June 2004

Article

“The Eyes Have It! . . . Or Do They?”
The Occular Segment

By Michael Brennan, MFT, CBT

Part 1

I want to state at the outset that I consider the ocular segment to be the most overlooked and most complex segment of the human organism, and therefore, perhaps the most important. Most important for many reasons, among which is the fact that within it lies that mysterious and magnificent organ, the cerebral brain and the complicated activity of interpreting perceptions of activities both within the organism and without.

In this brief article I will discuss a few of the dynamics that I have found to be of utmost importance when working with clients in Bioenergetic Analysis. In my experience, work on this segment of the human being/organism includes, but is not limited to:

Increasing the client’s ability to identify the sensations caused by energetic movements within this segment and into this segment from other segments, whatever they are. This leading to being able to tolerate the revealing of these sensations and any accompanying emotional reaction(s) . . . then, to tolerate the expressing of these emotional reactions through the scalp, the forehead and, especially, the eyes to the other person, i.e., the human therapist.

Seeing the other person (therapist) while these sensations and emotional sensations/feelings are fluidly, excitedly and excitingly active in this segment. In other words, to see the other person while one’s own head and eyes are alive with more sensations and emotion-sensations than one is familiar with, whether the emotion-sensations are fear, anger, sadness, happiness and/or sexual excitement.

Seeing the other person see me-the-client this alive ( more flowing, fluid, expressive, vulnerable, less contracted) with these sensations and emotion-sensations and daring to see/experience the other person react to me-the-client while I am this vulnerably alive! Additionally, daring to express my (the client’s) reaction(s) to the reaction(s) that I perceive the other person (therapist) having rather than to contract and deaden myself in the eyes and head (thereby, reaffirming the longstanding shaming attitude that to be alive and responsive to what I experience in the world is wrong).

These three critical dynamics of ocular segment activity and work are of utmost and profound importance in the healthy functioning of the human being/organism in nearly all of our qualities, capacities and functionings, especially, our all-encompassing sexuality. As the client manages to tolerate this partial and disturbing dissolution of the armored resistance to sensations, and the accompanying emotion-sensations, and is seeing, therefore, with this more vulnerable, anxious/fearing vitality, the client will naturally also have a strong, usually initially unconscious, need to see that the other person (therapist) is not withdrawing or rejecting through his/her eyes. In other words, the two must “meet” through the eyes . . . the client daring to reveal and, at times, express his/her vitality and current emotional truth(s), the other (therapist), accepting and welcoming the life of the client that is coming through.

Additionally, the client commonly needs to perceive that the therapist is not moving in or toward the client in a smothering way in order to get the client to stop or diminish the aliveness and the expression. Indeed, the most significant way, I know of, for the client to experience this need-for-acceptance and welcoming by the therapist is to really see this in the eyes of the therapist while the eyes and whole ocular segment of the client are more vulnerably alive with these vital sensations and feelings.

However, while this may be the most preferred response to the client, it is not always the case that the therapist is so clearly available or affirming. When we, as therapists, find ourselves not willing or able to meet the client while s/he is in this state of vulnerable vitality, it becomes essential that the client come to identify, reveal, and then, in time, express his/her reactions to the perceived non-support or non-acceptance. On these occasions, the priority becomes the client being afforded, indeed invited, and encouraged if needed, to express his/her reaction(s) to what s/he is seeing in the eyes of the therapist regardless what it is, i.e., fear, hardness, sadness, deadness, anger, criticalness.

Except in the more extreme ocular segment blocks, whenever the characteristic/ characterological energetic state of the client is changed, the head and, especially, the eyes have the impulse to reveal either how the change has affected the organism or the ocular segments reaction to the change. Frequently, the next, immediate impulse/reaction is to resist the first impulse. Hiding one’s eyes, subtley or obviously, is a common example. The stronger or more sudden the provoked change, the greater the first impulse-to-reveal a reaction will be, and therefore, the greater the secondary reaction/impulse-to-resist will also be. In working with sexuality and sexual issues, the intensity of these impulses will usually be even greater due to the organismically-encompassing quality of sexuality. There is more at stake when one is living/dealing with the vulnerable experiencing of one’s sexuality. Depending on the client’s ocular armoring, s/he may, or may not, be in contact with, and, therefore, conscious of, the first or second impulses mentioned above. It, therefore, falls upon the therapist’s ability and desire to look for and see the client’s behavior in the eyes and surrounding ocular segment.

