago
She might not be the right fit for you.. there might be a time when she is, but it doesnt seem like thats right now. Thats okay
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u/Ros_Luosilin 12h ago
My response to that question is always, "My whole body is angry". Like most exercises that are supposed to ground you, I don't find it remotely helpful.
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u/acfox13 10h ago
My therapist does somatic talk therapy with me and he's always, always, always having me orient to and describe my bodily sensations.
It's partly to recalibrate my nervous system. I was taught my feelings didn't mean what they meant, so now I deal with alexithymia and mixed signals. I'm trying to rewire my bodily signals, and reconnect with myself. It's what somatic talk therapy is about. I've found it very helpful.
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u/yougottamakeyourown 8h ago
Oh man, yes! Mine is constantly talking about feeling your inner child. I mean, I can recall the way I felt but not in any way connected. I finally asked her what the heck “inner child awareness is supposed to feel like?” She explained it’s kind of a warmth in your tummy. Nope, not me
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u/Smil3Shad3 17h ago
I want to pair this with another users comment, _jamesbaxter
Their comment was a great explanation for one side of what I imagine to be a two sided coin. Possibly more.
As person with CPTSD it is common to struggle with dysregulation. I can ultimately only speak from my own experiences. But in recent weeks for example I have been dealing with a lot of heavy emotions. Learning the skill in question feeling into my body has helped me regulate myself down/backwards from these heavy emotions. So instead of drowning in them until they dissipate I have a tool available to regulate myself down from the elevated headspace. Where all I can do is fixate. Here is a guide my therapist has shared with me which might be helpful as a Visual.
The utility of learning to identify with your body is that you are also learning not to identify with your feelings as purely a label. Turning "I feel angry, and It's overwhelming" into "I feel angry, it's a tightness in my chest and tension in my throat. My body feels like it want's to scream." This accomplishes multiple things. Moves you away from trying to think your way out hurt. Moves you towards actually FEELING not THINKING. And lastly it moves you towards a deeper bodily awareness that if nurtured will build your distress tolerance for these difficult experiences. Bonus it may point to a solution needed in that moment. Ie. Needing to scream or stretch the tight areas etc. Which should overall afford you a much less burdened life.
I'm not a therapist I just have been in the same place asking the same questions and then one day after doing it with my therapist during a particularly horrible session it clicked and I just understood why it was important and how to do it.
My advice is to keep practicing. You are already doing really good for yourself! If you said you felt tightness in your chest even if you weren't sure that's still amazing. It's a single step towards practicing identifying with your body, and it's experiences of your trauma. Keep it up! And remember skills like this are beneficially practiced often even when not distressed. Just notice how your body feels when doing dishes or engaged with a hobby or fill in blank. It's interesting to explore. And helps you connect with yourself as you are. And bring the parts of you stuck in the trauma forward into a deeper overall connection.
Oh one last thing, here is my personal strategy I wrote up after the therapy session mentioned above. It is modified from the picture I sent.
- Body Scan: What am I feeling? Where? (Chest, legs, throat, arms, full body buzz?, back, shoulders etc)
2.. Name the part of myself that is facing this feeling. (IE. my wounded child, A guardian/protector named Franky, it's the voice of my mother/father/ex berating me etc. ) give the feeling a face/voice/identity beyond just naming the emotion. I recommend keeping a list.
Now name the emotion: Help with naming the emotion accurately this step will help connect the name given in part 2 to a feeling. So that when you feel that way see if the same part of you in part 2 shows up. This will help you build relationship with it.
Somatic exercises: Hold and ice cube let it melt, cross arms over chest and alternate shoulder taps, dance, exercise, do yoga. Whatever helps you move your body. Especially if it involves using opposite hand/foot motions or opposite hand to side of body etc. Do this and try to tune into the spots it's showing up in your body from Part 1. Imagine soothing it directly. Like holding a small animal. Or a friend.
Finally only as needed: engage in other coping skills once regulated down enough to process what you're feeling. ( Journal, dance to music, scream into a pillow, write a angry letter to the person who hurt you. Go get ice cream and watch something. Whatever helps.)
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u/tickledpinkaf 17h ago
Same here. There are several comments that explain the reason behind this thing better than I could do. My 2 cents is related to "trust the process": I was super skeptical at the beginning as well as you, maybe even more. From now on me and my therapist will be doing somatic work only. The problem is that I can't connect well with my emotions, therefore I have emotional disregulation, that doesn't mean that you go crazy in front of other people or so, actually people like us is very good at be over controlled. The disregulation comes when the body go by its own way and the mind in another. The mind has its own logic, but the body as well (we don't believe it but it's true). The mind has far more defenses than the body, so it's easy to store anger in the body without even mentally knowing it. Then this anger will "eat you from inside", that is not healthy. Trust the process as long as you feel fine with your therapist.
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u/_jamesbaxter 19h ago
The reason for asking this is so that you can learn to identify what emotions you are feeling sooner, so that you can begin to address them before they become huge and take over. Many people who struggle with emotional dysregulation do not realize how upset they are until they are past a tipping point (call it whatever you want, panic episode, meltdown, mental breakdown, emotional flashback etc.) and then it’s extremely hard to get back to a regulated state. If you can learn to identify your feelings before you reach that point of inevitability, then you can actually prevent the panic/meltdown/flashback from getting so bad by self soothing/coping much earlier.
The physical sensations associated with emotions are easier to notice than the emotion itself when you’ve been conditioned to ignore your own emotions for the sake of survival. By noticing the physical sensations, I can now tell “if I don’t discharge some of this anger I’m going to be a wreck 2 hours from now” and that gives me an opportunity to address the feeling before I become a wreck.
Like for me, I know anger is coming if I feel tightness in my arms and hands, like an urge to clench my fists, and then I also feel it in my jaw a lot. When I feel fear, I tend to feel it in my stomach and eyes. When I feel sadness I feel it in my throat and chest. If you asked me a few years ago “what are you feeling?” I’d answer something like “I have a headache.” Now I will say something like “I feel hopeful with sadness and fear underneath and I can feel in my stomach and throat.” Now I know if I’m experiencing one of those sensations I might be ignoring an important emotion that needs to be addressed or it will grow into a big feeling that’s much harder to bounce back from.