A single moment can last forever in the memory . . .
Now when the memory is of something special, a time or an event that we hold dear, reliving the experience can feel almost as good as the actual moment did.
But when someone is remembering a traumatic experience, that memory can trigger a painful cycle of fear, anger, helplessness, and shame . . .
. . . and this, in turn, can slow the healing process for patients recovering from trauma.
So can traumatic memories be changed?
In the video below, Peter Levine, PhD shares some key insights.
Check it out – it’s about three and a half minutes.
If you want to learn more about working through trauma, check out our Treating Trauma Master Series.
What techniques have you found effective in helping clients work with traumatic memories? Please leave a comment below.
I was reading the article in the NY Times Sunday Review. A psychiatrist reported that using propanolol shortly after revisiting the fearful memory would quiet the fear.
Sounds good to me.
Kip
I thought someone like Bessel van der Kolk said memories change each time we revisit them. Maybe because of the experiences we bring to them. I guess that wouldn’t always change the therapy. It’s just that reading so many of these comments, it sounds like this might not be a common understanding.
The Bonny Methid of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) where music plays an essential part, connects us with inner resources and reinstalls powerful imageries helping the person to live a healthy life. I have been working with this technique for 13 years with amazing results.
Yay, finally you all are getting it. Since 1983 – yes, over 3 decades – Alchemical Hypnotherapy has involved at the very core of our work, a technique we simply call “Running and Changing Incidents”. And yes, we have been saying – despite the science of the time contradicting us – that we are making “new neurological pathways” in the limbic system of the brain. And despite the fact we didn’t have to look at it on an FMRI in order to know we were empowering people, we’ve helped thousands of people all over the world. (The subtitle of a Run and Change is “Rescuing the Inner Child”.)
So glad to see you finally catching on! Yay, Peter. Keep spreading the word.
Having worked with cancer survivor, sexual abuse or youth anxieties, guided meditations and tapping have worked well for me. I have also found building and reinforcing through polarities have been effective.
for traumatic memories that are in pre verbal states, (15-18 months old)
and more ongoing (not just one event), that has created much more of an ongoing dissociative state how does one “re-write” the memory into a more empowered one?
Having read his two books and witnessed somatic experiencing has left me awestruck by the effectiveness of this approach.
Having recently read Edward O Wilson’s *The Meaning of Human Existence*, I experienced an aha about how humans differ from most other mammals because of their erectness in space. He explains that the two PRIMARY senses that humans use–vision and auditory senses– are not the two primary senses which mammals on all fours use. We humans lost a significant degree of our gustatory and olfactory senses.
Our humanness predisposes us to a belief in practice, that SEEING something is the whole reality…as in the expression *I have to see it before I believe it*.
How Peter Levine explains the Reality of a trauma here, does not work for me, because what has happened when you have been traumatized CANNOT BE SEEN WITH THE EYES or on camera.
Trauma, in my definition, is a stealing away of one’s SENTIENCE or CONSCIOUSNESS, to this present moment. And good therapy deconstructs and reconstructs that LOST period of CONSCIOUSNESS– time spent in the primitive vagus, at first in anxious defense and then spaced-out and disconnected.
We do reconstruct a new narrative, yet the SOMATIC FEELINGS are no longer trapped inside.
Thank you, Elena, for this definition; for me, it fits, and gives me clarity on a recent trauma.
I think I have deconstructed and reconstructed a lot in therapy over the years and never got the results I hoped for. I also have never been able to avail myself of Somatic Therapy where my physical senses are involved.
I have had a lot of success using EFT for both big T and little t traumas.
I work with complex trauma in the Public School system. It is a self contained most restrictive placement within an already under serviced community.
Most of the students, even if they don’t meet criteria for PTSD (or diagnosed ODD, ADHD, other ‘conduct’ behavioral dx) have extensive trauma but the problem is they are not acute/isolated events.
I am learning about the ARC model which is really helpful, breaking it down into 3 phases including Attunement/Establishing Rituals and Routines to build safety (Rapport with intention!)
Modulation/affect identification, Gaining ability to name what is happening (not so much the “why”)
Executive Function skill-building, strengthening sense of self and identify
I am still learning but this is my basic understanding!
