We live in the dark ages when it comes to emotion. We have been taught to do things like suppress, deny, ignore, numb out to and bulldoze through our emotion. So, it isn’t a surprise that most people have no idea what is going on with themselves emotionally. Here is an exercise which will help with this.
Most people are far more aware of the physical than they are the emotional. And so, they are far more apt to register what is really happening when it is physical rather than emotional. I’ll give you an example: One dynamic that you will see in certain relationships is that person A will say or do something emotionally harmful to Person B. Person B has an intense reaction to this. Person A does not understand this intense reaction and therefore makes person B the problem for having the reaction. People on the outside also don’t get what is going on, so the person who is so obviously emotionally dysregulated, person B, is seen as the dysfunctional one. The one who needs psychological help. Well, let’s look at this dynamic through a physical lens. Person A hits Person B in the leg. Person B’s leg breaks. Person B has an intense reaction to this. Person A does not understand this intense reaction and therefore makes person B the problem for having the reaction. People on the outside also don’t get what is going on, so the person who is so obviously upset and dysregulated, person B is seen as the dysfunctional one. The one who needs psychological help. Now you and everyone can see how incredibly abusive this is.
We treat the emotional aspect of existence with an extreme level of disregard. This is a huge problem when it is the emotional layer that is the heart of our existence here on earth. Also, if physical things mattered most, no one who lost a relationship would stop eating and drinking and neglect their personal hygiene. No one who is physically well or who was wealthy would commit suicide. No person whose physical wellbeing was all covered for would obsessively go for more and more and more. And we do not understand that the emotional feeds into the physical. Every physical ailment has an emotional root. It is so important to be aware of what is going on at the emotional level. It’s not possible to properly respond to something that you are not even aware of. It is also not possible to properly respond when you don’t get what is really happening.
So, a trick you can use to really ‘get’ what is going on emotionally, is to physicalize the emotional. There are two ways you can do this:
- Move your body so that the physical reflects what is happening emotionally (i.e. is the same as what is happening emotionally).
- Think up a physical version or analogy of what is occurring emotionally.
To give you an idea of what it looks like to move your body so that the physical reflects what is happening emotionally, here are three examples:
Tom and Meg are in a relationship. They are not feeling very close and secure in their relationship at the moment. They are lying in bed together and Meg is upset. She is saying that he isn’t really there for her or with her and that she feels alone. Tom is getting frustrated. He tells her “Oh my god, I’m right here. We are in bed together. We are talking. How can you be alone when I’m right here?” In this case, what is happening physically is acting as a gaslight for what is happening emotionally. So, they decide to do this exercise of physicalizing what is going on emotionally. They both turn their attention inward to notice how they are feeling. And they then use their body to act it out. The goal being to make it so that what is happening physically most closely reflects what is happening emotionally. So, Tom immediately notices the drive to be doing something else, and to go away from other people, including Meg. He also notices that he feels exhausted. So, he walks to the other side of the room and lays down, facing the door and fiddles with the door stopper. Meg notices that she is feeling desperate and starved. So, when she really feels what it would look like for her body to mirror what is happening emotionally, she gets down on the floor too. She gets into a groveling, pleading, deep bow position and starts clawing at the carpet between her and Tom with alternat hand strokes, as if trying to pull him to her or herself to him. This is what is actually happening in their relationship. Very different than two people whose relationship is good and who are just lying in bed together after a long day. From this awareness of this reality, now Tom and Meg can actually address what is happening, both with themselves, and with their relationship with each other.
Next example: Jan is one of those guys who has a hard time with emotion. He has been taught his whole life to bulldoze through it. He has a stoic disposition. But he’s decided to develop himself in this area. As an exercise, he has decided to “physicalize” his emotions, so he has more awareness of what is going on. So, one day, after a fight with a coworker, he decides to do this. He isn’t very consciously aware of how to label what is going on with him yet. But he lets the feeling that is occurring in him take over his body, and he lets his body move to reflect it. When he does this, he realizes his body won’t move at all. He is completely frozen. So, he lets his whole body physicalize this and goes totally stiff and doesn’t move. He recognizes this as a freeze fear response. This helps him to realize that he is afraid. This shocks Jan. If you had talked to him fifteen minutes ago, he would have fully denied that he’s afraid and looked at you like you had a head injury if you’d asked him if he was. So, Jan stayed present in this frozen state until he started to feel the fear that was underneath the freeze seeping through.
At a certain point, it didn’t feel like the truth of what was happening was still that he is frozen solid. So, he let his body move to continue to reflect what was happening. And where his body ended up was face down, in a fetal position ball. And he kept seeing images of himself being whipped with a flail. This really helped Jan to see that conflict actually terrifies him. It activates the feeling that he is a small boy, unable to escape the wrath of his father’s anger. With this awareness, he was able to caretake this boy aspect of him. And also come into the awareness that he is now an adult and he is not in that situation anymore. And to see that his colleague’s anger is really a protection for fear. So, in their next interaction, Jan just cut to the chase and asked his co-worker to tell him what he was afraid would happen. When Jan responded to his co-worker’s fears, his coworker was immediately less emotionally charged. And this ability to de-escalate someone was very empowering to Jan.
