How to Work with Patients Whose Trauma Triggers Problems in Their Current Relationships
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with Stephen Porges, PhD;
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with Stephen Porges, PhD; Terry Real, MSW, LICSW;
Janina Fisher, PhD Richard; Schwartz, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Martha Sweezy, PhD, LICSW; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Deb Dana, LCSW; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Thank you for sharing these programs. I only watched module 5. I was happy you reviewed the other ones.
I didn’t realize until today that they were without cost. This was very helpful.
I would like the Gold Package but do not have any credit left right now or money as my limited budget and car repair this month after a home repair last month.
Thank you for sharing.
Great work. These sessions gave very practical applications to therapy and made me more confident with my choices of interventions. They also encouraged me in a more secured position to engage my DID clients .
This program is very valuable. As a clinical counsellor I have learned do much to
Apply with my clients. Thank
You, thank you for these truly great 5 sessions.
Sincerely,
Amey Lariviere , MA, RCC Victoria, Canada
Thank you for this incredible webinar. My key takeaways are to include the body posture and right brain communication. And to invite collaboration of both partners as to what will work to help the person. Notice their trauma response patterns and what will help them to move through it and come back to the present moment. I like the invisible bone bruises analogy and the being in present time/vs reactions to something triggered in the past. It’s empowering to help people see that their pattern helped them survive and that heir body chose to repeat the pattern; not their conscious choice. Thanks again
Thankyou
Dear Ruth and Colleagues, This has been a valuable course and has raised so many questions for me. When the word mapping came up it spoke to my artist brain and I began drawing that map of my own nervous system.
All through this program you encouraged me to consider applications with my clients and that was easy to do in theory. We are still meeting virtually which makes a lot of what has been described here about observing the person’s posture, eyes and movement out of reach. Two clients that I meet with by phone were inspired by the idea of mapping their nervous system as the groundwork about the NS had been laid down over the last couple of years. It has been rich practice with no visuals at this time. Thanks so much.
I have watched all sessions and am very appreciative that you enabled counsellors who could not afford the Gold Package to learn at no cost. Thank you to those who paid for the privilege. Sarah (NZ)
Thank you for the welcoming integration of the public (non-therapists)! I strongly agree with your emphasis of the importance of creating awareness around trauma related issues in our present times. I believe that everybody is able to intuitively understand what you as a team are communicating, and if we all creatively practice and apply it in our daily life the world can be a better place to share with others. Thank you all for sharing your experiences for free!
Thank you so much. I have learned a lot and enjoyed the variety of perspectives of your presenters. I have known about and used many similar strategies, but listening helps me tweak and improve my understanding and work. And new approaches extend our grasp and success.
Best to each of you who presented in this program! You were able to be clear and specific enough to build a successful learning process.
Sharon Moon
This has been the most powerful course I’ve ever taken for my own personal healing/recovery journey. I do believe at the core of all human disconnection is shame and that connecting through re-membering our own story of trauma and shame offers wholeness and wellbeing for ourselves and is the beginning of hope and healing of humanity.
I am a graduate student and cannot afford the package. But I have to say that the resonance I feel with the content of the presentation is amazing. I would love to be able to learn more from these incredible teachers. I will look for ways to piece together the content in a way that is valuable. I know that my work will be in trauma and particularly in the arena of relational trauma.
Dear NICABM,
I could teach many parts of this program myselt, but I attended it to see if there was anything new with which I was not familiar. (I am am faculty member at a psychoanalytic training program and at a medical school department of psychiatry.) I don’t need the Gold program but would like to make a $150 contribution to support the program. How can I do this?
Thank you, Alice! I appreciate your generosity!
Thank you so much again Ruth and all the rest. After listening to todays presentation, I have understood so much more about my patients and friends behavior, and my own too. It was eyes opening a very deep way.
Wonderful and professional with meaningful application. Practice that changes the practitioner.
Here is the edited version sans typos of my earlier comment (which you can remove)
This was very good and gives me hope for the future of psychotherapy. I was a severly traumatized child ( I score a 10 on the ACES test), did therapy for many decades but not one of them EVER mentioned the word TRAUMA. Not one.
As a result, I am still severly at the effect of my trauma wound. My symptoms are xompletely debilitating and have ravaged my health. I spend most of my time in bed. . Occasionally rallying when I absolutely have to.
I am a highly intelligent, educated woman and gifted beyond measure. . but all the wisdom intelligence and intuition I bring to this planet I’ve been a match for my trauma wound.
