The Felt Sense

     In the 1970s a Dr. Eugene Gendlin got a bunch of psychotherapists together and he asked a really wonderful question, ‘Why does psychotherapy work when it does work and thereby why does it not work when it doesn’t work?”  Isn’t that a great question? 

     Listening to recordings of psychotherapy sessions this group noticed a pattern that appeared. There was a characteristic that certain clients had that predicted they would get better. In contrast, clients that did not possess this quality tended to not get better. He then asked an even better question which was, “is it possible to teach clients that don’t have this quality to have this quality and would that then predict those clients getting better in psychotherapy?” The answer was yes it did. So, what was the characteristic right?

     The characteristic was… whatever story of suffering the client had experienced or was having, could they… get in touch with the “FELT SENSE”… of that story? In other words, could they FEEL in the body the charge of that trigger or dysregulation?

     This observation and discovery led to a technique called Focusing that we've had since the 1970s. It’s a book that was published in 1978 that every trauma informed therapist should probably have in their library. That’s 36 years before “The Body Keeps Score” by Bessel van der Kolk was first published.

     What this observation and the resulting modality created is saying is that a huge component of healing suffering lies in the way the body is holding….THE FELT SENSE, which suggests that a golden rule of mental health healing is that when a trauma occurs that the body dysregulates (I like to call it up regulate) into an arousal cycle that is created as a defensive protective mechanism for the organism. This understanding identifies anxieties as signals from the body’s neural system alerting that either the organism is actually in danger, or that an arousal cycle needs to be processed to return it to a state of flow or parasympathetic down regulated stasis. When we remove, or process whereby the body is no longer holding a charge or impulse of incoherence, that the story of suffering also dissipates because it’s only a story. It was always only a story. It is the charge in the body itself that is creating a state of uncomfortableness.

     This inherently says that anxiety is NOT a disease but a signal of communication from the body that something needs attention and processing. If you know how to use that guide, it will literally physically guide you in what needs to be healed. It means we've found a cure for most mental health struggles. You just have to engage in them. Honestly, it’s just a matter of time before mainstream wakes up to what the research has already told us. It’s a pretty great time to be alive or it will be when those that are suffering are educated and encouraged to engage in these modalities.