Next example: Brecka learned that her best friend was coming to visit. When she hung up the phone, Brecka noticed herself thinking of all of the ways that this visit may not happen. She felt like a ball of energy inside. She walked calmly to the kitchen and started wiping down the counter. Brecka decided this discrepancy between what was going on externally vs. internally was kind of tormenting. She was very confused about what was going on with her. So, she decided to do this physicalizing exercise. When she did this, she started bouncing and hopping around like a kid who had just been told they were going to Disneyland. She also noticed that this made her feel very vulnerable. That there was a part of her in opposition to this. So, she decided to physicalize both. She allowed the other aspect of her, the one that was opposed to the excitement, to take over her body and when this happened and she let her body move accordingly, she ended up slumped over in a cross-legged position, propping her head up with her hand. A position that mirrored disappointment. Brecka became totally aware that she was SO excited (an emotion she doesn’t allow herself to admit she has). And at the same time, she is terrified of disappointment and has trauma around disappointment and beliefs that come from those experiences that need to be resolved.
Obviously, I have to say that if you are doing this exercise of physicalizing emotion, you don’t want to haul off and hit someone or start harming yourself in some way. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t all kinds of ways to act out those kinds of emotions in a way that doesn’t harm yourself or others. That is the creative part of this process.
One final note on this. Because we tend to not take emotional pain seriously, I have even had people use body art makeup and even images of physical things to physicalize the way they feel emotionally on their body. For example, I was working with a couple once and one of them felt like the other was just not seeing the reality of the state they were in. So, I gave him this option. He used body paint to make the representation of a huge gaping wound right over his heart. And printed out photos that represented how he feels emotionally. He printed out an image of a person who is emaciated in a concentration camp, a person dying in a hospital bed, again emaciated. And a starved wolf who was locked in a cage. Needless to say, this really woke both him and his partner up to not only the level of emotional pain he is in, but also to exactly what the pain is. The pain of feeling emotionally starved and like his heart is ripped out and also trapped in that deep state of lack.
Now, to give you an idea of what it looks like to think up a physical version or analogy of what is occurring emotionally, here are a couple of examples:
Jyoti is best friends with Ananya. They really like each other. And they get along awesomely when they are alone. But this thing happens where they go out in public where things just don’t feel the same. There is a kind of tension between them. And neither of them feels like the other is an ally. This confuses them both. Jyoti imagines what this feeling state between them, this emotional dynamic, would look like if it were really happening in an overt physical way. What she sees is the image of herself in a gym with Ananya. Both of them are dressed in the clothes that they think look best on them. Their hair is perfectly done and so is their makeup, as if they were going to the Oscars. And they are both obnoxiously trying to gain the attention of the men in the gym. As well as sabotaging each other. For example, she sees Ananya go over to stand right in front of a guy on a treadmill and do a butt emphasis workout. And she sees herself going over and pulling Ananya’s hair and kicking her over, making her look stupid and then flirting with the guy instead. And then she sees Ananya running over and yelling “You think you like her, but when she tried to get into Stanford, she was waitlisted.” This exercise helps Jyoti to see that what is happening is a two-sided competitive dynamic. It is as if they are grasping to be seen as the one that is most valuable as a person and is therefore most desirable, even to the detriment of each other. Because of this awareness, Jyoti talks to Ananya about it. And they both decide they need to face their self-worth issues and they come up with a solution that makes the relationship safer when they are in public.
Next example: Remington is in a work situation that is causing him a lot of pain. He is struggling to explain to his therapist how he feels. He closes his eyes and internally asks to see a physical image that represents how he feels. He sees an image of a drowning sailor that is out at sea in a turbulent storm. His neck is caught in the rigging and he is being pulled down into the deep. Based off of this physicalized image, he becomes aware that he perceives the work situation to be a full-blown crisis. That he feels a sense of foreboding doom and that in the crisis, he feels like he is in a fight for his survival, but that he is helpless and powerless in it. And that he is being prevented from getting to any sense of improvement by forces external to him. He and his therapist pick apart every bit of the image to see what it reveals about how he feels and what stories he is telling himself about the situation.
Physicalizing emotions can really help you to become aware of what is happening at an emotional level within you, within your relationships and within any situation that you find yourself in out there in the world. It can also help you to take what is happening at an emotional level seriously. And knowing what is actually happening informs the fitting or pertinent way to deal with yourself, with your relationships and with the situations you are in. so go ahead and put this tool in your tool basket.
