Every Body Tells a Story

A Craniosacral Journey

Liz Kalinowska, Daška Hatton

• Publisher: Singing Dragon
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784502812
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Liz Kalinowska and Daška Hatton invite you into the therapy room to experience a therapeutic encounter through the lens of Craniosacral Therapy, discussing ways that therapists and clients can work together to optimise the success of treatment.

Describing a unique journey through ten bodywork sessions from the standpoints of a fictional client 'Anna', and her therapist, 'Sarah', the authors take you behind the scenes to witness the client's voyage of discovery, and how the encounter appears to her therapist during the course of treatment. The book shows how the perspectives of both participants develop and widen through their shared experiences and examines the ups and downs of the therapeutic relationship. Boundary, transference and trust issues are explored as Liz and Daška share their own experiences of more than 40 years in practice and examples from myth and legend help to place the work in a wider context.

CHAPTER FOUR

RESISTANCE

Anna’s Story

On the morning of my next appointment with Sarah, I woke with a depressed, sinking feeling in my stomach and a vague sense of doom. Something told me it was going to be a bad day, and so it was. The children were all in impossible moods. First they wouldn’t get up when called, and then they dawdled around, not getting ready for school. Oscar was the worst. He’s in the middle of revising for his GCSEs and can’t seem to get up the enthusiasm for anything at all, particularly school work. Nigel is getting increasingly annoyed with his lazy, laidback attitude to life and his seeming inability to take responsibility for himself. Whenever either of us tries to pick him up on his behaviour, he just glares and disappears into his room, slamming the door and swearing under his breath. I find this particularly difficult. I feel protective of Oscar and yet don’t want Nigel to get upset, so I’m really torn between the two of them. Unfortunately, Oscar’s behaviour is rubbing off on the younger two, and they’re beginning to reproduce perfectly his facial and verbal expressions, so I think we’re in for much more of this in the future.

Partly due to all of this, I felt one of my headaches coming on. This, combined with my earlier low mood, made me long to go back to bed to try to sleep off my negativity. Just as I was heading back up the stairs after the front door had banged on Nigel and the children, I remembered that I had my appointment with Sarah at 11.00.

So far, I have looked forward to my sessions. I like the feeling of complete relaxation that comes at the end of a treatment, and I’ve enjoyed being with Sarah because, during the time we’ve spent together, her calmness has rubbed off on me, and I’ve started to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Today, however, I didn’t want to go. There were several reasons for this: first, I wasn’t sure that it was working. I hadn’t noticed my symptoms changing that much and the calmness and relaxation seemed confined to the time spent in Sarah’s room. As soon as I got back into my everyday life, the effect wore off. Thinking about that made me feel horribly churned up and brought up a lot of disturbing questions. If I wasn’t improving was it my fault that nothing much was changing? Was I somehow hampering things, or could I be completely untreatable? When Sarah asked me how I was doing, would she be disappointed in my lack of progress? Would she decide there was no point in carrying on? And what about Sarah herself? Her touch is so imperceptible that I was still not convinced that she was doing anything apart from sending me off to sleep. Was I wasting my money on something that was not going to help at all? Surely after three sessions I should have noticed a difference. Was Sarah a quack, and were any positive feelings I had during the sessions purely down to my imagination? I felt hopelessly confused and guilty.

I thought about cancelling the session and finding an excuse for not carrying on with the therapy but remembered that Sarah had said at the outset that I would have to pay if I didn’t give enough notice. Reluctantly, I decided to go for one last time. Whilst on the way there, my perverse thoughts multiplied, and by the time I got to Sarah’s I was in a totally foul mood.

