In the previous post the balloon on the nails naturally makes you think of the next step, the popping.
One client projected out the image of a goblin with a metal mask or more precisely a metal covering on his head. The metal sheet is strange and when I asked the patient what is under it he told me that he picture the exposed brain and he was able to "introject" the exposed brain into his own brain and map it onto the sensations of his brain.
At the point when the image is fully embedded, I ask the if there body wants to do anything with it, or if their mind wants to take them to when this image came into them. Some people's bodies want to process the image but some people feel a mental connection with it.
Sometimes a whole fantasy is projected out. If this happens you ask them to tell a story that leads to an event. Often the event will be an infantile anxiety situation, but sometimes the fantasy leads to them correcting what is wrong with the parental imagos themselves. Regarding the former, here is an example:
I ask client to focus on all the people he
felt judged by and to see who registers the strongest for him. He stops the BLS
and tells me that his mother does and tells me that he feels tension in
his shoulders from when he focused on her.
I ask him to see if the
sensation there wants to develop (i.e. grow bigger, move somewhere, becoming a
feeling, etc.) and he says that it doesn't. I ask him to project it out (i.e.
if someone or something looks on the outside like this feels inside your
shoulders, what do you picture?). He tells me that he sees a rope bridge. He
elaborates that he pictures himself standing on it and that there are wooden
boards going across ropes on the bottom and ropes running higher to hold. He
also adds that some boards are missing. I ask him to make a story up. He's on
one side and wants to get to the other and there are some boards missing, so I
ask him to tell me what he imagines might happen. He first says, he makes it to
the other side and smiles as if he knows that he's getting away with something.
He then tells me that there's a "big gap" and he has to jump it. I
ask him if he imagines that he makes it or not and he seems coy about the
answer and so I ask him to tell me what would happen if he doesn't. He tells me
that "it's a long way down... and then splat". I
begin BLS and ask him if he focusses more on the fall or the
splat and he says the fall. He stops me and says the fall. He reports that his
shoulders get more tense and he begins to move them around in the chair. I tell
him that the tension relates to the fall and that constriction can often relate
to simple fight and flight impulses. I ask him to picture himself falling and
to get a sense for the tone of the movement. I begin BLS. He tells me that it's
flight and he feels like flailing his arms. I get him to imagine he's falling
and to flail and keep doing it until he feels like the energy is discharged.
Client reports that the
tension is diminished but that it's not all gone. I ask him to go in to the
fantasy again, and to again see what his body wants him to do and if there
might not be a different kind of action that might express the
"flight" better. I begin BLS and after client stops me, he reports
that he ended up in the fetal position. He reports that he also imagined
himself hitting the ground, and that it was with a "thud" instead of
a splat. I ask him if he survived it and he casually tells me that he died still.
I ask him to picture the intact corpse and to see if he can picture the
intactness of it and feel it into his shoulders and I begin BLS. He tells me
that it doesn't feel right to do so, but adds that he felt a pin prick of pain
flash in right under his shoulders and that he can feel the tension moving to
his chest. I ask him to focus on the development that wants to happen and
continue BLS. He tells me that the tension grew in his chest but that it just
stopped again. Because of the idiosyncrasy of the rope bridge and the
commonality of phallic and breast symbols that I usually encounter in my work,
I ask him to tell me what the first picture is that comes to mind when he
thinks of rope. He tells me that "big and thick... like in the
movies" comes to mind and adds that "the end is frayed." I ask
him to picture it in his chest and shoulders and see if it feels right in
either place. He tells me that it feels right in his chest and continues to
picture it there, as I continue BLS, and he lets it embed all the way. He
reports that the tension dissolved in his chest and that it moved to his right
bicep. I ask him to stay with it there and see if it wants to get bigger, move,
or has any process in it. He tells me that it stayed the same.
I ask client to return to the original memory
of his mother. He gets into it more now
and talks about how she "threw him away," turned her back on him, and
judged him. He expresses that you might expect your father to turn his back on
you but your mother is never supposed to. She is supposed to be there no matter
what. He focusses on the memory, but this time there is affect there. I ask him
to express it to her from the memory and that if he feels like the words are
not enough, that he needs to act on whatever his body tells him to do. I begin
BLS. When he stops me, he tells me that he expressed his anger, in words, and
that she got angry back at him and said that she was ashamed of him and that he
ended up walking away from her. I am not sure if this is growth, as similar
thoughts have been for others, or whether this is a failure to deal with his
maternal imago. I ask client to watch the scene replay again but to watch it
from the 3rd person ("as if it is in a movie") and to see if his body
has a reaction to it. Client reports he still feels the bicep pain. I ask him
what he thinks of his mother's reaction. He says that she never apologizes,
acts like she is perfect and never makes mistakes, thinks she's better than
other people. He tells me that it's as if "she denies being a drug addict
herself back in the day." I ask him if he ever told her these thoughts and
he says that he has tried but that she "just talks over me." I
explain to him that he has to get her to listen to him and really hear him. I
explain that when she turned her back on him that it hurt him so much that a
part of him became frozen and continues to feel like every other authority in
his life sees him as bad as she does. I tell him that he needs to tell her that
she has hurt him and is carrying this with him. I begin BLS and after a while
he reports that he explained this to her, took accountability for what he had
been doing, and that she admitted that she had been harsh, as a parent, and
that she hadn't been there for him and his siblings like she should have been.
He tells me that the scene ended in a hug. I ask him to focus on this hug and
see if his body has any reactions to it. He tells me that the tension in his
bicep is gone and that he can breathe easier. I continue the BLS and ask him if
there are any other shifts or developments that still need to complete. He
takes a bit of time but then tells me that he's good. I then ask him to focus
on the openness he now feels to tell me if he's ever felt this way before. He
tells me at the birth of his child. I ask him to visualize all the details he
can of the room, the doctor, etc. and to tell me when they have come into him
as much as they can and begin BLS. He laughs during the process but continues
and signals that he's done. I ask him what happened and he tells me that a man
from another hospital room stopped by and said that his little girl "has
lungs on her" (i.e. regarding her crying).
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