Attention to this activity is dependent, of course, on the ocular segment of the therapist! To the extent the therapist’s ocular segment is armored, s/he will overlook the activities that are taking place in the ocular segment of his/her client. And to the extent that the client is used to not being seen, this will not pose a conscious problem for the client. However, it is posing a significant problem for the therapy. For without the direct and conscious experiencing of being seen, the organism will not feel or experience, consciously and unconsciously, the necessary affirming required to dare to repossess his/her life in this more encompassing state while in relationship; let alone feel safe to reclaim, segment by segment, cell by cell, his/her sexuality, while in relationship with another human.

The intensity or suddenness of the change to the client’s energetic state can come from direct work with the ocular segment or from work done with another, or other, segments. In either case, the ocular segment is affected and the client requires the therapist’s consistent-enough attention and life-supporting focusing-on-the-eyes if the client is going to become willing to take the risk of allowing the first impulse-to-reveal mentioned above to come through. As I mentioned earlier, the client’s ocular armor may prevent the client from contact with the first impulse-to-reveal and, therefore, usually also the second impulse-to-resist. Nevertheless, in all but the most severely armored cases, the first impulse is visible to the eyes of the attentive, perceptive therapist. Hence it is up to the therapist to bring the client into contact with their own unconscious impulses by mentioning what the therapist is seeing, thus encouraging the awareness, possession and expression of the client’s impulses.

Part 2

Initially, the expressive work may seem contrived or “phoney” to the client, due to the fact that it is ego and body dystonic expression. Yet, it is important to encourage the expression anyway. Repeated experiences of this organismic situation of unfelt-feeling being seen by the therapist and expression being encouraged in order to make contact with the feeling will result in the client becoming more accessible to these first impulses. This type of consistent attention and work will also allow the client to become gradually aware of that second resistive reaction. The therapist may also find that consistent attention to this level of client life results in increased agitation in the client, and feelings of fear, anger-in-service-of-fear and other reactions because the client is usually not used to being paid attention to this closely.

To the extent that the other segments have been supported, provoked and encouraged to have, hold, contain and express the energy and sexuality of one’s life while the ocular segment was not being supported, there will be disparity and conflict between the motility of the ocular segment and the motility of another or other segment(s). And this disparity affects one’s sense of one’s sexuality as well as one’s reaction to oneself-as-sexual. This results in the client experiencing a conscious or unconscious characterological trauma or fear due to the charge of life that the other segments can and do experience and the lesser charge of life energy the ocular segment can and does tolerate. In terms of sexuality and one’s sexual charge, this trauma or fear usually results in the client needing to hide or separate or remove this part of the organismic self from relationship with the external world by closing the eyes or from the rest of his/her internal world by dissociating or what we sometimes refer to as “splitting off.” It can also involve contracting the source of the “feared” energy, namely, the pelvis or contracting against the source-segment in another another area of the organism. In these instances, s/he continues to organismically inhibit the experience of life within whether it is of a sexual quality or otherwise, and feel ashamed and threatened by his/her own sensational, feeling and sexual aliveness both in relationship to oneself and in relationship to another and the world.

Therefore, I find it essential to consistently attend to and support the client in identifying and expressing the reaction(s) in the ocular segment to the energetic/sensational movement that s/he is experiencing in any other segments of oneself. For example, the client may feel sadness and/or anger in the thoracic or abdominal segments or pleasure in the pelvic segment, and may be feeling/showing fear in the eyes, knowingly or not. In these situations, the client needs support for being in contact with both feeling states, at least through the therapist calling attention to such and inviting the client to dare to, if s/he can, consciously reveal the fear as well. Later, emphasizing an expression of the fear, depending on the charge of the blocked fear, is usually called for.

When one is working with the ocular segment while also working with the sexuality of the client, every issue already worked with and every issue yet to be addressed becomes involved since one’s sexuality involves and encompasses every cell of the entire organism. Thus, every segment is “called upon” to wake up and surrender to, or deaden and defend against, the movement of one’s naturally sexual energy. The “push” for owning or gaining more of one’s sexuality can result in the once-again rejecting experience of being pressured to have or display some feeling or energetic state that the entire organism is not ready for and therefore does not feel safe having or displaying. In these situations, to ignore the unreadiness is to reinforce the characterological defense against true grounded-in-the-organism sexuality.