Sarah opened the door and welcomed me into the room with a beaming smile, which made me feel even worse. I wondered how she could be so unremittingly friendly and placid. She asked how I had been after the last session, and I said peevishly that I was good afterwards but it never lasted and I had just had the morning from hell and now had a horrible headache. Sensing my unwillingness, Sarah cut her questions short and then asked me to lie down on the couch. As I lay there, the contrast between this serene woman, the tranquil atmosphere in the room and my dark thoughts and anxieties was all too much, and I felt irritation and resentment building up inside me to bursting point. I was so angry with Sarah. Why wasn’t she making me feel better? I was more stressed lying there than I had been before my first treatment. Had she done something to me that was making me feel worse? I couldn’t relax at all on the couch, but unbelievably Sarah seemed not to notice my agitation and carried on adjusting my body on the table as she always does. This only made me feel more awkward and uneasy, because I was finding her touch irritating today. Eventually I couldn’t stop myself from asking why I wasn’t getting better, and why I was feeling so stressed. I kept my voice fairly neutral though, both to hide my uncomfortable inner feelings and because I didn’t feel brave enough to confront her with everything I had been thinking. Besides that, I really liked Sarah and didn’t want to upset her. She answered my question calmly, saying that I was going back into familiar patterns of stress, and that it was because I was beginning to notice the way I reacted that it felt more acute. Even though I was still angry and confused, this made sense, and I wanted to believe her. Despite some lingering inner doubt, I relaxed slightly and decided to give Sarah and the work the benefit of the doubt for the moment. After all, I told myself, she hadn’t promised me an instant cure, and if my symptoms had built up over a number of years, I could see that it might take longer than a few weeks to untangle them. Perhaps I was overreacting and being unreasonable.

Although I was now less tense, I was still pretty jumpy. Sarah asked me where in my body I was feeling the most uncomfortable. Because I was feeling agitated all over, it was difficult to answer. I finally managed to pin down the worst place as my stomach. She asked me to put my hand there and to notice how it felt, and put her hand over mine. I was quite gurgly inside at first, possibly because I’d only managed to have a cup of coffee for breakfast. While my hand lay there, I noticed that I couldn’t seem to take a deep breath. There was a heavy weight pressing on my stomach, but my hand was only resting on it lightly. I felt panicky and very unsure of what was happening to me.

Suddenly a memory came out of nowhere. Once again, I was six or seven. I was playing with a friend in the garden, and we decided to dress up. I ran upstairs to my mother’s bedroom because she kept a dressing-up box full of old clothes there. As I climbed the stairs I heard voices coming from my parents’ room. They sounded angry. I could hear my father shouting furiously, and at first my mother answered him in the restrained way I was used to. My parents were very different in character: my father quick and impetuous, my mother distant and cold. I had never heard them arguing like this before; my mother’s cool politeness usually allowed her to avoid conflict. His voice became even more frenzied and then, to my alarm, she suddenly began to abandon her self-control. Soon she was screaming back at him, matching his volume and I started to shake violently with the shock of hearing her; it was as if she had become a complete stranger. The argument went on for ages and I crouched by the closed door, unable to move. Suddenly it was flung open, and my father came charging out, and ran down the stairs. Soon afterwards I heard the front door slam and his car leaving. I don’t think he noticed me trembling by the door. If he did, he ignored me. I stayed there feeling stunned and petrified. After a while I heard a noise coming from inside the room, and I realised with growing horror that it was my mother crying. I had never heard or seen her in tears before; she didn’t normally show her feelings at all. Once when I was younger I had heard my father refer to her as The Ice Queen. I had thought at the time it was rather a glamorous thing to be called because I had just read the fairy story of the Snow Queen. I had not realised then how frustrated he must have felt at her coldness.

The idea of my mother losing control was so frightening that I couldn’t move from outside the door for a very long time. I don’t really remember what happened next; everything is a bit blurred. I have no memory of moving away from the door or my friend leaving, but things must have somehow returned to normal. I do remember that my father disappeared after that and my mother seemed even more icy and cool for a long time afterwards and hardly spoke to me at all. Then I was told, without explanation, that they were getting divorced and that my father didn’t live with us any more. Eventually he married someone else and so did she, but in those few moments everything changed and I never really felt safe or protected again. Even though my mother had always been emotionally distanced, I had found some stability in her impeccably controlled behaviour, but now I couldn’t even trust that. If adults could be so vulnerable and so emotionally unstable who would look after me? Something that had been solid crumbled and could never be reconstructed. My father soon had a new family, but I had no place in it. I found my stepmother loud, grating and inhospitable. My father made little effort to help us to make friends. My mother’s new husband travelled a lot with his work, and very often she went with him. I became more and more self-reliant as the years went on, and found it increasingly hard to trust anyone but myself. All this came back to me in a flash as I lay there with our hands on my stomach, and the physical and emotional sensations of my six-year-old self were suddenly very real again.

