Sometimes you just need to stop talking

Sometimes it all seems so logical. You know why things go the way they go, and you can see the solution too. And yet nothing happens. Could it be that this solution mostly came from your head and that you forgot to check whether it also feels right?

As a coach, I see this pattern all the time. People who are so good at thinking that thinking itself becomes their escape route. Every feeling immediately gets turned into an explanation, and every tension gets labeled before it's even felt. Often, it takes over everything.

For me, that's been the reason to learn more about body-oriented work. Sometimes that's exactly the entry point needed to get things moving again. Thinking, in that case, isn't the road to insight: it's the block in front of it.

Blind spot

In mental health and coaching, language is still often the default. You talk about what's going on. Nicely measurable, and in many cases it works really well. But for people who excel at thinking, it can become a blind spot. Someone who can argue their way through anything is rarely referred to body-oriented work. Because surely she already understands it? But understanding and feeling are two different things. And for this group, one often runs far ahead of the other.

I myself worked with language alone for years, especially as a journalist. Asking questions, mirroring things back in words. Until I witnessed a client burst into tears during a body-oriented exercise, at a moment when nothing had been said yet, only felt. It showed me how much better it can sometimes work to look at things from that perspective.

Dominant

I didn't want to rely on gut feeling alone, so I looked into what's actually known about this. One thing I wanted to nuance first was the idea that gifted people are simply overstimulated by default, and that this is "the explanation" for why body-oriented work would be needed. That image is popular, but the latest meta-analyses nuance it considerably. The link between giftedness and overstimulation turns out to lie mainly in the intellectual domain, not so much the sensory or emotional one.

What matters more is that thinking, as a strategy, can sometimes become so dominant that feeling gets snowed under. Something gets skipped, in other words and that's exactly what you can use as an entry point for a conversation.

I use body-oriented work alongside more cognitive exercises, as an equal track running next to them. If a client jumps to the explanation too quickly, I sometimes deliberately don't probe further into the content. Instead I ask: where do you feel that in your body? What's happening in your stomach, your breathing?

Avoidance

I think that in mental health care, we too easily assume that someone who's good at talking is also sufficiently in touch with themselves. That's a misunderstanding. Being articulate can sometimes actually be a way of avoiding having to feel.

So the question I now ask myself with every client is: what is this person not telling me, because it was never asked? As long as we keep seeing body-oriented work as supplementary, we keep that blind spot in place. As far as I'm concerned, it deserves a permanent seat in the treatment room.

Sometimes you just need to stop talking

Blind spot

Dominant

Avoidance

About the author

Giftedness and friendship: the right click is hard to find