Although hardly an ardent Trekkie, there is a favorite
episode to which I frequently refer in my classes. Said
episode, “The Empath,” while not one of
the more popular ones, had a profound effect on me,
for reasons that were at the time painfully clear. This
rather simple morality tale centered on a young mute
woman who (along with the captain and his faithful senior
offices) is held prisoner by an alien race. For some
reason the alien captors seem bent on torturing the
inveterate trio in an increasingly gruesome manner.
What we soon learn is that the young mute is an empath,
a sensitive able to transmute the suffering of others
through touch. The purpose of the sadistic treatment
of all concerned is to teach the young empath altruistic
compassion by putting her in the presence of suffering
and caring humans. Through this horrific experiment,
the aliens hope to instill in her (and by example her
empathic race) a willingness overcome their fear of
suffering so that they might willingly use their exceptional
powers of healing for the greater good without fear
of suffering.
The
scene that remains imprinted was the moment when the
conflicted empath finally touched the badly injured
“Bones” and his wounds disappeared from
his body, briefly transferred to the empath and soon
faded away, leaving the empath weak and spent. That
such a graphic scene should still seem so poignant may
speak more of some aberration in my masochistic psyche
than the power of its imagery per se. What seemed disturbingly
clear was that I, like so many highly sensitive individuals
who ultimately found their way to bodywork, resonated
with the heroine of this sentimental tale, in some odd
way knowing that my reality was not dissimilar from
hers. This issue would emerge many times in my life
and in various guises would frequently show up in my
practice.
Along
similar lines, I recall a story shared in my first craniosacral
class about a middle age nurse who had attended this
class earlier that year. After the student completed
the first exercise, she looked at the instructor with
tears in her eyes and said: “Oh, I just can’t
do this. I feel everything.” She promptly got
up and left the room, never to return. The point here
was not to frighten us but to suggest that such gentle
and passive work could open doors to places deep within
our clients and that such experiences could be not only
powerful but also emotionally overwhelming for any sensitive
and unprotected practitioner.
Thoughts
of such an experience filled me not at all with trepidation,
but rather a sense of connection and profound recognition,
although I had hardly begun to learn the rudiments of
my craft. What struck me as strange was not that the
student left but that everyone in the room would not
feel this way more times than not. Furthermore, dancing
in this realm held a strange fascination for me, rather
like my wild imaginings of whirling dervishes or yogis
as they slipped into sublime states of altered consciousness.
Unfortunately,
however, my initial experiences with this empathic realm
were anything but ecstatic, but rather, exquisitely
painful trance-like states that were frequently frightening,
overwhelming and debilitatingly painful.1 These unpleasant
impressions were clearly “not me,” but rather
some distorted transmogrification of my client’s
reality, often searing with pain and noxious olfactory
assaults that initially overwhelmed me. Let me say before
I proceed, that I do not in any consider these experiences
atypical, that their effects were transitory and that
I over time learned to process them much quicker than
my melodramatic language might so far suggest.
Two
short examples will prove illustrative of my experience.
During my first visceral manipulation class with Structural
Integration instructor, Liz Gaggini in 2000, she was
explaining that the pancreas is not an organ but more
accurately a gland and that glands are not very happy
about being touched and become irritated quite quickly.
I should also point out that this was a normal, healthy
pancreas as far as Liz could determine. Within a few
seconds of Liz making very light contact with the student’s
pancreas, I began to sweat. This sweating began almost
immediately and continued uninterrupted throughout the
entire palpation. I suspected that I was too close and
began defensively backing up during the demo and soon
found myself pressing into the mirrored wall about 20
feet away. In an effort to protect myself, I was reflexively
jamming myself into the wall as if I could mitigate
this unremitting assault. As soon as the palpation was
over, the sweating and intense sensation of heat immediately
stopped and, while I felt a bit weak for several minutes,
I was able to ask questions coherently and try to explain
my bizarre behavior to my fellow students many of whom
I know to be exceptionally sensitive and intuitive practitioners.
Second
anecdote. Last year, a friend flew me to his home in
Northwest Montana do to some sessions with a woman about
70 with spondylothesis, stress fractures in the vertebral
arch that cause the vertebrae to slide forward and painfully
impinge on the spinal cord and nerve roots. My first
night there we went out to dinner and perhaps not entirely
coincidentally met the woman and her family who I suspect
hoped we might be dining there. After meeting and touching
her I received a wealth of emotional and nociceptive
information that was unpleasant and hard to filter out.
During the subsequent meal, the woman’s pain was
so palpable that I had great difficulty eating. At irregular
intervals, I felt excruciating pains shooting up my
back into my head. They were searing and rather like
sustained electrical surges. They persisted throughout
the meal and since the woman was sitting next to us,
I had difficulty discreetly explaining to my friend
what was wrong with me and he clearly could see that
I was uncomfortable. When we left, I told him about
my experience, which he was trusting enough not to dismiss
as nonsense. The next day, after he prodded me to do
so, I told the client what I had felt and she reported
that she frequently had the identical sensation and
that it often incapacitated her for days at a time.
Fortunately,
she did not seem upset or surprised by this discussion.
