Daniel Davis, LMFT

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A Felt Sense of the Body

February 2, 2016 By Daniel Davis, LMFT Leave a Comment

Alexithymia is a condition where one has difficulty identifying feelings and difficulty describing feelings. Someone with Alexithymia has trouble with thinking and regulating their emotions. This disorder appears to be partly responsible for disease and mental health issues.

John Omaha, the inventor of Affect Management Skills Training, cites research that men lack emotional sensitivity. Research indicates that emotional numbness is a one way someone responds to stressful challenges in life. Men are more emotionally numb that women. I realize that this is not a surprise to much of the world. Men, women, and children are often reminded of how men lack emotional sensitivity. Women are often better at bonding than men which is related to emotional sensitivity.

Many men have one person that they share their insecurities, fears, shame, sadness, or tragedies – their wife or girlfriend. Many men do not even share intimately with anyone. It can be a lonely world to hide our feelings and thoughts from everyone. I must add that some women do not share their insecurities, fears, shame, anger, or tragedies with anyone as well.

Women seem more playful than men. Watch children. The girls and boys are singing. The girls will be swaying and grooving with the music. The boys will be stiff as boards. It may be the due to incomplete separation from their mother. Robert Bly writes: “When a girl is two or three, she can look up at her mother and say ‘That is what I am going to be’. A boy the same age can look up at his mother and say, ‘That is not what I am going to be’. Separating from the mother is difficult for both genders; some children have good luck with it, some less good luck”. When we separate from our mothers, other boys often shame us calling us sissy or mama’s boy. This results in a wound that stays with us for a long time. Some boys are able to resolve this wound and gain more separation from their mother psychologically.

If as men, we are unable to resolve our wound separating from our mother as a young boy, then will tend to be stiff. We may become a lawyer, an engineer, or scientist. We can become obsessed with distance. He may have a tendency as an adult to treat people as if they were things, and to treat things as if they were people.

Although social support is a key factor in our psychological and physical health, many of us live lives of isolation, loneliness, and despair. We may live in bedroom communities in our neighborhoods, driving home late in our smart cars to our big screen televisions, computers, or smart phones. Some of us are overwhelmed with the responsibilities of children or work that we scarcely feel as if we have a free moment. We had friends once, but no longer find time.

Our experiences of our bodies may be numbness and pain. We may experience moments of relief when eating or drinking alcohol or having sex or playing a video game or working on the computer. Robert Johnson wrote: “We have an insatiable need of entertainment – we moderns watch TV and other screens more than seven hours a day – and for anything that might assuage our longing, especially late at night”.

Many of us remain strangers to our body sensations. Waking up to our emotions, body shifts, vital energy, erotic urges, and even aggressive impulses can be disturbing. We have become strangers to our own pleasure. We have sacrificed our joy for the seductive distractions of the commercial replacements in modern life.

From our morning caffeine, to our mid-morning sugar, to our afternoon Red Bull, and then to the big dinner and perhaps a few drinks. We may find temporary relief in our submission to much artificial assistants to climb up the daunting hill of our day, only to rest and do it all again tomorrow.

Vacations are a rarity. If someone takes time off, they must check their email and return phone calls from work matters. They may get up at 3:00 am for meetings with colleagues from around the globe. We become a source of output for the corporate profit machine. What is our reward? Where do we find relief or sanctuary if our own body no longer recognizes pleasure but only a relief from pain into temporary numbness?

Please watch this video by Nils Peterson on poetry and the body:

 

Filed Under: Blog, Calming Oneself, Somatic Therapy Tagged With: Affect Management Skills Training, aggressive, alcohol, Alexithymia, AMST, big, body, body shifts, bonding, caffeine, children, Dinner, disease, drinks, drugs, emotional, emotions, entertainment, erotic, fears, impulses, insecurities, John Omaha, marijuana, mental health issues, numbness, overeating, playful, Red Bowl, regulating their emotions, research, Robert Johnson, sadness, sensations, sensitivity, separating from mother, shame, sugar, thinking, tragedies, urges, vacations, vital energy, women, wound, young boy

Zapchen (Somatic Therapy)

September 21, 2015 By Daniel Davis, LMFT Leave a Comment

Kid Giggling

Rasberries and Stomping

Yawning

Setting Down The World and Turkey Flopping

Falling Asleep

Filed Under: Somatic Therapy

How do I fall asleep and stay asleep?

