Hi harigata, I came over here from Daniel Mackler's site (just recently joined) and I wanted to offer a few thoughts.
I have been looking for people to do mutual 'therapy' with, without success so far - the best I'm able to do is find friends who are sympathetic about various issues and sort of 'trade' with them. That is, I try really hard to balance out *my* need for talking and being heard with being sure I listen as well as I can when it's *their* turn to tell a story. And I also make an effort to draw them out on things I know they've been worried about or struggling with. This actually seems to work pretty well, but there's still some deeper stuff that doesn't quite get touched. For that work I've had best luck with an energy worker. I could tell you more about that if you're interested.
Mainly, I wanted to respond to a couple of your comments that resonated with me:
harigata wrote:I got so used to getting from therapists who don't feel comfortable when confronted with raw human emotions in a primal session. And no, not to 'keep saying' but rather to say very little, no more than is needed to asset the fact that one is, in fact, not alone in a room but with somebody who 'cares'. For some reason, most therapists feel the need to confront patients about various insane stuff that comes up during therapy, not realizing that letting it run it's course is what they really need to do in order to FACILITATE HEALING.
I've struggled with this with therapists too, and have basically fired every single one of them for their failure of empathy. I haven't read all your comments yet, but if you haven't yet read Alice Miller (and I think Dennis already suggested this?), her idea of 'enlightened witnessing' is what you're really talking about. For someone who actually *cares* enough to get into your emotional space with you, and give you a safe 'container' to do your work in.
In fact I was just looking up a link on 'attunement', which is the idea of sort of resonating with another person's emotional state. It's about facial expression, tone of voice, touch, body language - very kinesthetic, not just a passive verbal thing. Here's a link if you want one:
http://www.uktherapists.com/articles/li ... 0/2/02.htm
The first couple paragraphs are sort of annoying techy gobbledygook to make the shrink stuff sound all science-y and 'valid', but the fourth paragraph gets into the meat of the thing.
What I'm saying is that I can be a darn good buddy for primal sessions, and receiving this kind of help will put me in a mental state that will enable me to reciprocate in kind. When you're stuck in repressed pain and are not doing anything about it, you become frustrated, you grow weak, you fall pray to your repressed pain. When you are unburdening yourself in regular sessions you start feeling better - you might say your mind begins to breathe. And you are able to start giving to others. I feel that I can, in any event. Do you see any problem with that? Is that neurotic?
Aside from the specific *method* of using primal, which I have no experience with, I personally agree with you on this, at least in theory. I feel the same, that the ability to release *my* stuff will free up emotional space for me to be open-minded to somebody *else's* stuff. In fact, I *know* it works because that's how it works with friends.
The one caveat I would offer is that you not try to do the 'exchange' or 'trade' at the same session - I think it's good to take turns. But that's just a theory, and since I've never actually found someone to do it with, I don't really know. I just have a sense that it might work best, given the intensity of the emotions and all, to have each session be devoted to one person, then switch the next time. But that might just be *me*.
Hah, but repressed pain is an anchor to neuroses. You touch pain, you become irrational. That's how it works. It may cause you to ask yourself the wrong questions, give yourself the wrong answers, or simply become confused or overwhelmed (the exact nature of this depends on one's personal primal burden) and eventually either abandon therapy, invent a neurotic form of 'therapy' or just start moving around in circles, doing 'primal therapy' without really confronting any of the major issues in your subconsience. And this is what the majority of people in PT are actually doing, in my humbla opinion.
I don't know how primal works (maybe talk about this in another exchange if you're interested?) What little I've read actually kind of scared me away. But I don't want to go into that just this second, though happy to talk about it, just want to stay on your current topic.
I think what's needed to do this work is to be with someone who's done *enough* of their own work to be able to sort out their stuff from your stuff. Which may be a tall order, and might take some work. Like, you might have to say to the person, "Wait, I think that's *your* stuff, not mine." I've had to do that with therapists, and it's exhausting, becuase it interferes with my process, and it also pisses me off to be teaching them how to do their job when I'm paying them outrageous sums of money.
But, say you find someone who's pretty savvy, and who's open to learning and doing a kind of back-and-forth thing (that would be so cool, I'd *love* to find someone to do this work with in real life!)
Say you find that person. What I think is that the *only* way to finish the unfinished childhood business is for the other person to essentially agree to do their best to be your 'parent', temporarily, for the course of the session. People always say, "nobody can do that, you can't go back, once the damage is done you're screwed."
But I disagree. *I'm* willing to try it, *I'm* willing to do my best to fill that role for somebody, so I'm guessing there are others out there too who'd be willing to experiment. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? So it doesn't work. Well, yeah, that can be frustrating and you could get re-traumatized. But you sound self-aware enough to be creating your own path in the first place, so I'd trust your own instincts about what's helping you and what's not.
while having his therapy come to a screeching, painful halt in a stressful, unpleasant environment full of 'triggers' and antagonism. I've been there, and that piled up some new injuries on top of my older ones.
Ugh - been there, done that. I'm just glad I have *enough* of an emotional support system to survive it intact, and have done enough of my own self-therapy to trust my instincts as to when to give an ineffective or destructive therapist the boot.
Oh, and one more thing: since trauma is a result of interactions between people, it seems appropriate to me that healing should also be based on interaction.
I TOTALLY and absolutely agree with this!!! I've been saying this myself for years now, and keep looking for others who agree. Looks like I've found one, yay!
I guess I probably didn't offer any useful advice, but I hope you at least feel that there's someone out here on a similar path that's cheering you on, and hoping you find what you need.