Only recently through the work of Bessell VanderkolkMD, Gabor Maté MDand Fritzi Horstman at Compassion Prison Project am I starting to scratch the surface of what happened to me as a result of the trauma.
This gives me hope and it feels exonerating to the m shame I carry but it also fills me with despair that I did not get the help that I needed earlier in my life so that I could have the life that I deserved.
I am now 70 years old I feel like I got stuck in the starting gate. I was too lost and frightened and riddled with shame to move out of survival mode and create the fulfilling life that I deserved. I still feel frozen in time. thank you all for your smart and empathetic
I am a living example of how an unattended painful trama wound can block us from being present for our lives and the love and fulfillment we deserve.
I never qualified for rehab as Im not an alcolholic/addict or a mental hospital because Im not crazy – so there was no place I could go to get help for the extreme suffering that I carry. This only added it to my despair as I saw (and helped) the alcoholics and addicts in my family get the residential treatment they needed.
There should be residential centers where a person can go to receive treatment for trauma. As Bessel vander Kolk MD so wisely says, ” PTSD is one thing and there is much awareness and treatment available for this With treatment PTSD people can return to normal. But there is another population of people who I would call “TSD”. These people cannot return to normal after treatment because they have never known normal.They have only known trauma since birth or early childhood so they have nothing to return. to that is remotely resembling normal. These people are not PTSD but TSD. This is much harder to treat. ” I heard him say this just the other day during the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy seminar . It jumped out at me as an important truth.
I so appreciate this recognition. But where are the inpatient treatment centers for TSD TRAUMATIZED PEOPLE? A psychiatric hospital is the last place a traumatised person is going to go because it’s much too scary and even more traumatising. So many stories of shaming intimidating practices, overmedicating and a complete lack of love and sensitivity.. Mental hospitals and psychiatric hospitals are all treating symptoms with medication and therapy but I’ve never heard of one that treats trauma specifically, consciously and compassionately.
So apart from weekly visits to our therapists that leaves us again alone in our foxholes with our self soothing addictions and survival behaviors without the day ro day tribal support so necessary to healing Trauma.
” We suffer in isolation, we heal in community..”
Gabor Maté MD
The understanding of and healing of trauma is the most important work we have to do on Earth and I thank you all with all my heart for this enlightening seminar I was only able to catch the last one today but I received a great deal from it. it helps me to know that there are therapists out there who really get it Bless you all.💜🙏
I so hear you Martha and you are not alone. At 73, each one of these sessions presents me to myself. We are not a wasted life though I’ve been told that many times. We have worked all our lives to unfold the damage of the culture of trauma. I feel myself as having been born inside out with no skin to protect me …from birth.
NICAMB is such an extraordinary coming together and our trauma energy has been the clay these beings have worked with tirelessly.
It’s the only way, in collaboration. And it seems that its the only scientific field that is open to sharing and building from the awareness.
Thanks for speaking for me too. We are extraordinary humans and we have given our lives to help change this even though it still feels like the beginning. Thank you.
Barbara Beatson
Greatly informative, as always, and resonates with my personal recovery process. Each workshop provides validation for what I am working on, where I have come from and where I still need to go. Yes, I am one of those “non-practitioners” you mention in what you may THINK is a compassionate and reassuring statement (We are NOT our trauma, etc., blah, blah, blah.) No one has ever needed to tell me I am not the trauma. Instead, your comment merely highlights just how little the psych world knows about the thousands of survivors who have, of necessity, had to recover without the benefit of a truly knowledgeable therapist. Some of us began recovery BEFORE any of you thought it “just might be a good idea to do research on this trauma thing…” And yet, we have managed to recover in thousands of ways, build good lives. What you and your peers are researching, lecturing and writing books about is simply documenting, with provable research, what survivors have tried to explain to therapists forever and were labeled as overly-emotional or fantasizing. We have actually LIVED these symptoms and behaviors, recognized them, and then sought creative ways to heal. THANK YOU for finally doing the research and catching up to those of us without a Master’s or a PhD. But I ask you, politely, to amend your comments to non-practitioners. NICABM at least had the smarts to create a workshop on Racial Trauma (which was awesome, by the way), run by Thema and others who have lived it from the inside and with a true felt sense for what it meant to be a person of color. It is beyond time to create one hosted/presented by a non-degreed survivor of trauma, with the truest sense of what it means to live with and overcome trauma. At the very least, as you are applauding the practitioners for the work that they do, how about applauding the survivors who are watching your workshops for their strength, tenacity, and their courage instead of “reassuring” them they are not their trauma? And though you may think really good trauma therapists are out there – they are few and very far between. Hopefully, your outreach with NICABM will foster professional growth, but frankly, I don’t have any more time to waste waiting for the psychology profession as a whole to catch up. So your workshops are a gold mine for non-practitioners. Keep them coming, please!
