-: Hi everyone and welcome,
it's day two of the 2021 Mental Health Super Summit,
and it's Pedro here, Mental Health Academy CEO,
and your host for the event.
And joining me for this first session of day two is
Dr Pat Ogden from the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
Pat, how are you today?
-: I'm good, thank you. How are you?
-: I'm very good, it's lovely to see you again.
We caught up just a few weeks ago for another webinar,
so it's great to have you back.
-: Thank you, pleasure to be here.
-: Yeah, and today we're going to be talking about
the role of body in couples therapy, great topic
and probably a good, useful topic now
as a lot of couples have entered this
crazy COVID lockdown-laden lifestyle,
probably have a little bit of tension
that needs to be released.
-: Hopefully it will be helpful.
-: All right, so before we jump into the content,
I'm going to let our attendees know
a little bit more about you Pat.
So Dr Pat Ogden is a pioneer in somatic psychology,
the creator of the sensorimotor psychotherapy method
and founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute,
which you can find more information about on
www.sensorimotor.org.
Dr Ogden is a clinician, consultant, international lecturer,
and the first author of two groundbreaking books
on somatic psychology, Trauma and the Body:
A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy,
and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy:
Interventions for Trauma and Attachment.
Her third book,
The Pocket Guide to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Context
advocates for an anti-racist perspective
in psychotherapy practice.
Her current interests include couples therapy,
child and family therapy, social justice,
diversity, inclusion, consciousness, and the philosophical
and spiritual principles that underlie her work,
and a little bit of climate change, right Pat?
-: Right, exactly, very anxious
about what's going to happen there.
-: So before we jump into the presentation,
let me quickly tell attendees what they can and can't
do during this webinar, and this is particularly relevant
if this is your first webinar for this event.
So the first thing you'll notice is that the session
is being recorded and a recording will be available
for full event registrants after the presentation,
along with a copy of the slides as a handout.
Also, you can not talk during this webinar,
but you can use the chat function
to communicate with the other attendees
and to send us questions at the end
during our Q and A session,
if you also need help, you can use the chat function
or alternatively, you can email us on
help@mentalhealthacademy.com.au.
Now, Pat, let's get to the juicy stuff,
I'm going to launch your presentation now
and will be on the background,
but I look forward to seeing you back here
in approximately twenty-five minutes.
-: Great, sounds good.
Aha, here we go, okay.
So, welcome everybody, wherever you are in the world.
It's evening here in Colorado,
and I'm very happy to be with you
and I'm excited to talk about this topic
because I think the body, really it's,
the body to body conversation
between two parties of a couple
that has so much significance to the relational
difficulties and the relational joys and connection.
So, let's get started.
So, the body is very wise, you know,
there's been so much talk about
the brain is experience dependent.
So we have so many neural networks that are pruned
according to use, so our experience really influences
the wiring of our brain.
And luckily for us, our brain is plastic,
so it can change throughout the lifetime,
even in your seventies, which is lucky for me.
And the body's the same, the body will also adapt
to whatever happens to us.
So, you know, if we grow up in an environment
where we are traumatized and unsafe, our body will adapt.
We might tense up and we might become hypervigilant
because it will adapt to that input.
And this trauma could be perpetrated by individuals,
by groups or by society as a whole,
as in racialized trauma, colonization, systemic oppression,
transphobia, what has happened to indigenous populations
in America and Australia, and really in so many countries.
So we will adapt to the, our bodies will adapt,
our posture and movement patterns will change.
And our body will also adapt
to relational strife or adversity.
And this could be you know, just the mis-attunements
of our caregivers, the messages they give us, like,
you know, you better be strong or don't show your sadness
or you gotta really do well in school.
Our bodies will adapt to that.
We'll also adapt to the input of other significant people
in our lives, our peers, our groups of belonging,
and to society as a whole, again,
how we are perceived and treated by the larger society.
And these adaptations really for survival, you know,
how we adapt, it enables us to make the most
out of our resources or at least minimize our stress.
So let's take a look.
I like to call it the somatic narrative because in therapy,
people are usually talking about the verbal narrative where,
you know, you listen to the words and you talk,
you're in conversation and you get insight and clarity
by talking, but the body tells a story too.
It tells a story that we're often not conscious of.
And I, you know, I like to think about how
the body posture and movement, it anticipates the future.
For example, if you look at this woman who's pulled in
and her feet are you know, almost crossed,
her arms are pulled in, she looks like she's almost trying
to make herself smaller as if she's trying to hide.
What do you think she expects in a relationship?
Like do you think she expects to be really seen
and welcomed and accepted? Probably not, no.
