Just sharing an interesting somatic release that I am not familiar with. No response needed, but I want to share this with people who would understand.
Recently my therapist and I have identified suppressed anger. And I’ve been trying to get myself to feel anger on some level, but my body has been shutting down so quickly I haven’t been able to get to it.
Today my wife asked me to - well, she said, “I’m going for a walk, and you are welcome to join me”, which my body codes as “if I say no, it will upset her”.
So my reply was, “I think I need to eat,” this passive aggressive, indirect “no”. I didn’t say yes or no to going for a walk, just that I had another thing to do.
I honestly couldn’t tell you if I wanted to walk or not. But my body was definitely feeling resistant. I notice this happens with other things too. If I have to pay a bill, or take a shower. It’s like my body perceives some loss of autonomy and like a stubborn child, refuses.
During a thought experiment I recognized the signs of dissociation and shutdown. My head felt flu-like, fuzzy and clouded. My chest was heavy.
But when I told myself that I was allowed to catastrophically fail, suddenly it was like pins a needles. Like when you lay on an arm funny and your hand goes to sleep. Then the blood rushes back in and it feels tingly.
I felt light. Dizzy. A relief. My chest felt like it was opening up. I almost felt like crying, the emotions were swelling up in me.
As a little kid I learned to hide so much. And this is such a strange feeling. Swinging from freeze to release. I’ve come close a few times. Mostly when there is a message about not having to fight anymore. Like things were actually messed up.
But this was the first time I was able to do this on my own with such a big response.
I want to hold on to it. My body feels strange. Tingling, electric, a slight something; like when you stretch a sore muscle.
Saying the word “No” gave me a head rush too. Not to anyone specific, just out loud to myself. Apparently this is a what repressed autonomy does. How it feels to finally access autonomy after holding back for so long.
The swimming, swirling feeling is that release. A tension didn’t even realize was there.
This feels a little like a breakthrough. I could never find a good explanation to why I understood therapy concepts, but could not make them a reality. Intellectually I grasped the concepts, but my body resisted. And this resistance is this fear or autonomy.
Now that I’ve cracked this door, maybe I can make sense of things. Finally.