How to Work with Emerging Defense Responses to Trauma (Beyond the Fight/Flight/Freeze Model)
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with Pat Ogden, PhD;
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with Pat Ogden, PhD; Stephen Porges, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Janina Fisher, PhD; Kathy Steele, MN, CS; Deb Dana, LCSW; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Yesterday’s presenters shared Polyvagal and Sensory motor interventions that seem to anchor clients during in-person sessions. I think that utilizing the concept of ” I am with you!” during a telehealth session, appears to be a bit more challenging in its translation. Yet, with cues and education, it can be done!
Thank you so much for the information!
I am not a therapist, but rather a woman who grew up in an abusive family environment. I was the second of six kids, and played the role of the parent to my younger siblings. I was the child who acted the adult part from the time I was 10 years old, literally making money for the family and caring for my infant siblings. We were physically beaten by our father and abused psychologically by our mother. I spoke honestly about the abuse in the family, and began fighting back with my truth saying at an early age. It took me many years into my adult life to fully cut off ties with my parents. My mother’s defense has always been that my other siblings never “spoke of the abuse” like I did so I must be exaggerating. It was nice to hear that one other response to trauma that is now recognized is “please and appease” responses. This gave me an understanding of why my siblings never came forward and confronted our mother and father in the ways I did. They too were traumatized.
In my practice I strive to impart Stillness and Quiet. My work is largely experiential, I sense the client energy, I am aware of my own presence. I use the 5 second inhale,5 second exhale to help regulate emotional response and heart/brain coherence. Setting the tone of compassion and deep understanding allows for the recognition of these trauma states and how to hold/ approach each client.
Thanks very much for sharing this good work.
Thanks a lot for your generous sharing! What mostly resonated with my present work is that “double consciousness” mentioned for black people, because it resembles exactly a lot of native people’s manners, which look to prevent repraisals and hurt. A lot of sociohistorical load!
Thank you. I really got the attach/cry for help. I have just finished with a client who’s husband had died a while ago, she couldn’t let go of his death. On further enquiry this was never a good match, his family and he were very dismissive until he became ill.. then he was there for her which was what she had always craved.
With me in session she was clingy, and I noticed my own reaction which was to pull away, could feel my anger and not wanting to engage at times.. it was really strong and I wondered how many times this had played out in her life.
We did a lot of work around boundaries and saying no in a very compassion focused way. She started another relationship, it was lovely to see..
Priceless kick off to help client map their own nervous system and coping strategy:
Where did this “Please and Appease” coping mechanism start?
Where did you learn that it was dangerous to have thoughts of your own?
“You’re worthy just BEING instead of DOING anything.”
Thank you!
Really helpful.
I’ve done please appease for years.
I’m finding out where that comes from and redefining the moment with schema therapy abs revising the moment with my therapist so that I am more supported in the trauma moment to reset my nervous system differently from that point.
All of this insight has been so helpful.
Thank you
This is the 2nd time I’ve viewed this session – the Attach/Cry segment is invaluable and I’d welcome an entire program on it.
I agree with this “the Attach/Cry segment is invaluable.”
Please do more in depth on this, especially for caregivers of traumatized youth!!!
That was amazing. One of the most helpful things I’ve come across in the journey of healing from my trauma
David ……. student of life ……..
Brad ….. got out of his truck . Walked over to me…. their is no escaping Brad . He threw his arms round me …. squished all ..the air our of me .. i felt my vertebrae pop …. this was Brad …… then turning to his 10 year old boy …… I don’t hug a lot of men ? ..But this one is a real human .. then grabbing me again into another bear hug ….. We all were laughing and enjoying ……… I sensed he was burning up …… he had been clean for 10 years …….. when he started to talk down his wife .. the boys mother . I walked away to the stream and started to touch the cedar trees …… his 12 year relationship was beyond repair …… he was going down hard …… I gave him some money in friendship and respect ……. and told him he could stay here …. Brad came back 3 more times .. same mammoth bear hug .. then he disappeared …I was probably one of the last to see brad ……. he went up the mountain
and OD / suicide ..in his truck …….. he was found 3 weeks later ………
I know he ……. wanted me to be here for his young boys ..
Over the past 2 years their has been 3 others …..who …OD .. they too came for
help …….. all I can do is feel them .. listen and walk them to the stream … and touch the
cedar trees … give a little money ……. then they too were gone .. OD …. to be clear the money was for well being ….. not enough to OD …I struggle with knowing that I am one of there last hopes ….. and I suffer thinking that i could of saved them ……even one .I am the 8 years old who was sent to boarding school ..No one heard my crying …calling for help and I went further and further away from people to shelter in the trees …… then came the war in Africa …
I ran away … to be a refugee … then a nomad ……
I started to meditate …….. now for many decades …… I just sat with it all or in it ……. each day …
My system was conditioned by threat ……. So I can stay with all the pain and difficulties of life …. although I suffer deeply ………..