I think that statement is a recognition for the people just starting out, but I agree there are a lot of different ways to arrive at this point! Still it is very wonderful that we can share and learn together here.
💖💖
Thank you Alex for your comment. And thank you nicabm.com for the free videos.
All the best
Yes. Though I don’t mind being reminded I am not my trauma because sometimes it does feel like that. I agree though that we are amazing how we are steps ahead sometimes.
I have been laughed at by practitioners who had never heard of ….blah, blah ..etc…….now those practices are becoming main stream.
But I love the collaborative approach of NICAMB in not excluding us. I often feel so validated, triggered but certainly always empowered and that is the true Gift of Ruth and all her collaborators.
Very grateful.
Ruth and Team,
So impressed with everything you put together for us. I’m glad I purchased the whole thing because I plan to watch several times. I appreciate the Continuing Ed credits. But I think most of all, I appreciate all of you sharing your client experiences so openly. You modeled the kind of therapist I want to be. Thank You!!!
Hello, you mentioned the CE credits. Are you able to purchase and receive CE credits for this course from NICABM? I live in NY and this organization, as grateful as I am for the resources, is not approved as of yet to offer CE credits to Social Workers. I read that they are approved for Florida and for a national counseling association.
I am just beginning my journey into researching how I can help the children I work with and adults I am mentoring who are struggling with the effects of trauma
This programme has been so enlightening and an invaluable learning experience. It’s fascinating how the body remembers the past traumas long after the physical body has healed from abuse. I have worked as a psychotherapist with clients who have PTSD and their flashbacks and emotional wounds have been profound and have impacted their relationships.
A huge thank you to Dr Ruth Buczynski and to all her colleagues for their contribution to these 5 sessions which have been great.
Thank you so much, brilliant !! It has helped me to understand my own trauma of major burns in childhood and as a nurse practitioner and human being to have increased understanding, skill and compassion in generally with others.
Retired nurse and elder advocate
Thank you so much for the important work you are doing by sharing this information globally. It is amazing how much understanding is being gained .and it is powerful the way you have interfaced all that knowledge.
Best session! Learned about “neglect” trauma. Learning that will have a trickle outward effect for me in my life and in my practice.
thank you. slowing down time in the client’s processing was very good to be reminded off.
I plan on applying multiple concepts from this training immediately. The please and appease explanations were powerful. I also use a whiteboard so illustrating the big and little versions of the inner self was great. Thank you.
My first trauma training taught me that The Body Remembers. That was 18 years ago. Previously the body hadn’t igured that much in the training for psychotherapists in my experience. Watching this wonderful, series has shown how far trauma therapy has come. And to have such a great collection of people coming together to put their experience and expertise together is itself a learning, loving and hugely beneficial venture. And to let some of us who didn’t feel able to purchase the Gold Standard generous and important. The “Ripple Effect” is such an important way to save this world from the direction is heading in. Not “Trickle Down”. Thank all those who contributed to the Project. I hope it will be rippled out all over the world. And thanks for sharing the Comments. They’re a very helpful and informative part of the whole
Sue P, Psychotherapist UK
I can’t thank All of you enough and plan to continue to participate to your programs and purchase them again when I can. This opportunity has helped me 50% towards my healing with the other remaining 40-50% encompassed by my doctor therapist (counselor) I have been seeing on a regular basis and EMDR which was finally started up over 1.5 years after my trauma. In some ways I think that EMDR may be too harsh for some survivors and they end up being ré-traumatized. I remember complaining that there was a lack of compassion and issue of « safety » for me. It’s not exactly a casual thing to talk about, relive the event and feel in trustworthy place with an unknown or new therapist.
I never would have guessed that so much new work would be going into becoming aware* of the famous Triggers and studying or recalling anything uncomfortable about my past childhood. What a grueling and challenging Job! It must be worth it.
Thank you all infinitely.
Level 1 EMDR can break down dissociative barriers too quickly. People who test high for dissociation are supposed to get Level 2 EMDR.
