Emotional Turbulence in the Psychic Force Field

Dr. Avraham Cohen’s Field Notes
September 1, 2024

Avraham Cohen, PhD, RCC-ACS, CCC
dr.avrahamcohen@gmail.com

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I am pleased to introduce you to my very long-time friend and colleague, Larry Green, PhD, RCC (Registered Clinical Counsellor), the author of this Field Note for September 1, 2024. He is the first of a number of guest Field Note authors that I will be introducing to you and who will be appearing from time to time. I am certain you will find his Field Note informative, evocative, and even provocative, and most certainly helpful with your inner work.

 

Emotional Turbulence in the

Psychic Force Field

Authored by Larry Green, PhD, RCC

 

~~Alexander Milov

 

 

I am a practicing psychotherapist with over fifty years of experience. My approach is existential. When asked what I mean by “existential”, I quote Bob Dylan, who said, “You’re either busy being born or busy dying.”  I would make one small change — with big implications — to what Bob said — I would substitute the word “and” for Bob’s word “or”.  We are both busy being born and busy dying. That is, as we move through life, we find ourselves discarding old ways of being and developing new, more satisfying ways of living. Our guide to letting go of the past and giving birth to a future is our affect — the sensations we feel in our bodies as we contemplate the options available. When making the wrong choice, we experience diminishment; when making the right one, we experience atonement or attunement.

genero@telus.net

 

The mind is always trying to catch up to the body.                                                  ~Laura Berlant

 

There is gap, fractions of a second, between the body’s experience of [an] event and the application of language to label that experience.                                                                                        ~Greg Seigworth

 

Field Note audio

(Please see the end of the note for Larry’s closing comment)

 

Body and mind; experience and labelling. The body is always in the here and now — present and responsive to whatever delight or catastrophe that reality is offering. The mind however, is an operating system that is frequently out of date. It employs concepts that were formulated in the past — “I’ve been here before” and “Been there, done that.” Furthermore, it “anticipates” the future on the basis of past experience — “As soon as covid is over we’ll get back to normal.” Consequently, our minds are more of less out of sync with what is occurring in the immediate present. Our bodies, however, respond instantly — registering the “news from reality” — if only we could make sense of it. We prefer listening to the mind because it seems to offer clear direction. Consequentially we tend to trust head knowledge over “gut” knowledge. In fact, we are often not aware of our body’s response unless it floods consciousness as with a panic attack, for example. That “attack” is your body saying, “You’ve been ignoring me for too long.” It is a better idea to attend to anxiety at an early stage in its development where it’s still possible for the body and mind to develop a cooperative, rather than competitive relationship. To do this, however, requires some sensitive attending to ongoing sensations in one’s body. It is helpful to think of anxiety as a signal generated by the body to warn the mind that something is “off”, that something has been overlooked. Pay attention to that signal…it will lead you to what was overlooked. Often what remains in darkness is our mood or mental state.

 

Only by patiently attending to one’s bodily response can we begin to get a sense of that state. This is important because when in a mood, we cannot see the world without looking through that mood. Our state colours everything…influencing or conditioning what we see and how we think. For example, if I “woke up on the wrong side of the bed”, my subsequent interactions will likely be awkward. Or, if things didn’t go well in a meeting there is a good chance that the resultant feeling will overflow into my next encounter. This is especially true if I wasn’t mindful of my state but rather preoccupied with what just happened in the meeting.

 

Psychology began address this phenomenon with affect theory. The opening quotation — the mind is always trying to catch up to the body — was drawn from the affect theorist Laura Berlant. Affect, refers to the body’s physiological state. Vitality, for example, is a generalized affect. You can get a sense of someone’s wellbeing by noticing their vitality or energy level. High vitality usually corresponds with a “can do” attitude. Low vitality conveys a sense of resignation and defeat.