I know no other way . . And when in the subtle
energy it all gets digested …. always returning to some degree ….. all the break ups and loss …… arises in awareness ………..
and in this aliveness …… I am really saddened that I can not help others ..
I don’t have the training .. all I can do is feel them and take them to the cedar tree … I don’t have the thousands of $ for training . And yet this is my life time work ……
I so grateful to Ruth and all you true heroes of mine …….
My own trauma is not fully integrated into living …. maybe never will be ….. I just sit with it ………like a burning fire … that dissolves into the bed ..of red warming ambers
Every few days …… someone arrives …. I sense their wounding and trauma they want to be felt ….. so I feel them in awareness … listen and take them to touch the mother cedar’s … give a little offering ..sometimes just sometimes .. when they touch mother cedar .. something happens in that moment … I feel the shift
within … there stillness ……
I don’t have the training …… I wish I did ….. I am just in touch
with the kindness of love ……..
So grateful Ruth for making this wisdom avaliable …… Bless you all
David
Thanks David for your share … Yeah hard one … I feel that space you mention … just to sit with things until the fire become warm embers …
wish I knew how to be more helpful in others desperation as well .. bless you 💖😘🙏
This is so powerful. Thank you for sharing your experience of bearing witness to another’s pain. It really touched me and reminds me of what I need to do today as I try to be there for a struggling friend.
How deep and touching,
Seem like you sit at the fire
burning at the core of humanity.
Maybe you can persuade
a few to sit there
with you a bit longer ?
So well done. Ruth ,you do such a good job of repeating and pulling everything together.
Thank you. Great learning. Linda Hay RN BScN Certified Hypnotherapist.
Victoria BC Canada.
To have more clarity about the patients’ NS responses to trauma help me to address their treatment. Now, I see how important is to recognize their and mine NS activation to generate the desirable changes. As this undestanding is crucial to guide the treatment, clients also have to learn where they are in their NS to realize that their thoughts and feeling are normal in that specific state. It is clear that if we don’t work on the NS activation we can’t generate more adaptative responses to their enviroments. Thanks a lot, as always your training is very current, useful and pertinent in the clinical application.
Another superb training session-I am working to further refine my clinical applications with this information. As each of the three trauma responses were described, I could imagine my clients who exhibit these adaptations and am enthused to continue the work with new, fresh understandings! Recognizing and regulating my own NS is SO important (practicing what I preach even in the midst of so many telehealth sessions!) Thank you for offering these opportunities I LOVE how you’ve spaced them out each week with multiple chances to view within busy schedules is much appreciated!
Thank you for this thought producing session! I now realize one of my client’s recent reactions in session was one of please and appease. Next session I’m going to go back to her reaction and discuss this with her. I’ll introduce the concept as a sophisticated defense response and have her figure out how and why she needed it to survive her childhood. I’m sure it will be very helpful in moving her forward in her healing!
Hugely helpful, and I can apply this to several clients. Expands my understanding of client’s adaptive responses to trauma and how to work with them. I appreciate your looking at the therapeutic response through the various lenses – somatic, polyvagal, etc.
I am still a little uncertain about distinguishing the Collapse/Submit response from Treatment-resistant Depression. Any further clarity on this would be most helpful!
Many thanks for this, and for the affirmation about the value of the work we all do at the end. EMR, London
That was a revelation to me also. I think she was giving us a deeper understanding of the symptoms of Collapse by saying it might be mislabeled as “depression” but is not actually a diagnosis of depression. There are two aspects of seeming to be tx resistant. One is that it is not an organic disease so it won’t respond to meds. The other is that it is an unconscious but freely chosen defense strategy. So until the client consciously develops an alternate strategy for current time ( not trauma time), the client is not ready to give it up as a coping strategy. I think that is what she meant. It is an adaptive state that a child-part or teen-part
chose as a defense. Therefore, it is not responsive to treatment for an organic clinical depression. It will not respond to medication because it is not an illness. If a part is using it as a defense, then the underlying initial cause needs to be addressed. Then if that is identified and healed, the client’s part will spontaneously let go.
I was able to identify patients in my practice that fitted each of these survival responses and it was so helpful to remember to check in with my own nervous system response as a way of using the self in the service of my patients. When it is appropriate staying with the immediacy of the therapeutic relationship can deepen the possibility of change.