May 26, 2015 By Daniel Davis, LMFT 2 Comments

One of the most frustrating things is to have time to sleep and to lie awake in bed, starring at the ceiling.    Look around you if you are in a crowded room – the person on your left sleeps well.  The person on your right has trouble sleeping.  Sometimes, it is the demands of work, school, or children that keep us from getting enough sleep to feel rested and alert.

Before the electric light was invented in 1879, most people slept 10 hours a night.  People in countries free from demands of modern industrialized society, typically sleep 10 hours a night.  Americans on average sleep just 6 hours and 24 minutes sleep at night.   Successful people sleep 8 hours and 24 minutes a night.

Good sleep energizes the body and enables our brains to think and remember better.  Thirty percent of high school and college students fall asleep in class at least once a week.  Without enough sleep for long periods of time, we can become physically ill with health problems such as diabetes.  Most mental health problems are related to sleep.  We can become so deprived of sleep that we do not know what it feels like to be wide awake.

Here are some suggestions to improve sleep:

*Keep a regular schedule for going to bed and getting up

*Don’t drink or eat caffeine (coffee, caffeinated tea, or chocolate)

*Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you are awake in the middle of the night

*Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before going to bed

*Get regular aerobic exercise (not to close to bedtime)

*Minimize noise and light where you sleep (quiet and dark help)

*Keep temperatures moderate-not too hot or cold

*Spend the time 30 to 60 minutes before be relaxing (quiet music, meditation, pray, stretching)

Using simple movements, natural to us as children that we have been taught to suppress as grown-ups, Laura Lund offers us ways to fall asleep and stay asleep.  Laura Lund is certified as a Somatic Counselor and Educator with Zapchen Somatics.  In this video, Laura Lund demonstrates techniques to help us sleep.

 

Key Words:

Blog 5
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Blogs by Daniel Davis, sleep
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Filed Under: Blog, Sleep, Somatic Therapy Tagged With: hygiene, Laura Lund, research, sleep, Zapchen Somatics

How do I relax when I am angry?

May 19, 2015 By Daniel Davis, LMFT 3 Comments

If you have some trouble controlling your anger, you are normal. Anger has enormous power that over shadows our clear thinking and our desire to do good. Academic studies identify it as the hardest of emotions to master. Most adults do not master anger until after age 50 – if ever. Anger can lead to heart disease and cancer.

We typically get angry when someone blocks us from our goals, lies to us, or unjustly hurts someone. Fear is an emotional signal that danger is near. Anger is a signal someone is crossing into our territory – physically or psychologically. Yet there is an upside to anger, because anger gets us moving. Anger and depression are incompatible states.

Play is the natural way we let go of our unpleasant emotions and heal. Children naturally play through a conflict they experience. Play is the natural way we let go of tension and heal. During authentic play, we are spontaneous, unselfconscious, and non-competitive as well as lose track of time. Playing is part of what it means to be human. Schiller writes, (woman or) “man is completely human only when (she or) he is at play.”

Using simple movements, natural to us as children that we have been taught to suppress as grown-ups, Laura Lund. offers us ways to cope with anger. Laura Lund is certified as a Somatic Counselor and Educator with Zapchen Somatics. In this video, Laura Lund demonstrates technique to change our emotional state with childlike body movements and sounds – raspberries, horse lips, and stomping.

Key Words:

Blog 4
Blogs by Daniel Davis, anger and play
Laura Lund, Raspberries, Horse Lips, and Stomping
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Raspberries
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“How do I relax when I am angry?”

Filed Under: Anger Management, Blog, Somatic Therapy Tagged With: Anger Management, Horse Lips, Laura Lund, play, Raspberries, Stomping, Zapchen Somatics

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About Daniel Davis, LMFT

I create an environment where clients experience their unique significance, authentic empowerment, and profound acceptance and collaborate with clients to identify solutions to their current crises. For more information on how I can help you, contact me today by calling 408-249-0014 or emailing info@danieldavislmft.com. I look forward to speaking with you! Read More…

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Daniel Davis, M.A., LMFT
Counselor in Santa Clara, CA
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