Body and emotions
What can the body tell us about tension and overload?
"The body remembers everything." That sentence has had an enormous career on the internet. It is evocative. It sounds profound. It is easy to remember.
The trouble starts when we begin treating a metaphor as a diagnosis. Your neck hurts? Emotions. Gut problems? Stress. A migraine? Unexpressed anger.
No. The body is far more complicated than that.
Not every symptom has a psychological history
Pain, disturbed sleep, fatigue, changes in appetite and other physical symptoms can have very different causes. That is why working with emotions does not replace assessment or treatment.
If something is happening in your body - especially if a symptom is new, intense, persistent or getting worse - the appropriate step is also a consultation with a medical professional.
That does not rule out asking about emotions. We simply do not substitute one for the other.
So what does "working with the body" mean?
For me it means, above all, noticing the reaction.
Imagine a situation: someone asks you a question. Before you have time to answer, your shoulders tighten. Or you see a message from a particular person and immediately feel a weight in your stomach. Or in theory you have a free evening, but your body stays as tense as if the working day were still going on.
These are pieces of information. Not ready-made diagnoses. Information.
The body often reacts before words
You can say: "Nothing happened." And at the same time notice that for five minutes you have barely been breathing freely. You can believe: "I am not angry." But clench your jaw. You can say: "Of course I will help," and feel an immediate wave of tension.
That does not mean the body "knows the truth" while the mind lies. It means we have more than one source of information about our own experience. And sometimes it is worth listening to all of them.
What do I do with this during hypnosis?
I do not ask: "What trauma is sitting in your neck?" A question like that already suggests the answer.
What I can ask is: "What do you notice?" "What happens to that tension when you think about the situation?" "If you were to describe the sensation without analysing it - what is it like?"
Sometimes an emotion appears. Sometimes an association. Sometimes a memory. Sometimes nothing in particular. And each of those answers is fine.
Not everything has to be "released" at once
That is another word we like in the world of personal development. Release the stress. Release the emotions. Release the trauma.
And sometimes the first step is not releasing anything. It is noticing: "Oh, this is what I do when I am afraid," or: "I had never noticed before that I tense my whole body when someone is displeased with me."
That may seem small. But it is hard to change a reaction you do not even notice.
So instead of saying that "the body remembers everything", I would put it more carefully: the body can be one of the places where we notice that something is happening in us right now. And that is a place to start.
If you want to look at your reactions more closely, let us start with an intake call. Book an intake call - 30 minutes, online, free of charge.