The Body-Mind Connection
“It’s psycho-somatic.” My professor in graduate school said this in every class. He was always emphasizing how anxiety and depression impacted the mind and the body. [He also liked to tell us how anxiety and depression were usually two side of the same coin, but that is a blog post for another day.] The point of this blog post is, he was right. In honesty, I’m not sure he fully appreciated how right he was. My professor had been a therapist for ummm, we shall just say many years by the time he was teaching me, and he had picked up on something that hadn’t quite made it into the textbooks yet.
Trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression all reside in the body as well as in the mind.
This is a truth that researchers such as Bessel van der Kolk, Pat Ogden, Peter Levine, and countless others have proven in the past several decades. Our field is starting to recognize the validity of this research and the validity of he resulting therapy models. What we are learning is that traditional talk therapy such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and others is falling short in resolving many people’s mental health concerns. The reason is that talk-therapies relies on language and therefore solely focuses on addressing the way our mental health is impacts the mind (or really, just the prefrontal cortex) without really addressing the impact on the rest of the individual.
What does it actually mean?
The prefrontal cortex of the brain houses our logic, reasoning, time tracking, and most importantly- language center. This is the part of the brain that separates humans from most other animals. Considering counseling requires a large amount of communication, it makes sense that traditional therapy would rely heavily on talking (hence the term “talk-therapy”). The problem that we are finding with traditional “talk-therapy” is that our bodies have many other ways of communicating and storing memory without using language or involving the prefrontal cortex at all. Have you ever heard or experienced the following?
“My heart is racing!”
“I have butterflies in my stomach.”
“My gut says…”
“My heart dropped.”
All of these are examples of ways that the body’s more primitive communication systems might indicate something is not right. If you are looking for more cliché ways that someone might experience non-verbal communication from the body, try watching some old cartoons. You are likely to find the typical character that is so angry, steam actually comes pouring out their ears. Or maybe you will see a character who is so scared they are shaking and their teeth chatter right out of their head. Another example is the character that is falling so in love that their heart bursts right out of their chest and they literally float on air. Cartoonists use these images because people generally can identify with these sensations and the emotions that accompany them without needing to use a single word of language.
When it comes to therapy, recent research is showing that talking things through is only part of the solution, while including the body (specifically the nervous system) helps us to complete the picture. This explains why some people who have participated in counseling in the past might find themselves saying, “logically, I know these thoughts aren’t true, but they still feel true.” An example might be a trauma survivor experiencing a trauma trigger. They might logically know they are safe and have some excellent coping strategies to calm the body down, but when faced with the trigger, they still feel unsafe and all those trauma reaction sensations come bubbling back up in the moment.
This is where therapies like somatic experiencing, yoga therapy, EMDR, holistic counseling, and others are better adept to help the individual as a whole process and cope with anxiety, stress, trauma, depression, grief, and so on. Therapies that incorporate the body, felt sense, and non-verbal communication are designed to help more primitive systems in the body (looking at you nervous system) process and cope with things that are traditionally thought of as mental health concerns (anxiety, depression, stress, trauma responses, and so on).
What does that actually look like?
Utilizing each of these therapies looks different. Some therapists focus on helping individuals notice, then tolerate, and eventually release or eliminate physical responses to their triggers. This might include:
trying various yoga poses
drawing or creative expression of physical sensation
movement such as dance or acting out the fight/flight/freeze response
eye movements, tapping, or other bilateral stimulation
humming, singing, chanting
meditation and mindfulness exercises
other creative expressions of the non-verbal experience
At Lotus and Stone Therapy, we may use a combination of the above methods depending on what each individual client is comfortable with trying. We provide trauma-informed care and believe that each person is the expert in themselves. Therefore, we will suggest various options for mental health treatment, and allow the client to choose which they are willing to try. Ultimately, our goal is to serve each individual as a whole, and allow them to process, cope, and heal at their own pace and on their own terms.
If you are interested in learning more about the type of therapy offered at Lotus and Stone Therapy, or if you are interested in starting counseling, contact us to schedule a free phone consultation.