When the Body Becomes a Compass
On Meaning, Stuck-ness, and Finding Your Way Back
There is a particular kind of stuck that brings people to counselling. Not a crisis, exactly. More like a flatness ~ a sense that something that used to feel clear has gone quiet. You might still be functioning well by most measures. But something underneath has lost its signal.
I think about that flatness often. And I’ve come to believe that what’s missing, in many cases, is not information or strategy. It’s connection ~ to oneself, to what actually matters, to the felt sense of being alive in one’s own life.
Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, argued that the deepest human drive is not pleasure or power ~ it’s the search for meaning. He developed an entire approach to therapy, logotherapy, around this idea. Dr. David Puder, whose podcast on the therapeutic alliance I’ve been drawing on throughout this series, builds on Frankl’s work in a way I find compelling: that meaning isn’t just a philosophical concept. It’s something we can listen for, in session and in life ~ and when we find it, it changes things.
The body knows before the mind does
When I think about how meaning actually surfaces for people ~ not as an idea, but as a felt experience ~ I keep coming back to the body.
There is a quality of aliveness that comes when the nervous system is at rest. Not checked out ~ resting. The parasympathetic state, what we sometimes call rest and digest. When someone can access that, even briefly, something shifts. There’s a settling. And in that settling, what actually matters tends to become clearer.
I’ve experienced this directly, in my own work as a client. In IBP ~ Integrative Body Psychotherapy ~ with my therapist Dr. Barton, and in emotional release work during my training at Rhodes Wellness College, I learned that the body holds things the mind can’t always reach. Sometimes that meant lying on a mat, knees bent, and letting my fists move through frustration until the energy released. Sometimes it was twisting a towel through anger until something underneath softened. These aren’t theatrical exercises ~ they’re invitations for the body to complete what it started.
What I noticed, and what I’ve seen in clients since, is that when the body is allowed to move through an emotion rather than manage it ~ something like a compass appears. A quiet clarity about what is actually true, what is actually needed. The right brain, which holds feeling and image and sensation, has been heard. And when the left brain ~ the part that makes meaning, finds language, connects dots ~ is then invited in, something integrates. The two hemispheres begin speaking to each other. And from that conversation, insight tends to emerge.
Carl Rogers wrote that the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. That acceptance is not a mental decision. It’s something the body has to be part of. And when it happens, the difference between change and acceptance ~ between what needs to shift and what needs to be honoured ~ becomes much clearer.
Everything said has meaning ~ including what isn’t said
One thing Puder describes that has stayed with me is the idea of psychic determinism ~ the principle that nothing a person says in a session is random. Not the tangents, not the subject changes, not the words chosen and the words avoided. Everything carries something.
I try to bring this orientation into the room. Not as an analytical exercise ~ more as a quality of attention. This moment, whatever is being said or not said, is the accumulation of every moment before it. The present is always carrying the past.
I’ve seen this with couples especially. Two people in conflict, caught in a cycle that feels like it’s about the present ~ about what happened last Tuesday, about the tone of a text message, about who didn’t do the dishes. When we slow it down, when there’s enough safety in the room to get underneath the surface, something else emerges. Previous experiences. Old hurts. Moments from long before this relationship where something similar was felt and never fully resolved.
Each partner, when given enough space, was able to name how their past was showing up in the present ~ what we came to call their triggers. That naming changed something. The blame and criticism between them began to soften. In its place came something closer to curiosity ~ and a genuine honouring of how each person’s history had shaped them. The conflict hadn’t changed yet. But how they held it had.
Words carry different worlds
Puder makes a point I think about often: the same word can mean entirely different things to different people. He uses forgiveness as an example ~ a word that for some people is life-giving, and for others carries enormous weight and blame.
I’ve seen this with the word communication. For one partner in a couple, it meant: stop bringing up problems. For the other, it meant: let me be seen and heard. Both people thought they were talking about the same thing. They weren’t. And until that difference was named, every conversation about communication made the gap wider.
The same thing happened with the word safety. For one person, safety meant the absence of conflict. For the other, it meant the freedom to express difficult emotions without being shut down or immediately problem-solved. Two completely different experiences, both real, both valid ~ both invisible to the other until we slowed down enough to find them.
This is part of why I try not to assume I know what someone means by the words they use. The work is partly about finding out ~ not what the word means in general, but what it holds for this person, in this life, with this history.
What I carry into the room with couples
I want to say something honest here.
When I sit with two people who are caught in the cycle ~ contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, what the Gottman researchers call the four horsemen ~ something in me aches. Not because the conflict is unusual. It’s incredibly common. But because underneath it, almost always, are two people who have the capacity to be kinder to each other and to themselves. The harshness is rarely the truth of who they are. It’s what happens when old pain has nowhere else to go.
Psychoeducation helps ~ understanding the patterns, being able to name them, seeing the cycle from outside rather than inside it. But what I’ve found matters most is something underneath even that. When each person can move some of the charged emotion out of the way ~ when the body has been heard enough that the nervous system settles ~ something else becomes audible. A quieter signal. A deeper knowing about what they actually want from each other and from themselves.
That’s where I try to go with people. Not to manage the conflict, but to listen for what’s underneath it.
A note to anyone reading this who recognises themselves here
If something in this post has landed ~ if you recognise the flatness, the cycle, the sense of being far from your own compass ~ I want you to know that what you’re feeling is not a character flaw. It’s not evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you or your relationship.
It’s often evidence that something hasn’t had enough space to be heard yet.
There is a deep calling in most of us to be kinder ~ to ourselves and to each other. I believe that. And I’d like to help with that inner calling, if you’re open to it.
The free discovery call is a good place to start ~ no commitment, no pressure. Book one here. I see individuals and couples online across British Columbia.
Published April 2026 | Updated July 2026
Cyrus Jagosh, RTCc (ACCT) | MPCC-P (CPCA) — Registered Therapeutic Counsellor (Candidate) at Cyrus Counselling, offering individual and couples therapy online across British Columbia. He draws on trauma-informed, somatic, and relational approaches.
This post is written for general informational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. If you are in crisis or need immediate support, please contact a crisis line or emergency services.
