The process of deepening and Tools to deepen
Carl Jung: What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.
How do we deepen in a session?
What does deepening mean in a process?
In a session we roughly distinguish between content and process.
The content is the story, which the client is presenting.
The process is everything else, which is happening simultaneously, such as body movements, feelings and sensations.
The process also includes the relational field and everything that happens in the space around us.
There is a primary process and a secondary process happening.
The primary process is what is happening on the conscious level.
The secondary process is what is happening outside of the client’s awareness.
A movement or an unfolding can be eitherhorizontal or vertical.
A horizontal process keeps the session more or less at the same level of depth. This happens a lot when we mistake intensity with depth.
A horizontal process can appear quite deep and emotional, however we come out without a new awareness or insight. It is more like a recycling of the same old.
A vertical process ismeant to support the client in attending to previously unattended material, which exists outside of the client’s awareness.
We have to understand that we organize our experience in a patterned way, which is never fresh and new.Our patterns are built on unconscious implicit memories that are loaded emotionally and stored in the limbic brain. They are linked to our core beliefs about reality.
These unconscious implicit memories play an active role in shaping our perception, our affect and our behavior in the interest of our survival and fulfillment.
Given our limited capacity to be aware of our experience in the present moment, most of what we know is known unconsciously. What is unconscious has a far greater capacity to motivate our behavior than what we consciously know, want or desire.
This is why it is so difficult to stick to exercise, diet or to step out of destructive thinking patterns.
The purpose of deepening is to access the unconscious, organizing principles that shape our perception and behavior.This is where we need other people. Deepening together with a practitioner gives us the freedom to step beyond our habitual maps and to look through different glasses.
As facilitators we have to become aware of what the client is not seeing.
When we are looking through the client’s glasses and seeing like the client sees, then we are merging.
How do we become aware of what our client is NOT seeing?
We need to stay grounded in our presence, which is rooted in our quality of mindfulness, embodiment and attunement with our client.
We need to slow down, sit back and surrender into not knowing.
By slowing down we become aware of body gestures or expressions, whichareincongruent with what the client is saying.
It can be the tone of voice, the position and movements of hands and feet, breathing patterns, hand gestures, speech rhythm, tics, repetitive words, anything that does not fit with what the client is saying.These moments are often fleeting and dreamlike. When we don’t see them we are lost in the trance of the client’s story or else in the trance of our own countertransference.
We step back and also become aware of our own sensations, imaginations and reveries in our interaction with our clients and let them inform us (our counter-transference).
We become aware of the client’s body postures and our own body responses(ex. Are we both leaning forward?).
The Process of Deepening
We can roughly distinguish between for steps that are naturally occurring in a vertical process, and we can attend to the client’s process accordingly. These steps do not necessarily happen in a linear way, we may shift back and forth between them during a session. They happen organically, when we are present. But it is useful to know where we are.
Entering the River (the process)
The first step is to help the client shift from content to process, which means from the story to the movement.
After listening to the client for a while and getting a sense of where they are it is useful to offer aprocess observation.
We bring awareness to something that seems habitual and outside of the client’s awareness, such as “I see you lift your shoulders when you say…….”
Now we can be curious together what has you lift your shoulders.
There are two kinds ofprocess observations, which have each a different function:
An observation, which is congruent with the client’s story can be useful to confirm something that the client is becoming aware of. It supports what is already there and helps the client integrate. (Ex. You seem to be taking in the support now)
An observation, which is out of the client’s box ignites curiosity and a desire for inquiry and is therefore is a disturbing force. These are all the observations that are not congruent with the client’s speech.
We can also shift from content to process with a question leading into the experience in the body.
(What are you experiencing in your body when you tell me about your issue with your boss?)
Once we have shifted from content to process, it is important to stay with the process and help the client deepen. Sometimes it is most useful to wait and let the client drop deeper by himself. If that is not happening, it is useful to inquire into the nature of the experience in the body. This can give the client a direction to keep the inquiry alive.
(What do you become aware of when you inquire into the pressure in your chest? Any thoughts, feelings, memories, etc?,)
Or you can inquire into the nature of the sensationTell me more about the pressure? What is the experience like?
This is a very powerful way of deepening, which we use in homeopathy. We keep inquiring into whatever the client comes up with, until “another song, another story” surfaces through the gestural body and then let the client describe the nature of the gesture, until the core issue is revealed.
Accessing questions are questions that cannot be answered without immersing ourselves in the experience of the present moment.
These questions require the client to inquire more deeply into her felt experience in the moment.
Being mindful at the developmental edge
Shifting from content to process will lead us to the client’s developmental edge.
At the edge, mindfulness is very important.
Mindfulness helps the client be with their experience fully without being swept away by the content of their experience.
When we reach an edge, clients have a tendency to abandon mindfulness, because something got triggered, perhaps they got anxious or distracted. Then the client will feel more comfortable starting to make sense of what she has been experiencing instead of staying with the unfolding.Here we have to be directive and help the client stay with the experience.
Immersion into the experience
We give space for the client to feel and embody the richness of what is experienced, its sensations, movements, flavors, details, insights, including the emotional expression.
When we are immersed in an experience, the link between the current experience and other related experiences from the past starts to be activated.
As we stay with the experience long enough and mindfully enough, related events will start to surface.
In this way, related experiences can unfold piece by piece until the whole system is revealed. We start to see the river and we start to understand the client’s inner world.
Throughout the process, we trust the client’s inner wisdom. We don’t rush, don’t force. The unfolding is never on our terms.There needs to be plenty of time and space.
We trust that by helping the client stay mindful and immersed in one aspect of her being, she will gradually reveal her entire inner world.
Once the client is in contact with the core organizing experience and belief, she will naturally search for new and more adaptive ways of operating, which will slowly replace the old.
This is where the healing edge is, where we need to acknowledge both the old believes and the new awareness and let them co-exist for a while.
It is helpful to hang out at the healing edge with a client, because our brain shapes with new experiences. We don’t change suddenly, we change slowly by firing in new ways.
This is where we can offer affirming process observations to support what is already happening.
This is also where we support sequencing. Energy starts to flow in new ways when a new possibility arises. Touch can be helpful here to support a client complete her sequencing in a new way.
Body-Mind Integration
We shift back and forth between the immersion into the experience and the meaning emerging from that experience.
We support the client in making sense of the experience within the context of her life.
(How is what you have been experiencing relevant to the stuckness you may be feeling in some aspects of your life?)
Body-mind integration is essential because it helps the client find new insight into his current condition and new and more flexible and adaptive strategies.
Through this process the client’s internal experience becomes more coherent and self-informing, which further helps integration.
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