Arc sounds excellent, Leslie. I think it also is a bottom-up protocol, by your explanation, because the
attachment wound is the base wound-rejection and lack of safety;
then above it confusion about whether this happened out of feelings that persist, through naming;
and finally building back the power which was stolen by abuse, to create a new healthy sense of oneself, or one’s identity. Thanks for you post. I had never heard of ARC.
CPT is one of the more helpful techniques I use for trauma survivors. it gives them access to the memory in a controlled environment where they are able to look at it objectively. TF-CBT narrative works the same for children.they are able to talk about something horrible and look at how it made them feel and how it changed their thought process and then decide if they want to continue down that line of thinking. I have also talked to some clients who have done EMDR and they report the most helpful part is when they discuss their experience with the therapist after the EMDR session. The common factor in all of these for me is the narrative. Being able to talk about something in a non judgmental atmosphere is probably the most helpful thing a client can experience.
James, PTS in my experience is not about thinking and making decisions about how you WANT to think about things. It is more like a condition which was energetically forced on you and you attempt to organize what happened and release it….somatically. We cannot modify our thinking until the FEELINGS are clarified…bottom-up, not top down.
Is there any chance I can purchase the transcripts to Spirituality in Healing ?
Al
In my life I have tried several approaches – and nothing really helped to soothe several symptoms of PTSD – But now getting Somatic Experiencing, softly working with the body and the nervous system finally gets some relief!
Why do many talking approaches not help? They deepen the trauma memories instead of solving them! Only with talking we can`t reach the nervous system!
I have studied the work of Dr Levine and Stephen Porges and many others while researching trauma for my PhD and have found their work to be crucial in healing severe trauma in myself and others, however I am greatly concerned by what Dr Levine is saying in this video. I am assuming that he is referring to Somatic Experiencing in this video clip on re-framing. My concern comes from personal experience with PTSD when I was guided to build a positive memory before the old traumatic memory had been cleared. The method the practitioner used was not Somatic Experiencing, but Dr Levine doesn’t mention Somatic Experiencing in this clip. If anyone watching this clip doesn’t understand that he is referring to rebuilding a positive memory within the context of S.E. they could end up in severe distress if they apply this theory using other modalities. Correct use of clinical EFT has been the single most effective modality I have found in completely clearing PTSD and complex childhood developmental disorder because it spontaneously changes the traumatic memory to an empowering once the trauma has been completely cleared. In fact the empowering memory can only arise spontaneously once the trauma has been completely cleared.
Thank you so much, your comment was very enlightening for me. Barbara
Very interesting. I too was puzzled as i heard Peter talk and like you immediately thought of how energy modalities, I use TAt as well as EFt clear the brain of the trauma and then a new relationship to the self can emerge.
I will use this video to further my understanding of a friend’s traumatic experience.
Courtney Armstrong, LPC of Chattenooga, TN is working with this very theme (she has written a book called The Therapeurtic Aha” and she is excellent at teaching it. I’ve been studying with her and will shortly be studying Peter Levine’s course of Somatic Experiencing, so I’m excited to see the overlap and consistency in their thinking. Courtney uses a variety of methods, because as a person below mentions, each person is different. She uses hypnosis, music therapy, play therapy, and a variety of methods. You might want to consider having her as a speaker on here, Ruth. 🙂
I have found EMDR useful in helping clients work through traumatic memories. I also find mindfulness very helpful for clients processing traumatic experiences. Thanks for the wonderful presentation. It reminds me to respect the body’s innate healing process.
How did you get my name? And how did you find out that I was a child of chronic abuse? I will be working on my childhood, trauma in a therapy group soon, I’m not sure if I will be using these techniques I do know that it has P.T.S.D.therapy with it. I don’t know how much your program costs but I can tell you that there is no way I can afford it, I can barely get by now. I am sorry, I’m sure your techniques are great help for people, thank you very much.
EFT is very effective for acute trauma and PTSD. Many thanks for the presentation.
I’m working with inmates and see lots of traumatic memories, especially in woman. It is a complex situation, as each human being is so complex.
