The Therapy of Touch IV: 'Merging'

One of the most valuable things I learned when I trained as a Transactional Analysis psychotherapist was to learn the difference between my “self” and the “other”. This is particularly important in a therapy like Massage which offers so many opportunities to ‘merge’ with our clients. Before my training I had gotten myself into difficulty with merging. I had assumed that what I felt or experienced was what the client felt or experienced.

This is what I mean by ‘merging’. It is when I confuse what I am experiencing and thinking with what the client actually experiences. It is an “I - Thou” issue. This sounds a bit obvious, doesn’t it? However, one of the most common mistakes I witness in my training of Massage therapists is precisely this problem. Many Massage therapists actually foster this delusion and pride themselves on their ‘sensitivity’ and their ‘psychic’ abilities, even. They simply love to prove their abilities by telling clients exactly what they notice about them and what their ‘energy’ is doing. Yet if it was really happening, wouldn’t the client be telling them?

What is really going on here, is a manipulative ‘power play’ in which the client is encouraged to disable their critical and ‘Adult’ faculties. In Transactional Analysis terms what we have is a lack of grown up Adult communication. Instead what we have is a therapist’s Child ego state that is living in a fairy tale world of wizards and witches doing its very best to convince the Child ego state of the client that all this psychic and magical thinking really works.

To ‘out’ this process we must see it in the following transactional terms:

Client: “May I have a Massage”

Therapist: “Yes, but first may I magically discern what you need, thereby disabling your ‘Adult’ ego state and discounting any ability you have to think or talk for yourself?”

Client: “Is that what I must do to have touch?”

Therapist: “Yes, and having disabled your ‘Adult ego state’, let me now anaesthetise any critical and evaluating Parent ego state you have by using the hypnotic and merging power of touch to give me total power over your interpretation of reality”

Client: “Oh goody goody, this is such fun!”

What we now have are two children ‘running the show’ which is generally a total disaster for the therapeutic relationship. Most of this merging is simply ‘projection’. We feel uplifted so we say to the client “I notice how uplifted you are”. In the power relationship of Massage, the client is bound to agree. Occasionally, a client with a strong ego will simply walk out and not return, as a result of such insulting and manipulative behaviour.

What I teach to Massage therapists is how best to ensure it is the client’s own experience they are describing in their own words. To do this, I invite the client to spend a few minutes lying on the table at the end of the treatment. This is so they have time to integrate the effect of the Massage. I leave the room so they really are in their own space for this phase.

The second part of this ‘Integration phase’ is when the client is dressed. Here, I still avoid ‘chit chat’ and deflect the inevitable “what did you notice, Doc?” game, by simply asking the client to: “Walk around the table and notice how your body wants to walk after this treatment. Tell me anything you notice that feels different from before you got on the table - if anything.”

What is remarkable is that clients never say “Wow, I feel so myofascia-ed!” or “I feel like my ilio-psoas is now so much longer!” Unless that is, they are structural bodyworkers who have virtuously ‘fought off’ the implications of letting in powerful healing touch throughout the whole treatment. Only Massage therapists and professional bodyworkers talk such daft and unnatural language. If clients really do speak this way, then they have simply been ‘educated’ in the same way that Freudian clients have been trained by their analysts to dream in Freudian imagery and Jungian clients to dream in Jungian imagery. What clients actually come out with, without such professional brain washing is, well, absolutely anything!

It is so exciting to actually listen to clients’ own words without any merging or attempt to ‘influence’ their findings. I genuinely never know what will actually come out of their mouths, despite 28 years of watching clients get off the table and walk around the room. One client may walk like a zombie carrying lead weights on his feet and still exclaim “I feel so light and free”. Another may prance around like the sugar plum fairy saying “I feel so grounded and centred”. Who am I to say what my client actually feels or experiences internally? What is certain is this:

Everything I learned about the power of touch and Massage came from the mouths of my clients. None of it can be found in the Massage or Psychotherapy text books which, of necessity, only speak ‘bodywork’ or ‘Psychotherapy’. Yet to really understand the immense power of touch, we really need to turn each client we Massage into our teacher, by truly listening to their words. We need to learn how to

‘speak client’.

