Somato-psychotherapy in healing

Integrative Body Psychotherapy: When the Body, Soul, Mind, and the Forces That Sustain the Order of the World Move Together in Service of a Meaningful, Emotional, and Embodied Life

Recently, I received the honor of being invited to write an article for Életigenlők Magazine (Life Affirmers Magazine) about the role of body-centered methods in self-awareness work, with a special focus on introducing the ICD method, and about the relationship between physical healing and psychological processes. I will do my best to fulfill that request based on my current knowledge and experience.

Let's dive right in—as surgeons might say—and begin by going straight to the heart of the matter with a little sharing, in the psychodrama sense of the word. Although in psychodrama, sharing is usually saved for the end. For those unfamiliar with psychodrama: sharing means offering something from our own life experience that resonates with another person's struggle and may help illuminate their path forward.

What I would like to share is how I first encountered the world of body psychotherapy, what it gave me on my own journey of self-discovery, and how I eventually found myself helping clients through this method as well.

So, once upon a time...

Back then, I was participating in psychodrama training with Ádám György Kiss, whom I deeply respect for his outstanding expertise in psychodrama and playback theater. At the time, I thought I would one day lead children's psychodrama groups.

Then one day, Ádám organized an outdoor reflective walk that was open to anyone interested. We walked across Gellért Hill, talked, connected, lived, and grew together.

There I met a woman—purely by chance, although I don't really believe in coincidences. One of my friends came along as well; she was a naturopath, astrologer, and belly-dance teacher. She and the woman, who happened to be an oncologist, quickly fell into deep conversation.

I mostly listened.

At one point, the oncologist mentioned that since the 1980s she had been advocating that the treatment of chronic illnesses such as cancer should be supported by body psychotherapy.

For me, that was the essence of the conversation, although they also discussed the strengths and limitations of conventional and alternative medicine at length.

I became curious: what exactly is body psychotherapy?

At the time, I was studying advanced mathematical statistics in a program humorously called "behavior analysis." I could only hope that there were healthcare professionals out there who didn't assess a person's "normality" using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test whenever someone came to them with physical or emotional suffering.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Let's jump ahead in time.

Twenty years ago, my mother was diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer. She died four months later.

An entire world collapsed inside me.

I couldn't understand it.

She wasn't an alcoholic. She didn't live recklessly. She didn't engage in unhealthy habits. Longevity was common in our family.

I wanted to understand.

For years I researched and read on my own. I read books written by people who had recovered from cancer, and books about alternative approaches to healing.

Then, years later, that encounter on Gellért Hill inspired me to explore body psychotherapies more seriously.

I contacted Márton Szemerey, president of the Hungarian Association for Somato-Psychotherapy (HAPT), and told him that I would love to attend their theoretical training program.

Marci kindly replied that I would be very welcome—after completing the experiential component first.

There was a five-day workshop scheduled for September.

I signed up.

Before that, in August, I attended a three-day SomatoDrama retreat. There is extensive literature available about this method; it is associated with psychiatrist Dr. László Buda and combines elements of somato-psychotherapy, psychodrama, and family constellations.

Between those two events, at the end of August, I also attended a one-day family constellation workshop. In Hungary, this method became widely known through Dr. Mária Angster, though it originates from Bert Hellinger.

All three experiences were powerful and valuable.

That said, I would not necessarily recommend experiencing them all in such quick succession.

It was emotional boot camp.

That summer, during SomatoDrama, a woman played the role of my uterus. Within moments, she transformed into my mother.

Her performance deserved an Oscar.

Had I not known they had never met, I would never have believed it.

After that came family constellation work—another extremely powerful method, surreal in an entirely different way. It is especially effective for processing transgenerational trauma.

And if that wasn't enough surrealism for one summer, I arrived at my very first body psychotherapy workshop wearing high heels, nylon stockings, and a miniskirt, looking fit, energetic, youthful, and carrying the attitude of someone who had already completed hundreds of hours of psychodrama:

"What else could possibly surprise me?"