I’m finding that working with mindfulness and self-compassion practices as taught by Tim Desmond in his online course at the Institute for Applied Compassion is helping me heal from a childhood filled with abuse and neglect. Very grateful to have found his book and his course!
Thank you for this excellent series.
The most powerful method i know personally for working with traumatic memories is Matrix Reimprinting with EFT. This is not only an extremely creative approach for the client, but it is also relatively easy to teach people to use it effectively and safely with clients. This is partly because it is almost impossible for the client to reactivate the trauma, as they move within the ‘Matrix’ – where all is connected and all is possible – in a state of dissociation from their former traumatized selves, with whom they dialogue to discover what lesson was learned about life on that occasion. A new memory is formed spontaneously, as the former self is invited to bring into the picture any resources their mind can conceive with which to approach the stressful situation in a more empowered way. With this kind of support in place the situation generally evolves naturally in a way which transforms the original learning into a new and far more supportive belief about the self, others and the world. It is an extremely elegant and beautiful process where the main work is done by the client, with the practitioner there as a guide. Clients can also learn how to do this for themselves at home.
It is truly wonderful how many different approaches are being developed in this field, each with their own special qualities.
Immediately after a sexual encounter I had with my boyfriend in college, I started to feel dirty, guilty, contaminated, and anxious. For the next 44 years I compulsively washed my hands until they bled and cleaned my house for hours and hours. It got so severe I was hospitalized for 9 months. 3 years ago I found a therapist who worked with me using EMDR for trauma and my washing lessened 75%.
After living a life of isolation because I feared my house had dangerous germs, I can now have friends and family in my house. My thoughts are no longer consumed with germs. I am now volunteering with NAMI and giving hope to others that healing is possible.
It would be helpful to have a more specific example for instance Dr Levine spoke with some detail about how the child was behaving prior to having tonsils removed – details of how the child might empower herself would be useful – rather than general comments specifics would be helpful for example does the clinician work with the child to imagine what it would be like to experience such and such empowerment such as asking for someone to hold her hand –
Remind her she is not alone – imagine leaving the office knowing this is a short term situation – some details it was a little unclear how this particular scenario would be handled – thank you for your short videos very useful good ideas –
Peter Levine’s explanation of trauma and how it is stored is very helpful information for therapists. EMDR is the best psychotherapy model I have found to help clear traumatic memories efficiently, on all levels, cognitive, emotional and physiologically.
Thank you for the presentation. I have found that with clients who have experienced a trauma or a series of traumas, they spend much time trying to forget those traumas. In my practice, I try helping them remember the experience in a way that can augment their character.
Regards,
Mike
I use something similar to this with my clients who have a specific trauma event that is continuing to haunt them with flashbacks and nightmares: I ask them to not end the story with the traumatic event but to go beyond that and end the story at the point the trauma is over and they feel safe. So many of my clients only remember the traumatic event itself and don’t focus on the feeling of the event ending. Helping them remember that – yes, the event happened – but then what? When did they realize it was over and when did they feel safe again?
This doesn’t typically work with clients whose trauma is repetitive or developmental, but can be very helpful when the trauma is a specific, time limited event.
Thank you for these postings, they are very helpful and thought provoking!
I see that many of you are using EMDR as one of your resources for recovery. Is anyone using Brainspotting, which I understand has been developed from EMDR, & supposedly better in some cases, & curious if Peter Levine will make mention of it in his new book. Thanks to Ruth for concentrating on PTSD & bringing to light the many methods of treating it from people around the world. After all, we all suffer from PTSD to some degree, & if we can help ourselves & those with the most severe cases, we can make the world a little better & more compassionate.
I am an energy alternative healer. I use the NMT Trauma Release pathway and it works like magic. (Neuro Modulation Technique by Leslie Feinberg). This allows the mind to know that it happened, but no longer has the power to cause fear, panic or bad dreams. It is something that just happened, and the person can then move forward in peace of mind. It totally changes their perspective and takes away the trauma from the past and also into the future. It is truly an amazing tool. It is effective for sexual abuse, PTSD of war for veterans, memories of a car accident, any trauma.
I also do a lot of work using The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson, which is a quick and easy way to release trapped emotions from the past or present. I also use his Body Code as well.
