by Halko Weiss
In conveying the instructions for the mindful experiment, the therapist is careful to model the state being requested by softening his own voice, slowing down his words, and embodying an open, curious, experimental attitude in his inflections.
C: [Opens eyes.] I really don’t know about this whole direction. I mean, come on, I work with people as a coach. I’m all about needs and support. I’m a professional supporter. Good thing I don’t work with athletes—they’d call me an “athletic supporter” [laughs]. [The client comes out of mindfulness, which effectively stops the experiment. Entering into a mindful state of consciousness is entering into a mysterious place of receptiveness and not knowing, and this can be a strange and discomforting experience at first for those accustomed to knowing and being in control. Anxieties or defenses against such a move are predicable.]
T: Quick humor you have there, Mike. So you recognize that on one level you really do respect the whole idea of needing support and having needs. You’re actually around these kinds of processes often in your life. Tell me more about how you coach. [The therapist intuits that Mike is not really safe or ready enough to release into deeply watching himself. Since the client has come out of mindfulness to regrasp his normal thinking and humor, the therapist decides not to call attention to the underlying fear, but to support the return to contact and relationship where the client is more comfortable, offering him the invitation to talk about his coaching in ordinary consciousness.]
C: [Relaxing a bit more and becoming animated, Mike enters into a dialogue for a few minutes about his work life and its importance, challenges, and impacts on the rest of his life. Here the therapist decides that it is important to develop a stronger and more connected relationship with the client before entering into the potentially powerful world of mindfully exploring his needs for support. He allows the client to be in the safety of his everyday strength, talking about what he knows well.]
T: So I’m understanding more of how you operate in your life, Mike. You’re actually pretty good at picking up the needs of people around you, especially those who are close to you, and you get a lot out of helping out and helping people get what they want. It keeps striking me as we talk that most of what gets you engaged is helping others out. Makes me wonder whether you’re “in the club” too. [After talking for a bit in a way that both affirms and normalizes the client’s life, the therapist risks contacting the underlying theme again, this time in terms of being “in the club.”]
C: What club is that?
T: The “my needs are important” or “let’s all help each other” club. I get it that you’re good with supporting those around you, but I’m guessing you don’t spend that much time getting help or support from them[?] [The therapist once again gently returns to the underlying theme. He is not pushing an interpretation, but hoping to get enough collaborative agreement on the issue that there is a license to move toward mindfully exploring it.]
C: Hmm, you know, I just don’t really feel like I need that much. It just doesn’t really come up—you’re saying something’s up with that, aren’t you? Like that old Groucho Marx line, “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.” [Here the client names his every day emotional truth that he is not aware of needing much.]
T: That line pops up, huh—stay with it a little, and when you’re ready, tell me more.
“Stay with it a little” is an accessing directive that encourages the client to maintain mindful attention to this piece of his experience, and not automatically skip to the next thought as is normal in ordinary consciousness. Likewise, “when you’re ready” is a phrase that implies there is more luxurious, slower, exploratory, spacious time available here than is the case in everyday conversation.
C: It’s weird—that line keeps pinging around in my head. [The client is able to witness his internal experience and name it as “pinging” even as other parts of him experience the strangeness of the process.]
T: Tell you what—let’s do a little experiment to make it easier for you to deal with the pinging. Close your eyes and just watch. I’ll say that statement back to you and you just notice anything that happens in you. [The therapist understands that the pinging phrase has spontaneously emerged. Though it could be considered a defensive or protective emergence, the therapist considers it an organic expression of how the client is organized, something with wisdom that can and should be supported.]
C: Okay. [The client expresses a calmer readiness to experiment.]
T: [Pause] . . . “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.” [He repeats it again, and then a third time in brief succession. This is a classic Hakomi taking-over experiment where the therapist does for the person what he is already doing for himself (repeating phrases in the head), with the assumption that supporting, as opposed to confronting, defenses provides the safety that enables the client’s consciousness to go to a deeper level.]
C: It’s funny, I get a little uncomfortable—and then I remember that duck that used to come down during that old Groucho Marx show. What was the name of that show? [The process deepens into a sense of uncomfortableness that has promise, and the more mysterious duck association is evoked.]
T: Yeah, I remember that show—don’t remember the name though. Kind of two things come up for you, this slight discomfort and then the idea of the TV show. Can you still feel this uncomfortableness? [The therapist contacts both elements of the client’s experience, but decides to go with the uncomfortable sense. While it is an artificial, though informed, decision, the therapist also knows if it is somehow off that he will be able to track signs of that, contact it, and the process will self-correct.]
C: If I focus on it I do. [The “if” indicates a measure of the client’s ongoing ambivalence about staying with internal experience.]
