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Indicators
Written for Eiseach, the Irish Journal for Counseling and Psychotherapy

(Eisteach can be found at: : http://www.irish-counselling.ie/)

Indicators
There is evidence that we are almost entirely automatic. We don’t stop and make decisions about almost all the things we do. We do them out of habit. There are some seemingly small habits that are indicators of the memories and adaptations that control our automatic behaviors. When I first sit down with a client, one thing I do is look for indicators.
For example: I had a new client last week. She had an obvious indicator. Any time she talked about herself or her situation, she’d shrug her shoulders. She wasn’t aware that she was doing it. It was automatic and since it was automatic, we can talk about the part of her mind (actually, her brain) that is doing stuff outside of our awareness.  It’s called, the adaptive unconscious. Her adaptive unconscious was always shrugging her shoulders. She would say something like, Well, I was in a car accident and I got this scar. [shrug]. This was so frequent, it had to have meaning. It had to be doing something for her.
It turns out she had faced a situation as a child which was repeated in her adult life: she was stuck in situations where she couldn’t win. She was overpowered by various people in her life. Her only compensation and the way she could handle her pain was to say to herself, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. That’s what her gesture was doing. It was adding the unconscious comment, I don’t care. I don’t care. She had no idea that she was doing that. I had to point it out a few times before she started catching herself doing it. I could have tried to find out about her life by asking her questions, letting her talk about herself, explain herself. I didn’t do any of those things. I only had to notice this indicator and help her get in touch with it. (After that, I created an experiment using the indicator that put her in touch with the experiences that created it. At which point we worked with the pain they’d caused, which was still an active, though unconscious part of who she was.
There are hundreds of indicators like that. We can think of them as small, external expressions of the adaptive unconscious. It is becoming very clear that not everything we do is consciously conceived. We are all pretty much the history of our adaptations. To quote Aristotle, We are what we repeatedly do. We all had to adapt. We find ways to deal with the worlds we find ourselves in. Technically, these adaptations are stored in what is called, procedural memory. We learn our adaptations as procedures; we don’t have to think about. We learned them, because in some way they worked for us, as hers worked for her.
Finding indicators helps us to understand our clients. And it’s a quick way of getting material to experiment with. So, I look at a client’s small habits and I make guesses about mean. Then I use those guesses to bring memories and emotions into consciousness. By doing this, I avoid asking a lot of questions to get the information I need. I see it and hear it.
Here are a few more examples of common indicators: Typically, when the head is habitually turned slightly, with the chin down a bit and the eyes looking at the speaker from an angle, it is an expression of doubt. When it’s habitual, the doubt is too. That kind of adaptation protects one from being lied to, deceived, betrayed. That kind of thing. Fast speech is another common indicator. It tells you that the person does not expect other’s attention to last very long.
If you’d like to study indicators, just watch for them in the people around you. People have postural habits, movement habits, speech patterns, gestures, and habitual tones of voice. Observe these and make some guesses about them. You’ll learn a lot, you’ll build up a habit of nonverbal awareness and you’ll have some fun doing it. Just watch people anywhere and look for indicators. Or watch great actors, like Peter Sellers being Inspector Clouseau or Marlon Brando as the Godfather. They were experts with indicators.
When I first started working as a therapist, I learned to look at bodies and to listen to tones of voice for psychological information. I learned about the nonverbal expressions of Reichian character theory. The signs were posture and body structure. Indicators are a more general approach which refers to all of nonverbal expressions of personality and psychological history.
Indicators may also reveal positive experiences. An easy smile, for example, could possibly reflect confidence. So, it’s good to notice that kind also. But the indicators we want to be most aware of are those that reflect adaptations to painful experiences, experiences that shaped a person’s was of being. But, it’s only a problem, if it’s become maladaptive. That is, when it is being used in situations that no longer call for it. Think of Iraqi war veterans who dive to the floor when a car backfires nearby. That kind of misused vigilance, which once may have been a life savor, can drain ones will to go on living. And it has, too many times already.
When a client’s habits prevent healthy, satisfying experiences, an indicator may give us a clue as to why. Habits often suggest that there’s a belief, implicit or explicit, that’s part of the behavior. The people who come to us for help, hold beliefs like: Nobody could love me. Everybody’s against me. People will hurt me. You can’t trust anyone. Such beliefs are parts of adaptations to situations where to believe otherwise just wasn’t a good idea. Such beliefs and adaptations cause unnecessary suffering, because they blind people to available nourishment.
Working with indicators is easy. Here’s the sequence: You look for an indicator, make a guess about its meaning. Then think of an experiment that will evoke a reaction that helps the client realize the habit and the belief. Once that’s in consciousness, you give the client time to sit ponder what’s happened. Associations to what they’ve just discovered through this reaction follow. If you give this process the right kind of support, a client will feel relief and begin to make sense of what had happened to them. The client comes to understand the adaptation and how it came to be. This is the first step. Beyond this, there’s a healing process that has to happen.

