Ch 11 - THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF PROCESSING OUT THE WORDS OF DEATH, & OTHER COMMON EXPERIENCES OF CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER 11:

THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF PROCESSING OUT THE WORDS OF DEATH,
& OTHER COMMON EXPERIENCES OF CHILDHOOD


This death issue may seem to you, the reader, or to a regular psychologist, as farfetched or simplistic. Some people might consider it only a metaphor. Even those who intellectually believe it can be true might believe the pattern that connects our usual 'psychological issues' to a real death threat is fairly involved. Correctly or incorrectly, they may feel that a lot of work on the issue might need to happen first. After all, our conscious minds think death issues can be very heavy. Even with Reichian and Bioenergetic release therapies, someone might want to process out different kinds of interpersonal relationship and achievement scenarios first. Rejection, abandonment, control and manipulation are the common ones.

With the Netherton work combined with the Structural Integration Bodywork, most of this effort is unnecessary for many people, even those who have been abused or raped. The Bodywork immediately releases months and even years of tension and trauma in just a few hours, which can all be performed in a few sessions. This removes a lot of adult, teen and late childhood restriction. And the emotional contents of those years also get released at the same time. Most of that emotional energy just falls away. What's left can be easily processed with the Netherton techniques, including any traumatic events. There is no need to go over and over the same material. Whatever comes out is gone.

This unique Bodywork also has a personal growth effect. As it realigns the person and clears out the tension, it simultaneously makes them more relaxed and stable, and more capable of handling difficult issues whether they come from outside or inside.

It's also unnecessary to rehash all the issues of a person's life before getting to 'the big one' about death. The unconscious mind doesn't work that way. The reason the fears are still with us is because that ultimate scare of annihilation is still stuck inside. This scare isn't conscious. Its just part of the statements that come out during the release, no matter what the issue.

Contrary to what some people might expect, the words about death regularly come out in the very first session, along with all the rest of the stuff, without much travail. Maybe it's because of the way I work with people, but I've never had any client freak out from releasing death statements that are part of old experiences, or even recent experiences, still stuck to them. No matter what the issue, releasing the threats and physical contractions makes people feel much better even though the Netherton processing itself may be uncomfortable just because unpleasant feelings are coming to consciousness. But as soon as the words embedded in these feelings are spoken, the unpleasant sensations are gone, and for good. The Bodywork, the way I do it, is usually very enjoyable, and is rarely painful like some people's deep massage.

When adults work on long term child abuse, or indeed with dependency or another neuroses, it is, indeed, a multi-faceted process. And it may take a while for many people to become stable enough to do this kind of verbal release work. This is why I strongly favor breath concentration meditation in the lower abdomen. It strengthens people's cores and they identify much less with their emotional 'stuff.' It takes nothing more than a willingness to let someone touch them to do the Bodywork.

However, in spite of the cautions that may be needed, releasing the upsetting words inside themselves makes everyone I've ever worked with feel better.

Even when processing abusive experiences, people always feel better after releasing the words than if they hold them in or push them down, and pull away with their adult minds. I've even had this happen with a young adult who took an hour and a half to release a week's worth of fear, anger and physical pain from a shooting. He was psychologically much much better.

Even 'establishment' psycho-therapists are now using processes to help rape victims release the trauma of their experiences. And they, too, have found that when the woman releases her fears about getting killed during the rape, she feels much, much better and can function normally again. If those therapists also made use of the Bodywork, they wouldn't have to have the women go over and over their memories of the trauma. If they recognized what I've been saying in this book, they wouldn't be making the mistake of having the woman in their office identify with the memories from an experience that happened months or years ago. It is not denial to label those old energies as something separate from the person's current identity. It is the truth, and by looking at those unpleasant experiences as something to observe as we feel them, they come out without running us and scaring us.