 

As a psychotherapist I pay attention to fluctuations in my client’s vitality level. How animated are they? How “flat” are they? Robin Williams, the comedian, is an example of someone operating at the high, even manic, end of the vitality scale. You could “see” his intensity. Many politicians have stripped their speech of any affect and consequently come across as flat. John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Brian Mulruney are recent examples.

 

When I am with my clients, I notice when their v itality raises and when it drops. Often they are unaware of these affective shifts. My questions direct their attention to these state shifts. I ask them to identify what thought they had or interaction that we had, that might be related to the shift I just witnessed. I’m helping them to identify the trigger or stimulus that produced their state change.  Previously all their attention was being devoted to analysis, and explanation — operating exclusively within their mind. No awareness of their body’s affective state. Without that awareness they can’t make allowances for how their “mood” influences their interpretation of events. For example, depending on their state they might interpret their partner’s raised eyebrow as a sign of disapproval or a sign of surprise. That interpretation was primed by their physiological state. 

 

How might this information be put to use? For example, I might notice that my client has a similar affective (physiological) response when discussing his wife as when he was reminiscing about his mother. Disappointment. He thought that his current partner would make up for his mother’s “neglect”.  Instead, the same outcome occurred. He might surmise, “How could lightning strike twice — how unlucky am I?” Further down the road he might conclude “all women are unreliable.” He arrived at that conclusion with is no reflection, no questioning of their subjectivity. Rather he assumed that his perceptions were objective.

 

We’ve all done that at some time and will do it again in the future. It is a question of the ratio between mindfulness and auto-pilot. When on auto-pilot, the client employs a stale template derived from earlier experiences with previous partners to the unique, ever-changing person sitting across the table from them. And they are not aware of doing so. Consequently, they are disorientated when their partner responds in unexpected ways — ways that challenge their assumptions about their partner. “You’re not who I thought you were!” As a result of this perceived challenge they start raising their voice or perhaps they drop out or shut down — these are responses driven by affect. Because they are not aware of their embodied responses they attribute their upset feelings to their partner… “It’s your fault that you’re not who I thought you were.”

 

What exactly is this this affective response?  I came to a more nuanced understanding of it as a result of my recent surgery. About a day after the operation, I began to direct my intention to recovery and healing. To do so, I focused on the sensations in my body. I had previously learned that only in deep sleep or profound relaxation was it possible to heal. Any agitation would prevent sinking to the healing level. I became adept at monitoring my arousal level. It didn’t take  long to notice that when I considered a task, duty or obligation my agitation level immediately spiked. The best way that I can describe it would be as a hum or vibration that went to a higher frequency as soon as my considered a future action. I knew that higher frequency would interfere with healing and I quickly learned not to anticipate future activities. Instead, I remained in the present. This knowledge resulted from my newfound ability to tune into my nervous system’s vibration. Later I used that sensitivity to notice my state before embarking on a difficult conversation. Having that information made my reactivity less likely…fewer unanticipated eruption of defensiveness that in the past would catch me “off guard”. The question then became how to put this new capacity to work.

 

“You should be grateful whenever you’re disappointed or frustrated because it means you are getting news from reality.”  This Buddhist aphorism identifies the affect of frustration or disappointment as a signal or alarm informing the person that the assumption or template they’ve been using, can’t do the job being asked of it. For example, my wife will eventually protest if I continue to expect her to compensate for my mother’s failings. Noticing my frustration or disappointment and recalling the above aphorism I can respond mindfully and listen to what my affect is signaling: my expectation of the other person are out of sync with who they actually are. That is, the auto-pilot needs to be disabled. I would do better if gave up my expectations and tuned into my perceptions. As Fritz Perls would say, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.”  In other words, attend to your situation with your eyes and ears. This is the way for the mind to catch up to the body. This has been extremely helpful in all my personal relationships. In addition, it has proved fruitful when working with clients. They gradually learn that tuning into their affect provides them with a guidance system for making informed decisions. 

