The Struggle to Feel by "John"

I have been in therapy for four months and like quite a lot of other patients I have been struggling to do it right. Most of what I have read about Primal Therapy describes the remarkable results it achieves. This is a description of my own struggle in an attempt to illustrate the kind of difficulties that frequently precede the results.

From what I had read I had let myself slip into the belief that there is a magic formula which ensures success. The theory that I could reconnect with my real self by feeling the pains of my early life made a lot of sense to me. I had always felt I was only half a person, a shadow of whoever I really was, and for many years it had seemed clear that this was because of some major catastrophe in my childhood. The analytic psychiatrists I went to failed to uncover it, but my blind faith that they knew what they were doing saved me from the extremes of despair. Their approach was far too gentle and the ritual could have gone on forever. I felt I needed to explode, to have a bomb placed under me in order to really come to grips with the problem. Eventually, in my ignorance of what it really did, I requested electro-shock treatment in the hope that the violence would shake me back to life. My awareness of what effect it really had is still very foggy, but it certainly failed to make me feel much different from how I'd felt before. I began to experiment with a lot of different drugs, marijuana, LSD, mescaline. Sometimes I felt more like my real self on it, but the benefits were illusory and failed, as had everything before, to get me anywhere near to feeling like a complete human being. It was during this time that I read about Primal Therapy. Immediately I knew that it was what I'd been fumbling towards all along. It was the concept of feeling pain that I'd missed out on. But now that I knew it, it seemed the obvious way to go about things. I knew I had a lot of pain in me and that a lot of horrible things I'd seen on LSD were symbolic of it. Pain was what I'd been chasing all along, but I'd also been backing away from it because, when you meet it face to face it seems the most unlikely path to choose to eliminate it. I was convinced that all would be different now that I was aware of Primal Therapy. I knew instinctively that the theory was right and was sure that I would consequently be able to get into my pain a lot more easily.

By the time I heard I'd been accepted by the Primal Institute, I had left drugs well behind and was speculating what pain was really like and what a Primal scream was like. I began my three weeks of individual therapy feeling very uncertain about what was going to happen and constantly on the lookout for the "big pain" and the "big scream". I was like a scared but plucky boxer wanting to risk myself against the heavyweight champ. It seemed inevitable that I would put up some sort of fight, but my overriding hope was that I would be beaten, either to have some sense knocked into me or some craziness knocked out of me. I stepped into the ring feeling very alone, as if the fight was taking place in a huge auditorium that lacked an audience, and I mistook my therapist for the champ. Nothing much happened and I was very disappointed. I'd come to believe that those would probably be the worst three weeks of my life. The simple fact that my therapist was on twenty-four hour call let my imagination run riot. I half expected to be reduced to an incoherent idiot, and was scared I might not even be able to get to a telephone in time to call the Institute and let them know what was happening. I wanted the champ to show me what he was made of, I wanted him to hit hard. Instead, he hardly blinked let alone gave me any indication of making an aggressive move. Gradually I began to realize that he was leaving me to set the pace, and although I didn't want to because it felt lonelier, there didn't seen to be any choice. The intricately reasoned arguments that I showered him with were a demonstration of my strongest punches and my cleverest footwork. I began to feel that on these terms I could beat him, which would have been fine if I'd come to win the fight. But I'd come to lose. If I won, I'd still be the person I was before.

When my three weeks were over I started going to group therapy twice a week, but I went into the Institute on all the other days to try and feel my pain on my own. Not a lot happened compared with what I thought should be happening. Sometimes I cried; sometimes my body felt as if it was trying to remember something, but still the "big scream" didn't come. It was time to reassess my position. In group I continued to fight the champ. He still didn't put up any kind of resistance, and now, for the first time, I also saw that he hadn't been in any way affected by my onslaught. It was as if I'd been punching a mirage. I'd been so involved in taking care of the details of my style that I didn't notice him move aside just before each attack. I looked at him again and started listening to the words he'd been saying from time to time ever since we started. At the same time I kept up my routine of footwork and punches. Gradually it dawned on me that my therapist wasn't the champ, but my trainer, helping me with advice and encouragement, but refusing to do the work for me. It was as if I'd been trying to get him to knock down my defenses, to feel my pain for me. I was alone in the ring, shadowboxing.

My realization that I was trying to "feel" what I imagined my pain to be like rather than the pain itself, crept up on me in group one night. I felt I really wanted to love my daddy, and although it seemed impossible, it was the only thing in the world I wanted, I needed. Afterwards I didn't think it had been a very spectacular feeling. I can only think I had been feeling little bits of my real pain all along and this was a kind of culmination. For several days afterwards I felt very exhausted and heavy. Almost imperceptibly that feeling changed into a new and frightening but tremendous feeling which is too hard to describe. I felt more masculine than I ever felt in my life, I felt that my body was in one piece instead of five which is how it usually feels. I had long been aware of the tension in my body, but now for the first time I knew what it was to have less tension. The feeling was only the beginning and I was aware of a lot more pain underneath it. I enjoyed it while I could, but then later I felt all disconnected again. But it demonstrated to me what my real pain is - simply, what I've been wanting to cry about all my life but have never dared to admit, that I need my daddy. My pain and the way I feel it is Primal Therapy for me. Other patients struggle in different ways, and they also feel their pain in different ways. Everyone has his or her own therapy. I'm still not sure that I've stopped shadowboxing altogether, but I hope I can now recognize my pain and feel it as it comes instead of trying desperately to feel some abstract concept of Primal pain that doesn't exist and which I've learned no therapist can just hand to me.