T: Just stay with it. [The therapist judges that the ambivalence is not so strong that it needs specific attention and uses another accessing directive for the client to stay with the uncomfortableness. Again, he assumes that if something important is being overridden, it will show up in a way that can be tracked, contacted, and included as necessary.]
C: [Seems to move a little deeper. Therapist tracks nonverbal clues related to mindful state of consciousness.]
T: That’s it. Keep turning toward it. [Contacting the client’s progress in turning awareness inward toward felt present experience. The accessing directive to stay with the process is more necessary now with a new client than it might be later.]
C: I don’t know what it relates to. It’s just this little anxiousness.
T: Don’t worry about the meaning right now. Just keep sensing your experience. [The therapist again assists the client to understand that mindfulness involves suspending analyses in favor of bare attention to present-moment experience.]
C: [Gets more deeply quiet. Therapist continues to track bodily signs of mindful state.]
T: Does it have a quality of familiarity? [Here the therapist begins to work the mind-body interface. Now that he judges the client has an embodied felt sense of the issue, he moves the process toward meaning by inquiring about familiarity, which might connect with past memories.]
C: Yes, it is familiar. Now I get that I felt the same sensation earlier, when you said that other statement to me. So what are we talking about here? Do you think—uh? [Client mindfully accesses the connection to previous probe, and immediately pops into ordinary consciousness.]
T: Don’t work hard to figure it out or make sense of it. We’ll just experiment while you stay in touch with that vague sense, and see what it connects to. [The therapist continues to manage consciousness by supporting the client to stay with present experience.]
C: [Nods. The client is increasingly trusting the therapist and process.]
T: Just be quietly watching again, both that sense . . . and for anything else that occurs by itself. . . . You can let my voice be anybody’s voice. Notice what happens when you hear a voice that says, [pause]
“I’ll support you—it’s your turn.” [He returns to the earlier experiment of the verbal probe. Often clients get additional information when a probe is repeated after further calming, receptiveness, and processing of their initial reactions.]
C: HAH—that’s bull! [The client reacts strongly through fusing or blending with the part, as opposed to witnessing it and reporting on it while being present to it.]
T: Strong response[!?] How does that happen for you? Is it a voice in your head, or a sensation that tells you it’s bull, or a feeling? . . .
The therapist asks the client to deepen mindfulness through noticing how this reaction happens. The result sought is not acting out the response or talking about the response as a past event, but being present to it and commenting on it without losing the experiential connection.
The accessing questions all have a right-brain form, in that they require the client to reference his experience to check whether it is congruent with the suggestion or not. Thus, the answers to the questions are not as important as their function to keep the client in present-moment awareness longer, which allows the process to deepen. The question list keeps the exploratory field open to many forms of experiencing, as opposed to narrowing the options by asking, “How does it feel?” By ending the list with an implied open-ended “or whatever . . .” the therapist communicates that what is important is the client’s own curiosity and discovery.
C: I don’t know—what—ask me again. . . . [Spontaneously emergent affect often pushes clients beyond curiosity to being startled, or evokes the issue of allowing out-of-control material to arise.]
T: Don’t worry about answering it. Just go back in, and I’ll say the same thing again, and you just watch your response again. Notice what happens this time . . . letting any response be okay . . . when you hear: [pause] “I’ll support you—it’s your turn.” [The therapist guides the client back to present experience. The calmness of the therapist communicates trust in the process, that everything that arises has organic wisdom and has a place, and that, again, there is someone present to help. The client does not have to do it all by himself. The therapist is also continuously coming back to one of the most important aspects of mindfulness, namely slowing down.]
C: I hear it in my head—“bull!” . . . and my chest gets tight right in the center. [Here the client offers a truly mindful account that comes from being present to his experience, witnessing it, and reporting on it while maintaining the connection.]
T: You can sense how some place inside you doesn’t believe the support at all, huh? [The therapist contacts the barrier to support with the implied suggestion that this could be the next focus in this ongoing curious exploration that is deepening toward core material.]
C: Yeah, man, that’s strange, and surprising. Uh, can I open my eyes for a minute? [The client seems to struggle with the strength of his internal response.]
T: Yes, you can open your eyes. We can take some time and talk about how this all happens inside you. [The therapist tracks the struggle. A theoretical possibility here would be to invite mindfulness of what is “strange and surprising.” However, the therapist senses that it is best to flow nonviolently with the client’s need to open his eyes.]
We talk for a while about automatic behavior (indicators) and how they can relate to information and experience that is below the level of ordinary consciousness; how unconscious beliefs can be different, and sometimes even the opposite of conscious ideas and attitudes; and how sensing these usually unconscious automatic indicators and related information can be surprising and disorienting, best when related to in a space of open and gentle curiosity.
We then connect back to Mike’s earlier developmental life, how his parents were basically loving and caring people but were both very busy and somewhat clueless about how to handle and support the high level of sensitivity that Mike was born with in his nervous system. We bridged this to how a child could easily develop the underlying sense of the world as unsupportive and lose confidence and belief in the world literally being there for him.
