A psychological exploration of illness, chronic symptoms and psychosomatic disease
with Michael Soth
Integral-Relational Body Psychotherapist (UKCP reg.)
Most treatment - both orthodox and complementary - turns illness into an enemy. Of course, you feel afraid, in pain, worried, out of control. Of course, you want to get rid of it - the symptom, the pains, the plain threat to your life. But what often gets neglected in this fight against the illness as ‘other’, is the possibility that it may have a meaning - it may be a messenger. The problem is that in order to understand the message, we have to stop demanding that the symptom change - instead we have to change our approach to it.
What makes it so difficult to understand the ‘message’, is that the illness speaks a completely different language from our ordinary waking consciousness. It speaks the language of the body, of the unconscious, of dreams. It has its own ‘logic’ which does not follow rational, logical or even strictly causal lines. And whether we like it or not, if we do want to understand, we have to meet it on its own terms.
Recent developments in bodywork and new techniques in body awareness allow you to converse with your illness in its own language, thus ending the exclusive focus on fighting against it. This involves getting in touch with the spontaneous processes in your body and mind. By allowing and following these processes - such as sensations, movements, gestures, images and fantasies - you can discover the self-regulating force at the root of both health and illness.
This frequently surprising process can reveal existential issues - past, present and future - of significance to your soul. For example, inherited and unresolved conflicts from the past may be at work in the development of your illness and your relationship to it.
Following spontaneous body reactions may lead you into avoided or unexplored areas in your being which are calling for attention. In this way your illness may help you re-connect with lost or hidden aspects of yourself. It is often through the buried treasures in the psyche that healing can be found. All that is required is a degree of openness to your own body and its messages. Through the body and its illness you may discover the voice of your intuition and the inner vision of your imagination.
In looking for possible meanings of your illness, you may have come across a variety of holistic and alternative theories which claim to have discovered the general meaning of a multitude of symptoms. It would be easy enough for you to read up what the various translations of symptoms into ‘soul messages’ are. One difficulty with these systems is their inevitably too general approach. The same symptom can mean widely different things to different people. And even if you are given the ‘right’ psychological explanation, this will not necessarily have an effect on you or your life, because it tends to remain an intellectual insight.
The ‘Soul in Illness’ approach is different in that it offers you the opportunity to discover your individual ‘explanation’ for yourself, not only through mental insight but through experiencing a body/mind connection in yourself.
• open up a way of listening to and conversing with your body and its messages
• identify with your symptom(s)
• transform your position from being the sufferer to becoming the expert of your own dis-ease
• feel in a better position to decide about the further course of treatment, and feel in charge of it
• be able to actively participate in any further treatment
• begin to consider options for a healthier life-style
• be given any magical ‘cure’ or ‘answer’
• change or get better without applying yourself
• be instructed what to do
• be told the ‘meaning’ of your illness
• be required to take anything on board that doesn’t make sense to you
• be given a treatment plan or other set of rules to follow thus over-riding your own intuition
• be given false hopes or promises
• be required to ‘buy into’ an ongoing dependency on drugs, remedies, treatment
Soul in Illness aims to make the recent integrative developments in the specialised field of Body Psychotherapy available to a wider public. |
Individual sessions can be arranged according to availability. If you are interested, please join our mailing list and we will keep you informed.
If you are suffering from symptoms - long-standing, chronic or acute, mild or severe - the first step is usually a series of individual sessions. A sequence of sessions will usually comprise of between six and twelve weekly consultations, at the end of which you will have the opportunity to discuss the results, reflect on how what you have discovered might translate into your life, consider changes in life-style (including detailed dietary and life-style recommendations should you wish to consider these), and talk through possibilities for further treatment. I will usually be able to suggest practitioners for complementary treatment and arrange referrals. I offer a follow-up consultation after three or six months for you to evaluate and consolidate your exploration.
Please contact me for an information pack which includes an application form and a detailed questionnaire, to complete in preparation for your first consultation where you can discuss your specific needs and requirements.
Although psychological aspects are increasingly recognised as playing a major part both in the development and the healing of all kinds of illness and disease, relatively few opportunities exist within established medical and complementary practice for patients to actually explore the psychosomatic basis to acute and chronic symptoms. Stress, anxiety and personality patterns have been established as essential ingredients in a variety of conditions including cancer, heart disease, back pain, asthma, migraine, digestive troubles, and many more.
The ‘Soul in Illness’ project was originally conceived and developed in 1995, then known as the ‘Holistic Health Consultancy’, to provide a local service for Oxfordshire in the new and promising field of psychological and preventative health care.
“Having come to England from Germany in 1981 to study massage, I attended a wide variety of courses in the field of health, healing and personal growth, including three years at the East-West Centre learning Macrobiotics and Shiatsu. I then began to be more interested in the emotional and psychological side of illness, and trained at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy. I have been practising as an Integrative Body Psychotherapist since 1986, aiming to integrate the various therapeutic perspectives (humanistic incl. especially Reichian & Gestalt, psychoanalytic, Jungian and transpersonal / archetypal).
I came to Oxford in 1990, working with individuals as well as training and supervising students and practitioners. In 1997 I helped establish the West Oxford Centre for Counselling & Psychotherapy and then became a partner in the WellBeing Clinic, the largest complementary health centre in the UK outside London and the longest established one in Oxford. This provided the impetus to bring complementary and psychotherapeutic approaches together into an accessible format relevant to the treatment of a wide variety of psychosomatic symptoms. Since leaving the WellBeing Clinic in 2002, I am working privately.“