EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and belongs into the category of Energy Psychology, the roots are in Traditional Chinese Medicine though. Different acupressure points on the body are tapped with the fingers while speaking sentences that combine the distressing experience and a self-affirmation. Tapping energetic pathways running through the body (meridians) to influence […]
therapy
Learning relaxation with biofeedback
Trauma is not a ‘mental’ disorder, the whole body suffers from chronic stress. It sits deeply within our nervous system. Our traumatized body will struggle with relaxation and sometimes we have been tense for so many years that we actually don’t know how to relax and what that even feels like. Biofeedback technology can help […]
Reenacting trauma patterns in therapy: behavioral control
Trauma is often treated with a combination of behavioral therapy and more specific techniques to process the trauma. There are areas where CBT or other therapies that focus on behavior like DBT can interact with our own trauma-related patterns and reinforce abusive lessons we learned as children. These aren’t always obvious reenactments and our Ts […]
Releasing traumatic energy (body work)
A basic exercise in body work focuses on releasing tension or energy that is stuck in the body so that we can let go and regulate in a natural way. I will walk you through the steps as I learned them, using an example from my own therapy that is hopefully not triggering for you. […]
The Clay Field – alternative treatment of developmental trauma
Work with The Clay Field is a mix of all kinds of therapy concepts. We can see elements of art therapy, Jungian symbolism, gestalt therapy and sensorimotor therapy. I like to think of it as a form of body work where the main body-focus is on the hands and on experiencing things with our hands […]
Discussing EMDR for the treatment of complex PTSD with structural dissociation
Now that we have looked at the standard protocol for EMDR and how it can be adapted for DID, we want to discuss the technique based on our own experience with it. As always, we are focusing on the treatment of complex trauma with structural dissociation. Some people don’t trust EMDR because it is […]
EMDR: The Progressive Approach for severe Trauma 2
It is not rare for DID or subforms to get diagnosed after an EMDR session went terribly, terribly wrong. Once we understand why the basic protocol for EMDR can stir up so much within a system that patients get overwhelmed, we will look at a different approach to EMDR that can make processing safer and […]
EMDR: The Progressive Approach for severe Trauma 1
When we look at the standard protocol for EMDR we soon realize that it is too difficult for a lot of people with a background of severe abuse. We need more stability to manage trauma work, yet we can’t gain that stability because of our severe trauma symptoms. It can feel like we need to […]
The 8 Phases of EMDR
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It relies heavily on scripts, which makes it easy to research. A multitude of studies show that it works just as well as other easily researched approaches for trauma confrontation while being more gentle for both Ts and patients. Why exactly EMDR works is not fully explained. […]
TRE for healing complex trauma?
TRE stands for Tension and Trauma Release Exercises. It is a new form of releasing stress through working with the body. To understand why and how TRE works we need to take a look at physiology and a polar bear. Theory In mammals we can find a natural response to extreme stress that keeps […]
Balancing in Therapy
In nature, balance is never static. It is achieved by constantly re-adjusting and adapting to changing influences. It never stops, there is no time when a perfect balance exists for long. Balance is really a verb, not a noun. It is natural that all our therapy work is happening with ups and down, constantly shifting, […]
Polyvagal Therapy
Science about the vagus is an exciting new trend, it gets marketed as having almost magical powers to help people feel better. So I get quite a lot of emails asking for ways to ‘strengthen’ the vagus or how to ‘stimulate’ it. I think that this is based on a misunderstanding. Let me clarify. […]