The Eyes Have It! ... Or Do They?
By Michael Brennan, MFT, CBT

continued
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 character-ological 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... more

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