Being a survivor of a recent sexual assault I would say that as I came to *recognize that I was dealing in fact with a perpetrator, and not just some guy treating me wrongly, as I was attacked a 3rd time by the same man …a voice said inside of me « he is raping me, this is what he has been doing to me » I automatically yelled « Not again…bla bla… !!!» and in so doing in a muffled sound all my pelvic muscles tightened and I stayed like that kind of solid like cement, all the while pleading and begging him until he jumped back yelling furious at me to « kom op » . I believe I made my voice reaction first and then I heard that voice in me, more things were said but not heard. All the while I think I was « fighting my perpetrator with some Will » because I suspected I knew him by now and I refused to Freeze up again.
I just don’t think most victims manage to fight their perpetrator because most naturally freeze. Once you sense and feel the fear you can’t move, you can maybe 🙏 softly while dissociating from time to time to escape the pain. It was my visit at my GP months later, (naturally I didn’t seek any medical help, not even my therapist) to notate my awful experience describing what and why I had seen certain things going on during the assault.
My only criticism in the medical community in the Netherlands is to fail to get the survivor into a common group to feel, reenact whatever has happened. Not even the Trauma expert wants to stay in the story much or at all. It’s not their work in that way. So the client is left quite alone without support.
I have learnt so much in this last hour and had light bulb moment into some of my own behaviour in relationships gaining
understanding I didn’t have before.
Particularly interesting how different approaches can contribute to trauma therapy i.e. Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Person-Centred.
Thank you so much for raising awareness of types of traumas that maybe out of the client’s awareness – male sexual abuse and strategies which can help.
Such an informative session. Thank you one and all for sharing your expertise, knowledge and techniques.
Ruth Buczynski’s final comment that a therapist can alter a client’s relationship with suffering is profoundly true. She was commenting on Kelly Wilson’s observation that those who suffer can be more sensitive to the suffering in others once they understand and learn to be compassionate toward their childhood (and then teenage and adult) coping selves. This respect for the client’s dignity and agency is inspiring. Dr. Buczynski is correct that it can change the world.
Thank you nicabm for educating the world. I really appreciate having access to this valuable information. You’ve given me alot of valuable ideas for my clients. The ripple effect you’ve created will benefit many people. I look forward to more programmes like this in future. Thank you again!
Thank you for including the Fawn/Appease response (many only include fight/flight/freeze, so the Fawn gets lost or even vilified as a “gaslighter”) and acknowledging the difficulty of contrasting trauma patterns colliding. Would love more info on helping the Fawn respond well when a Fighter is attacking/abusing them (especially in marriage. This is particularly acute with the Fawn is male as traditional power dynamics place him in the “one up” position, when functionally, even if the bread-winner, this is often not the case in a family/marriage in terms of relational power), as well as concrete steps for helping the Fighter empathetically see their Fawn partner/spouse and recognize they are not (necessarily) being attacked when the Fawn protests or even appeases/placates.
the body is speaking and reacting, not the adult you
woring with the partner is enlightening
Very informative .As PT working with valiant s I got great insight and also many things to help with family relationships. Thank you
Thank you for this program.
The impact of neglect actually…..how much more difficult this is to discern….thank you ! So powerful this work ! Thank you very much.
Neglect is a form of abuse. Much pain there.
Thankyou sooooo much for this !! It is soooo helpful to be able to understand trauma behaviours and to help heal others from trauma !
I joined the gold award a few weeks ago after your first week….. highly recommend……have also bought a few of your books authors ……Thankyou for sharing your wisdom and experience
Leslie Wallace Caledonia OT, Scotland, U K
Did I understand this correctly?: “The healthy partner triggers fight or flight, the unhealthy partner triggers closeness/attachment”.
Yes – crazy! With a history of trauma Stress / danger can lead us to ‘attach’ – and more likely to others with trauma (also you can get ‘trauma bonding’ past or present trauma in my relationship experience or over-identification). …While real intimacy may be threatening – and people who may be a good match may seem boring. Or in my case I could be over critical of them!
A Trauma wounded woman will tend to be drawn to the “bad boys”. The edgy element of danger there is a frequency match to their childhood abuse. They expect to be taken advantage of
The nice guys are a completely foreign country to them and they will push them away or run away. They don’t know what love is because they’ve never experienced it and perceive it as a threat.
(Speaking from my own experience while echoing what was said here).