By this time I had forgotten my earlier animosity towards Sarah, and I was very glad she was next to me. She asked how I was, presumably because she had sensed from my body that something was happening. She wanted to know if I was able to carry on, and despite feeling shaky and cold I said I would continue. It was comforting to have her hand over mine, and we stayed there for a while as I told her some of what had happened. It was hard to put into words, though, and I don’t know if I properly conveyed it to her because I honestly didn’t understand it myself. I had buried this incident very deeply. I was amazed to find myself not just remembering that time outside my parents’ room, but almost reliving the whole experience as if I was there all over again. I couldn’t believe I was still so much affected by it. My whole childhood was a bit of a mystery because my parents had never discussed it with me. They obviously wanted to erase any reference to their marriage and, unfortunately, I was part of that painful episode.

Sarah asked what I might need to support me both in the present, and as my six-year-old self. This was a possibility and an attitude that I had never considered before. No one had thought to ask me either as a child, or even as an adult, what I needed to make me feel safe. I realised that both then and now I needed the warmth of physical and emotional contact: a hug from my mother, a caring touch from my father. Steve had been hopeless at showing affection, and Nigel wasn’t much use either. Feeling rather tearful now, I tried to imagine and feel myself being lovingly held and comforted, and as I did so there was a wonderful melting sensation in my body.

Some time later, Sarah said she was bringing the session to a close. She wanted to have time at the end to discuss what had happened and to make sure I was okay before I left. She explained that traumatic incidents are stored in the body. If the mind is unable or unwilling to process the shock then the whole experience may become ‘frozen’ into our tissues. We tighten to protect ourselves from the pain, but bodywork can apparently spontaneously ‘defrost’ those memories. This releasing process may be uncomfortable, but we may at last be able to come to a better relationship with any buried emotions sealed up inside for many years. She added that both physical and psychological symptoms are often the result of holding too much unrecognised baggage in our muscles or other bodily structures.

I found Sarah’s explanation helpful and saw that there was probably plenty more to work on, but for now I was too exhausted to talk. I remembered after we had made the next appointment that I had decided earlier not to come again after today. However, this session had changed my mind. For the first time I had felt deeply cherished and I now had a better understanding of my own needs for warmth and contact. This would stay with me for a long while and I now wanted some time and space alone to digest what had happened.

Sarah’s Story

When Anna arrived today, she looked cross and upset. She flung her coat down, threw herself into the chair and refused to make eye contact. I assumed to begin with that her anger was not directed at me personally, but found it disconcerting nonetheless. I asked what was going on and she said she had a tension headache and was even more tired, stressed and run down than usual.

She went on to say that she had had a nightmare morning trying to get everyone off to school on top of an exhausting week. This had caused a bad headache and now she felt completely overwhelmed. I explained that stress and tension can become embedded in our body and that any small incident can trigger a whole cascade of symptoms, usually totally out of proportion with the original cause. This can reactivate stress that has occurred in previous situations, and so it goes on. Something very minor may indeed be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Once again I suggested that Anna got straight onto the table so that we could work with her immediate physical sensations.

Unfortunately, I found that my own body was echoing Anna’s agitation and I had to make an enormous effort to ground myself. Stress and adrenal responses are very catching, and it is sometimes hard to control my own reactions when clients are wound up. What I wanted to do was present a cool, calm presence that would help Anna to slow down, but instead I found myself fighting to get settled.

This is easier for me to do when working than in everyday life, because as a therapist I am consciously trying to be aware of my own responses to what is happening in my client. Today it meant noticing that I was tensing my body in response to Anna, and that both my neck and shoulders had tightened in concert with hers. I felt, too, the beginnings of a familiar constriction in my solar plexus. Luckily, I was gradually able to release my neck and feel my feet on the ground, and by stepping back and giving myself a pause before moving into the treatment, I successfully avoided going into a full-blown stress reaction myself.