I was familiar with “fawn” which you call please/appease but not the other reactions shared in this module. This was very informative and helpful. I train parents and protective service caseworkers and foster-adoptive parents who live or work with children and adults with trauma histories. I do not do clinical work, but translate what I learn into practical non-clinical tips to offer these service providers for supporting the clients they serve or children they live with. Often, especially for foster-adoptive parents, they are with the children the other 167 hours of the week (outside the 1 hour of therapy) and are dealing on a daily basis with trauma triggers, reactions, and needing to support what the therapist is doing (or some therapists don’t know but the parents still need the support and strategies).
That is wonderful work you are doing. It is so needed. Very little is known by most people about what goes on in the foster care system.
My work is with advising organizations that provide services for homeless pregnant teens and homeless young women with small children. Usually, they are homeless because they are escaping violence. I am learning about trauma treatment to help those who work with them to understand them better.
My professional work is counseling older DID clients, mainly women.
I realised what I saw in clients – now I have words for this ‘attached cry’
Thank you
I am an art psychotherapist. The teaching on the attach cry response has been an eyeopener . It has helped me gain new insights on images the client has made in the session and validates my approach to combining coregulation and encouraging self regulation with a current client . I include some grounding techniques in each session and encourage regular practice of it outside the sessions
I’m a case manager in a children’s shelter and so although I don’t directly treat clients, I do feel it is so important to recognize these responses to be able to provide nurture and structure to the kids in an appropriate way. Seeing these responses play out in real time, day after day, can be frustrating and exhausting as you want to help them progress so badly. This session really showed me how important it is to be in tune with my own nervous system and to be aware of how subconscious many of the kids behaviors are.
That is great work you are doing. It was interesting that previous sessions in this series explained the cognitive brain does not start to develop until around age 9 or so and does not fully develop until mid 20’s. These are findings of neuroscience. I do not recall which expert talked about that. Maybe Stephen Porges.
I really resonated with her last comment, that when we assist someone in healing from their trauma, we change generations/world. Hmmm, I lost the exact word she said. Empowering!
Just loved this session. I am very curious to learn more about Poly Vagal Theory. I had an “aha” moment during the discussions on the sympathetic nervous system and how this also triggers responses in ourselves. Thank you so much!
Again I learned in more detail how to be adware of my own role and funerability in the relation with my cliënts. Sometimes both me and my cliënt tend to be “ to kind” to each other. To protectieve, erasing/ avoiding, in order to protect the relation. I regognise en will metacommunicate clearer on this sometimes uccuring common attachment style.
Deb Dana explaining how to say “ No” drom different parts of the nervous system is very helpfull. As well as the soft but firm pushing gesture Pat Ogden showed us.
Janine ‘s style of kindly refuring to parts of the cliënt, in order to look at them together, strengtens the part of me that will make more use of this tender modelling.
Thanks!
I really resonated with her last comment, that when we assist someone in healing from their trauma, we change generations/world. Hmmm, I lost the exact word she said. Empowering!
I also liked Annemarie’s thoughts. Me too!
Learning a bit about Collapse Submit today aka Survival Response has helped me to understand where I have been for many years. I have been in survival mode since a child and not that long ago realized this for myself. Thank You for sharing this.
Again, not a practitioner, but once was…. I am now clear on the beginning which I missed some of at 8PM. Attach and cry for help is why I’m alone today. I have chased everyone away, or did. I don’t know if I’d do it still, as I’m elderly and in poor health, not likely to find a relationship to test. Plus, I am isolating (Covid allows me to isolate, without answering to anyone). I used to think (several decades ago) that I was an introvert. Then I realized that being afraid of people is not the definition of an introvert.
Thank you again for allowing me to attend. I’d pay for it I had money, but I don’t. My stability is tenuous as my housing is insecure.
I relate to your introvert versus seeking social isolation reflection. I wonder how many of us have been labelled inappropriately. Look after yourself.
Connie, know that you speak for many of us
right now at this moment,
in looking back at our lives,
and this
information, insight,
that gives us some important,
if not relief,
at least gives us some
compassion and understanding
to sustain us,
and also the gift of learning how
to be present and love and
take care of ourselves,
the somatic piece that is so healing!
As I watched the training, specific clients came to mind as each of the 3 emerging defense responses were described. Thinking of the clients’ histories, it makes so much sense why they’d respond in these ways. I was sensing things in session but didn’t have names or clear understandings of what was going on. I’ve noticed myself feeling like we’re on a carousel unique to each client. I now have a few tools to apply in session to help them much more effectively. And I will continue strengthening my understanding and playing w/ my own nervous system so that I sense the real-time alerts in session that please and appease, attach/cry for help, and collapse and submit may be at work. I think this training has really helped me so that I can help clients grow aware of their nervous system responses and move to healthier socially engaged functioning. A million thanks!