I am also experienced in using hypnosis to assist in releasing and reframing trauma, which is also very effective.
Each of these is very effective, but together they are like magic and give so much relief to the client.
You can find more info on my website: integratedholistichealingcenter.com
I let the person talk about the traumatic event and acknowledge the persons fear,anger ,whatever, this seems to heal the person, a listening heart
i;m still trapped in the memories,they are as real today as when they happened.i carried a lot of guilt for one particular event,over time i have learned to disconnect from the whole day and bore myself with my war stories,look for someone who needs held help now to deal with their pain as they live it,try and bring calmness and acceptance of the situation.be present in their momrnt,by the time i have heoed my memories have gone ,to be relaxed by the pain and suffering from thr persom,introduce a bit of humour in to the situation .i have now sucsessfully dodged the bullet.june maet
New Empowered Memory. Very interesting…
I worked with a 12 yr old girl for about a year who had experienced complex trauma ( Involving witnessing long term domestic violence, experiencing sexual abuse, and witnessing drug use by her carers) She was a very articulate young lady and I mainly used a client centred counselling approach where I regularly validated her thoughts and feelings and provided relevant psycho-eduation to reduce self blame where appropriate. This approach seemed to resolve many issues in regard to traumatic memories. After several months of counselling she told me she was feeling much better in general , but was still having nightmares. I asked her to describe the feelings she had during and immediately after the most recent nightmare, to remember the feelings and to draw them. She selected colours for the feelings and drew her many different bodily reactions. eg heart beating really fast, sick feeling in tummy, tight muscles down her back, breathing really fast. etc. We spend some time together describing the feelings and drawing them, which slowed down the process of re-experiencing the feelings. I then asked her if she could remember a time when she felt those feelings before. She readily recalled an incident that had occurred several years before when she had had experienced these same feelings. This time I asked if she felt ok to draw the incident. She drew it in map form explaining what had happened. I think the drawing process helped to slow down the re-experience of the trauma and she described in vivid detail a very traumatic experience. We slowly went together through the experience and identified all of her needs which were unmet at the time. The list was extensive. We then connected the feelings she experienced at the time to what she needed. She also remembered that she had to suppress what would have been a normal expression of these feelings at the time of the trauma and identified that this was to keep herself as safe as possible at the time. She recognised that her feelings were body ‘s way of trying to keep her safe but that there was some confusion at the time between the need to express and the need to suppress these feelings. We then spend the next few sessions identifying ways she could give herself the love, attention, feelings of safely and many other needs that unmet on that day. After this process my client reported no longer experiencing nightmares and said she felt much happier that she could ever remember feeling and was happy to finish counselling.
Thank you for this truly benign helpful process for those who know deeply their constant heart for good, freeing them from externally applied guilt .historically and consistently applied to females ,often by “sell out” females relentlessly, ultimately futilely for their perceived benefits but un helpful diversion from .safety and good health.I would say this pathway is of enormous value for healthy survival of discredited fen
males strong enough to come forward world wide and well done for devising it.
Nola,
I think that your work with your young client includes a number of key healing elements. I have been fortunate in my recovery from severe, multifaceted trauma as a very young child through teen years, to experience therapy similar to that which you describe. I have a master’s degree and originally intended to become a therapist. That became amended to becoming a supporter of other survivors and a “continuing ed” educator for psychotherapists.
You described “being with” your client, which is so important, because as children survivors were so very alone. You provided education, validation, connection; you moved slowly and patiently “together” through the experience. You didn’t shy away from the painful material, but found a way through it and, in the process, changed it. You helped her find ways to treat herself with love and compassion. My similar experiences in therapy with courageous and caring therapists, along with my own determination, hard work, and the love of my husband and friends are the reason I am still here and now able to give back (albeit, not as a therapist, but in other ways).
Along with the excellent programs by NICABM I have been researching and studying “memory reconsolidation,” (work by Ecker, Ticic and Hulley), which explains why clients of therapists like yourself and others are healing and regaining their lives. Their research and that of others is explaining what happens in the brain to “unlock emotional memory at the synaptic level” and allows new learning to erase, not just suppress, the deep, unconscious…learnings that…generate most of the symptoms that bring people to therapy.” The quote is from their book, “Unlocking the Emotional Brain.”