To give frightened people confidence in the Netherton process, they can work on the scariest episodes in layers, starting with an observational overview of the entire experience before they start identifying with and feeling the unpleasant events. They'll get to see the whole thing first and know they came through it to this day. This is similar to how these rape therapists are working but, again, in this system the view about the material is different so the client can look at even the most upsetting parts of the experience with objectivity. This ability is greatly facilitated by the Bodywork. Besides all it's other accomplishments, the release of the connective tissue and muscles removes the blocks to remembering. And that does not turn out to be terrifying, especially when a knowledgeable Netherton therapist is available to call on the phone.

By getting a good overview of each episode that's been affecting them, there won't be any unknown endings for the adult as there often were for the child. Abused people never know when it will happen again nor how long it will last. When a person starts processing out their old incompleted experiences, they also don't know what's going to come up. For some kids, death might have been a real possibility.
This past experience is a major driving force behind parts of these people's behaviors. If you don't know when the next bad episode is coming up, you might always be on your guard. You might be suspicious, or prejudiced about certain kinds of circumstances. If the episodes are forcefully depressing and you have no idea when they're going to end, you can be thrown into depressions when any other negative experience happens and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. If the episodes are frightening, you can carry this fear forward with you all of the time.

It only takes an hour or two to get a complete overview of even a very involved experience, and maybe four to six hours to process it all out. A lot of experiences get fully cleared in only one two hour session.

In early childhood dramas, and especially in infancy, I have found the issue of death to pop out in many scenarios, even when the issue wasn't one of general abuse. A most common situation is of an angry and frustrated parent whose rage embodies wanting to kill the kid, and those words became imbedded in the child through a spanking, a slap to the face, or a lot of shaking.

Usually, these words were never spoken, but the unprocessed energies from the non-verbal statements of the parent, are now deep down inside our adult and contain what that part of the parent felt like. Other parts of the parent usually feel and think other things, with one part usually feeling guilty at having done this. But during the threatening parts of the event, the child is also psychologically traumatized and is always tensing its muscles in protection. Sometimes the infant is screaming louder and louder while actual verbal threats of further punishment are said by the parent. It was the physical tensing and strong touch by the parent that locked in the energies.

Another common statement is, "I wish you had never been born." This is also a kind of death threat and is always tied to a rejection issue. It sometimes creates a problem of doing good things for yourself. As with other statements that are forced into us, we take this one as our own, too. "I wish I'd never been born," is something people say when they experience either themselves or some circumstance as a failure. This is also what they might have said as children and throughout their lives.

Besides the fact that their minds can turn the 'you' into the 'I,' they have a built in scenario from more of Mother's original words. "I wish I'd never been born" can be something a mother says when she's overwhelmed with an infant and family to take care of, and especially if she feels guilty and overwhelmed about what just happened with her and her baby.

The energy imprint the child gets is a combination of both Mother's scolding and the emotional experience Mother is having inside herself. I've found this 'identity' to be true in absolutely every single episode. I believe both sides should be 'de-charged;' the hopeless energy and the angry energy of Mother, and the fear and possible depressed energy of the child. All the words will come out in the same session, with my clients switching back and forth between the different characters, depending on whose energy is currently strongest in consciousness.

A similar pattern is created in people who feel they are 'stupid,' but are actually smart. Their self-esteem does not match their talents. They were told they were stupid, more than once, and the energies got imbedded. It is a sandwich. The inner layer is the person's good self esteem and talent. This is covered by the physical tension, which embodies the fear and confusion of the episodes. And the confusion often results from slaps to the head. This layer also physically holds in the good self esteem and talent. The outer layer is mother's voice saying, "you're stupid," and that is all the person has been thinking of himself because the deeper information has been locked in physically. This is a major reason the Bodywork helps so much with Netherton processing; it releases this material so we can clear it. This kind of sandwiching is typical for every kind of problem.

So the fear of death always seems to be the underlying issue. It is the one thing that our minds take to be a real threat to our survival. To repeat what I said above, it even seems to pop out in the first session for many people. With the addition of the Structural Integration Bodywork, and even without it, I have not had any adults have problems with uttering this statement. In fact, a complete processing seems to remove a heavy burden. It is the lack of processing this deeper death material, if it is in the episode that leaves people dissatisfied.