How Do I Move a “Head” Client Into His/Her“Heart”?
Written By: Two Addiction Ladies, Candy Finnigan and Jeanie Griffin Date: February 5th, 2009. Topic: Intervention.In our previous article, Head, Heart and Feet, we promised to offer the counselor exercises that assist clients who are stuck in their head or heart or feet. People “stuck in their head” think their feelings. People “stuck in their hearts” feel their thoughts and often engage in catastrophic thinking. People who are “stuck in their feet” often react impulsively before they get in touch with what they may think or feel. The challenge for the counselor is how to facilitate an effective group when clients process experiences with such diversity.
When asked by a counselor, “How do you feel about your best friend moving to another town?” Amy replied, “I think it is a great move for her.” This response is common for someone who thinks feelings instead of feeling them. Such responses often offer a defense against the pain of having to feel feelings. Freud identified defense mechanisms such as intellectualization, isolation of affect and rationalization as ways to avoid feeling. Over explaining, defending and rationalizing are common verbal expressions of thinkers or “head people”. Adult Children of Alcoholism often compartmentalize feelings or “sanitize them” in an attempt to have control over the unpredictable waves of emotion that sweep over them as they live through the events they experienced in hurtful homes. While this illusion of control offers safety from unpredictable feelings, the client becomes robbed of spontaneous emotional responses to events. The counselor’s challenge is to create a safe place and use safe techniques whereby the client may begin to explore feelings instead of converting feelings into thoughts.
One way to facilitate the expression of feelings is to use quotes, poems, writings or songs of others expressing feelings and combine such works with non verbal and verbal techniques for sharing experiences. We would like to suggest some possible works for you to use in your groups.
1) Aaron Neville’s To Make Me Who I Am,
“I’ve walked through this world sometimes
Without a friend
My life has been up and down
Been close to an end
But I’ve been through the mill
And I’ve paid my dues
Walked so many miles in different
People’s shoes.
I’ve been through the fire
And I’ve walked in the rain
I’ve felt the joy and endured the pain
2) Around the Year with Emmet Fox , A Book of Daily Readings, 1931
“God has not made you without a definite purpose in view. The Universe is a universe, that is, it is a unified harmony, a divine scheme. It could not happen therefore, that God could create a spiritual entity such as you are, without having a special purpose in view, a special place for you. Whatever the place may be, there can only be one person who can fill it perfectly………Discontent is not necessarily a bad thing. It is your duty to be discontented with anything less than complete harmony and happiness. A wholesome discontent with dullness, failure, and frustration is your incentive for overcoming such things. Whoever you are, your true place is calling; and, because you really are a spark of the Divine, you will never be content until you answer.”
3) Around the Year with Emmet Fox, A Book of Daily Readings, 1931
“Suppose that you had an invisible recorder on your shoulders tomorrow morning. At the end of the day, suppose that this record were played over to you so that every word you uttered for a whole day was repeated to you. Well, if you are like the average human being you would probably be embarrassed. Yet it really does happen that everything we say and think and do is recorded —- in the subconscious mind—and our daily experience is simply that record being played over to us. Never forget that the circumstances of your life tomorrow are molded by your mental conduct of today.” — Emmet Fox
4) A Course in Miracles, vol 1, page 536:
The only thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear—nothing more than one instant of your love without attack is necessary.
Using these or other works of expression that you might find useful, ask clients to:
- Read the quote out loud in group.
- Sit in silence for 2 minutes letting the reading and the feelings resonate.
- Ask clients to re-read the quote silently again asking themselves how the reading applies in their own life.
- Distribute blank paper and colored markers or crayons and ask clients to draw a picture that illustrates their feelings.
- Share with each other.
- Ask clients to offer a favorite song or quote that affected them deeply
Do not expect “head” people to be able to “emote” on the spot. This exercise may bring up many feelings for them that might be expressed as anger, disgust, irritation, or resistance. Do not be tricked by the appearance of insensitivity. Keep digging gently. More will be revealed. Good luck!
Next, we will help you move those dramatic “heart” people into their heads.
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February 10th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
I am going to try this in group this Thursday…..let you know how it goes. I love it, want more!
February 11th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I had the pleasure of meeting Candy and Jeanie at the recent Intervention Conference last year in Santa Monica. I love Candy’s book, and enjoyed my visit with Jeanie as my lunch partner. Before many got on the “bandwagon” I’d been doing Interventions with families in the 80′s, while working under John Bradshaw, Kip Flock, and Dr. Dave Lewis. What a change we’ve been through in the field of Addictions since that time~! I am enriched by Candy and Jeanie’s writing in this current issue of RecoveryView and hope our paths cross again very soon. I will be sharing their words of wisdom with colleagues and introducing them to this new publication
Judy