Do you ever wonder how you got a gut feeling and turned out to be true? Or how the strange feeling at the pit of your stomach always goes along with your fear? How your hands and feet feel numb when you’re depressed and how you can’t just keep them still when you’ve had good news?

It’s your body’s own expression, its own wisdom and needs.

I used to suffer from depression since 2004. Some of my relatives also did so it was logical to assume that I may have had a genetic disposition of developing depression. In addition to that, people (sometimes therapists too) called me an over-thinker and made me feel responsible for my depression, like I intentionally stirred through shit to feel it. To be honest I believe what they perceived as overthinking was merely my way of working through my emotions and figuring out where they came from.

I tried eating healthy and walking. Dancing did help for a while but it just uplifted my mood and delayed the handling of emotions in a sustained way. Any physical work helps the body in transforming the emotional energy, but to increase your physical intuition (ie. the level of back and forth communication with your body about on going feelings) you need to be conscious about how and why you move and tap into that with an observatory sense. I also tried meditating, but meditating with escapist tendencies only increased the suppressed frustration and delayed its confrontation. I was basically on my own fighting it off, until early 2015 when I tried psychotherapy. Which also failed miserably.

The problem I had with psychotherapy is that it relied on medications for me to feel good enough for the psychiatrist to dig in, if the medications don’t work the doctor waits longer, or changes dosage, but changing the medication seemed like an outsider idea for them. Sometimes they even asked me to push myself and do stuff I felt unsafe or rather pressured doing just to lift my mood to (again) dig in. The problem was that the activities I resisted doing were in themselves symptoms and clues to what was going on, so in a way trying to do them wouldn’t count as uplifting experiences but rather a blind dig in before I was up for it.

And what if I never felt better enough to dig? Did that mean I would never get to understand the depths of why I was covered in this shit? It was such an inflexible way of handling something so critical. And the two weeks spaced sessions ended up as a six months’ journey of just pushing and silent judgement, and no progress in return.

During the months of attending psychotherapy, I came across psychodrama workshops and gave it a shot. The experience was overwhelming and a lot to digest at the beginning, especially that I am a slow processor. I was feeling brave and expressive at one session, so I forgot my limits and I dove right in nominating myself for drama*. It was intense and overwhelming and it brought a lot of pain to the surface.

But it was good.

Psychodrama is based on the idea that we all have inner theaters inside us, with roles and inner power dynamics between them that control all our emotions, functions and behaviors. Sometimes we have different plays that are slightly connected all waiting to be played and observed closely on your personal theater. Observing them can explain our level of response and our fears, our shadow feelings and desires, it can explain things that make us filled with self loathing and blame, or judgment, or despair. It can explain and dissect the guilt surrounding all those natural wild aspects of our psyche and help us come to terms with them and negotiate control between the roles and the “Self”. And training to take the lead in managing that theater is possible, by training that “Self”, the part of your psyche that is responsible for negotiating terms, compassionately, creatively and curiously, to connect and comprehend the back story of each role inside of us. That comes with unbiased observation and compassion, and lots of playing and communication.

It’s very close to the roles notion in the amazing animated movie “Inside Out”. The idea is to identify and differentiate between different voices inside our heads, and manage to give them space to express themselves individually, in their own voice, and then take the lead and decide how to proceed in our best interest as a whole integrated system of emotions and inner roles.

The several dramas I’ve experienced (whether my own or other people’s, since our experiences intersect on so many levels despite our differences and different stories) helped me understand the dark sides of all the fun things I do to escape reality or my emotions, and not judge them as escapist again. They taught me to be creative and flexible about my needs so nothing swells up beneath the surface by neglect.

In psychodrama our emotions are very unique individualistic beings that have their own stories and their own need to be heard. If neglected, they’d fight for attention the only way they know how, by causing instability. Whether that instability was in the form of physical or emotional pain. Our psychological system finds ways to maneuver the pains either by forming easier to digest and accept narratives of why we feel that way, or by causing distraction in any possible way (depersonalization, derealization, memory loss..etc). But to regain touch with your different parts you need simply to follow the smallest clues step by step, your body has its own wisdom and will try to guide you through physical pain, to direct you in its own language. Your body wants you to know the truth, and it also wants you to be ok (hence the delayed responses sometimes), It wants to support you and face experiences with you side by side. This is why any physical work helps the body master the language of communicating the emotional messages it needs to bring to your attention, to be a better friend for you.

I have so much yet to share for the experience, I am grateful beyond expression.

*A drama in the psychodrama world is a play scene form of exploring your feelings, story and/or possible strategies by either revisiting an event and playing it by assigning roles of participants and feelings to other attendees, or by imagining a different possible scenario for the event, or creating a dialogue or scene to explore the power dynamics and the tangled emotions between the roles.

Further readings: