Following The Feeling

I nearly blacked out in therapy yesterday.

Before I start, I just want to note that this short essay contains some pretty detailed descriptions of bodily sensations whilst reliving trauma, so you might want to check in with yourself before reading, and make sure you feel grounded enough to continue.

My therapist draws from a wide range of techniques and modalities, but at the heart of her practice is deep somatic work. And by deep, I mean something much more than basic body awaremess and minfulness. I’m talking the kind of work where you notice an uncomfortable feeling arising, and you let it come. You listen to it. You experience it, whatever it is. Gently, and with care. And for me, the reason I do this is so I can start to name the feelings, which (I’ve slowly learned) helps to take some of the power out of them. I realise now that a lot of my general anxiety and panic came from a place of not understanding why I was feeling a certain way. Constantly living with a bodily sense of dread, and not knowing why had left me in a place where my levels of anxiety were increasing exponentially, but when I finally started getting to a point where I could understand and name the sensations, something in me immediately shifted, and some of that extra layer of panic began to disipate.

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Yesterday, a horrible feeling came into the session with me. It was uncomfortably familiar, and I got the sense that it's been trying to tell me something for a long time, almost like a constant warning, but in a foreign language.

My therapist and I have a little routine that always helps me to slowly start to absorb the sensations without getting overwhelmed - she asks me where in my body I first noticed the feeling? Does it have a colour or texture? A smell? If I can answer those questions without disappearing into myself, then we know it's safe to proceed. And then she asks me to describe the physical sensations that are happening:

There’s a lump in my throat. My heart’s racing. My hands are cold and sweaty. I can taste bile. My lips are going numb. I feel like I’ve been drugged. I’m losing words…

By this point, my peripheral vision was caving inwards, and I felt like I was going to pass out. I tried to say this, and the words came out slurred, so we both knew it was time to stop.

“For a second a feeling of utter revulsion ran through me, oiled and slick in the crisp air, a sensation of warm dark terror stirred round with shame. Then the feeling was gone, rolling sickly over itself into the distance, leaving me soiled and dirty, the world’s bright lights all pissed on at once. Taking a deep drag on my cigarette, I followed the feeling.” Michael Marshall Smith - Only Forward

The only thing that kept me present throughout was the fact that I’ve learned to lock eyes with my therapist when I’m working through something like this. It keeps me in the knowing that I’m safe, and that whatever I’m experiencing isn’t happening now; it’s an echo. Born of a memory that’s spent so long hiding in shame and doubt that it can’t help but arrive with excruciating force when it’s finally given the attention it’s so desperately needed.

Once I'd brought myself back to a safe state, it was about 3 seconds before the release started. A few slow tears quickly turned into a cascade of self-compassion, and I spent the next 10 minutes or so weeping for all the previous versions of me who were haunted by those sensations without knowing why.

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I still can't fully name the feeling that followed me into therapy yesterday, but it's something akin to absolute terror combined with gut-wrenching disgust.

And the thing it's been trying to tell me every time it's reared it's ugly head?

Run. Now.

Run. Now. A visual represntation of what I was experiencing. Acrylic on canvas, A3