As a welcome, Marci informed the small group gathered there that we should all get down on all fours and moo like calves.

Occasionally, he added, we could even rub against each other.

My first thought was:

"Where's the emergency exit? Either everyone here is crazy, or I am... but the 'or' is sure."

That's how it began.

Had I not first heard about the method from an oncologist, I probably would have run for the door.

I had no intention of becoming an ICD therapist.

I wasn't planning it.

I simply wanted to try the method.

At that time, four body psychotherapy approaches were available in Hungary:

• ICD
• Haptonomy
• Focusing
• Biosystemic Somato-Psychotherapy

I chose ICD because it appeared to be the most comprehensive, and because it placed the strongest emphasis on explicit, open expression of anger.

By the end of the first day, I was curled up in a fetal position on my couch at home, crying:

"I want my mother."

By the end of the fifth day, I had finally connected with my anger.

At last, I experienced what I had read about so many times in accounts written by cancer survivors: that famous "pillow-punching" approach to self-discovery—the surfacing, feeling, experiencing, and expressing of deeply buried anger.

Years had passed in my life without me feeling my feelings.

Worse still, I wasn't even aware that I wasn't feeling them.

Now they arrived in full force.

An important clarification:

Although ICD is often associated with anger expression, the point is not rage itself.

Anger is merely one emotion that many of us suppress—women especially.

For some people, laughter emerges.

For others, sadness.

What matters is the feeling itself: experiencing it, allowing it, becoming conscious of it, and integrating it into conscious awareness within a safe therapeutic framework.

That is the essence of the work.

One moment during that first ICD workshop became especially significant for me. (Well, there were many such moments, but I would like to highlight one in particular.): Participants had the opportunity to work on a personal issue in an individual process if they wished. I volunteered.

But by the time I walked over to the therapist facilitating the exercise, I could no longer feel anything. No emotions. No bodily sensations. It was as though the issue that had quietly wanted to emerge while I sat in the corner had suddenly vanished. It felt like arriving at the dentist with a raging toothache, only for the pain to disappear the moment you walk through the door.

Then the ICD therapist—a woman—said:

"I'm feeling something in my chest right now. Some kind of pressure. Does that mean anything to you?"

I was surprised.

What she described was exactly what I myself had been feeling only a few minutes earlier.

As the sensation disappeared from my body, she began to feel it.

She exchanged a glance with László Pintér, director of the Zagreb School of Body Psychotherapy and head of the Budapest training program.

They concluded that it might be worthwhile for me to begin individual therapy with someone experienced in trauma work.

The phenomenon in which a therapist begins to feel in their own body something that does not belong to them but emerges within the therapeutic process—essentially taking on what the client cannot feel or bear to feel—is called somatic countertransference.

It is a form of bodily empathy or somatic resonance that helps therapists understand the client's unspoken and deeply buried emotional material.

I experience this myself in body psychotherapy work, and also when working with family constellations, in which I have also trained.

It took another two years before I became capable of truly feeling the anger I carried toward my father. And beneath that anger lay an unimaginably deep pain and despair. The pain of the infant I once was—the baby whose father abused her mother, whose mother abused her father in return, while that baby lay helplessly in a crib. The father who abandoned that child at eleven months old following a divorce proceeding and partial restraining order. One day during training, László Pintér was scheduled to give a lecture. Before beginning, however, he asked everyone how they were doing. Because in that training, people mattered more than theory. The well-being of therapists mattered more than finishing the curriculum. When he realized I wasn't doing particularly well, he asked whether I would like to "open my heart" on the roller. My immediate reaction was resistance. Of course I didn't want to. But I was paying for the training, and besides, Laci was Laci. So, I found myself standing before the group, preparing to "open my heart." I lay on a therapeutic roller while Laci applied pressure to points in the body where trauma can become stored. Over time, this often helps feelings begin to emerge. Usually, anger comes first. It did for me as well. I don't remember every moment. My sense of time disappeared. At one point I found myself trying, with all my strength, to break Laci's arm. I twisted it. Then I wanted to bite him. Of course, therapists don't actually get bitten. There are special therapeutic tools designed for biting when necessary. When every last bit of anger had finally been expressed, something deeper opened beneath it. The pain. The immense grief connected to my father. A pain I had not truly felt before. It had been stored in my body and unconscious mind, manifesting itself in countless indirect ways. For example, whenever possible I chose workplaces where at least 95% of my colleagues were women. It appeared in gynecological symptoms. It appeared everywhere. Years earlier I had read Dr. László Buda's book What Is Your Body Telling You? (Mit üzen a tested?) In one case study involving a woman with cancer, he wrote: "She simply needed to feel." I remember writing a note in the margin with a pencil: "Okay. But how?" This. This is how. This is how body psychotherapy can help us feel emotions, experience them fully, and release trauma stored in the body.

