Case #20 - The frozen lid

Jane was provoked by the sharing in the group. She came up and was shaking. She did not want to talk about the content, which was fine. We just worked with the energy. I asked her to describe her experience. She talked about being frozen. I asked her for a metaphor to describe what she felt. She said, a frozen lid. I asked her to show me where in the body this was- lower stomach.

I asked her to speak as if she were the lid ‘I am a frozen lid’. She did this, and then talked about the way she sealed up the ‘edges’.

So I asked her to speak as the edges. ‘I am an edge’...and then she described other aspects of being an edge.

I asked her to put one hand on where the frozen lid was, and the other hand where the edge was (on her side). Then, to breathe into these places. This intensified her feelings. Her legs started shaking, so I encouraged this.

She felt a lot of sadness, she was crying. But she couldnt express anything.

So I asked her to wiggle her toes. She found this hard, and could only do it on one foot. Then, after a while, I supported her to be able to wiggle her toes on the other foot.

Then she started burping, many times. She said, this was familiar to her.

Burping in somatic terms is an excellent release, and the start of the movement towards expression.

Sure enough, she felt the upward direction of her energy, but there were not any words yet. So I encouraged the somatic release, and gradually, she was able to put some words to her feelings. I asked her to say them directly, as if the person who had hurt her was there.

This was the completion of a lot of pain she had silently carried for many years.

By asking her to express the feelings as a metaphor (lid, edge), we could then work directly with them. By asking her to own them, this focused her awareness, which previously had been diffuse and avoidance - naturally, no one wants to feel pain. 

By supporting her to stay with the energy and feelings in her body, we bypassed her thinking process completely, and allowed the natural unfolding to occur. If you stay with body process, this will always happen, because the body always wants to move towards healing.