Do You Feel Like You’ve Tried Everything?
This blog is for people who feel stuck in some area of their lives.
Feeling as though you’ve tried it all (and that there may potentially be no solution for your challenges!), is actually quite common for many of my clients and online community members.
But, if a client asks me ‘can I really change?’ – I always respond with a heartfelt ‘If people couldn’t change … and couldn’t change things they’d been struggling with for a long time … I wouldn’t be sitting here!’
Any good psychologist would tell you the same – we often have more hope than our clients at the start of therapy! But any good psychologist – as well as believing that you can change – is also dedicated to the ongoing process of learning how to best help you change.
And for this reason, I want to share with you what we psychologists are learning about how we can best help people to change and grow.
So, if you feel stuck with something, this blog may provide you with some hope that you haven’t, just yet, tried everything …
It Turns Out Psychology Is Not All In Your Head …
Since before I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed psychology student, psychology has been dominated by what we broadly categorize as ‘top-down’ approaches.
As the name suggests, top-down approaches focus on what’s ‘up top’ – the head, brain, or mind – first. They focus on your thoughts and emotions, and prioritize insight, self-awareness, and conscious thought processes as the key drivers of change. Therapists using top-down strategies help clients identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns that contribute to emotional discomfort and/or unwanted behaviors. By gaining insight into the underlying cognitive and emotional processes, people can reframe their perspectives, develop more helpful coping strategies, and achieve lasting psychological growth. The most well known top-down therapy is, what I was trained in, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
But sometimes insights, self-awareness, and conscious thought just aren’t enough, are they?
For example:
- Gaining the insight that you hate exercising because you were bullied by a gym teacher in high school, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily help you to put your shoes on and go outside for a walk.
- Being aware that you are eating a block of chocolate – and knowing that it’s emotional eating as you are doing it – doesn’t always stop you from doing it.
- You can intellectually understand that someone wasn’t trying to hurt you when they did something that upset you, but you can still feel upset.
The ‘head work’ of top-down therapies, such as CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and others is helpful, but there is also an acknowledgement among the therapeutic community that we are limiting ourselves by just focusing on what’s between our ears!
As master therapist, and my professional soul mate, Dr. Julie T. Anné put it in our podcast, ‘CBT is only half the picture’ …
Bringing the Body Into Therapy
The newest wave of psychological approaches – collectively called the 4th wave of psychology* – is aiming to improve on the mind-based approaches, with ‘bottom-up’ approaches that bring the body into therapy.
Unlike top-down approaches, bottom-up approaches focus on the body first. They emphasize the role of bodily sensations, emotions, and sensory experiences in understanding and shaping psychological wellbeing. Therapists using bottom-up strategies help clients to regulate their nervous systems, process trauma that is stored in the body, and cultivate greater awareness of their internal states. By grounding therapy in the body, clients can learn to reduce stress and anxiety, heal from past trauma, and break free from old behavioral patterns.
Research on these therapies certainly shows that they are placing a missing piece of the therapeutic puzzle, and often achieving better results than top-down therapies.
For example:
- Research on Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR; which involves processing traumatic memories while performing specific eye movements) shows that it is more effective than CBT in reducing the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder1.
- Research on Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT; which involves focusing on a problem while tapping on various points of the face and body), shows that it results in longer lasting reductions in food cravings than CBT, which are achieved in half the time2,3,4.
The ‘body work’ of bottom-up therapies, such as EMDR, EFT, and others, is showing therapists and clients alike that we can achieve better results when we acknowledge the body in which all of the psychological processes are taking place!
Why Wouldn’t We Bring the Body Into Therapy?
Modern psychology has come to acknowledge the importance of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours … why wouldn’t it acknowledge the body in which they all occur?
We are coming to recognise that psychological phenomena are not just in the mind; they occur as a complex interplay between our thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and our physical bodies.
In fact, all of the other three factors are deeply intertwined with the body:
- Thoughts occur in the body. They are triggered when the body (e.g., the eyes, the ears, or the nose) perceives a stimulus, and they involve the firing of synapses between neurons in your brain, that grow (or shrink) depending on how much they are used (or not used).
- Emotions occur in the body. As an example, the experience of stress is not purely mental. Stress results in elevated cortisol levels, increased muscle tension, and shallower breathing. Consequently, focusing on the body, with techniques such as breathing, can help relieve stress and calm both the body and mind.
- Behaviours are performed by the body. Take physical activity, for example; we know it is good for us, but the body is the vehicle that has to experience it – and may experience it as enjoyable, an uncomfortable task that involves overheating and sweating, or something downright painful and potentially harmful, depending on what the movement is and the physical ability of the body we live in.
The complex interplay between our minds and bodies is no better exemplified than in the desire to eat some yummy food. It’s not just a thought about the food in your mind – it’s also an emotional desire. It’s behavioural, based on your past habits and the ingrained neural wiring that consolidates them. And it’s physical – it’s in the eyes, the nose, the tastebuds, and the tummy – it’s in the whole body. So, from this perspective, it is easy to see how a mind-only approach is going to be limited in it’s power to solve such a problem, as the problem does not solely exist within your mind.