This “reconsolidation” occurs in a number of, but not all, psychotherapies when a client is in touch with a traumatic memory “as a visceral emotional experience” and “disconfirming knowledge” spontaneously occurs or the therapist brings it to the client’s awareness. My current therapist works very similarly to the way you described working with your client. Formerly I worked with a therapist who used emdr and I now understand why that was also very effective–it slowed down the process of re-experiencing the feelings and then the “disconfirming knowledge” (eg., I am safe, there’s someone with me, it’s 2015) replaced the original traumatic learning.
From all my research, training, and personal experience I think it’s important to know the truth of what happened to us–the trauma–and in facing it (with as much help as we need) it can be transformed. Reading what you wrote reminded me of the therapists who have been on this “journey” with me and have helped me find the truth, which took courage on their parts because much of what I remembered was very ugly. Sometimes I needed to hear “Yes, it really was that bad,” because I was feeling awful and there were so few people who could stand to hear some of my early experiences. I have enormous gratitude for my helpers.
Lovely gentle approach, There is a very good book by Margot Sunderland called -Draw on your emotions- I was fortunate enough to train with her.
thanks
I live through my client’s traumatic memories with them, teaching them that they can stand to have their emotions as they live through them. I bring into their conciouness the emotions they’re feeling. I teach them the words they need to understand themselves and their emotions and bring them into their consciousness. I also teach them imagery to use if their feelings or memory of the event become too much for them. But of course before all that I teach them to trust me so that I may teach them to trust themselves. And I teach them how to develop feelings of safety inside them.
I’ve worked with them to rework their traumatic memorie into memories where they feel their power, but they have to have a lot of work under their belts or they have to understand the power of their imaginations before they’re willing to consider reframing their story in a more positive light.
I’m finding a process called IEMT (integral eye movement technique) highly and rapidly effective for trauma and PTSD, along with many other emotional problems. This is a very different process to EMDR – indeed several EMDR therapists attended the training course with me a couple of years ago and found it very useful. IEMT was developed by Andy Austin in the UK. What I particularly like about it, apart from the rapid results it delivers, is that it can be done entirely content-free. The client does not need to talk about the traumatic event at all, merely refer to “the problem I want to be free of”.
I read Waking the Tiger before I went back for my masters in counseling; Peter Levine’s has always played a pivotal part of how I worked with trauma clients. For those who can do it, imaginatively renegotiating the ending of the trauma has been very powerful.
Having clients imagine they are watching the event on a picture theatre screen and changing position from front to back in the theatre and then colour to black and white and then creating a split screen with a new successful image that can then grow bigger.
Having client hit the rewind button and rewrite the ending of a difficult event. Seems to engage creativity and power as well as anticipate future empowerment.
Concerning infantile memories, I’ve never learned an effective way to reconstruct memories. They are shattered pieces of sentient moments, not cognitive stories of what happened.
Deaths of the perpetrators,TIME, developing a narrative and having a caring listening therapist believe that narrative, (though it may never consist of proof) have helped.
very interesting thank you
Thanks Peter and Ruth for this lovely clarification about the neurobiology or how healing memories are formed and consolidated. I LOVE this explanation and it makes so much sense in what I have seen in the last 30 years of working with trauma with CST.
In hands-on CST, (CranioSacral therapy), a skilled practitioner can work with the traumatized client and help them do what we call “completion of biological process” which entails ‘re-doing’ the memory except that with the support of their body’s inner wisdom, they do it in a way that brings it to a healed completion, rather than re-doing over and over the old traumatic memory. Makes the phrase – “Never to late to have a happy childhood” take on new meaning!
Hi,
Thank you Ruth. I have really enjoyed and learned so much from your emails and webinars.
I have used TAT, Tapas Acupressure Technique , for trauma for 9 years , developed by Tapas Fleming . I have used it for persons experience sexual abuse, rape, a mother who’s child was murdered , people coming from war zones and much more. It is amazingly easy to learn and use and very effective and the client do not need to go back into the trauma , just pay attention to the trauma.
