Stick with the Obvious

There are two groups of people who come to therapy. Those that want a quick fix, remove the symptom, change my behavior and done. And those that want to go deep, to figure out the causes, to go back to their childhoods... Interestingly enough, both groups often need the exact opposite of what they say they want. This is not going to be a text where I generalize about people who come to therapy, however. Ultimately, it’s my job as a therapist to help people as best as I can, not to philosophize about what I think they really need. 

There is nothing wrong with either, and the reason I started here is because I want to point to an interesting paradox: the depth the latter group seeks is often on the very surface. Vice versa, those that prefer to stay on the surface, can’t avoid depth because the axiom they start from „my symptom has no depth“ doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. In this article, I will deal with the former, not with the latter. This is a blog post about depth that is to be found on the surface. 

When we try to figure out what it all means, we have a tendency to immediately jump into fancy theories and painful memories. We try to unseal our unconscious mind and deceive our defense mechanisms to release what has been pushed under the rug. Alternatively, we will google newest studies that show how genetically predetermined all that is and how deep the roots of our issues are. Whatever direction we pursue, we end up ignoring the obvious, and there is so much in the obvious. 

The obvious is often all you need. The trick is to learn how to see it.

You feel butterflies in your stomach. They’re flying around because they’re upset. Maybe if you put your hand over them, comfort them like that, maybe that calms them down? 

There’s restlessness in your legs, they can’t keep still, they need to move. So, get up and move. Let them walk and see where they take you.

Perhaps you’re heartbroken. If your heart is broken, it hurts. When it hurts, it needs to heal. Without going down the rabbit hole of deep meaning, perhaps you can put your hand on your chest and gently rub, focusing on the heat skin-to-skin contact creates. It won’t do the work of healing, but it will ease some of the pain. 

Take a look at another example. My client describes how her panic attacks usually begin, by pointing to her chest. „I feel like there’s a lot of weight on my chest“, she says. „Something’s pressing me and I can’t get enough air.“

„You need to get something off your chest so you can breathe?“ I ask, following up on her remark.

„Yes“, she said. „I need to get something off my chest.“

I encourage her to do so right then and there. She pauses for a second and then says: „I’m not sure. Maybe that my boss is a sexist ass? That I feel overwhelmed because he gives me more work than anyone else, but I can’t say anything because he’ll somehow turn it around and blame me?“

And just like that, starting from the surface, the obvious, we come right to the point.

„You don’t like the way he talks to you?“ 

„No. He talks shit. It’s inappropriate. “

„He says inappropriate things? “

„Even worse – he implies them! I hate his passive aggression. “

Then I suggest that she pretends I’m her boss. She can tell me all hat to my face. And she does just that. It ends in tears and clarity: „I don’t want to do this job anymore. “ 

Those words echo in her mind and she stops. I ask about her chest, she says the weight is now gone. The weight is off her chest, but she’s not ready for that step just yet, she can’t quit her job,  so she changes the subject and talks about something else. 

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Our body is the ultimate medium for our unconscious mind. Its wide palette of symbols is a great tool to express anything that we can’t adequately put into words, sometimes because it’s very important not to, other times simply because language isn’t enough.

If you learn how to look carefully, you can easily decipher the language. The trick is to stay on the surface. It helps to describe the situation out loud. “I’m having a panic attack” is a useful description if you want to take a pill to stop it. If you want to decipher what your body is screaming at you, then focus on how are you having a panic attack, what are its symptoms? 

When you describe its symptoms, again stick to the obvious. For example, your breathing is shallow and fast. There’s already a grain of solution there – it needs to be slower and deeper. You have a headache, you feel like there’s a tight rope around your head. Maybe you need to loosen up the rope. What would that do? It would ease the pressure.

A lot of these symbols will be idiosyncratic and specific for you and your personal experiences, some of which may be puzzling and may warrant deeper research. Quite often, however, they’re biologically and culturally conditioned – pressure, squeezing, heart racing, not getting enough air, etc. That means that you already have tools to deal with them, you just need composure and focus to discern what is what. 

This is one of those techniques that are simple but not easy. It may be frustrating in the beginning. I’m talking about the obvious and you may quickly form an expectation to be able to recognize it. But it’s not going to be simple even if the principle is simple. It takes a while to unlearn all the layers of useless information that we read into what’s happening to us, but the sooner you start, the better. 

To be sure, I’m not against depth or insight or going back to your past. I do that daily with my client and I think it’s rewarding and beautiful in its own way. However, in terms of what you need right now, what’s urgent, it’s very often on the surface. Your body is telling you, you just need to hear it.