Helping Clients Who Cant Feel – Janina Fisher

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Nothing defeats a therapist more than a client who’s numb or disconnected. When you ask why they’ve come for help, they may say, “I’m depressed” or “I’ve lost all hope,” but they can’t describe how they feel. 

How can we help clients like this deepen into the work of therapy?

This recording offers a body-centered approach to helping clients access emotion and connect to themselves in a way that can’t be defeated by numbing. You’ll learn to use simple movements and sensations as a therapeutic entry point to help clients appreciate how their bodies prevent them from experiencing the emotions they’re entitled to feel.

1. Reframe emotional and somatic numbing as a body phenomenon to improve clinical outcomes.
2. Discuss the role of emotional numbing in the client’s survival or adaptation to trauma.
3. Describe the autonomic arousal model and its role in emotional numbing.
4. Identify body-centered interventions that increase sensation or energy.
5. Implement strategies that increase autonomic arousal.

Why therapists need clients to ‘feel’

• What the client cannot feel is not available for treatment 
• Therapeutic models emphasize emotional connection

The role of the autonomic nervous system

• Numbness and avoidance as autonomic symptoms
• How emotional numbing helps children survive

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: a somatic approach

• Addressing numbness and ‘avoidance’ as somatic issues
• A somatic approach to increasing the sense of safety
• Using ‘feeling’ alternatives
• Integrating movement and play into psychotherapy
• Empowering clients to self-connection