If you look at this person here with this puffed up chest,
what do you think he expects in a relationship?
Probably some challenge, right?
He's ready to meet this challenge.
So there's an anticipation of the future
and expectation for each of these patterns
and the body will also support particular emotions.
So that depending how we live in our bodies,
we can have a propensity to experience
certain emotions more than others.
Like if you look at this posture right here,
this kind of slumped posture,
I mean, if I even take that posture on,
I feel like, oh, I could get sad,
I could get depressed, I feel defeated,
but it probably doesn't support anger, right?
The posture next to it would support anger,
but probably not vulnerability.
Like I can think of some world leaders
who have this posture, for example, and ready for a fight,
ready to be in immediate confrontation,
but not ready to be vulnerable and soft.
Each of the way that we live in our bodies,
it will communicate implicitly to another person
and that other person will respond without conscious intent.
I just find that so fascinating.
And I think we're going to see in couples therapy
how important our body stance and our body expression is.
Okay, so meaning making, it's constantly in flux,
we're making meaning every moment
and it's influenced by the constraints of the past.
You know, so, when something happens in a relationship,
our brains we just, and bodies really,
we automatically compare that event
to all our past experience, we get predictions of the future
and the predictions are based on that meaning that we make
combined with the accumulated meanings that we've made
and these predictions guide our moment to moment responses.
So if my partner,
if we're having a conversation about something important
to me and I see my partner kind of tighten up and pull back,
I'm going to implicitly make meaning of that.
And for me, it's probably going to mean
he doesn't want to hear what I'm saying,
that he doesn't like what I'm saying
and then I make that meaning and then I respond,
I don't know, well,
I might try to make him understand, right?
But that might not be his meaning,
but that's the meaning that I implicitly interpreted.
And I'm probably not even conscious
that that's the interpretation that I'm making now.
So, the somatic narrative in relationship,
I put these figures together,
and if you just look at each of these dyads
and imagine the kind of relationship they're in,
like, imagine this couple,
what kind of relationship do you think they have?
This is their common stance, she's like,
hands on hips, kind of looking at him,
he's pretty collapsed, hands in pockets.
Think about who do you think has the power,
what kind of conversations do they have?
Who's doing most of the talking and those kinds of things?
And that's very different from this conversation, right?
Which is very different from the conversation
between these two women, yeah?
And you can see that just from their bodies.
You can imagine, you can get a sense
of the kind of relationship, the energy, the emotions,
and even the flavor of their dialogues.
So the body will reveal and broadcast our inner state
to others, but also to ourselves,
and it happens whether we intend to or not.
And this thing about how our own sense of self
is in part influenced by how we live in our bodies,
I think is really important, because look, if,
and you could try this on, like,
if your body say collapses like this woman in the ponytail,
like if you just collapsed like this, I mean,
if you do that in your body, how do you feel about yourself?
Like, I feel kind of like,
I don't feel very good about myself in this posture,
I don't, I don't feel like I have much to offer.
Even my voice changes, right?
And that's different if I take on this woman's posture,
if I live in my body like this, I feel pretty assertive,
I feel confident, I feel a little bossy.
It's very different just from the stance and again,
my voice automatically changes.
So, how we live in our bodies,
it really influences how we feel about ourselves,
but also our relationships, like,
you would have a really different reaction to me
if I'm like this than if I'm like this,
or if I'm like this, right?
So in couples this gets really
kind of profound, the communication because yeah,
Argyle and colleagues discovered in the seventies,
and there's lots of research to support this,
that the impact of this body to body
nonverbal communication,
it's four times stronger than the words.
So think about that in a couple,
the way the couple communicates in their body
is going to be four times more powerful
than the verbal exchange.
And when couples are having difficulty,
these nonverbal transmissions that are, you know,
unconsciously perceived by the other person
and made meaning of,
I feel in all my work with couples,
that that is almost always at the root of their problems,
when they try to straighten it out through language,
verbal language, but it usually doesn't,
it doesn't get them where they want to go.
Like, imagine if you're trying to talk to this,
imagine this guy's your partner and you're trying to talk
to him about a problem that you feel in the relationship,
something that bothers you and he,
without even realizing it, he takes on this stance,
crosses his arms, is pulling to the side a little bit,
imagine how you would feel.
Would you get aggressive like this guy,
would you collapse and give up,
or you would have a reaction? I know I sure would.
So, in sensorimotor psychotherapy for couples,
we really don't rely on the story.
The story provides great information
about the experience with each other and their relationship,
but I feel that the therapy itself
has got to address this body to body communication
and the meaning that each of them makes from it
in order to shift the relational dynamic.
So let's talk about that a little bit more,
Allan Schore, who's a therapist
and a brilliant clinician and neuroscientist in Los Angeles,
he talks about this dialogue of ultra rapid
body-based, affective communication.
Now he talks about this a lot
in attachment relationships between infants and mothers,
but it's the same in any attachment relationship,
any close relationship, it's the same in any relationship,
really, but it has the most powerful meaning
in our attachment relationships.
So, and couples have an attachment relationship,
and it's so fast and it occurs underneath
our conscious awareness.
And see, that's what's really important,
is that we're not conscious of it and we're not conscious
of the meanings that we make from it.
So in sensorimotor psychotherapy we want to make
this implicit compensation conscious, more conscious.
So especially when things are heated in a couple,
or difficult, or, you know, the couple's in trouble,
the physical communication is just heavy
with emotion and meaning.
And if you watch a couple having a conversation
when they're having trouble,
you will see this interaction that has ultra rapid
approach and defend, withdraw,
sometimes aggression, body language.
So, you know, one person makes eye contact,
the other person looks down or, you know, away, like,
and that meaning is happening so fast.
One person leans closer, the other person
just turns to the side a little bit, right?
One person smiles, the other makes a frown.
And this happens so fast, you know?
Leaning towards, leaning away, it just happens like that.
And I think that's why so many couples
can get heated so quickly, think about it,
'cause this conversation is happening
through the body and they're interpreting
their partner's response without awareness
and the conflict is just escalating, right?
So we also take a look at power dynamics in a relationship.
Some of this research is from privilege, oppression,
privilege, subjugation dynamics,
but it applies just as powerfully to couples.
So the dominant partner is likely
to take up more interpersonal space,
like they make themselves bigger, right?
Like these two postures are dominant postures
'cause it's called manspreading, right?
The guy takes up a lot of space,
but women can take up a lot of space too,
because these oppose.
A dominant person will often exhibit less formality,
just more movement, right?
Where a subjugated person will,
be more pulled in, more constricted.
I kind of think it's interesting, you see this with couples
because prolonged direct eye contact
can definitely be a signal of dominance,
but so can avoiding eye contact.
Like I had one, a member of a couple saying,
well, she doesn't look at me, you know?
So, she's just not even interested in what I'm saying,
but it was really an attitude of like,
dismissiveness and superiority.
And this shows up in facial expressions too, right?
The dominant person in the relationship
is usually more allowed to initiate the touch.
I'm not sure though if this is really true
often with couples because I've seen people
who are subordinate in a couple relationship,
also trying to initiate touch,
but more in a clingy pay attention to me, help me way.
So we would want to explore that for meaning.
The dominant member of the couple
will often take truages really with the other person's
possessions and space.
Now, the point that is welcomed by the partner,
it wouldn't be interpreted as dominant behavior,
but if your partner is picking up a notebook,
sitting on your desk, you know,
taking these opportunities to get closer to you
when you are not wanting that,
then that is considered dominance.
So we track for that in couples therapy,
we track because couples will have dominance,
subordinate relationships,
and it can change and switch.
Like, one member could be dominant for a while
and then the other one, so we just want to be aware
and track for that.
So, let's talk about a couple, a case,
and I'll call them Nell and Harry.
Nell and Harry had done a lot of talk therapy and they said,
it just didn't work, it wasn't helping at all.
They said they could go from zero to a hundred in a second
in their arguments and they fought all the time.
And they said that they were just tired of fighting
but they couldn't stop, and couples therapy didn't help,
like, they said that the talk therapist
would give them assignments, like take a 10 minute break,
calm yourself down, and then come back and talk.
And they said they just use it against each other,
like they would come back and they'd say, well,
you didn't really use that 10 minutes to calm down,
you're still angry and they would just be
right back in it, you know?
So, in sensorimotor psychotherapy,
we want to get away from just talking about it,
to see if we can bring some of these
implicit patterns to awareness.
And we call these little experiments, like,
I said to them, okay, when was your last argument?
And they said, oh, we had a fight last night,
and I can't even, they told me about it,
I don't even remember what it's about
because it didn't matter, they were always fighting.
So I said, okay, see if you can,
let's remember that argument from last night
and let's find out what changes in your body.
I also want to know, like, if they have images, emotions,
and thoughts, but I'm really interested in the body.
So and this is mindfulness, right?
They're mindful, aware in the present moment
as they remember that fight, what happens.
And Harry got very still and very alert and watching now,
he said that he was still, but it was in preparation
to either fight back or flee.