Stress manifests in each of us in different ways. It can cause headaches, insomnia, general discomfort, panic attacks and digestive problems, and the variety of symptoms can make it hard both to diagnose and to treat. Looking at individual signs is not usually helpful so I always try to look under the surface to what lies beneath. I began this time by placing my hands on Anna’s head. I could instantly feel a furious energy like a wasp in a jam jar. I tried to decipher what was happening underneath the noise by just listening with interest to the activity. The buzziness slowly got less insistent and I was able to leave her head and move around her body. My intention was to give her some space so that she could reconnect with herself. This took much longer than usual and tension came and went in both of us. I noticed again how hard it was not to mirror Anna’s agitation and found myself wondering in a moment of doubt if I had anything at all to offer her. My habitual negativity momentarily reared its head, and it was quite an effort to resist it.

I asked Anna to describe what she was experiencing because I thought it might be useful for her to notice how her physical symptoms were mirroring her thoughts and contributing to her emotional state. She unexpectedly burst out that she had been coming to see me for several sessions and that things were no better. In fact they were probably worse. She confessed that she had been thinking of cancelling today and calling the whole thing off. Just before doing so, she had remembered that she would have to pay a cancellation fee so she had decided to come for one last time. As she was speaking, I began to feel the familiar sinking feeling that usually accompanies feelings of insecurity about my work. I so much wanted to make Anna feel better but so far had only succeeded in making her feel worse. I wasn’t even sure at that moment whether the feeling in my gut belonged to Anna or to me. Probably a bit of each, I thought.

It was hard to go on with the treatment after this wakeup call. I began to feel quite wobbly about my relationship to Anna. She badly needed me to tell her that she was improving and I found myself wanting to make everything better for her, but I also noticed how much encouragement I needed myself. At that moment I wanted reassurance that the treatment was useful and meaningful, and needed a pat on the head or a motherly hug. I wanted Anna to make it alright for me too, and for a moment our roles were confused. I had to make a huge effort to dismiss these feelings and return to my own centre and a sense of my physical body in space. The agitation in my solar plexus lessened and gradually became one of an overall range of sensations, not the most dominant. My explanation to Anna was that she was probably noticing her stressful reactions more because of the work that we were doing and that this, although uncomfortable, was relatively common. Change requires a period of adjustment and it is pretty normal to feel worse at first. Habitual patterns of stress and tension that have taken so long to build up cannot realistically be expected to change overnight. From my current place of insecurity this all felt a bit thin to me, but she seemed to accept it for the moment, so we carried on.

I asked Anna where she felt most uncomfortable, and after thinking for a moment she put her hand on her stomach. I agreed that this was exactly the spot I had noticed and it seemed a good place to start work. I put one hand under the middle of her back and the other very softly over Anna’s hand. All was quiet for a moment or two and I noticed the rising and falling of sensation in her body. I felt she was settling and going deeper into stillness when suddenly there was a jolt that seemed to go right through her, and the texture of both her breathing and her body changed. A minute or so later she said that she could feel crushing sensations in her chest and throat. The agitation in her stomach, which had appeared to be resolving, was back with a vengeance. I made sure she knew I was there beside her, and let her know that she could tell me anything that she wanted to about what she was experiencing.

She eventually said that she had suddenly had a memory of being a small child, which seemed to be connected to the sensation in her stomach. I asked her to tell me, if she could, what had happened and what it was that she was remembering. For a long moment she didn’t say anything at all and seemed to be struggling to maintain her composure. She swallowed a few times and turned her head from side to side like someone trying to escape, and her body tensed as if to stop itself from shaking. I was acutely aware of her anxiety and desire to turn away from her physical sensations. It s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• In The Beginning
• One - Departure
• Two - Feeling The Way
• Three - Where Have I Come From?
• Four - Resistance
• Five - Boundaries
• Six - Separation
• Seven - Meetings
• Eight - Despondency
• Nine - Acceptance
• Ten - Closure And Return