Gradually, understanding began to emerge regarding my mother's illness as well.

I came to see that it wasn't enough to say she never drank alcohol, exercised regularly, gardened, and lived an honest life. She carried enormous amounts of trauma within both her body and soul. And she never received help processing those experiences. My mother was born in 1946 as a child born outside marriage into a Catholic family, in a society where that was considered deeply shameful. My grandfather was beaten by his own family. Later he beat my grandmother and my mother. At the time, this was considered normal.

When my mother was nine years old, she said at school that the Russians had started the war.

Russian officials happened to be inspecting the school that day. As a result, both her teacher and grandfather nearly faced severe consequences. Later she was denied admission to the educational path she desired for political reasons. She had always dreamed of becoming a teacher. She loved children.

In 1956 she was ten years old. Her father took her to the town square to see a man hanging from a noose. He also showed her a man whose legs had been tied to two separate vehicles that drove in opposite directions.

At sixteen, she was raped. She never told her father because she feared he would beat her.

And despite everything, she cared for him until the day he died.

Ironically, by the time I was born, that same grandfather—nearly blind—became more of a father to me than my actual father ever was.

Returning to ICD:

ICD is a body psychotherapy method.

In Hungary it is not yet officially accredited as a psychotherapy modality, but it is becoming increasingly known and accessible.

In my own life, psychodrama, integrative body psychotherapy, SomatoDrama, and family constellations focused on transgenerational trauma brought extraordinary transformation. Changes occurred within my inner world. And what shifted inside me gradually transformed my life as well. The first major change happened during my psychodrama years: my sleep disorder disappeared. The funny thing is, I hadn't even known I had a sleep disorder. I genuinely believed that only weak people slept at night. So when I first found myself naturally becoming sleepy around nine or ten in the evening, I panicked. "When am I supposed to do all the things I normally do at night?"

Then my anxiety began to decrease. For ten years I had lived in constant terror that I would develop cancer. Watching my mother's death—and helping care for her through it—was profoundly traumatic. I was also largely alone in my grief. The fear became so overwhelming that many times I considered ending my own life. Because this did not feel like living. Eventually, that fear faded. In exchange, my feelings returned. First came anger. Then pain. Sadness. Grief. And eventually something else emerged from the deepest layers of my soul:

Creativity. A capacity to create. A new way of being.

Eventually, I changed professions. I left workplaces where I was mistreated and unappreciated.

I left my marriage and my passive-aggressive, emotionally abusive husband. With my three children, and without meaningful support from either family or society, I moved away from Hungary and began a new life elsewhere.

There was, however, one thing that did not change: Whenever something difficult is happening in my life, my body still lets me know. The difference is that now I no longer try to silence it. I no longer treat my body the way my mother treated hers—or the way she treated my bodily experiences when I was a child. Now I listen. I pay attention. If things become difficult, I ask for help.

I do not know how long I will live, nor how I will eventually leave this life when my time comes.