And he said, I, you know, my arousal's going up,
Nell made this kind of, what appeared to be
an aggressive motion, dominant motion,
she leaned forward and her arms and hands were tensed
like this, she said she felt panic coming up
but she was responding with this aggressive stance, right?
Now, isn't that interesting?
The thing with working with the body in this way,
they became interested, they were like, huh?
I didn't know that about myself,
I didn't know that that's what I was doing.
So they got curious, and this was a pretty secure couple,
this was not, they had a solid relationship,
even though they fought all the time.
So, clearly the past was intruding on the present.
I remember they talked a little bit about
their childhoods and Nell grew up with a lot of brothers,
she said that, you know,
I always had to like fight for what I wanted
because her brothers were so like,
bossy and aggressive and everything.
And Harry said, you know,
I just remember my parents fighting
and it was scary to me and I would kind of freeze, right?
So this started to be revealed to the body,
to understand that even though they had talked this out,
they never really realized how the bodies were responding
and how these responses were impacting each other.
So these procedural patterns in the body were really based
on their early attachment relationships in their families,
which is true for all of us, pretty much.
So that was really the crux of their difficulty.
In this instance, it's often the case.
So we could get rid of it very quickly through the body.
So the next little thing that, the next experiment
that I asked them, I asked Nell, actually, I said,
"I wonder what your body is saying?"
Like, I want to translate the language of the body.
We didn't get the language of Harry's body
but if we had, you know, he got very still and very alert
and if I had asked him, I wonder what your body is saying,
he probably would have said, you know, I'm scared,
or I wonder what's going to happen,
I'm prepared for the worst,
don't know because I didn't ask him.
But I wanted to find out from her.
She said, if her body could talk, it would say,
"why can't you?"
Like, those were the words that went with
that aggressively leaning forward, why can't you?
But it was an unfinished sentence
and she said, you know, "It doesn't matter."
The rest of the sentence is, it's just how I feel,
why can't you do the dishes?
Why can't you do this? Why can't you do that?
And so that was the next experiment,
she leaned forward and she said those words,
and Harry said, "I just want to pull away
and I just want to protect myself."
And his hand came up like this.
And think of the nonverbal communication,
because you see, this was happening,
like that ultra rapid body to body communication,
this was happening all the time in their arguments,
but it wasn't broken down like that.
He wasn't even aware when his hand came up.
'Cause I pointed it out, I said
"did you feel your hand come up?"
and he goes, "Oh no, I didn't feel that."
But that's one of those withdrawal push away gestures,
which is not what Nell was going for,
that's not what she wanted from him,
she did not want him to push her away, right?
What do you think she wanted?
Well, we'll find out.
So, Charles Taylor, he's actually a philosopher at McGill
I think in Chicago, he talks a lot about recognition.
I just love that sort of,
because one of the things he says is on an intimate level,
you know, we can see how much we need
and how vulnerable we are to whether we're recognized,
by our significant other and the withholding
or the not being able to recognize us and our needs
and our desires and our vulnerability
is really painful, right?
So sometimes I think about couples therapy,
it's helping partners really have that sense of recognition
of each other like, oh, I get it, I get you.
So recognition, I like Jessica Benjamin's definition,
she's a psychoanalyst in New York.
She said, "recognition is that response from the other
that makes meaningful the feelings, intentions,
and actions of the self."
It gives meaning, accurate meaning
to the feelings, intentions, and actions.
So if we need a boundary, if we need our own space, right?
Our partner recognizes that they, ah,
I see you need your space, it's okay, you know.
There's a feeling of just being in it together
and there's a feeling of I'm seeing you get me, right?
When we're recognized, and if we're mis-recognized
or misinterpreted in our most closest relationships,
it's really painful, right?
So, I remember when I met Tronick,
he's an infant researcher in Boston,
and in the year, gosh, decades ago, really.
And he said, you know,
for a parent and child to form a secure attachment,
the parent just needs to be attuned 30% of the time,
that's all, you don't have to be attuned all the time.
And I remember how relieved I was, I thought
oh, that's so great because I don't know if I was
attuned much more than that with my kid.
But he said what's really important is the repair,
like to recognize when you're not attuned and repair
and this is really critical with couples.
It's not that you always have to recognize the person,
you always don't always have to match because you will
attune, you will match, you will mismatch
and then you have to rematch, right?
So you have to recognize when you,
you have to know when you're not attuned
or where you missed your partner.
So the ability of each member of the couple
to rematch with each other,
when parts of themselves are not recognized,
that's really critical in a healthy relationship,
much more critical really than
always matching or always recognizing.
So, yeah, all right, so,
let's talk a little bit about proximity seeking actions.
You know, babies don't have to be taught
to make eye contact,
they don't have to be taught to reach out or to touch.
it's innate.