Our psychology – and any meaningful change in our psychological makeup – occurs in the context of a complex interplay between our minds, emotions, habits, and bodies – and it’s important that our psychological interventions acknowledge this …
What to Do About All of This (Three Things I Would Like for You) …
In applying this information to yourself, there are three potential benefits I would like for you to experience as a result of taking the time to read this blog:
The first thing I would like is for you to have a dose of self-compassion.
If your personal change process has focused mainly on behaviours, like most of ours has, it’s probably been like trying to drive a car with only one wheel … scary, expensive, and you don’t get very far!
And even if your personal change process has involved some top-down psychology, which incorporated a focus on your thoughts and emotions, you’ve still only been riding on three wheels … way better than one, but it makes for a tumultuous journey nonetheless!
The second thing I would like is for you to have hope.
If your personal change process goes just a little deeper, and brings your body into your transformation with some bottom-up therapy, it can make all the difference. Riding on all four wheels just works better. I’ve witnessed the benefits with countless clients, and that’s why I want to share them with you!
And the good news is, you may only have one wheel to place! While the difficulty of taking the journey missing a wheel can’t be overstated, your ability to place that wheel may be less challenging than you think, especially with the right support ☺
The third thing I would like is for you to experience the benefits.
I don’t want to leave you with hope around the deeper body-based work unlocking some powerful changes for you, and not give you a pathway to experience the benefits … so I’m going to suggest a couple of great options:
Work with our psychologists. While our clinic has been traditionally grounded in top-down approaches, for the reasons outlined in this blog, we have incorporated some wonderful therapists who work from a bottom-up approach:
- Lynette Armstrong is our EMDR guru – she supportively helps our clients to successfully navigate general psychological challenges, heal from past trauma, and understand how all of this fits in with their eating, movement, weight, and body image concerns.
- Emma Furner is our deeper work guru – she gently uses a range of body-based approaches to help our clients understand their emotions, connect with their bodies, heal from past trauma, and experience the benefits in their health, life, and relationships.
Stay tuned. If you’re not quite ready for therapy (or not quite ready yet!), I am going to be sharing more on the deeper work and bringing the body into your transformation, beginning with a powerful blog from the aforementioned Emma Furner. In the blog, Emma will help you to understand more about the mind-body connection, the specific benefits of connecting with your body, and most importantly how you can connect more with your body, so you can experience the benefits yourself!
The Truth Is, You Can Change.
Whatever it is you are feeling stuck with, there is an answer.
And going a little deeper by bringing the body into therapy has helped so many of my clients, and our clients at the clinic, that I just had to share these potentially life-changing ideas with you.
Because as we therapists learn how to better support you to change, it’s in our DNA to want to share what we learn with you, to support our life’s work of being the best therapists we can be, in order to help our clients to become the best selves they can be.
Yours in courageously exploring the deeper work,
Glenn
*The ‘four waves’ of psychology:
1) Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic – Pioneered by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; Focusing on unconscious conflicts, early experiences, and ‘transference’ of feelings from the patient’s childhood onto the therapist.
2) Behaviourism/Behavior Modification – Pioneered by Joseph Wolpe and B.F. Skinner; Behavioural learning theory focusing on positive and negative reinforcers, with the aim to increase desirable behaviors and extinguish self-defeating behaviours in clients.
3) Cognitive/Cognitive Behavioural – Pioneered by Aaron and Judith Beck and Albert Ellis; Targets a client’s thoughts and interpretations of situations, and how they relate to their emotional states and behaviours. Newer 3rd wave approaches include mindfulness-based approaches, like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and blends, such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.
4) Somatic/Body-based therapies – Pioneered by Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen; Focusing on the role of bodily sensations and emotions in shaping psychological wellbeing, with an aim to help clients regulate their nervous systems, process traumatic memories, and become their authentic selves.
References:
- Khan, A. M, Dar, S., Ahmed, R., Bachu, R., Adnan, M., & Kotapati, V. P. (2018) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy versus Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in Patients with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials. Cureus. 2018 Sep 4;10(9):e3250. doi: 10.7759/cureus.3250. PMID: 30416901; PMCID: PMC6217870.
- Stapleton, P., Bannatyne, A. J., Urzi, K., Porter, B., & Sheldon, T. (2016). Food for thought: A randomised controlled trial of emotional freedom techniques and cognitive behavioural therapy in the treatment of food cravings. Applied Psychology: Health and Wellbeing, 8(2): 232–57.
- Stapleton, P., & Chatwin, H. (2018). Emotional freedom techniques for food cravings in overweight adults: A comparison of treatment length. OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, 3(3), doi: 10.21926/obm.icm.1803014.
- Stapleton, P., Lilley-Hale, E., Mackintosh, G., & Sparenburg, E. (2020) Online Delivery of Emotional Freedom Techniques for Food Cravings and Weight Management: 2-Year Follow-Up. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine 26(2):98-106. doi: 10.1089/acm.2019.0309. Epub 2019 Nov 25. PMID: 31765223.
