ACTING-OUT DEADENS THE ANXIETY

[ Introduction ] [ Energy Movement ] [ How We Got There ] [ Fight or Flight ] [ More Contact ] [ Incipient Armoring ] [ Chronic Armoring ] [ Tools of Therapy ] [ Therapeutic Process ] [ Acting Out ] [ Concluding Remarks ]

Speaking of self-destructive behaviors, patients who are currently abusing alcohol, drugs or engaging in other destructive ways are not candidates for orgone therapy, and they are required to stop those behaviors before being considered for therapy.  Those behaviors serve to suppress the anxiety that is underneath, and prevent the therapist and patient from contact with the anxiety and associated issues.  This goes for other antisocial behaviors as well.

The orgone therapist, unlike the conventional psychiatrist, does not seek to take away the patient's anxiety in a knee-jerk fashion by prescribing tranquilizers, although in certain circumstances they may have a temporary role.  The goal is to get the patient to tolerate the anxiety, to breathe through and not tighten up against it.  Thus by bringing the anxiety out into the open, one then can hopefully get at the underlying affect, memory, and armoring involved.

In orgone therapy, it is not uncommon for the patient to progress and work through much of the armoring without specifically recalling actual memories.  Since many of us grew up in families where the armor came about not because of physical abuse or peak traumatic events, but rather with the insidiousness associated with the chronic, negative attitudes of parents, educators, peers and various institutions, this is understandable.

In fact, in therapy, one of the hurdles occasionally encountered can be an overemphasis on the part of the patient in trying to understand why they feel a certain way, or where an emotion is coming from.  We are definitely not opposed to such an understanding.  In fact, true functional understanding is encouraged  because it can serve to integrate the person's different conflicted feelings and help the person from repeating and acting out his unresolved feelings in the present.  Unfortunately, what can occur is that the patient uses this questioning as an intellectualizing defense, further distancing themselves from their actual feelings.  It is thus often necessary to put more emphasis on the process than the content.

So the question becomes, not what happened to you thirty years ago that you're wanting to cry now during the session, but what are you doing now to keep yourself from crying.  Frequently, one sees in patients that once they allow themselves to take the risk and give into expressing the emotion, the associated memory comes to the surface.

Therapy is usually conducted on a once-a-week basis.  Patients in acute distress may need to be seen more frequently.  Some patients benefit by taking breaks from therapy, giving themselves an opportunity to consolidate their gains and allow the restructuring process time to establish itself.