John Bowlby would say it's a behavioral system
that we're born with, you know,
parents don't have to be taught to reach out to their kids.
So it's just a natural need to reach out to others
but our habits of seeking proximity with our closest people,
it's really based on how probable it is
that that partner is going to be receptive and empathic
and recognize our reach for what it is.
So when, when Nell made this action,
leaning forward, but made an aggressive action.
What do you think she needed from Harry?
We'll find out.
So, reaching out is a wonderful action to explore,
it's a simple action, just reaching out with your hands.
It's a wonderful action to explore
in therapy and definitely couples therapy.
So you know what, like if you will right now,
just indulge me for a minute and just reach out.
I'm not going to demonstrate it
because I want you to see how you reach out,
what's your pattern?
If you reach out with your arm, do you reach out like this?
Do you reach out halfway, do reach out with your hand down,
do you reach out and lean forward?
What's your just natural way of reaching out?
And just notice it, because that will tell you
a lot about your attachment history.
It just will because it's an innate action
and we've all modified how we reach
based on whether that action was effective.
Did it produce the outcome that we wanted?
So here are your different ways of reaching out,
and these were all taken from different clients of mine.
Like this person reached out halfway and she said,
"you know, nobody was ever there for me,"
in this really small voice, "like why would I reach out?"
And there wasn't a full, you know, open reach,
like with this person, you can see she's reaching,
if you were standing in front of her
and she reached out to you,
I mean, I would just want to reach back.
There was direct contact, there's an open palm,
different from this person who is reaching over eagerly,
like almost desperate for contact.
This person is reaching, but his eyes,
his gaze is averted right?
This is a client, I remember her so well,
she had an abuse history and she was having
trouble connecting with her kids
and when I asked her to reach out,
she said, "well, I'd like to reach out."
And she had this pattern of hunching her shoulders and,
you know, reaching out very similar to those,
those children in the strange situation studies,
those little toddlers that would proximity seek
their caregivers, but their shoulders would hunch in fear.
And this we learned was with disorganized,
disoriented attachment patterns,
where there was an insecure relationship.
This person reached out palm down, you know,
with a stiff arm, not really reaching for connection, yeah.
So back to Nell and Harry, there's really a couple of ways
we could go in that therapy session.
One would be to, you know, explore their issues,
their childhood issues,
and go deeper into some of the pain of that.
But another would be to see if we couldn't help them
rematch in a kind of an efficient way.
So what I asked them to try,
I asked Nell to go ahead and do that motion
with her hands and lean forward,
that kind of aggressive motion and that,
why can't you didn't say those words,
and then remember Harry did this motion
where he put his hand up like this.
I asked him if he would be willing to just lean forward
and reach out to her.
And he said that it feels strange,
but he's willing to do it and he did it,
so she's this aggressive, why can't you?
And he just reaches out with an open palm towards her,
she melted, it was so sweet.
She just melted, it was like that was all she ever wanted
and she just said, oh, this is lovely
and she completely softened.
And Harry just started laughing
because that was all he ever really wanted anyway,
was for her to soften and stop being aggressive with him.
So it was a simple but really effective
intervention with this couple
and it shifted their body to body communication.
And often, you know, with a couple,
I often, I kind of select one member of the couple
that I think could probably change the pattern the easiest
and that happened with Harry.
It wasn't the end of the therapy
but it certainly changed that pattern.
So the outcome of that particular session was Harry said,
"you know, I just want to practice reaching out at home"
because he said, "I don't want to fight and I love her
and you know, this might really help"
he said, "I can do that."
And Nell was so grateful to him
for his really just being receptive
to reaching out to her and seeking connection to her
instead of pull away from her because when he pulled away
she just escalated her aggression
and then that's how they got into the cycle,
then he would pull away more, she would get more aggressive,
he'd pull away more.
So this really broke through that pattern
and then their arguments no longer escalated.
I remember two weeks later, I said,
"well, you haven't been using the reaching out."
And they said, "well, we haven't really been fighting."
You know, it didn't escalate, we can, we seem to be able
to kind of, you know, navigate those arguments.
And I think they, well, they said they felt
they had a concrete tool that was in their pocket
if they could, if they needed it.
So this simple intervention could shift that body to body
conversation that they'd been having for years now.
So with sensorimotor psychotherapy with couples, you know,
we want to really be aware of how the issues or the problems
activate these implicit memories.
Like they weren't aware when they came in
that they were reenacting really their childhood situations
they weren't really aware of that.
And we, you know, we collaborate together
to select the first experiment.
Like how about we start with remembering that argument.