But I can now face that reality. And that changes many things about how I choose to live while I am here. What I do know is this: I am alive now. And I do everything I can to live as fully as possible. I also do everything I can so that when the time comes, I will be able to leave this world peacefully and with dignity. As we often say in family constellation work: "As long as possible, I stay. And I honor the difficult lives of my ancestors by creating something meaningful and valuable from my own life, carrying them with me in my heart. I ask them to look upon me with love, even if I walk a somewhat different path—not better, not worse than theirs, simply my own."

Let's make another leap forward in time.

Eventually, during the ICD training, we received an email informing us that we were now permitted to begin working with clients using the method.

So I started.

At first, I worked pro bono.

Coincidentally—though again, I don't really believe in coincidences—the very first ICD client I worked with had cancer within their family system.

At the time, I happened to be in Athens attending the 16th World Conference for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies when I received the email from this prospective client expressing interest in beginning an ICD process with me.

I had never planned to specialize in cancer-related work.

Yet since then, I have continued to work with people affected by cancer, either directly or as family members of those who are ill.

Of course, I also work with many other issues.

And day after day, I continue to witness the extraordinary wisdom that lives within the human body.

When given even a little support, tremendous energy and life force can be released.

One of the most valuable things I have learned through working with clients is how much more quickly essential issues can emerge when the body becomes part of the therapeutic process.

When we work only with words, it can sometimes feel as though we are endlessly circling around the core issue.

The surface talks.

The depths remain silent.

The body, however, often speaks long before words can be found.

Body-oriented approaches help people turn toward themselves with greater awareness, compassion, and presence.

Not because every difficulty disappears.

The world remains imperfect afterward as well.

That is hardly a secret.

Rather, these approaches help us remain connected to ourselves even during the most difficult moments of life.

And they can also help us learn how to experience profound joy, pleasure, and vitality.

Sometimes, in therapy, we begin with something that exists primarily at the level of thoughts and words. From there we gradually bring awareness into bodily sensations.

Other times we start directly from bodily experience. Through meditation or movement practices—such as bioenergetic exercises or core exercises—we bring attention to physical sensations.

I often ask:

"What is the truth of your body right now?"

"What physical sensations are present?"

Whether those sensations are pleasant or unpleasant is entirely acceptable. There is no judgment. No criticism. We simply notice what is there. Naturally, we welcome pleasant sensations.

When unpleasant sensations arise, I often ask:

"Are you attached to keeping that tension or pain in your body?"

Most people answer:

"No."

At that point I may bring a blanket, a pillow, a beanbag, or a pointer into the session.

I invite the client to imagine that the object represents everything responsible for creating that sensation.

Touch it.

Respond to it.

Allow your body to move.

Show on the pillow what this sensation is doing to your body.

Put it onto the pillow rather than carrying it inside yourself.

Don't punish yourself by holding it in if carrying it is not important to you.

This pillow now represents whatever is causing that unpleasant bodily experience.

What does the person—or thing—that causes this deserve?

How would you respond?

Allow your body to move.

Release the tension outward.

Let it leave your body.

What are you feeling?

When have you felt something similar before?

And sometimes memories begin to emerge.

Feelings emerge. Stories emerge.

That simple pointer can transform astonishingly quickly.

Suddenly it becomes our father. Our mother. Our partner. Our sibling. Our boss. Our colleague. Or even our inner child. The person whose relationship with us lies beneath the bodily experience.

This is projection. We project our wounds onto others.

And what is fascinating is that we do this constantly in everyday life.

We project unresolved injuries from our relationships with our parents onto our partners, bosses, coworkers, and friends.

We project familiar patterns. Unprocessed trauma. Old relational dynamics.

Until these become conscious, they continue to direct our behavior from beneath awareness.

And we wonder why we keep finding ourselves facing the same problems over and over again.

Recognizing what is present.

Naming it.

Making it conscious.

These acts alone often begin to open the possibility for change.

This is often how an individual therapeutic process begins.

There is immense wisdom in the body. It leads us with remarkable precision toward whatever issue is most important in the present moment.

