Resonance

The word resonance comes from the Latin word “Resonare” which means “to resonate” or “to vibrate together.” If two bodies are in resonance, they can also communicate through resonance (Hunt & Schooler, 2019).

Resonance is the sense used in the intention method. With this sense, people who are complete strangers to each other can intuitively feel and express the other's most painful experiences and feelings. How is this possible?

You could call it intuition. Or gut feeling. We humans use it subconsciously every day to navigate and communicate with each other. Have you ever walked into a waiting room and felt, oh, it was tense here? Or a friend makes an admission and you think, you really knew that? Or how you can meet a complete stranger and think from the first second, this is a person I like. Or conversely, I don't like this person. There is more information around us than what is visible and audible.

There is research going on into the phenomenon, but so far no one has been able to prove exactly how it works in detail, but it does work. There are theories about mirror neurons, psychic fields, and experiments in social science that show that we humans can induce our own emotions in others, but I won't go into detail about this here.

What do we humans do with this sense/trait?

At the beginning of life, a young child is not able to sustain itself and is dependent on an attachment figure to take care of its needs, which means nourishment, security and emotional connection (Bowlby, 1969). The baby can imitate movements and facial expressions, reciprocate loving affection and initiate other forms of non-verbal contact with its attachment figure (Bauer, 2014). Through this resonant form of communication with its attachment figures, especially the mother, the baby develops a sense of what is “me”. As the baby experiences that its actions have an effect on others and receives a resonant response, the baby slowly develops a distinction between what is “me” and what is “you”. A mother who is in healthy contact (resonance) with her baby will be able to understand what the baby needs even if it cannot express it in the absence of language. The scenario of the baby crying and the mother who knows what specifically it needs is familiar.

So this is the theory, that resonance is a form of communication between fetus/baby and caregivers, but we carry it with us throughout life and use the sense subconsciously in daily life, as input to feelings, thoughts and, for example, decisions.

Resonance cannot be predicted, controlled, or manipulated. Information conveyed in resonance is an autonomous and idiosyncratic way of expressing oneself (Rosa, 2016). One cannot manipulate or trick someone into resonating a particular emotion. Then the resonance will disappear.

Resonance between two people is encouraged through empathy and acceptance of who the other person is and what he/she does. Implicitly feeling, thinking, and experiencing what the resonant partner communicates without trying to change it is the purest form of resonance. Any cognitive interference in the form of evaluation, judgment, thought, or diagnosis compromises the therapeutic effect. As soon as the resonant person begins to think about what to do or say, or as soon as they guess what may have happened during the client’s life, they leave resonance and distort the self-encounter. Cognitive evaluation and diagnosis can then potentially lead to an incorrect analysis and misunderstood intervention by the psychotherapist. IoPT therapists need to be aware of this risk.

In an IOPT self-encounter, the resonance will always find the traumatic memories or parts associated with the experiences. I have wondered why this is the case. Why don't you resonate with other parts of the client, e.g. happy memories? First and foremost, I think the framework for a self-encounter and the intention come into play. The client is here with a certain intention and that also becomes the focus. An additional theory I have is that since resonance is basically a sense of ensuring attachment and thus survival for a fetus/child, there will also be themes related to attachment that the resonance smells its way to when you consciously use it as an adult, as we do during self-encounters. Resonance is like a guard that is supposed to make sure that attachment occurs and then it is reasonable for me to assume that it targets the points where attachment has been experienced as inadequate as well.