The Healing Process
The impulse to heal is real and powerful and lies within the client. Our job is to evoke that healing power, to meet its tests and needs and to support it in its expression and development. We are not the healers; but happily, given the grace and skills required, we may be part of the process.
Healing is a spontaneous, natural process. It is a process that comes on line spontaneously when needed, if it’s not interfered with. A cut finger repairs itself. If nothing interferes with the process and your body has the resources, it will heal itself.  However, under certain conditions, the healing process doesn’t come on line. Something is missing.
Our particular concern is with the damage done to a client’s mental-emotional health. Often, the natural healing process has been overwhelmed. When that happens, the experience is handled by adaptations that work to prevent further damage. That could include becoming hyper-vigilant or going numb. The damage is contained but cannot be integrated. The doesn’t go away. It gets stays “backstage”, where it saps strength, undermines clarity, and troubles thinking, feeling and behavior. Sometimes it breaks through to consciousness as flashbacks.
So, healing is a spontaneous process that can get interrupted. Even some psychotherapeutic techniques can interrupt the healing process For example, a client suddenly becomes sad. Some therapists would ask: “Where do you feel that in your body?” Or, even worse, “Why are you sad?” The very act of asking questions too soon or too often is the thing interrupts the healing process. Anything that takes the client out of his experience and asks for information or an explanation, interrupts the natural emotional healing process. The client may not have the explanation. The process may just be beginning to unfold. It may be the start of a whole series of healing events being organized by the adaptive unconscious. It may just need time. It may need the therapist to remain silent. It usually does. Healing will arise spontaneously and continue spontaneously, if it is not interrupted. After sadness (or whatever emotion) arises, given the right support, memories and insights usually follow.
Anyone can support a healing process; it’s done all the time by all kinds of people. When sadness arises, holding or a gentle touch are things that support the process. (Of course, touching is problematic for professional therapists. For ordinary people-and even some of our mammalian cousins-it’s the obvious thing.)
So, if you want to support an emotional healing, don’t ask questions! Don’t even talk! Put a comforting hand on the person, stay silent, and wait. The client will probably close her eyes and deepen into her experience. She’ll likely get memories and insights which will help integrate the original painful experience. When an emotion arises spontaneously in the course of a session, the client will automatically search for associations that make sense of her emotions. It’s a spontaneous, internal process. The ideas, beliefs, memories and images help make sense will pop into consciousness. But only if you do not interrupt.
The client herself may interrupt the process. That’s what’s been happening all along. If you have established a relationship in which the client knows, without thinking about it, that you will not interrupt. If you wait when the person stops to think. If you can read the signs that the client is busy internally and just wait, you will be supporting the healing process. Eventually, the client comes to an insight that helps the healing. That insight is usually about what was missing that would have supported the healing when the painful experience were happening. Part of what was  missing something you’re doing right then. If you are comforting the person, if you’re waiting patiently, if you are listening, if you are sympathetic, you could be doing exactly what was needed originally. Had it happened then, the process might have completed without damage. With the right elements in place, it can begin now.
At some point the client will open her eyes and look at you. When she does, be waiting! At some level, she will realize that you have been patient and paying attention. Let her speak first. Doing these things gives her a sense that she can take her time, that she can go inside without losing you. It tells her you are supporting her efforts to make sense of her feelings. It most likely won’t make total sense that quickly, but it doesn’t have to. What has happened, is that the process has begun and can now move forward. What she tells you when she opens her eyes will most likely be something is part of the healing process continuing to unfold. And you have done what needed to be done to be part of that.

Loving Presence
All that adds up to one thing, being in loving presence. I learned about it when I was doing a nine-day therapy group in Germany. (Nine days! One German after another.) On the last day, I was working with a client and found that I couldn’t follow what he was telling me. I was sitting there in front of the guy, exhausted from trying to hold all the details of his story. Slowly, I yielded to the inevitable; I gave up. Being the kind of person I sometimes am, I thought, Well, I’ll just look like I’m listening. He seems okay talking. Maybe I’ll recover later and think of something to do. I certainly won’t know what he said, but maybe I can still make something good happen. We’ll see. I surrendered to my fatigue and that was serendipitous. When I gave up trying to understand, my perception changed. I became visual. As I did, his face became beautiful. He looked like a Rembrandt painting to me. This experience was very new to me. As I became absorbed in just looking at him, I not only saw colors and shapes, I saw something of who he was, his humanity. Seeing that, a deep feeling of compassion arose in me. Following that, I had the thought, “My face must be showing that I feel this. I should ask him to look at me. He’ll see it.” I wanted him to see what I was feeling. This idea came right out of my ideas about how we create a healing relationships. (What better way to demonstrate compassion and presence than to actually feel it and show it.) I asked him to open his eyes. When he looked at me, his whole being changed. He slowed down. His feelings intensified. He became vulnerable, which made me feel even more loving. As he changed, I changed. Together, we went deeper and deeper. We were in a reinforcement cycle. We were triggering each other and together, we were creating exactly the right context for a healing process. Whatever happened after that, our mutual reinforcement was driving it.
After that, it happened somewhat with each person I worked with. It didn’t always happen as strongly, but it would always happen at least a little. It happened enough so that deep and important healings took place. I don’t always get the same deep level of love but, I’ve felt it often enough to know that it’s always a possibility and that it’s powerful when it happens. Seeing beauty and humanity in the other became my “therapeutic meditation”. It was my way of becoming loving and present. I learned to avoid listening for problems, engaging in questions and explanations and long conversations. My first impulse now is always to find something to love, something to be inspired by, something heroic, something recognizable as the gift and burden of the human condition, the pain and grace that’s there to find in every soul you meet.

Eisteach can be found at: : http://www.irish-counselling.ie/