t deal of tension in her shoulders, neck, and head, particularly around the temples and forehead. She described the tension in her shoulders and neck as several large tight knots and the tension in her head felt like there was a vice clamped around her skull maintaining the pressure. I asked her to rate the tension on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst, and she rated it at an 8. I then requested that she show me how it felt by shrugging her shoulders tightly and squeezing her eyes tightly shut. After this, I asked her to intensify the tension to a 9 or 10 and as she held this position for a few seconds I then asked her to remember the last time she felt this way. She began to tell me of an incident she had with her mother a couple of day’s prior when she took her mother to dinner for her birthday. The evening started out with some small talk where Paula told her mother how great her job was going and that she would be getting a promotion and a sizeable pay raise very soon. Her mother ignored this news and instead asked Paula if she had met anyone yet, meaning a man. Paula was angered by this but resolved not to let it get to her and instead continued on with the conversation. She later told her mother that she had just joined a gym to get in better shape. With that information the mother quickly replied “are you sure you want to eat that then?” Paula was hurt and angered by the fact her mother wasn’t being supportive in the least, but was instead being critical, although not overtly. Paula equated these instances to a “hit and run” – she’d take her jab at me and move on to the next subject “. When asked how her mother’s criticisms made her feel, she reiterated the hurt and anger she felt that evening. Now that these significant feelings were brought into the present, we were ready to proceed on to stage 2.Stage 2 – Working with External Polarities: In s...