The body keeps track of everything—as the title of Bessel van der Kolk's famous book suggests.

Recently I have been working primarily online.

One of the most beautiful discoveries has been realizing that body-focused work remains effective even in virtual settings. Technically, online work is very different. But the essence remains intact.

In my experience, perhaps the greatest value of body-oriented work in self-discovery and psychotherapy is that it allows access to deeply buried emotions and traumas through bodily sensations, movement, physical gestures, and stimulation of trauma-related points in the body.

Once processed, these experiences can become sources of strength.

As long as emotions remain suppressed and unconscious, they tend to manifest elsewhere:

• bodily sensations,
• physical symptoms,
• projections,
• relationship conflicts,
• self-destructive patterns.

They cause suffering.

But once they become conscious and emerge into awareness, something can be done with them.

Anger can be felt.

Sadness can be felt.

Grief can be mourned.

Tears can finally be shed for what was painful.

And eventually, there comes a moment when it can all be set down.

And life can continue.

And once these emotions become conscious, they can begin to transform into supportive energy.

Of course, body psychotherapy is not the only path toward this kind of transformation.

Unconscious trauma can also be accessed through hypnosis and dreams.

Methods such as TRE (Trauma Release Exercises), Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR are excellent approaches as well.

And ICD is certainly not the only modality that works with trauma-related points in the body.

A skilled massage therapist or acupressure practitioner often stimulates many of the same points.

One of the primary aims of body-oriented approaches is to help people re-establish a sense of bodily safety, self-regulation, inner stability, and connection—both with themselves and with the world around them.

Within ICD, special emphasis is placed on:

• developing body awareness,
• becoming conscious of present-moment physical and emotional processes,
• creating a safe relational environment,
• strengthening internal resources.

The method often incorporates subtle bodily signals, movement, breathing, imagery, and mindful presence.

An important aspect of the integrative nature of ICD is that it also includes work on the transpersonal or spiritual level.

Perhaps religious experiences come closest to describing this dimension, yet the work itself is not tied to any specific religion.

Rather, it involves engaging with the larger force that seems to organize and guide life itself.

Carl Jung referred to this dimension, among other things, as the collective unconscious, and he was among the first to bring spirituality into therapeutic work.

In this respect, the integrative approach shares important common ground with various transpersonal psychotherapy traditions, many of which are also recognized by professional organizations as valuable approaches to personal growth and healing.

The transpersonal perspective does not imply religious doctrine or mysticism.

Instead, it reflects the recognition that human experience can extend beyond ordinary psychological functioning.

Which is easier?

Finding the exact point along someone's spine that needs pressure?

Using core exercises or bioenergetic practices to initiate emotional movement through the body?

Or working within the spiritual dimension?

I honestly couldn't say.

What I do know is that the first is more tangible.

And the second is every bit as significant.

Integrative body psychotherapy views the human being as a whole.

It addresses the physical, emotional, relational, mental, and existential dimensions of life simultaneously.

Within this framework, deeper self-exploratory and transpersonal questions may naturally emerge:

• the search for meaning,
• the experience of connection,
• the processes of loss and acceptance,
• questions of identity and authenticity,
• spirituality and religious beliefs,
• one's relationship with inner resources and with larger forces that shape life.

Body-oriented approaches can be supportive in many different life situations, including:

• chronic stress,
• anxiety,
• exhaustion,
• trauma or loss,
• relationship difficulties,
• self-esteem issues,
• psychosomatic symptoms,
• the emotional burden associated with physical illness.

For people living with cancer, reconnecting with the body and with one's emotions can be particularly important.

Body-oriented work may help by:

• increasing feelings of safety,
• reducing anxiety,
• enhancing emotional awareness,
• strengthening self-acceptance,
• improving quality of life,
• activating life energy,
• supporting the body's natural healing processes.

Many clients report that therapy helps them become more aware of their bodies and personal boundaries, recognize emotions more easily, and rely less on automatic survival strategies.