Sometimes, the charge in one, or more, of the other segment(s) can be so much greater than the ocular segment can participate in or express its reaction(s) to, that without the therapist’s attention and support to the ocular segment during the charging phase, the experience quickly becomes overwhelming to the client. This, again, tends to result in the client automatically engaging in hiding the fear by closing the eyelids or dissociating in the eyes from the organismic experience while keeping the eyelids open. Either way, the client experiences the usually- unconscious isolating process of beginning to become more alive and not see that s/he is being seen. Then, once again, we can see how the client recreates the conflict/context between having the need to be seen and accepted and prevents that need from being satisfied by hiding or dissociating in the eyes/ocular segment. This experience is usually accompanied or followed by a disguised, and also unconscious, feeling of anger, despair, sadness, irritability, anxiety or fear.

Usually, when the functional integrity of the organism is unimpeded, the greater the charge in the organism, or any segment of it, the greater the natural impulse-to-reveal is present in the eyes. The greater the impulse-to-reveal, the greater the resistance to reveal when ocular segment armor is active and, thus, the greater the ocular segment crisis. And this involves, as does every activity in the ocular segment, the brain. It is this crisis that is either reinforced or worked through . . . depending on the therapist’s frequent and consistent attention to the ocular segment and eyes of the client.

If the therapist does not actively and obviously tend to and support the client in identifying, owning, revealing and expressing through the eyes what is happening, the client will tend to conclude, unconsciously, that the therapist, for whatever reasons, has an investment in not supporting the client let this charge and its affect move into and through the head and eyes. In that first impulse-to-reveal is a great unconscious dual-need. The first need is to be seeing the therapist while these sensations/feeling(s) are coming through the client’s eyes; the second need is to protect oneself from possible further wounding by not looking at the therapist while the sensations/feeling(s) are coming through. Connected to the first need is the need to be seeing the therapist see the client while these sensations/feeling(s) are coming through, or while the client’s reaction to this charged sensations/feeling(s) are coming through. Again, it is very important that the client be given the opportunity to reveal or reveal-and-express his/her reaction(s) to what s/he sees in the eyes of the therapist as the therapist witnesses the client taking the risk to be more vitally and vulnerably alive.

Without the support and encouragement to have the ocular segment be continuously involved in the fluctuating of the organismic state a primary and essential level of relationship goes ignored. The result is that a most significant aspect and part of that scared, angry, sad, joyous, loving/needing to-be-loved and sexual human being that the client is, remains hidden; continuing to hold the belief that no one wants him/her to have or express those energetic life-affirming internal experiences that she or he does indeed have! To alter this experienced-based belief the client needs to become able again to establish vital eye-contact with the therapist throughout the course of therapy. Tending to and emphasizing coming-through the eyes throughout the work with other segments is essential. Some clients have a significantly unarmored ocular segment, but they can close off this segment and eye-contact when the work enters the realm of another, more injured and more armored, segment.

When this needed support and attention to the ocular segment is not sufficiently provided, the client leaves the session and therapist with a particular experience or sense of isolation, regardless of what else has happened in the rest of the client’s organism. It, therefore, becomes easy to create new or maintain old beliefs that are character-structure- based projections.

In my experience as a client and a therapist, terror is the most difficult emotional expression to risk tolerating and making eye contact with another person while feeling. However, terror is also the emotional experience that one is in most need of support for in order to tolerate and maintain eye contact with another person while feeling the terror! There is frequently a great deal of fear of being alive with anxiety, fear, let alone terror, in us humans, in my experience. When this dynamic is ignored, the terror maintains a quality of entrapping the client in an internal state of isolation, which compounds the terror. Not only does misery love company, I submit that each of our repressed feelings require company! It is the company of compassion through the eyes and heart and vitality of another person. Otherwise, we remain relationally imprisoned in an isolation established years, decades, ago and that compounds the charge of every emotion that is trapped inside our character structure. All the emotions need the consistent support of seeing and being seen. This need is intensified even more when working with one’s sexuality, given the powerful effects sexuality generates in the organism.

It continues to be important to me to closely attend to the emotionally energetic experience of the ocular segment of my clients for it is my experience that the healthy functioning of this segment determines the difference between being more deeply or fully connected to the flow of life in another being or being isolated or disconnected from the other human even while having one’s own degree of vitality. One does not have to always have one’s eyelids open to feel connected and be connected to the other human, but given the complexity of this segment and its inhabitant, the brain, this segment does have to be sufficiently unarmored to be able to participate in the expression of one’s organismic life in order to be connect-able. As the scared, angry, sad, joyous, loving/needing-to-be-loved and sexual human that I am, my life experience is indescribably enriched when I and the other human can tolerate and reveal, if not express, through the eyes, what is happening to the life inside us wondrous spirited organisms!

Michael Brennan is a Bioenergetic Analyst in private practice in San Diego, CA. He can be reached at (619) 282-6911

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