Rather, it created an immediate bond between us. Such
a reaction is not always to be expected. In general,
we must be very careful how we share this sort of information,
as we will often be met with confused questioning or
outright fear. The fear factor here is huge and should
never be minimized. Injudicious or abrupt sharing of
personal information you sense can prove very upsetting
and in many instances will send the client running for
cover. Just as a therapist must be extremely deliberate
and careful in the pacing with which he introduces questions
and difficult issues, so an intuitive may choose to
withhold information that may not now be appropriate
for the client to receive and internalize. In many cases,
in fact, such sensitive information retrieval need not
be shared.
Having
such an awareness and using it to shape your words and
techniques may incalculably deepen your clients’
experience at a subconscious level. Also, you should
never forget that such information might well put you
in a tricky position of power; a position that you must
always approach with humility and respect, as the possibilities
for inadvertent abuse are rife. Too much information
is a very dangerous thing and you must always put the
client’s needs and psychological abilities to
hear and integrate ahead of any well-intentioned need
to share information you assimilated through non-ordinary
sensing and touching.
With
all these caveats in mind and many others that an empath
would certainly learn as he worked, it would seem that
there are certain therapeutic arenas where such sensitivity
might prove particularly useful. Once a highly sensitive
individual learns how to moderate the input he receives,
certain fields would naturally attract him. For instance,
those modalities that are more passive and require monitoring
and effecting subtle changes in the client’s system
or the fields that emanate from said individuals would
be a natural “fit” for an empath and unquestionably
many so wired do choose such specialties and develop
loyal clients who appreciate and gratefully respond
to their gifts. Such would seem a natural marriage of
kindred spirits and fill an important need not met by
Western allopathic practitioners. Medical intuitives,
shamanic healers, Barbara Brennan practitioners, sound
healing practitioners, energetic healers and those proficient
in certain subtle osteopathic techniques would certainly
feel at home in these and similar modalities, ones where
their empathic gifts are more likely to be refined and
developed. Of course, one need not be an empath to be
an osteopath, but when engaging in certain subtle types
of sensing, having access to the wealth of sensory impressions
available to empaths would certainly enrich the experience
and guide the therapist as he patiently waited for a
healing force to manifest or for some subtle shift in
the client’s system.
This
notion of the wealth of sensory data accessible to empaths
leads us rather indirectly to a connection, however
seemingly oblique, with a world I find fascinating,
that inhabited by autistics. Much of what we know about
their world is provided by a relatively small group
of high functioning autistics and those who suffer from
the related condition called Asperger’s syndrome.
One such individual, Temple Grandin, has written three
books on her life as an autistic and her fascinating
work with animals. There have also been several books
and novels written by and from the perspective of young
autistics, such as the imaginative mystery novel The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
Haddon. From such insightful sources we develop a much
clearer understanding of how a few members of this remarkable
community process and experience their worlds. As to
how the vast majority function and process, we can only
speculate at this juncture.
One
of the most common experiences described by autistics
is their sensitivity to jarring stimuli whether they
be loud noises, bright lights or too much sensory input.
They report having an aversion for large crowds and
in self-protection retreat internally and may engage
in repetitive behaviors to calm themselves. They also
have difficulty interpreting ambivalent meanings and
social behaviors that we accept as normal. One reason
for this seems to be an inability to generalize and
a concomitant focus on details. They also seem to “see
in pictures” rather than process their environment
verbally as most of us do.2
What
particularly struck me in the many books I have read
on the subject were autistics’ problems with sensory
input, their visual processing of incoming data and
their penchant for focusing on details. All of these
features sounded profoundly and disturbingly familiar
to me as I suspect they may to many others similarly
wired. I go back to that nurse who said she felt too
much during her first craniosacral palpation, the relatively
direct CV-4, and left the room in emotional overwhelm,
retreating from painful stimuli as we all instinctively
do. Dealing with the sensory input that surrounds us
is painful for sensitives and autistics in part because
we both have poor filtering skills. However, this sensitivity
which distances for survival may also act as a bridge
between individuals with kindred processing problems.
This unconventional insight may have some implications
for sensitive neophytes who might be drawn to autistics
without quite understanding the attraction.
Potential
advantages of empathic practitioners working with autistics
became clear to me in my work with two young autistic
boys last year. The more profoundly impaired of the
two was a ten year old with apparently minor brain damage
who could not speak, had poor coordination and profound
learning and processing difficulties. The first time
he and his parents came to the office he was extremely
agitated and acted out so badly; rocking, screaming,
shaking, that his father had to remove him from the
waiting area and hold and comfort him several times.
What gradually became clear was that he was overreacting
to a group seminar that was taking place in the back
of the center where some rather intense emotional work
was going on.
At
one point, these folks broke for lunch during this protracted
emotional outburst. As they paraded by, I suspect their
emotionally raw state was “read” by my client
who simply panicked because he could not filter out
all this unresolved leaking distress. When I finally
figured out this rather obvious fact, this was after
all my first such case so be tolerant gentle reader,
I explained my insight to his parents who were not entirely
convinced. Yet it seemed I was correct, since, once
the participants in the seminar left, he calmed down
and we were able to get him in the room and begin the
session. Of course some damage had already been done
so this settling took some time, but, generally the
session went quite well.
