By Mark Van Dompseler
In the dead of a summer’s night last July, nineteen-year-old Allison recalls waking up to a flurry of incoming texts that would change her forever.
“Have you heard about Emma?”
“Are you okay?”
It was hard for Allison to picture her best friend of many years accidentally falling from the roof of Peterborough’s city bus terminal, plunging to her death. Emma’s untimely passing signaled the beginning of Allison’s ordeal with severe anxiety and depression, a battle that she continues to fight today.
“Since then, I couldn’t get rid of any kind of sadness,” she says quietly. “Nothing could drag me from the depths of that sadness.”
In the days and months that followed, Allison withdrew from her friends and family, isolating herself inside her bedroom. “None of my other friends could understand.”
She began to cut herself. First came the scissors. Then, she moved on to sharper and more dangerous tools, ranging from chef’s knives to X-acto blades. The thoughts of suicide were overwhelming at some points. As her mental health continued to decline, Allison’s family encouraged her to seek treatment.
She spoke with a counselor, a social worker and a doctor, who diagnosed her as being clinically depressed. She entered group therapy. She began taking Cipralex, upping the dosage after having little to no success with the initial prescription. Allison and the professionals who tried to help her focus primarily on the psychological part of her traumatic experiences, but pay less attention to the physiological aspects of the problem. The idea that the mind and body are mutually exclusive and must be treated separately prevails.
Bioenergetic analysis, for example, is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the interrelations between the human mind, body and emotion. Proponents of bioenergetics believe that conditions like depression and anxiety are almost always rooted in the body, and can be traced back to the inability for emotional expression, either from not having certain needs fulfilled or through chronic muscular tension, which inhibits day-to-day motion and activity.
Alexander Lowen, the founder of bioenergetics analysis, says that “you are your body; your head doesn’t control it”:
When asked about bioenergetics analysis, Allison admits that she has never heard of it. After a brief explanation of its core tenets, her face lights up. She tells of her experiences with dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), which focuses heavily on the idea of mindfulness and bodily awareness.
Bioenergetics analysis goes a bit further in regards to the significance of the body. Valerie Anderson, a psycho-educational consultant for the Peel District School Board, believes that bioenergetics can work wonders for individuals who are suffering from mental disorders like anxiety and depression.
“With mindfulness, what you do is go into something, you just learn to accept it. With bioenergetics, you kinda go into something and you … work at releasing it,” says Anderson.
She explains that this form of “body psychotherapy” emphasizes the importance of ‘grounding,’ or the physical connection one has to the Earth. Oftentimes, mental disorders are so psychologically draining that it feels as though a person’s head is floating away like a helium balloon. Bioenergetics analysis uses specific physical exercises that focus on affective expression, which are designed to ease physical tension within the body. These “release” exercises are thought to help facilitate a more useful and therapeutic working through of one’s issues. Asked what he does when he is depressed, Florida-based strength and conditioning coach Elliot Hulse goes through this ‘bioenergizing’ drill:
Many of the expressive practices and exercises are different than most ideas people have about ‘therapy,’ and can seem a bit intimidating because of how unconventional they are. This reluctance is something Anderson is aware of.
“I’ve seen [bioenergetics] work for lots of people.” I can’t say I haven’t seen it work … I think some people are afraid of it,” she says.
Allison might not perform exercises like these directly, but she finds the time to physically and emotionally express herself, usually through contemporary dance or yoga. One can almost consider any activity that brings joy to be bioenergetic, in a sense. People’s minds are constantly occupied with text message conversation and social networks, to the point that bodies are nearly forgotten. Bioenergetics analysis is concerned with the relation one has to their body and to other people, meaning that the increasingly digital nature of human relationships presents many challenges for this form of psychotherapy.
Allison is feeling much better these days. She confides that her new boyfriend is helping her to cope with past trauma, and is helping her lead a more enjoyable life.
Quoting her doctor, Allison says: “Love is a better treatment than any pill I can give you.”
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