 

With this approach I am building on Eugene Gendlin’s (1997, 2020) work regarding the “felt sense”. I like his combination of words: felt (embodied) sense (intelligible). It is an awareness of what is existentially significant for this particular person at this particular time. It is not to be passed over lightly like some intellectual possibility that could be just as easily dropped, as explored. Rather it is an existential marker that lights up the one path, among many, that produces the best chance for flourishing. Many of the clients who show up in my office have lost the ability to “tune into” that embodied knowing. I guide them through an exercise that gives them a taste of attending to their felt sense. To begin, I ask them to attend to the sensations arising from the sole of their right foot.  I give them a moment to do so. Then I ask, “Were you making any judgements about those sensations — for example, labelling them as good or bad?”  “No”, has always been the response to this question. “Fine”, I reply. “Now expand your awareness to take in the sensations of your whole body, the whole force field that your body is generating, and your consciousness is inhabiting. Don’t think about it, don’t judge it, just register it.  Now I’m going to give you a couple of sentences to repeat, and I want you to notice how that force field responds when you entertain those thoughts.”

 

What follows is a fictionalized account of the use of that approach with a client (excerpted from a forthcoming co-authored journal article,  in the International Body Psychotherapy Journal; https://ibpj.org/):

 

My client talked about the differing rate of change between her and her partner — his speed was slower than hers. When I commented that this might be frustrating for her, she corrected me: “No, it just made me sad [for him]”. She continued, “My sadness was at the thought that he may never escape the damage that was done to him in his childhood.” She began to cry.  I instructed her to say to herself “That feeling belongs here,” and then to notice her body’s reaction. (I had previously talked to her about Gendlin’s notion of the felt sense…which she seemed to intuitively understand).  She did as instructed. I then asked her to let that feeling fade away and repeat a second sentence: “That feeling doesn’t belong here.” Typically, when someone rejects their experience, their anxiety intensifies and when they accept it, they relax. But with her, something unusual happened. When she uttered the second sentence, she reported that she went into a vast space, initially described as fearful. Then she remarked, “Decisions have to be made.” She was glimpsing the possibilities and demands of existential agency — the daunting demand to take responsibility for one’s life. Then, to my surprise, she said that she felt relief and that many possible “roads” had been presented to her. Furthermore, she reported feeling empowered. These were unusual responses to this approach. No previous clients had spoken of “vastness”.  Nobody had spoken of empowerment. Rather, they spoke of their relaxation when they “owned” their previously rejected experience. This was the case with this client as well. I then referred to Chogyam Trungpa (1973), the Tibetan Buddhist. He described a way of utilizing that vastness to access the required energy for the completion of tasks. I wanted her to know that someone other than herself had named that space and connoted it positively…as a place of empowerment. I wanted to suggest that the vastness wasn’t her idiosyncratic creation but rather, had some transpersonal validity. By doing this exercise she was learning how to register her body’s reaction to various possible scenarios or possibilities. Now she had a compass that she could put to use as she navigated through life’s inevitable crossroads.

 

In addition, something more profound was happening. As the opening quote asserted, “The mind is always trying to catch up to the body.”  The body is in the present. The body senses what it needs or senses what is lacking. At the same time it is also scanning or registering its circumstances.  As a result of both operations, it is receiving “news from reality” — one internally sourced, the other external. It raises the question of how to best respond in this situation. What action alternative does the circumstance afford that has the greatest possibility of satisfying that need? The body tests out the hypothetical alternatives and registers which path has the best potential…often indicated by a sense of alignment or wholeness. The mind takes note of that result and commits to the action that would bring the desired outcome closer. What if that action produced an unsatisfactory turn and the person’s situation deteriorated? Their body would know instantly, giving the opportunity to course correct — choosing the best alternative that the changed situation was now presenting. This way of operating does much to reduce the chance of self-deception that occurs when the mind is the sole operator in charge of decision making.

 

Dear reader, the time has come to part ways and I want to thank you for giving your attention to these thoughts. I imagine that as you read there were moments when your pulse quickened and your vitality heightened. In those moments you were directly experiencing the felt sense. It was guiding you towards what was existentially significant for you. Follow that…