All the best,
Solveig
May I learn to retrain my mind to see the beauty in the world, the beauty in people and the strength and beauty in myself. My painful memories center around a breakdown from the EST training and a mugging on a street in NYC that I tried to intervene in. They both caused me to become fearful of honestly communicating with people again. I am praying that I overcome that holding me back from truly expressing the positive abilities that I have dormant and latent within me. Also I would like to learn how to let go of being critical of other people and respect their own struggles toward wholeness and love. As the poet Rumi once wrote” my task is not to seek for love but to find and remove the barriers within myself to accepting and being Love”. I am not sure if that is the exact quote, but the gist of it is there.
I find that a combination of re-scripting while doing deep breathing and progressive relaxation is valuable. This requires an imaginative or actual safe setting, with imaginative or real friends and or a therapist who are advocates on your behalf, ordering the perpetrator(s) to back off and successfully assuring this occurs. It includes encouraging expressing the full intensity of fear, rage, grief, helplessness that were stifled, and then self soothing or being soothed by the imagined or real others present. This is then followed by affirmations of loving and accepting self, being whole, healed and clear.
Hands down…EFT! Before getting certified 5years ago I was on a 20 quest to heal multiple traumas. I tried everything mentioned here and more. EFT is effective, gentle and fast. It is not a cookie cutter modality that can be applied via videos though. It must be personalized and with a gifted practitioner…
20 year
I agree Dede. EFT is effective. Matrix Reimprinting is an advanced form of EFT that works specifically to reformat those early traumatic memories. I wish i had of know about these therapies when i was assaulted. The PTSD could have been circumvented.
I have been using EMDR Therapy in group and individual settings and found it to be very useful.
I find meridian and chakra based tapping therapies to be powerful in providing relief and healing
I think each person is going to be individual and thru the process of empowerment will find their inner Light House. Personally, I had an experience after a massage. That night I had an experience after the safe massage therapist pulled it out of me, revealed in a dream. Plus building trustworthy relationships with many people added to my healing. The kitchen sink if need be! I am grateful for several healers including my mindful psychotherapist!
From reading Peter Levine’s book we introduced empowerment . So after each traumatic memory is recalled we invite our guest to allow the child inside to do or say whatever they like to the person who caused the trauma, it can take time, but in the end they either physically do something like sream at them or throw plates at them while yelling or they may do it in their imagination.
We have found once this is done there is no further need to ever revisit that particular trauma it is stored away in the Hippo-campus with no emotional energy attached.Over 16 years we have helped over 6,000 people this way
Thank you Peter.Your book Waking the Tiger within .
In this video Peter Levine omits mention of the crucial distinction between episodic memory and emotional memory. I would not want to submit to a therapy that proposed to alter my episodic memory of events. However I have found great value in being able to change the emotional learnings from events to correspond to reality. The methods of Coherence Therapy as formulated by Bruce Ecker, et al, rely on clear recognition of this distinction, and lead to rapid resolution of symptoms that have arisen from outdated emotional learnings, while they leave intact the episodic memory of the event.
yup. thank you
Totally agree with you. Thanks for bringing this up.
I hadn’t heard of this, but you’ve described exactly what I was thinking when I watched the vid. Thank you for posting this!
The thought of messing with the episodic memories is frightening; that’s what perpetrators do.
In fact, often the worst abuse comes after ‘the trauma’ when survivors attempt to hold on to their reality by stating it out loud. Until they publicly ‘admit’ to the abuser, and often witnesses, that their episodic memories are incorrect the abuse at all levels will escalate (and at that point many survivors start to believe it themselves).
The pattern I’m starting to see is that this – far more than the assault itself – is what leaves the lasting harm, if no-one steps in to intervene.
And even changing the emotional memories is fraught with problems; survivors need to retain the memory of extreme fear in order not to blunt their responses should anything similar happen again.
What’s key, as you pointed out, is not changing memories (Orwell, anyone?) but learning – adding to them. For one thing learning that even in the most dangerous circumstances they can act to protect and defend themselves. Even better is learning what TO do (as in physical & emotional techniques) in truly dangerous situations. That gives the patient options other than the freeze response in the moment. The emotional memory that someone cared enough about their well-being to teach them how to protect themselves can go a long way toward setting them on the path to self-empowerment.