Mike began talking about the kind of strong self-reliance that he seemed to have and how he was both proud of it and felt constrained by it.
T: So, I’m wondering if you’re okay with getting mindful again and checking with how you’re responding inside to all the ideas we’re generating together here. [The therapist tracks and senses that the integrative conversation in ordinary consciousness has now calmed down the client enough that he is ready again to return to present-moment experience. The therapist asks the client to study how he has organized around the integrative conversation that just occurred.]
C: I’m feeling a little excited and something—I don’t know—maybe scared. This is coming together in a whole new way. I feel a little hot. [The client is able to notice and name the spectrum of what he is experiencing.]
T: Take your time. Just get used to being inside and sensing all of this. Don’t so much worry about figuring it out or remembering it. Just stay present and have it, like getting used to anything new and unfamiliar. When you can, you can bring me along. [The therapist helps orient the client toward simply staying with present experience. Again, the therapist is modeling the calmness and trust that he is hoping to evoke in the client, thus helping modulate or regulate the client’s affect and activation levels. In addition to slowing things down, the therapist asks to be brought along in the process when the client is able, thus allowing the client a new choice of not working alone.]
C: [Client is focused in a quiet way for a couple of minutes, then begins to talk in a slow reflective voice.] It’s like a kind of clashing inside me—I can actually see how it fits that I’m good with other peoples’ stuff, and don’t ask for much back . . . or even think about it really . . . but when I think about that as not being okay with having needs, my head tells me that’s nuts. . . . I don’t know how to connect the dots.
T: I see that you work hard on trying to connect the dots of what’s true here. It might be easier if we explore around for some more dots, and see if they start forming their own picture. [The therapist keeps it an interpersonal, collaborative, therapeutic bubble, while gently moving the client back toward intrapsychic contact with inner experience. The parallel process is maintained. The therapist continues to teach aspects of mindfulness by suggesting that it is not so much a matter of consciously imposing analytic order from above as allowing sometimes precognitive material to emerge effortlessly from below ordinary consciousness. This guidance is only possible because the therapist holds the client in the loving presence of unconditional regard that does not make the client wrong in any way for attempting to figure his experience out.]
T: Yeah, that’s it. . . . Just settle into yourself, instead of trying to figure out what’s true. . . . Let’s go back to that same experiment, and explore some more of what happens in your experience. [The therapist continues to track present-moment experience in the client and contacts what he tracks. This provides a ball bearing that allows the work to progress. Though he is constantly following the client’s experience and lead, he also takes charge through proposing experiments and offering directives.]
C: Okay. [The client continues to learn how to rest into trusting the process and implicit support.]
T: So, again, just keep your awareness turned back toward you. Find a place where you can just watch your experience, where any experience is okay, and notice what happens on its own when you hear a voice that says, [pause] “I’ll support you—it’s your turn.” [The therapist maintains focus on the main accessing route that they have been working through repeating the experiment with the verbal probe. It can be tempting for more beginning-level therapists to switch to other experiments when the first attempts don’t yield dramatic results.]
C: [Staying inside.] The same thing happens, a little softer but definitely there—the center of my chest tightens, and I hear this one word, “bull.” [The client gains increasing facility with studying how he organizes his e
xperience in relation to a particular input.]
T: Stay with it. Notice how the rest of you participates. [The therapist uses another accessing directive that helps broaden the focus to include a larger Gestalt. It is normally the case that an issue brings forth a particular holographic piece of the whole; a sensation, tension, gesture, posture, movement, feeling, attitude, dream, image, symbol, memory, or way of relating. When mindful attention is brought to this aspect of experience, it inevitably draws other threads to itself, which might or might not seem to cohere at the time but eventually reveal the entire creative fabric. Here the therapist makes a judgment that there is sufficient mindfulness of the threads (or dots) so far that it is possible to facilitate the process by asking how the rest of the client participates.]
C: The word faded. My chest relaxed a little but not all the way back, like it was still on guard.
T: I notice you’re talking in the past tense. Are there parts of your response that stay or that you can still sense? [The therapist helps facilitate a fuller present-tense focus. A client can easily resort to reporting on past history, even if that history is just seconds previous.]
C: The “on guard” sensation is still here, and I feel something like mad or sad or something.
T: Don’t push for anything. Just keep staying with the on-guard sense and the feeling sense. [The therapist helps support the client in staying present to a degree of “not knowing” and promotes nonviolence through cautioning against forcing or pushing for any particular result.] Is it okay to keep exploring this? [The therapist checks out the level of safety present.]
C: [Nods. Even if he feels safe to continue, the client has also received a message that the therapist is concerned for his safety and is ready to honor any hesitation. This helps build safety for the coming stages of the work.]