It is important to understand that body-oriented work is not always pleasant.

Sometimes emotions or memories that were previously kept outside conscious awareness begin to emerge.

Often they were hidden for a reason: because they were overwhelming.

This is why gradual pacing is essential.

It is equally important to emphasize that body psychotherapy is not a magical cure-all.

There are situations and conditions for which it is not the most appropriate approach.

In cases involving acute psychiatric crises or severe psychological instability, careful professional assessment is especially important. When a person's connection with reality is significantly impaired—for example in psychotic, hallucinatory, schizophrenic, or schizotypal states—ICD is generally not considered the appropriate method.

When physical symptoms are present, it is also important to understand the role of ICD clearly.

Integrative body psychotherapy incorporates bodily signals only to the extent necessary for working with emotional processes, psychological trauma, and inner experience.

It does not replace medical treatment.

Nor does it replace interventions aimed at strengthening the immune system, healthy nutrition, reflexology, acupuncture, or other physical healing approaches.

Many conventional and complementary medical methods exist that may support the body's healing capacities from a physical perspective.

When working with physical illness, body psychotherapy is most effective when integrated alongside appropriate medical care and physical treatment.

None of these approaches is omnipotent.

Yet somato-psychotherapy can provide many people with a form of emotional support and self-awareness that helps them reconnect with their bodies, feelings, and inner resources.

And what would have happened if my mother had met a body psychotherapist instead of a surgeon's scalpel?

I don't know.

There is an old family story.

When the husband of my maternal grandmother's oldest sister, Aunt Rozi, died, my mother said:

"Watch. Rozi will follow him within two years."

And she did.

Pneumonia took the life of an otherwise healthy and vigorous woman.

After my grandfather died, my mother began saying:

"I'm next."

I was angry whenever she said it.

We both knew that people in our family generally lived long lives.

We came from resilient stock.

Those thoughts seemed unrealistic.

I used to joke that we would probably have to knock her over the head at age 120 to get rid of her.

Well.

No.

She meant it.

And it happened.

In family constellation work, when working with clients facing life-threatening illnesses, we sometimes ask:

"Whom are you going in place of?"

"Whom are you following?"

Throughout both my own self-exploration and my work as a therapist, I have repeatedly observed something:

If a soul decides it wants to leave, it will leave.

One way or another.

None of us is powerful enough to keep someone alive who no longer wishes to remain.

And I have also witnessed the opposite.

People who still have something to do in this life somehow find a way to stay.

There are many valuable methods that can support healing psychologically.

Likewise, there are numerous conventional and alternative medical approaches that can support healing physically.

Because every person is unique, the same method does not help everyone equally.

For me, ICD became one of the most important paths in my life.

It remains one of the primary approaches I use in my work today.

My only regret is that I did not discover it sooner.

And finally, a closing reflection.

When we are at the bottom of a pit, it is often difficult to believe that a painful life experience could eventually lead to something valuable.

The lives and work of Viktor Frankl and Edith Eva Eger demonstrate this beautifully.

They remind us that even the deepest suffering can become a source of growth, wisdom, and service to others.

This is what we call post-traumatic growth.

When I was caring for my mother in the hospital, changing her full-body wet compresses every fifteen minutes, I gave up my dream of becoming a physician.

What I witnessed there was not what medicine had meant to me.

At the time, I had no idea where those experiences would eventually lead.

A world collapsed inside me then.

Rebuilding it was difficult.

But I succeeded.

And I remain deeply grateful to every therapist and friend who accompanied me on that journey—a journey that eventually led to the writing of this article.

At that time, I never imagined that one day I would write these words.

Nor that my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge might help others find their own path back to life—to a meaningful and fulfilling life, whatever that may mean for each individual.

Death, pain, and suffering are difficult to face.

Whether they come directly into our own lives or through the suffering of someone we love, they challenge us in profound ways.

Yet for some people, such experiences become the catalyst for change.

