Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

suppressing the experience and expression of emotion, cutting off interoceptive awareness, and in general denying and dissociating from one’s embodied self-awareness. Some methods of being out of touch with embodied self-awareness, however, seem like just the opposite.

The problem with fear, and any type of threat to the self, is that awareness of the body becomes lost and replaced by the need to protect the self or to collapse. Suppression is the loss of our ability to feel ourselves. Suppression includes defenses of denial (I’m not really scared, just a little nervous!), intellectualizing (I don’t want to be a

is important in the short run because it helps us rise to challenges and mobilize our resources. If we can return to a more relaxed state soon after, allowing our parasympathetic nervous system to slow down our hearts and cool our bodies, normal recovery and restoration of our metabolic energetic resources will result in an ability to think clearly

Paradoxically, even though pain is meant to be a wake-up call, it is often treated like an unwelcome guest. All we want to do is get away from it or to have that guest leave as soon as possible. Pain often leads to suppression and absorption. Continuing to suppress pain in the absence of embodied self-awareness that leads to self-care, therefore, c

Neural learning is reflected in physiological changes in the nerve cells and their connections. Practice leads to the growth of an increasing number of interconnecting fibers that can synapse between cells. The more synapses between adjoining cells, the more likely there will be a direct communication between them, and the stronger the neural netwo

This is why we often need someone else to guide us in and out of this state. With practice, we become better able to maintain ourselves there, but ultimately the full exploration of new emotional territory requires help from a coregulating other.

We can assume that the horror was a spontaneous and emergent emotion as Sacks connected—in the subjective emotional present of embodied self-awareness—his change in body schema to his interoceptive self-awareness. He graciously admits to us that he could not stay in that emotional present: the horror was too disturbing.

the similarities and the differences between normal absorption (flow) and dissociation. In both cases, there is a total focus on the activity and a loss of peripheral awareness. While normal absorption is inherently pleasurable, however, dissociation is a loss of body sensation so as to avoid pain.

Like suppression of feelings, suppression of urges has consequences, especially if the need for suppression of the urge is in conflict with one’s desires. In addition to the chronic muscle tension and possible pain, these consequences include feelings of discomfort and longing, distracted and impaired thought processes, obsessive thoughts about wha

A good cry is restorative, creative, and cleansing. It can help us heal and regain a sense of hope. However, a good cry is paradoxical: it is about pain and relief, despair and hope, loss and gain.