Several
minutes into the session I started observing patterns
of behavior that did not seem random and seemed to indicate
some sort of communicative effort on the part of my
young client. As I moved from area to area in a generally
planned manner, I noticed certain responsive patterns
in the boy. Some were subtly withdrawing and some seemed
more clearly a moving into me, as if my client were
guiding me in choices of where to work and for how long.
The child was never static and seemed to be constantly
resisting, redirecting, or assisting me. At first, I
suspected that I was looking for meaning where there
was none. That my desire to “prove” that
I was effecting change was coloring my perceptions,
offering deceptive suggestions of implicit meaning and
that in fact his actions were purely random and a function
of either involuntary responses or chance coordinations
between my work and his self-directed movement. And
yet, there it was, over and over again.3 I tentatively
remarked on this seeming pattern to the child’s
parents who seemed totally mystified by my suggestions.
Their skepticism seemed to throw a wet blanket on my
insights and yet I found it harder and harder to see
these patterns as random. I sensed that the boy was
broadcasting an ever-stronger signal on some unfamiliar
yet resonant frequency.
The
kicker came at the end of our short session, some 20-25
minutes in duration. He seemed restless and began making
sounds that seemed disapproving or perhaps irritated,
it was hard to tell. I quickly removed my hands and
said: So we are done for today, are we? He did not respond
directly but slowly began to sit up and soon got off
the table. Then a most remarkable confirmation of my
observations occurred. Instead of walking back to his
parents, he slowly leaned over the table and pushed
his butt out away from the table and stood there expectantly.
I was totally floored by this action. In an instant
I understood that he wanted me to work some more on
his hamstrings and that he somehow knew that this would
be a perfect way to both tense and present them to me
so that I could easily and directly work along their
taut bellies. When I expressed my surprise to his parents,
they seemed so confused both by his actions and my interpretation
of them that they just sat watching in stunned silence.
This just had to be right. I did perhaps two minutes
of moderately direct work on these chronically hypertoned
hip extensors and when he had had enough, simply stood
up and watched me. Done for today, I announced confidently.
I
had one final surprise which was that now he began to
slowly walk towards me and seemed to want some more
direct contact. I was again confused and asked his parents
what they thought was his intention. His mother said
that he wanted me to hold him and after getting his
parent’s permission, I allowed him to climb up
onto my lap while I held him firmly until his curiously
distressed dad abruptly picked him up and took him out
of the room. Apparently, such behavior was extremely
unusual for him particularly with a new therapist. A
deep connection had been made and he was expressing
his gratitude. A very special moment for us both.
After
the child left, I told his mother that I did not believe
that he was retarded but in some ways incredibly intelligent
and that his kinesthetic awareness and communication
skills were exceptional, in fact, more highly developed
than in any child with whom I had worked. Unfortunately,
this proved too odd an observation for her to accept.
It blatantly contradicted all her previous experiences
since all other therapists had not said any such thing
in her several years of seeking treatment for this exceptional
and I suspect gifted young man.
When
she asked me why no one else who had worked with him
had never said or observed the things I had, my immediate
answer was that perhaps they just didn’t know
how to listen to him. I believe that the unconventional
nature of my work created much confusion in these loving
parents yet they continued the therapy for a few months.
Also, I have no specific answer as to why other skilled
and perhaps better-trained specialists failed to interpret
or manifest the behaviors I watched unfold with wonder
and joy. Such speculations might seem to reek of judgment
and narcissistic self-aggrandizement. “The facts,
ma’m, just the facts.”
The
sessions were special for me and my young charge who
experienced genuine excitement at the prospect of our
sessions and seemed to slowly blossom as a person. He
soon became more happy and communicative in his special
way and also experienced some interesting improvements
in his walking and coordination. I suspect that my ability
to connect to this child was largely a result of some
deep connection between us and that the nature of this
connection seemed to have more do with problems of processing
sensory input and communicating our discomfort to others
than some special skill that my excellent training afforded
me. Unlike the Star Trek heroine I had no fear of feeling
or suffering too much. Rather, accessing through my
naturally distorted lens some fractured dimensions of
this child’s jumbled reality felt more like coming
home than some alien “fantastic voyage.”
For those of us who live with the often-painful reality
of processing the world empathically, the trade-offs
are huge, particularly once we learn how to entrain
with others without becoming a prisoner of their painful
reality.
Notes
1. An important question that I have never been able to answer is
why traumatic experiences are easier to read and see than those
of a gentle or positive nature. But such seems to be the case in
my experience.
2. All this is beautifully explained in Temple Grandin’s and
Catherine Johnson’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries
of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (New York: Scribner, 2005) and
in Grandin’s earlier Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports
from My Life with Autism (New York: Vintage, 1995).
3. I have dealt with these issues of perceptual bias
for seeing pattern in my recent article: “The
Pattern Conundrum: or, What Is the Sound of One Hand
Rolfing?” Structural Integration, Vol. 32, No.
4 (Winter/December 2004): 20-24. |