Thank you. I’m aware, now, of defenses my son has used. Now I can discuss please/appease uses with him.
Would have loved to hear much more from Janina about strategies for dealing with all three defenses. Deb Ranga’s strategies were extremely helpful as well.
That is wonderful work you are doing. It is so needed. Very little is known by most people about what goes on in the foster care system.
My work is with advising organizations that provide services for homeless pregnant teens and homeless young women with small children. Usually, they are homeless because they are escaping violence. I am learning about trauma treatment to help those who work with them to understand them better.
My professional work is counseling older DID clients, mainly women.
Thank you for another fine session! I really appreciated the in-depth discussion of the newer understandings of traumatic responses beyond fight flight and freeze. I always learn something new, and thank you again for such quality trainings.
This has been so enlightening. I wish I had learned a long time ago, these other responses to trauma. I could have articulated myself sooner as to my experience with the trauma I have experienced and how to move forward. I would have opened up more to the therapists I have had in the past without the fear of misdiagnosis based on my family’s history of what I would call misdiagnosed mental health issues as well. I wish every therapist in the world had this kind of training to help their clients heal more effectively and avoid misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis and improper treatment.
My biggest take away was to tune into my nervous system and let it alert me and guide me towards what is happening for the other person’s nervous system. I loved the exercise of practicing responding and reacting to each other from different activation states. That will inform self-awareness as well as learning the best ways to respond to various activation states that will feel safe to the other person.
On my own healing journey, the insights from these experts in the field of trauma treatment are invaluable. I deeply appreciate the tremendous work they are doing, and cannot express enough my gratitude for the generosity in presenting the material without charge. Over the years, while employed and earning, I have purchased books by many of the practitioners and have read and reread them. Now, as a 70 year old pensioner, I don’t have as much disposable income so being able to access such up to date knowledge is of great benefit. Thank you so much.
I plan to watch again at 11PM because I was late arriving and need to hear it all again to be sure I understand. I’m not a practitioner, but was once. I’m looking for answers for myself. And while they are sometimes hard to hear, I am learning a lot. I can see that I’ve primarily used collapse/submit spending most of my earlier years (age 3- until, well, less often but still recent) hiding in the back of the closet, and now hiding where I live. I have spent most of my life feeling helpless and now I tend to fight back- doing it safely through political activities, with my non-profit for adult survivors of child abuse and the issues of homelessness. I still get afraid to stand up for myself at times and with certain situations. And forget relationships. I am totally alone, at least I sure feel that way. I’m surprised when someone comments me in a positive way or encourages me. The last strategy I would use is please and appease, but realized I have used it, quite purposely when I was in a relationship with someone who was DID and his angry teenage males would come out and attack me. And I used it later with someone who came to me for help through my non-profit who had male alters who hated all women. That never was, or never could be default mode- as I’m way too honest and real to fake it for long. Thank you for allowing me to attend. I’m not good at asking or accepting help from others, this allows me to work through things as I’m able.
My take away from this session is to utilise the concept of co-regulation in a more skillful way. After spending time educating the client in the 3 stages and understanding their own response in these states, and being more sensitive to my own ANS. Especially when I hear the disconnect from a clients words to their energy. Taking the time in the session to pause in those moments and advise the client of my own ANS state and checking in with where they are sitting. Curiousity to explore their own sensations, reactions and providing the space to explore where they are and if it’s the right time of the therapy, deepening also where it may have come from and what are their needs in that moment.
Also role playing responses (client asks the question and I respond seeing how that sits with them. I will also experiment with a physical motion of pushing away to anchor a more embodied experience of “no”.
Loved this session today thank you!! My practice framework includes polyvagal theory and I map my own and teach clients how to map their nervous systems. What I really found useful today though was the discussions around please and appease and clients self censoring. I have one such client at present and now I have some new ideas of working with her and also around the language I am using. I will definitely be taking this to supervision and doing some role playing with my supervisor.
Thank you for your clarity & invaluable information… I particularly like the idea that our 3-part nervous system is reachable and can be communicated with, therefore a serious, intrinsic ‘friend’ is present within the therapy, on the part of the client & the therapist, who in variations, resonate with the other and the other’s nervous system. It seems almost like a dance or orchestra, fine-tuning to reach alignment & equilibrium.
This program’s clarity about the wide range of possible client responses to trauma will allow me to be more compassionate and use my natural optimism by being creative in engaging clients in non-judgmental change. The somatic component was woven in well.
Thank you for this excellent training. I have witnessed the attach/cry for help, collapse submit and appease/please responses in my clients. This training gave me insight into the involvement of the nervous system and showed practical ways to apply the concepts in my practice. As I watched the video, specific clients came to mind, and I intend to use the information learned to bring awareness and healing to those individuals impacted by trauma.
This session was phenomial. I’m working with one of the best therapists in my country, and yet she totally failed to identify any of this in my process over the last 5 years as I went through extroadinary trauma after years of positive growth wihh her in my journey. I’m so relieved to see this today, everything bar nothing matches my experience directly and so I can see how to apply it in my work immediately. It will take some practice to locate all the nuances of that inner landscape more specifically, but I’m so grateful for this chance to pinpoint, broaden my capacity, and also integrate this at a broader moral level with my work in social justice also. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for making this available free worldwide. I could not afford to buy the programme just now, but I’ve referredany therapist friends to take a look too. Bless
Thank you … can be difficult for me keep cognitive part of me working at the same time as listening … I like listening again so I am more calm
Appreciate your work enormously 💖😘 🙏
You are not alone! I too will listen multiple times. Taking notes the first time is how I learn, but I miss things trying to get the notes on paper. Plus, that kind of cognitive tasking also has a stressor response on the body. As a bodyworker and skilled manual muscle testing practitioner, I have seen how cognitive tasking weakens a manual muscle test. I use muscle testing to interact with a client’s nervous system. I also have always used my own body’s “barometer” to guide me on what kind of bodywork is appropriate to the moment in each session. Therefore, I will be listening to the entire broadcast as least one more time to fully integrate the information both on conscious and subconscious levels.
I loved the reminder to also be compassionate with myself when a client is in attach/cry for help response, which feels easier knowing they may be triggering my primal response to a baby’s cry. Wonderful learnings, thank you so much.
The music after the program ends is spectacular, especially after Ruth’s words that we change the course of civilization… the deep bass, the swelling brass, takes my heart to such heights of hope and inspiration, the drums, the pauses and increasing tempo, rising pitch! And then it starts over…I feel like a champion hearing this!
I will be sensitive to client’s nervous system as it relates to their current or past environment which was dangerous for them. I will tune in to their nervous system (and mine) to determine best course of action. I will be patient. It is a process, but the outcome is worth it! One soul at a time.
thank you so much for the valuable opportunity.
I will use this ideas with my clients to understand the survival responses to trauma.
Thankyou – I recognise some of these therapeutic strategies in my work with clients which I have thought make intuitive sense but now feel more confident about the theory behind them. Well done nicabm.
Thank you for this opportunity of self healing.
How exciting to see all these dedicated practitioners, so experienced and overflowing with stimulating and practical ideas!
What popped into my mind today is the Research that points out, how much babies need physical contact to survive.
Is it then not still essential for an adult to have a loving physical relationship with his/her own body? Can the negative function of the Personal ever nagging critic not be turned around into a loving soothing mother or father or friend – even if they do not yet exist in the outer real world, but can „work“ by giving yourself the tangible pat on the shoulder, the massage to an aching neck, the release of tension by holding trigger points to soothe a nervous system in turmoil…
– That would make the client self-sufficient in another more physical and energetic way, when the strategies don’t work in the moment and the practitioner is not at hand.
(If to some of you experts it might be appropriate – but not in your domain – however applicable elsewhere, I felt in the mind body relationship to improve the energetic flow can be addressed sometimes more directly. However, my mind is reeling with so many more avenues to explore.)
THANK YOU to all of you!
Thank you for making trainings such as this freely available! The ideas I find salient are the 3 vagal states, my own nervous system registrating to that of my client’s, and the four trauma responses; they will help me recognize unsaid states and dysfunctional behaviors in my clients, and give me a way to respond with that awareness. I have already used the idea from a previous training to tell a client when my nervous system was registering their own upset as a means of joining.
Very good session. Learned a lot of things I don’t know about like Polyvagal theory. Deb made sense out of this.
Great therapists on board! Each with a slightly different perspective but the all came together.
Thank you so much 🙏🏻
I’m so interested in polyvagal theory but needed to flesh it out so it translated in the therapy room. I learned so much today that has helped me identify the stress states one particular client presents to me…. and now we have more strategies to work with together, now I know about ‘collapse/submit’ amongst the other survival defense mechanisms… this information is pure gold. I can also understand now why some of my own gut reactions can be trusted, and when surfaced, are also so helpful for the client when we tune in together. Thank you so much. Really, thank you. And also, I was so touched at the end of the presentation, to be thanked for the work I do with my clients. To be recognised and validated – that’s what it’s all about…..grateful for your teaching.