It could be all kinds of things,
you know, it could be a phrase said by one party,
a physical action, pulling away,
like with another couple I remember we started with
one party was one party was tightening up.
And so we started with that,
why don't we just start with that?
Because that was such a profound communication
to her partner, this tightening up.
So we started with that, so we picked something,
where we can start to study the pattern
instead of just talk about it
and pay close attention to each person's bodily response.
So we're looking at that somatic narrative,
the somatic conversation.
And, you know we really wanna pay attention
to the social location of each person.
I think this is really important
because especially, I mean, we think of this
usually in terms of, you know, privilege
and marginalization, privileged locations,
oppressed locations, marginalized locations.
So with any of these social occasions listed here,
you know, all of us have a place where we sit
on each of those locations and they're either on the,
towards the end of privilege and advantage
or on the end of marginalization and oppression.
So, you know, if you're a man, if you're heterosexual,
if you're fit or handsome, if you're highly educated,
if you speak the language of your country,
if you have money and if you're a native not an immigrant,
you've got a ton of privilege, right?
If you're, if you're say, if you're a trans woman,
a black woman or an Aboriginal woman,
if you don't speak the language of your country,
if you're poor and so forth,
you have a lot of marginalized locations.
And those come, the social occasions of each person
will affect the couple, right?
So I mean, how many, if you work with couples or
you know couples, how many have arguments about money.
who's making the most money? How should money be spent?
Et cetera, et cetera, and that's often the real difference
in where we sit on the social locations.
I remember one couple where, you know,
the man was really fit and wanted his wife to be,
and she was, he considered her overweight,
she wasn't attractive as he wanted her to be,
and that was a huge issue in their relationship.
So the somatic narrative of each individual and
the narrative between the couple is gonna be influenced
by social occasions and we want to be aware of that.
So we explored physical actions like reaching, self touch.
I remember one couple was, they just, well,
they were just pretty shut down from each other
and not able to be regulated with each other
because they had so much inability
to connect with themselves.
So I remember with them,
like her gesture was to put her hand on her heart,
that kept her with herself,
and his gesture, he felt this little boy
that was desperate for connection in his belly
and his soft touch was to put his hand on his belly.
And when they did their own self touch,
they could then relate to each other
because it was almost as if,
it was almost as if they were taking care of
that child part of them that had so many needs
that they had been imposing on the relationship.
So through the touch, they were taking care of that part
and then they could relate in a much more
present, adult regulated way.
And I always think that individual and couple therapy.
I mean, I've seen a lot of couple therapists,
what they're really doing is individual therapy
with each of the couple while the other couple's present.
And I try to avoid that,
I'm much more interested in what's happening
between them in this body to body conversation.
And I always like to end with concrete homework,
like practice the reaching out, practice the self touch,
whatever it is, you know?
So, because we we're trying to change
the somatic dialogue with the couple.
So, I'll end with this beautiful section
of a poem from John O'Donohue here that I just love,
and I share this often with couples,
maybe you'll share it too.
He says, "now is the time for one of you to be gracious,
to allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,
to reach out with sure hands,
to take the chalice of your love,
and carry it carefully through this echoless waste
until the winter pilgrimage leads you
toward the gateway to spring."
Isn't that beautiful?
And I think that's what we're, you know,
that's what we're going for with our couples.
There's a lot of love between the couples
and we want to help them really honor it
and go from the trouble to the spring time.
Okay, that's it.
Time for your questions maybe or comments.
-: Thank you so much, Pat, beautiful words.
And I already have some questions here
that were asked during the presentation
so I'm going to get started with them
and for those who are on the session right now,
please send me your questions and we'll go through them.
And Pat, are you going to grace us
with playing some drums at the end of the session?
I can see you have some of the drums in the bedroom.
-: You know what? I drum sometimes
with couples that can't communicate with each other,
they can be really helpful.
Like one part of the couple would drum up a rhythm,
this is how I'm feeling, and then the other couple,
the other member would mimic it and it can,
you know, really can get them in tune.
So drums are great for use with couples therapy.
-: I like it.
All right, so the first question is from Emery
and she's asking, in long distance relationships,
how does the lack of physical body presence
affect the relationship?
-: How does the physical presence-
-: The lack of physical contact
in long distance relationships.
-: Well, I mean, it depends upon the couple of course,
but I will say, you know,
even in long distance, implicit communication,
'cause that's what we're really talking about
is body to body communication, it's implicit, right?
It's not conscious, this will happen over Zoom,
this will happen talking on the telephone
because we're very sensitive to prosody,
how our voice is used,
especially the prosody of our loved one,
you know, the tiniest little constriction in the larynx
or the openness of the larynx or a little like irritation,
you know, you'll hear all of that
and that is also like the implicit communication.
