The Road To A Primal Feeling


By John A. Speyrer


I am essentially a self-primaler and my usual technique for accessing my early pain is not having a technique! I usually wait for the feeling to build and then let it spontaneously erupt from me.

But a couple years ago I found a excellent regression therapist and have been attending her monthly week-end groups. It has led to my changing the way I sometimes work - to hone my abilities in seeking a way into a primal feeling. I have become more efficient since at the workshops we are strictly limited by time. The eight of us have only one and one-hours of individual therapy time during the week end and if I wait and hope that the primal erupts, well - it could happen that sometimes I might not get to work. So I've had to change the way I approach my primal pain.

Earlier this week I used that new technique when it became very clear to me when I began overreacting to an unpleasant situation.

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My brother and I had decided to have a road built on our farm property so that the farmer who worked our land would have a way to bring his farm machinery to the fields. For reasons which don't need to be explained here, the usual route, through someone else's property, could no longer be used.

The only practical way into the tract being farmed was to have a road built which would exit very near another individual's property. This person had learned of our plans and we had heard he was taking exception to them as he believed that the outlet of the road would be on his property.

The more I thought that he might sabotage our plans, the more worried and concerned I became. I felt that this person should have known that this route we were planning to use was our own property. As I became increasingly concerned I was more agitated and upset. I fantasized a long acrimonious court battle to retain this piece of property. Would it be easier, I asked myself, just to let this person have this small portion of our property which I had heard he was contending was his own property? He had a reputation for being a tenacious individual and he was wealthy. Would we have to change our plans and have the road constructed in a less desirable area? The contemplation of a confrontation was making me more and more uneasy.

The day before my brother and I had visited the construction site along with the person who was farming our property. All of the problems which could arise became even more real to me. When I returned home that evening I was very agitated but knew very well that I had been overreacting and still was overreacting to this problem. I decided to lie down and try to access and re-experience, via the primal route, what was the real source of my overreaction.

On my living room floor, and listening to feelingful music, I continued to think about the possible negative outcome of this problem which began to loom larger and larger after I had visited our proposed construction site. I was overloaded and attempting to connect to the real origins of my anxiety was not successful, so I decided to take a small amount of alcohol to reduce the anxiety and tension. Sometimes, in the past this had helped to lower my anxiety level enough to allow me to enter the primal zone where my anxiety could override my defenses. This would bring me back on a feeling level to re-experience my present uncomfortable feeling back to its original source in traumas of my childhood, infancy or during birth.

Recognizing when I was overreacting was one of my original techniques I had used to begin accessing my primal feelings twenty-five years ago. Analyzing the over-reaction when it was happening somehow allowed me to begin the primal process. Ever since then the primals had continued more or less on their own. Getting to intimately know and try to feel my triggers was also helpful. It is far easier to check out a feeling when you are in the feeling than to attempt it after you are out of the feeling.

That is what I did last night when I again laid down on the floor and let my mind wander. When one has had primal experience in the past and is in an unconnected feeling one's mind will sometimes automatically search for a similar (having the same emotional content) disturbing feeling from your past. It takes relaxaion and determination to make the effort. In this instance I accessed an earlier feeling, but it obviously was not the early traumatic feeling which was triggering the over-reaction in the present. In this case, as I relaxed and allowed myself to feel what I was feeling, I almost immediately began thinking of a similar feeling incident (though much milder) which had happened two years earlier.

In 1998, I had attended a William Emerson's birth trauma workshop near New Orleans. William had just finished his presentation and we participants were to retreat into areas of the building where the workshop was held and begin to try to feel our birth pain with each other. I immediately found one of the few really good places to work when two women entered the small room and told me that I was in their place, that they are chosen this place even before the workshop presentation had begun. In my mind I had also chosen that place, but I did not question them; I simply left, feeling both disappointed and cheated out of what I thought had been my place.

Thinking about this incident was the entry point to the primal feeling. I was on the right track as my mind had found a prior incident which had a similar feeling content. [That primal space was mine as the farm property was mine; the women wanted me to abandon the room and I felt as though the property owner wanted me to surrender my property!].

The hook-up from that feeling combined with the anguish about the farm road problem led to an even earlier feeling almost immediately. The feeling connections had been made. And very soon the feelings which I had had when the two women claimed my territory unconsciously became hooked up with my earlier overreaction that day.

On the living room floor I began primalling as I verbalized, "You Can Have It!; You Can Keep It All!" 'What is this all about?' I began asking myself. 'What incident am I beginnning to relive?' I was becoming tearful. In my normal state of consciousness, I was wondering what my other track of consciousness was referring to. (It was as though I was a spectator, but that is how most primals are perceived). I continued saying out loud the feeling which presented itself: "I Don't Need Any," I continued to cry as the feeling intensified. I began crying more deeply and in anguish, but still did not know the source of the feeling. However, within seconds, the real cast of characters - the real source of my earlier over-reaction - was beginning to appear as my unconscious mind began removing its repressive blocks.

I began feeling "I Don't Need It, Mom!" I screamed, "You Can Keep It!" 'But what,' I questioned myself, 'was I telling my mother that she could keep?' 'What was it that I was telling her that I did not need from her?' I knew from past experience that the answer would soon appear. Within seconds, I began feeling, "You Can Keep Your Love Mom" "I Don't Need You!" "Mom, I Don't Need Your Love."

The farm property incident had tapped into my frustrated need for love from her. during my infancy. I was angry at my mother and was telling her to keep her love. Her love had been a critical need, but I wasn't getting the love I needed and in my baby anger I was letting her know that I didn't need her love and that she could keep it all if that is what she wanted to do. In angry desperation I was telling her that I would somehow survive even if she didn't give me the love I needed. I wanted her to know that I would "make it" even without her liking me! The deep primal lasted twenty minutes. When I arose from the floor the tension and anxiety I previously had had when I laid down was gone.

*   *   *

The next day we had a very amicable meeting with the other landowner at the area where we wanted to have the road built. We stated our position and brought maps to support our claim. He had also brought maps but soon agreed that the boundary lines of our property was as we had stated. The farm road will be in the area we had originally planned and construction will begin this week.


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