As Lawrence LeShan points out in his book Cancer as a Turning Point, confronting serious illness can sometimes lead people to re-examine their lives and begin living differently.

I do not believe that all the wonder, depth, beauty, awareness, feeling, and meaning that can emerge through body-focused self-discovery work can ever be fully captured in a single article—or even in a very long and detailed written account.

Still, I have done my best to convey at least a glimpse of it.

Dear Reader,

What is it that gets you out of bed even when life becomes difficult?

What gives meaning to your life?

What still calls you forward in this world, in this body, in this life?

Why is it worth taking one more step on the path—and then another?

And what remains for you to experience, accomplish, or become before the day comes when you can look Death in the eye and calmly say:

"Now I am ready to go."

I do not possess the philosopher's stone.

I do not know—and do not wish to dictate—what another person's path should be.

Neither toward healing and reconnecting with life, nor toward finding peace when it is time to leave it.

What I do know is that I am grateful to share these thoughts.

And I trust that somewhere there may be someone who finds in them a direction that matters.

Recommended Reading

Health, Trauma, and Body-Oriented Psychotherapy

• Gabor Maté – When the Body Says No
• Lawrence LeShan – Cancer as a Turning Point
• Beata Bishop – A Time to Heal
• László Buda – What Is Your Body Telling You?, What Is Your Soul Telling You?, What Is Your Life Telling You?
• Anna Üveges – The Message of Our Soul Through the Pathways of the Body: The SomatoDrama Impact Model
• Bessel van der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score
• Peter A. Levine – Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

Meaning, Resilience, and Human Growth

• Viktor Frankl – Man's Search for Meaning
• Edith Eva Eger – The Choice

Family Systems and Transgenerational Trauma

• Bert Hellinger – Family Dynamics in Cancer Patients
• Mária Angster – Twin Stories

Psychosomatic and Symbolic Approaches

• Ruediger Dahlke – Illness as Symbol
• Ruediger Dahlke and Thorwald Dethlefsen – The Healing Power of Illness

Character and Psychotherapy

• Stephen M. Johnson – Character Styles
• Irvin D. Yalom – Staring at the Sun, Love's Executioner, The Hungarian Cat's Curse, and other works

About the Author

My name is Szilvia Tünde Sebestyén.

My original profession was economics.

Later, I became a psychologist specializing in adult clinical and health psychology.

I am also a family constellation facilitator and an integrative body psychotherapist currently in the supervision phase of training, in accordance with the standards of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy.

On a personal level, I am the mother of three children.

A fallible human being.

A vulnerable woman.

Closing Reflection

The central message of this article is not that ICD—or any single therapeutic method—possesses all the answers.

Rather, it is that the body remembers.

The body communicates.

And when we learn to listen carefully, with courage and compassion, it can guide us toward parts of ourselves that have long been hidden.

Toward grief that needs mourning.

Toward anger that needs acknowledgment.

Toward pain that seeks healing.

Toward meaning that wants to be lived.

And perhaps, ultimately, toward a fuller experience of being alive.

As long as we are here.

As long as there is still one more step to take.

Photos of in-person group work sessions with the ICD:

Image of an in-person, one-on-one process conducted using the ICD method:

Image source: ICD ICBP Budapest training program's official Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584848946036

and:

https://www.icdawareness.com/

A portrait of me:

On the first day of my very first psychodrama group, there was an exercise in which Ádám, the group leader, asked us to express through images and symbols how we were feeling in the present moment and how we wished to be.

My image was this:

"Right now, I am like that drooping ficus plant in the corner of the room—half dried out and slowly withering. And I would like to become a flourishing oleander bush by the seaside."

Then and now:

On the left, the withering houseplant—struggling with suicidal thoughts and barely holding on.

On the right, the flourishing "oleander bush"—no longer hiding behind a mask, but genuinely living through pain, depth, joy, and everything in between.

Or perhaps more accurately:

No longer merely surviving, but truly living.