Psychogenealogy

Dave came into today for his second session of therapy.  He's big guy, built like a rugby player, with a soft centre.  He has a lot of issues he'd like to deal with, but the event that triggered him into coming to therapy was when he recently learned his wife had cancer.  He brought it up again with a painful look on his face so I suggested we could go into that.

Dave claims he can't feel anything.  But as we stepped through the announcement of his wife's illness, he connected to a distinct sensation of oppression in his upper chest area when the doctor delivered the diagnosis.   It was like a blow in the belly, he said.  Staying with the sensation, Dave felt a lot of underlying anger.  It was blood red in colour.

Using a special protocol, I explored with Dave where the sensation and anger were coming from.  It wasn't in his adult life and it wasn't in his childhood.  It finally led Dave to connect this state to his paternal grandfather.  His grandfather had been a very angry man, he began to tell me for the first time.  He had worked on developing bombs for the army and had become exposed to dangerous chemicals which shortened his life.  Dave felt the deep state of rage his grandfather would only let himself experience when he was alone.  When he was with others, he felt nothing so he wouldn't exploded into someone. 

So we worked to help Dave's grandfather name these inner feelings to break the silence.  Suddenly Dave felt calm in his upper chest area.  So we verified it by running through the announcement experience again.  But there was no sensation of oppression anymore for Dave as the doctor pronounced the diagnosis.  I feel calm, he said, and I can now begin to even feel some saddness.