This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Caroline Greenwood Dower, University of Durham. The paper is co-authored with Benedict Smith, University of Durham. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.
ABSTRACT: Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in primary care and higher education counselling settings. Observations from clinical psychotherapy suggest a shift in reporting towards “I have anxiety”, an object-related sensation, rather than “I feel anxious”, a subject-related sensation. In anxious states individuals are typically highly vigilant, attentive to and at times preoccupied with the external world. The physical symptoms of anxiety – breathlessness, increased heart rate – draw attention back to the inner experience of the body, but as with anxious thoughts, they are often reported as ‘intrusive’. In response to the increase in help-seeking students a programme of workshops entitled ‘Calm to the Core’ was developed within a higher education counselling setting, as an applied phenomenological therapeutic alternative to individual counselling sessions. Group facilitated workshops help participants to explore and share the lived experience of anxiety, through a series of movement and breath-based enquiries. Our interest is whether these workshops increase body awareness and specifically awareness of how the individual experiences and organises their contact with the world. A helpful way to understand the benefit of this approach is by utilizing Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, particularly how an enhanced sense of embodied agency can help mitigate the effects of previously ‘intrusive’, passively-experienced, anxious symptoms. This paper addresses the practical application of phenomenology to common mental disorders for therapeutic benefit. Some modalities of psychotherapy have a rich tradition of employing phenomenological methods within a talking therapy. Here, movement is central to the approach, combined with an emphasis on the group verbal sharing of first-person lived experiences. Diagnoses of anxiety, particularly in young adults, are increasingly becoming part of how such people regard their identity. An increased understanding of anxiety is thus urgent. To this end this paper will present pilot research findings from the workshops and set-out areas for future research.
BIOS:
Caroline Dower is a psychotherapist and Head of the Counselling Service at Durham University. Caroline has a long-standing interest in the integration of body-based methods into talking therapies and is beginning a study of the experience and conceptualisation of student anxiety in the ecology of the university setting.
Dr Benedict Smith is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. His research interests include phenomenology, philosophy of psychiatry, Wittgenstein and Hume. Dr Smith’s research has focused on narratives of depression and the value of lived-experience in an interpersonal setting. His current research uses related phenomenological insights to address experiences of anxiety.
This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/
You can check out our forthcoming events here:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/
Prof. Alia Al-Saji - 'Fanon and an Engaged Phenomenology of Affect: Touching the wounds of colonial duration'
Marieke Borren - ‘The Spatial Phenomenology of White Embodiment’
Ondra Kvapil - ‘Thought-provoking Death’
Sam McAuliffe - ‘The Improvisational Encounter: What is Common to Music and Hermeneutic-Phenomenology’
Adriano Lotito - ‘Tran Duc Thao between Phenomenology and Marxism’
Maria-Nefeli Panetsos - ‘Dancing Phenomenology: A New Source of Non-Verbal Knowledge’
Pablo Fernandez Velasco - ‘Evenki wandering and situationist wandering’
Mary Coaten - ‘Dance Movement Psychotherapy in Acute Adult Psychiatry: Psyche and Dasein’
María Jimena Clavel Vázquez - ‘Perceiving like a girl? Sensorimotor Enactivism in the face of situated embodiment’
Mary Fridley & Gwen Lowenheim presenting for Susan Massad - ‘Creating a New Performance of Dementia’
Giuseppe Torre - ‘Noise, Phenomena and the Digital Psychosis’
Joel Krueger - ‘Taking Watsuji online: aidagara and expression in the techno-social niche’
Juan Toro - ‘The Ecological-Enactive Model of Disability: Why disability does not entail pathological embodiment’
Ellen Moysan - ‘Phenomenological Description of the Notion of Inner Song: Doing Phenomenology to Understand Music Practice’
Bence Peter Marosan - ‘Engaged Eco-phenomenology. An Eco-socialist stance based upon a phenomenological account of narrative identity’
Belinda Marshal - ‘Being-in-the-Virtual-World’
D. R. Koukal - ‘Teaching Phenomenology as a Heuristic Tool in Architectural Design’
Sadaf Soloukey - ‘Phenomenological Embodiment in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury Receiving Neural Implants’
Michael Fitzgerald - ‘Phenomenological interpretations of patient engagement in research’
Lucienne Spencer - ‘The phenomenological impact of hermeneutical injustice’
Join Podbean Ads Marketplace and connect with engaged listeners.
Advertise Today
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall
The No-Frills Teacher Podcast
Heal, Survive & Thrive!
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast