Stuck On A Problem? Try These 3 Questions

When something difficult happens, we can get stuck in one part of ourselves. We overthink the problem, become consumed by what we’re feeling, or act on an impulse before we’ve had time to understand it.
This somatic inquiry brings together three different channels of information: your thoughts, your feelings and sensations, and your impulses. Rather than asking one of them to have the answer, you’ll move between all three and notice what new information becomes available.
The goal isn’t to figure everything out quickly. It’s to bring more of yourself into the conversation so you can understand what’s happening and make choices from a more integrated place.

Transcript

When we're dealing with something difficult, We tend to get stuck in different ways. We get stuck up here by overthinking and analyzing. We get stuck in here when we are consumed by the emotion. Or we get stuck in the impulse, Meaning that we don't think about what we're doing. We just act on whatever impulse is happening. I want to give us a practice to integrate these three channels of information. Okay. My name is Lillian and I'm a somatic therapist. I love helping people bridge the communication between their minds and their bodies. And I'm going to show you a simple practice. Okay. Imagine these are three channels of information. People like to say in bioenergetics, The three different brains, We're going to take a situation that you have. Think of something, A problem, Something that you are working through right now. And we're going to go through them. So what do you think about the situation? What are the thoughts? What's the story? Where are you up here with the situation? Okay, Now that you have thought about it. What do you feel about that? What do you feel about those thoughts? Okay. What are the sensations that you're noticing? So there's one thing about like the emotion that you identify, But also like, What do you feel in your body when you think about this problem? And once you've identified some feelings, You go back, You go down to the impulse. What's the impulse? Now that you know these things, What is it that you want to do? And name it, Say it out loud, Write it down, So you get to see it outside of you, Okay? So now that we know the impulse, We go back up. Now that we know the impulse, What do we feel about the impulse? What do we feel about all this information that we're gathering? And there's a difference. OK, Sometimes we get we get confused between these two. We start acting. We start saying what we think when really it's slowing down enough to notice how we feel. We quickly jump to our brains. So once you've identified how you feel with that information, Now you can go back up to thinking about it. What are the thoughts that you have now with this new information that you've gathered? If you do this a few times, You cycle through them enough, You start to get a little bit more information. It's not about quickly figuring out the problem. It's about bringing all of ourselves to the situation to make better decisions. Thank you for listening.