I believe the idea is that with the unhealthy partner the client feels that it is too dangerous to flee/fight leaving traumatic attachment, collapse, please, and appease as the remaining available defense mechanisms, whereas with the healthy partner, the client feels safe enough to say no, set boundaries, or run away while lacking experience with or insight into how to stay and develop healthy intimacy.
Not being a licensed clinician, I am confident that I can use much of this information in my own interpersonal relationships and help understand my coaching clientele more accurately. I love that our brain, our body, is created to heal and that our trauma is not a life-sentence. Consistently, the presenters mentioned empathy, love, and care for our clients while going through their healing. But the most important aspect of today’s video was at the very end — knowing that what “we” do (for our clients/patients) is hugely important. It has a ripple effect that can impact others exponentially. Thank you again for great insight, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.
The session was extremely helpful ;most insightful and of the many useful ideas, included the paradoxes within traumatic relationships such as the body chooses the dangerous “partner” ; this can be the one that we do trust and the “safe” one can be the one that would be avoided as this triggers traumatic memory..
I liked the discussion around a client speaking “for the angry part “not “from that part,” and finding the strengths within the same response , in which the clients actions as a child helped to keep them safe, leading to validating that strength to put it to good use currently.
Also the emphasis on asking the client if they could tolerate the changes that could take place within the relationship , since the dynamics could become very different. There was so much that I found very helpful, and thought provoking .Thank you .Denise
This program has been thought provoking for me and my husband who has been watching with me. I am 64 years old and am continuing to survive from incest starting at 6 years old the first memory that I have of it. This series has helped me to understand some of the reasons that I do certain things or feel a certain way. I thank all of the therapist involved in this course for finally helping me to understand some of this. I have been a family nurse practitioner for 30 years and have encountered many people over those years who are recovering from childhood trauma as well. I currently am not working but when I do go back I want to be able to help those people who are in the same boat as me because I know the boat is very lonely at times. I feel I have been blessed to have been able to take this course. Thank you again.
If trauma informs the need for connection as protection in dangerous/abusive relationships, while it seems backwards because you’d think you’d want to run from them and find something that feels safe…If reenacting trauma implores deeper connection in abusive relationships, it tells me why “bad guys” are always so much more attractive than “nice guys”. It tells me that chemistry in a relationship is just an early sign that you’re going to be easily triggered because you feel so strongly so quickly. It makes me wonder if there is such a thing as positive chemistry, and how mentally healthy you would have to be to create that and if any human is capable of being that healthy. This one class made me realize that I’ve wasted tens of thousands of dollars over the years with inept therapists who never once explained to me that my issues come from neglect as a child, or how my “perfect family” growing up lead me to be incapable of true connection still 66 years later because I’ve never dealt with my family of origin trauma.
Yes. And when the family of origin has made you the scapegoat for the lie of the totally “perfect family”, then calling it out is completely retraumatising and isolating.
Thankyou Barbara I resonate with this
These trainings have given me a deeper understanding of how to recognize and address trauma in sessions with most of my clients. Particularly I appreciate gaining an understanding of collapse/submit, please/appease, shame, and the parts and polyvagal approaches. Thank you all so much! I’ve made a list of books by these practitioners to read; the videos allow me to start using their insights right away.
Thank you for the time and information shared. It’s a lot but ties a great deal together. I have found so much helpful I don’t know which to isolate. Probably, the constant awareness of us / our clients being biological beings therefore constantly connecting with our / their felt sense. Also the importance of nurturing curiosity, notice it, psychoed of biologic trauma response, mindfulness and going slow. Skillfully slow. 😊. Love it all. Thanks and stay blessed.
I mean fight, not flight. Sorry.
I guess it’s because it’s the trauma response that had been overly focused on for so long as if they were the only ones. That had been mentioned around module 1 if I remember correctly.
As usual, I found very powerful information in this presentation. Thank you for helping me understand myself and my loved ones better. I will continue to read and expand my knowledge, and by changing myself, I will provide a safer place for others.
Thank you!
This has been a very helpful eye opening series for me. Thank you for you generous competent work and your sharing that with all your viewers.
thank you!
trauma repetition as a “body memory”. This is a powerful new (for me) way of thinking of trauma repetition. Will be using more.
The 3 parts of the psyche (wounded inner child, adaptive child, functional adult) was the most helpful piece to me with how to separate the parts of themselves that were wounded from their adult self was crucial. Will definitely use this concept asap with clients!
Thank u for broadcasting the course for free