It's not the body language,
but it's still the implicit communication.
So I mean, no matter if it's long distance or not,
that implicit communication's going on.
I mean, I think it affects,
some couples do better long distance
because they have trouble with the, you know,
day to day intimacy and, you know,
being with someone all the time.
So it really depends on the couple,
how it affects the relationship
but the implicit communication is still going on, for sure.
-: Thanks Pat, Jay's asking, does matching need to be done
all the time or just perhaps once or twice a day?
-: Well, I think it can't be done all the time
because we don't always notice when we're not matching.
So, you know, we don't, I mean,
and sometimes when our partners come
and basically are saying you didn't see me,
you didn't recognize me, basically saying you need to match,
we get defensive and we're like, well, you know,
you didn't really tell it in the right way,
you didn't show me or whatever,
but then the rematch needs to be done enough, you know,
like, enough so that the person feels
secure and recognized enough.
But you know, we can't ever match all the time,
we can't ever rematch all the time.
I think this is something in couples work
and also in cross racial dialogue with microaggressions.
I think, when we're in those relationships
we learn not to be defensive, like with our partners,
with feedback around our own microaggressions,
we learn to say, tell me more, tell me more,
I don't understand, you know,
could you explain a little bit more? Rather than react.
So sometimes it takes a little more to be matched.
No, we don't have to be perfect at relationships,
if we did, we would never have any.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
And I saw this really powerful image yesterday,
I'm going to see if I can find the link here.
And it was about peeling the layers of finding out
where the pain is and I think it was a four square image
and the first image was an angry man and then you peel
the first layer and there was a sad man crying,
and you peel another layer and it was,
I have to remember, hang on,
I'm actually going to find the image now
and I can describe that and I'll try to find the link
to the image so I can share with everyone.
So, yeah.
So this first layer is a man going kind of like this like,
then the second one, when you peel the first layer,
he was angry, he was like, ah, red,
and then you peeled another layer and he was sad and crying
and your peel the fourth layer
and it's an image of a little kid in the corner.
So it's probably talking about that attachment
and that kind of like trying to understand
where the pain's coming from, rather than reacting.
-: Right. -: I'll find the link.
I'll find the link and I'll share it on the chat.
All right, this next question is from Anna
and she's asking if the illustrations in the presentation
are your own and she mentions that
they are so beautifully powerful.
-: The illustrations? -: In your slides.
-: Oh, yeah. Well, the illustrations are taken from the book,
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Attachment
and Trauma, that's what the illustrations are from.
Yeah, I had an artist draw those illustrations
from pictures, so yeah. -: Thank you.
-: But it's true, isn't it?
Because the pictures speaks a thousand words, you know,
you can look at those images and you get it.
-: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Okay, so this next question is from Kim,
I'm wondering how this somatic work is impacted
by so much being done via screens during COVID restrictions,
everything can still be observed and noted
but there is a more performative dynamic
since clients can see themselves in camera,
what are your thoughts on that?
-: Well, I have a lot of thoughts,
if you're really interested in this we do have a couple,
we have two hours of free presentation
on sensorimotor psychotherapy via Zoom,
about the body to body conversation.
You know, it's very interesting,
some clients feel exposed and you know,
they don't like the Zoom work, it's difficult for them.
Others actually feel more in control, so again,
you know, there's no one size fits all,
it just depends on the client.
One client said, you know, I love Zoom,
I can turn your voice up, I can turn your voice down,
I can shut off your picture if I don't want to see you,
I can shut off up my picture if I don't want you to see me.
And they felt much more empowered.
So it just, it really depends on the client, I think,
and the person, the individual.
-: Thanks Pat, Deborah is asking
for the couple with the fit husband and overweight wife,
how does the somatic dialogue help resolve this issue?
-: Well, I think a lot of it is about meaning and history.
So his conveyance of his disapproval through the body,
in this case, I spoke to her
and she felt terrible about herself,
which exacerbated the problem.
You know, her body withdrew, she collapsed,
she tried to make himself smaller,
and other couples, you know, it's really different
if somebody, in another couple for example, how to say it,
it's like, both of their histories come together
in this hand in glove fit
that activates their implicit issues from the past.
You know, like if that guy had the same issue
with a woman who felt great about her body,
she would say, well, that's your problem,
you know, go deal with it.
It would just, it would be very different.
So the dialogue for both of them takes them back
to the issues that are underlying the content.
It wasn't really about the content,
it was about, for example, in this case,
it was about his own insecurity
and then his wife reflected that to him.
