Steady and Comfortable

Do you have clients who seem stuck in constant states of fear?  

Would you like to stay even more calm when your clients are in deep distress?  

Would you like to teach your clients to do the same?  

My client, Susan, learned at an early age to stay on alert. Her father was an alcoholic who would sometimes return from a binge in the middle of the night and wake her in a rage. Her mother did not believe in downtime and always kept Susan and her siblings busy with chores when they weren’t studying. She was frequently criticized and bullied at school. As an adolescent, Susan began drinking and fell quickly into addiction. She found herself in dangerous places, with dangerous people, and she was often hurt.  

By the time Susan came to see me, she had been sober for five years. She had married a kind, thoughtful woman, and they created a quiet life together. She found an LGBTQIA+ community where she was welcomed. The problem that brought Susan into EMDR therapy was that she could never seem to find a sense of ease, despite the changes she had made in her life. Her wife worried that she could not seem to allow herself to have fun. Susan was restless and exhausted, overbooked and agitated, and she was full of shame.  

Like many of our clients, Susan was trapped in a traumatized state of hypervigilance. To deeply rest as a child meant to be caught unaware and terrorized. To sit and put her feet up meant to be called lazy. As much as she tried to convince herself that she could trust her choices now, she was wary of new people and places.   

 As Marion F. Solomon writes in the book, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain, “Hyperarousal causes traumatized people to become easily distressed by unexpected stimuli. Their tendency to be triggered into reliving traumatic memories illustrates how their perceptions have become excessively focused on the involuntary search for the similarities between the present and their traumatic past. As a consequence, many neutral experiences become reinterpreted as being associated with the traumatic past.”  

To help clients like Susan heal, EMDR therapists must be thoughtful and diligent in our case conceptualizations. Treatment planning requires we prioritize the issues at hand. Without some capacity for ease and positive affect, it can be difficult or even impossible for a client to tackle problems of powerlessness and self-esteem.  Therefore, clients must be supported to strengthen feelings of safety within and target for reprocessing experiences that interfere with the ability to restore and renew.  

We can only bring our clients into territories we ourselves have mapped, so it is essential that we engender a sense of calm when working with our hypervigilant clients.   

Our nervous systems are constantly in communication with each other, so when the therapist stays tranquil and grounded, even in the face of pain and uncertainty, the client is given the signal on a deep level that they may too.   

Like me, Susan was a practitioner of yoga. When I introduced the phrase, “sthira sukham asanam” to our work, she was delighted. This is a teaching of a sage named Patanjali, and it translates as, “The posture should be steady and comfortable.” It refers to the position assumed for meditation, but for centuries yogis have taken it off their meditation cushions and into the world. Regardless of outside circumstance, whatever the posture is that we are taking in life, we may endeavor to be as stable and easeful as possible in each moment.  

Susan was delighted, but she was also concerned. It seemed great in theory, but she worried she would fail at it. I assured her we would go slowly, and that like a muscle being exercised, this skill could be built.  

We began applying “sthira sukhma asanam” in our sessions, in small amounts at first and then increasingly more over time.   

Was she sitting comfortably?   

Was there a way she could shift, even slightly, to bring about even more ease?   

Could she heavy herself downward to feel more stable?   

Could she notice what she was feeling and breathe deeply into it?   

Could she place a hand gently on her heart or belly and feel that warmth?  

Then we took it into the relational space between us. As I too sat comfortably, breathed into what I was feeling, rooted myself into my seat, I asked Susan if she could begin to trust that when she felt calm inside, this was a signal that she was safe enough in the moment. Could she trust that I would stay steadfast in my presence? Could she trust that we could calmly face whatever storm came in her reprocessing work, and that we would come out together on the other side?  

Susan found that the more we practiced this in the office, the more she could practice it outside the office. She practiced it while standing on lines, in her yoga class, when she lay down for sleep at night, when her wife wanted to try a new restaurant, when she met new people.   

Susan repeated to herself, “Steady and comfortable, steady and comfortable.” As she found more agency over her state of vigilance, she allowed herself to move more slowly and take more time for repose and for play, and ultimately, she was able to process her traumatic memories and shed the defectiveness and shame that had followed her everywhere since childhood.  

I am grateful to have a lifelong yoga practice that teaches my mind and body to be strong and quiet, and a lucky EMDR therapist indeed to be able to share all that I have been taught with my colleagues and clients.   

What is your superpower to help clients be steady and comfortable?  

Notes:  

Bryant, E.F. (2009). The yoga sutras of Patanjali. North Wind Press.  

Solomon, M.F. & Siegel, D. J. (2003). Healing trauma: attachment, mind, body, and brain. Norton.