In this chapter, I would like to revisit work by my client Louise from the intro chapter, IS-1: A New Science of Being. There we learned about her experience of shifting a state she called Crumbling to one she called Core Strength.
In this chapter, we start with Louise sharing her experience of moving another state she called Isolated Outside. Then we check in at two weeks and a few months later for her to share more of her experience of how things shifted in her life over several months and beyond. It’s a nice peek into the experience of psychotopology fieldwork.
Shifting Isolated Outside to Inclusive
In Louise’s words:
“The next feeling I mapped was a strong feeling state I called Isolated Outside. I have always felt on the outside of things. Like a shadow observing but never invited to enter. I saw the whole world of social interactions as something I could never really be a part of. I felt comfortable interacting with one other person, but I always kept my distance emotionally and kept a very solid invisible wall around myself.
In groups, I felt isolated as though everyone involved was a part of something I didn’t have the ability to understand. ‘You’re so quiet’ is a comment I heard many times. I would smile sweetly and say something elusive and somehow people got the idea I was intelligent. I was happy to allow that perception when in reality I felt lost and wary and lonely, and lacking in whatever it was everyone else seemed to have.
I discovered that Isolated Outside is a part of self I developed in response to being so sensitive to people. A simple phrase that may or may not have been intended as a criticism or ridicule would just about destroy me. I kept an uninterested cool exterior image as a front to hide how fragile I felt.
“I shifted Isolated Outside and I discovered a space around me that felt safe and that I influenced. It pulsed. It felt like a warm yellow light all around me. I saw it as a space where people could exist in my life. It was a space I held and it was a part of me but it was removed enough that what happened there could not destroy me. This was a huge relief. I look back at my self in this state and feel a deep sense of compassion, as though my self in that state were an undeveloped me, too young to understand but still kind of cute in its fumbling way.
“Moving this part changed my interactions immediately. I began making friends quickly. People I had known on an acquaintance basis for months or years got closer. The only thing that changed was me and all I did was shift my awareness of, and reaction to, other people. I created a space to let them in.
I realize now that many people also feel shy or insecure or self-conscious at times. I am not the only one. This realization has transformed my interactions with people. I always felt judged by others because I was so harshly judging myself. Other people’s reactions to me shifted. As I became more at ease in my self, people around me became more at ease in my presence. It has led to a wonderful unfolding in my social, professional, and personal relationships.”
Below are my notes capturing Louise’s mapping of both Isolated Outside and Inclusive.
Isolated Outside
I’m standing back from the feeling. It’s out in front, spherical, four feet in diameter; like a dense, foggy cloud, charcoal dark gray, wispy on the edges, dense in the middle, but you can run your hand through it, not solid. Kind of cold and damp. Just floating, pretty still. Total silence. Dense feeling at my heart, very dense but moist and gray and very cold. It’s like the cloud is coming out from my center, cold, and then it forms this cloud and gets cool and damp and less intense and bigger, like moisture particles.
I can see what’s coming from here. So I’m safer back here. I can see what might come at me, so that I’m ready. It’s safer here.
Inclusive
Body temp; lighter, pure energy; gold, shimmering, translucent; moving with a lot of energy, constant movement, little particles vibrating, humming; radiating out from my core in all directions; pulses in and out, very gently; there’s a pulse but there’s no real end; it’s continuously radiating out of my core. Going out and coming back, like breathing, rate of comfortable breath. Sound is like a breath.
You carry all the protection you need inside of you. It creates a space that other people can move into; there’s this gentle pulse, allowing things in, including other people in the pulse of the interaction.
Reflections
Here is what Louise wrote about her experience a couple of weeks after this shift.
“After mapping and moving several states over the last two weeks, I love how this process has a path that you follow. And each part really couldn’t be any other way. It just is. It’s like a discovery. I like how each layer unfolds naturally. It’s not forced. And the few times I have tried to make it be something I thought it should be, Joe stopped me, to focus on just experiencing, unfolding the next piece, to see what it is. I could tell when I was getting off track, but it’s hard not to have ideas. I’ve been working on that. This work really can’t be forced.
“I can start to feel it coming into place. Last week I felt really disoriented. As more things get mapped and shifted, there’s this real feeling of peace and acceptance. I was just sitting here watching the seagulls and clouds, and I was in this feeling of timelessness.”
I love the way Louise’s description here captures the experience of a natural unfolding in the process of fieldwork. As she says, you can’t force it. Mapping and moving is a process of discovery of something innately you.
Louise’s description of her experience before and after shifting Crumbling and Isolated Outside is typical of many people doing the work. Isolated Outside was central to the experience of the entire set of feeling states, playing a role I call a pivot.
Shifting a pivot state can sometimes result in the entire set letting go of its reactive configuration and becoming free to find a new way of being. When I work with people who have limited time, we generally strive to identify and shift a pivot state. It’s preferable, though, to do more thorough work, identifying the full set of parts in their reactive states, and moving each one to its ideal, then supporting the ideal states in integrating. In our work together, Louise and I did a fairly complete job of that, contributing to the significance of her overall shift.
Longer Term Integration
Louise and I worked over a period of several months. She describes her experience as “hitting the reset button” on her life. Here’s what she has to say about the impact of the work a few months after we finished.
“Each area of my life has changed in some way. I find new opportunities to develop my business and my skills daily and I have the confidence to pursue the opportunities. I enjoy meeting new people professionally and socially. I enjoy participating in conversations and adding my voice to the world around me. Instead of destroying me, I find that criticism gives me the chance to clarify my thoughts on a specific subject. The many little fears that used to limit me in the world have all but fallen away.
“When I do feel resistance or discomfort now, I take the time to look at the situation and at my reaction to it. I can use my emotional response to guide me towards rewarding work and experiences and away from useless, limiting or damaging situations. I enjoy starting new projects and solving problems in existing projects and this leads to that wonderful feeling of satisfaction when the job is done and I know it is the best work I can produce.
“The rebuilding is an ongoing process. It is exciting and challenging. Life feels fresher, newer, and the possibilities seem more possible and more numerous. I can see the threads of my life up to this point, and I see how I can shape my future at every step along the way.”
This kind of expansion of perspective is common in this work. When we are trapped in a reactive compensation pattern, our awareness is often locked into very limited ways of experiencing our world. When we release the hold these patterns have on our awareness, it expands to include more of the resources that naturally lie within ourselves. We can see any given situation from multiple points of view, and we bring much more of ourselves to the task of responsively navigating any given situation that arises.
A Reflection on Physical Awareness
Before closing, I want to share Louise’s description of her experience of shifting states with fieldwork and how that intersects strongly with her somatic experience.
“One of the most surprising and intense parts of this process is the physical feeling that accompanies the emotional states. It feels like a real realignment is happening within, not only your mind and your emotional state, but in your physical being as well. Shifting a strong emotion was commonly accompanied by a feeling of tingling all through my body, lightness, and excitement.”
This example highlights the relationship between the field dimension (particularly that of affect fields — see Introducing Inner Fields in SO-11:Getting Real About Inner Experience) and the body. For most people, the relationship is very tight, and changes in one influence changes in the other.
This relationship between affect fields and somatic experience represents a prime opportunity for future research for those researchers and labs set up to pursue it. Just a suggestion…