He had to deal with his own insecurity,
you know, it's like he got some of his self worth
from his wife and he thought he would get more
if she had a figure that he thought was more desirable,
does that make sense? Does that make sense?
So, that's where he had to work
and that somatic dialogue between them
reveals that deeper level, I hope I'm explaining that well.
-: Thank you Pat,
Michelle is asking, habitual ways of reaching out,
does this extend cross-culturally?
Are there differences among cultural groups?
-: There are definitely differences amongst cultural groups,
yes, yeah, like I remember for example,
eye contact is another proximity seeking action
and this is why we really do need to
understand different cultures.
There was a man from Senegal
who wouldn't make eye contact, right?
And if you interpret that as a proximity seeking action,
which we would in Western culture, that you know,
if you don't make eye contact, well
you probably got a problem with relationship.
For him, it was just in his culture
you don't make eye contact with elders
because it's a sign of disrespect.
So it had a completely different meaning.
So, you do have to be aware of that
because it does have different meanings
in different culture, absolutely.
-: Yeah. I've got a funny story
about body language in different cultures.
My first job in Australia, 17 years ago,
19 year old Brazilian, fresh from the plane,
and I woke up in the office
and there was a lady sitting down,
she would've been probably in her late fifties,
and I touch her shoulder lightly as I say,
"good morning, how are you?"
Next day, I get a complaint of a physical harassment
because in Brazil we all touch each other,
but here in Australia, not so much.
-: Yeah, right, exactly. I think that's a good point.
That's something I realized too,
because I touch very easily and I'm very tactile that way
and then when I started studying about
dominance and subordination and about how
that also could be interpreted as a kind of dominance,
and it really made me think about it, you know,
like how many times I've touched students
on the shoulder or something and huh,
I wonder if that was interpreted
as a dominant gesture, you know?
-: Well, we can only try our best.
-: Yeah, exactly, yeah.
-: The next sort of question is from Cheryl
and she's asking if it's possible
to adapt these only when seeing one member of the couple,
aware of slight bias.
-: Wait, say ... some of these interventions.
-: Yeah, she's asking if it's possible
to adapt these approach when only seeing
one member of the couple. -: Oh, yeah, it is.
Because like, for example, if I had just been working with
Nell, for example, or Harry,
we could have done the same thing,
if there was someone upset about this argument,
we'll remember the argument, what happens
that same pattern would have happened, right?
And then we would have gone more into that pattern
and probably done some, you know,
some work with those early attachment relationships.
And then also then, you know,
if one party of the couple changes, the dynamic will change.
So maybe Nell would have noticed
that she didn't have to be aggressive,
that that was leftover from growing up with four brothers
and that maybe she wouldn't have learned to, you know,
be more open and receptive,
maybe Harry would have gotten in touch with how that
defense and that kind of fear
was from hearing his parents argue, you know?
So yes, absolutely, yeah.
-: Thanks Pat, do you have any recommendations
with regards to books around body language
in different cultures?
Do you know of any good books in the area?
-: I don't, not of any one, no, I don't have any good books,
I don't. -: That's okay.
That's one for a Google search.
-: Yeah, if anybody finds one, let me know.
I tried, I mean, yeah.
-: All right Pat, wonderful.
So through the chat here,
I've shared links to your books and title of your books,
I've shared the link to the online courses section
of the Sensorimotor Institute website as well,
so people can check out when the upcoming training is,
on top of that, I want just to give you a moment
just to say some final words,
see if you have any recommendations or urges
for people to learn more about the topic,
or just any general comments you want to make
just to conclude the session.
-: Well, you know,
I guess maybe I would say that
our bodies are just so intelligent.
And if you can get just curious about
your body and its language and its communication,
it's really exciting to have your body
as a laboratory in that way,
to notice your responses in interactions with others
in your body, just to be curious and interested,
'cause there's such a wealth of knowledge and information
in our body's movement and posture and patterns.
So maybe I would suggest that.
-: Curiosity seems to be the solution
to many problems we have faced as humans.
Just have a little curiosity and open-mindedness.
-: It is. -: And patience.
All right Pat, well, wonderful to connect with you today.
Really appreciate your time, I hope you have a great evening
down in Boulder, Colorado and a wonderful weekend
and you get to do some hikes as well.
-: Definitely, yeah.
And you have a great summit.
-: Yeah, it's going great, it's going great.
So for those of you that are logged in now,
we'll see you back here in approximately one hour
for our next session with Dr Zach Seidler.
Pat, thanks once again, I will be shutting down
the session now but it's been a great pleasure.
-: Yeah, me too, pleasure.
Be well everybody.