How to Keep Going when you Feel Like Sh*t

The most ubiquitous issue in body-based therapy is simply this. People give up when they feel shit. Actually, feeling shit is just one of two aspects of the same issue. The other is that their nervous system has detected that they are going to feel shit very shortly, if they continue. So it finds a way to get them to stop.

This is it. If you can beat the issue of feeling shit, you can achieve immense development. But you have to beat the issue.

So let’s break it down. Let’s take a closer look.

What do we really mean when we say we feel shit?

Curiously enough, what most people mean is not that they actually feel shit. Rather they mean that their mind is filled with extremely negative thoughts. Thoughts like:

• I want to die

• There’s no point

• I’m just totally fucked up

So what should you do when you are assailed by these thoughts? What you should do is to place your attention on the sensation of your body. Why? Because this is where processing takes place.

The extremely negative thoughts are happening because they are the mental correlates of emotions and physical sensations that were repressed within you when you were younger. They are happening because something is trying to move, trying to come out of you and to process. That won’t happen if you just sit and listen to the thoughts. Or if you make yourself busy to distract yourself. But if you use the presence of extreme negative thoughts as a signpost, and remember that you need to spend time feeling your body now, then you can process, and move on.

When you are working with deep trauma, you have to get used to extreme negative thoughts. In many ways, the depth to which you can heal will depend on your tolerance to extreme negative thoughts, your capacity to be with extreme negative thoughts and to keep directing yourself to feel your body.

Okay, but what about when I actually just am feeling shit? When it’s not just negative thoughts?

In that case, once again, simply feel your body. I find it fascinating just how much I can avoid a background sensation, somewhere deciding that it’s “shit-ness,” but not actually allow myself to feel it. Once you take a position to actually “go in there” and feel, you will almost certainly be surprised. For it will be like, “Oh, I thought this was going to be terrible. But actually it’s just a physical sensation in my body. Not so bad.” And by feeling it, it processes.

Once again, it’s the background mental processing that is telling you not to feel - this is gonna be so fucking bad, better go look at my phone instead. But when you turn around and confront it, it’s really not such a big deal. Why? Likely because feelings and sensations that were overwhelming when you were two are just no big deal when you’re thirty.

Okay, got it. But what about when it is my nervous system coming in and not even allowing me to feel what I need to feel?

Good question. But then it’s good to realise, all my nervous system can do is to play narratives to try to get me to stop my practice, or distract myself. Narratives like:

• This is pointless, nothing is happening

• You forgot to do blah-blah (excuse to look at screen)

• You should try that breathwork course, bound to be way better than this

Your nervous system knows the kind of narrative to play to get you out of there. It’s been A-B testing that stuff since you were a kid. But, guess what? You are also complicit. Just because your mind is telling you that something is pointless, doesn’t mean that it necessarily is. Just because your mind is telling you to check your phone, doesn’t mean you have to. You have a choice. Be objective and use it. Develop discipline.

At the end of the day, you can move forwards if you learn how to use the narratives you play to yourself to signpost your likely inner state. Get curious, get sceptical. Just why is my mind playing this narrative now? Why did I just get up from my chair upon reading that? What’s going on?

You can use the presence of extreme negative thoughts and escape narratives to detect that something is trying to shift. And to direct yourself to feel your body. And to keep going.