The Therapy of Touch III: Frightened Psychotherapy?

Just as the current obsession of the Massage profession with ‘fixing’ the structure of a body suggests a rather worrying and fundamental fear of touch, so too the Psychotherapy profession’s aversion to touch suggests a fundamental ignorance of what makes us truly human and what makes us better.

We are not just mind. Touching the body can release patterns of energy, emotion and behaviour that have remained undisturbed for decades. In just a few minutes. Whether this comes from our oral phase or our anal stage is largely irrelevant except to those who would avoid contact and ACTION through endless theoretical disputes. Like those mediaeval scholars tediously arguing over how many angels might fit on the end of a pin…

Does accepting contact from a client who reaches their hand out for comfort constitute a breach of the therapeutic relationship? Or was it a rediscovery and reassertion of that most fundamental of healing beliefs, namely that “I am not alone”? Who made up such rules and regulations? Did these regulators ever do any work on their own fears of touch, intimacy and life itself? Are they qualified to regulate? The only people who should be scared of touch are those who have not examined the issues of boundaries, genuine intimacy and personal motivation. This should be a fundamental part of any psychotherapy qualification training, surely?

Once qualified, is a Psychotherapist not competent to utilise that most universal of all human communications - touch? Are they not capable of assessing the right intervention, verbal or physical, for this individual? Is some ‘professional ethics panel’ more informed about this particular client’s needs? If the body never lies, why do we shun touching it in our therapy? Do we want to only work with that aspect of the self which is capable of self delusional lies - the mind?

Congruency is when what is said and what is done actually match. If we make up unnatural and touch phobic ‘rules’ around our therapy, how then do we ever assess our clients’ congruency? How do we know if what is said is meant, or that what is meant is said or that what is done is both meant and said? Young children reach out and touch those they are safe with. In our great psychological wisdom we would forbid this. So just what message do we give about humanity and life when we sit so apart from each other and stay so uninvolved? “This is a scary world and I am not going to risk my professional separateness from you”. Great. Such wisdom. Such profound teaching about the really important things in life.

A touch phobic profession is literally ‘flying blind’ to congruency, unable to assess the truth of what is unfolding. Body language and body movements are but insipid and weak indicators of truth when compared to the intensity and searing honesty of touch. When you touch me or I touch you, I am immediately and intensely aware of my issues and my difficulties with you. This powerful intimacy of touch brooks very little theoretical dispute. Our reactions to touch are there for all to see and feel. They are instant, observable and powerful. Just what types of touch can be used powerfully in a therapeutic setting goes beyond a mere blog, but touch is one of the most powerful psychotherapeutic interventions of them all.

Working for so many years with Massage therapists, I have witnessed a whole room full of people knowing INSTANTLY when the touch just ‘got right’ and when the client just ’let it in’. The visual clues were minimal, though on reflection and discussion some unconsciously recognised ‘micro-signals’ may have been present. By ‘micro-signals’ I mean skin hue, subtle changes in breath and minute alterations in posture. However, as these were done with the clients lying ‘rested’ on a table (face down) there really was only about as much ‘body language’ to go on, as in a morgue. There was none of that highly visible ‘shifting of position’ seen in seated posture.

What was INSTANTLY and universally experienced by all in the room, whether watching or giving a treatment, from the most inexperienced to the most ancient bodyworker, was the SENSE that touch was accepted at a certain moment in time. The whole room as an organism seemed to just say “Yup, I can let this healing and soothing power of touch in”

In psychoanalytical circles we might perhaps say that the id, ego and superego all opened the gates to this touch. In Transactional Analysis we would say that the touch scored a ‘bull’s eye’ where all three ego states were happy to accept this touch, Parent, Adult and Child.

When touch is either accepted or rejected it always comes with a story. That story is KNOWN by the client and much of its dynamics can be FELT by the therapist and the group. After the experience of touch comes much fruitful sharing and discussion of our ease or difficulty with intimacy and human fellowship. As 90% of all psychological dysfunction and healing relates to our difficulties with intimacy and human fellowship, touch becomes one of the most useful therapeutic tools on the planet.

And the Psychotherapy ethics committees around the world in their wisdom would ban this amazing tool of discovery and healing.

Such wisdom…