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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Great session!
The relation between learning, the role of our nervous system and trauma behaviour was definitly more put into life for me. I supervise a junior colleague who has a difficult client with outspoken cry for help behaviour. I will try to update her with the course of this day.
Very clear and practical ways of dealing with and responding to these defense mechanisms. How collapse/submit can present as chronic depression, technique of saying no from the three states,…
Thank you so much for your program and for changing the course of civilization!
i have been sharing aspects of fight flight and freeze with clients for years, though will now be sure to add the 3 strategies explored in today’s sessions into my psychoeducation component of trauma treatment.
Thank you for taking this important issue up! I can recognize some of the reactions of some of my clients in a new perspective and hopefully adress it in another way.
Thank you so much for a full and detailed session. I appreciated all of it, especially the concept of working somatically, going back to the body where the original response evolved and working out physically, outlined by P Ogden. I also loved the idea of practicing “no” from each vagal state with modelling by the therapist, described by Deb Dana; followed up by practising “yes”. Kind regards.
I like that the please and appease response was described as ‘sophisticated’ and think clients will respond well to knowing they are not ‘weak’ to participate in the ‘trama’ bond with abusive intimate partners. I liked the 3 responses and it lines up with a part of the course I facilitate which focuses on ‘passive, aggressive and assertive’ communication.
Also good to have the reminder to check in with our own nervous system as a clue to what the client needs.
Thank you. Was a really great session.
This was brilliant I have been watching and learning to help others I was sexually abused as a child and I can see how I opperated and why I went from please and appease in to fight because I didn’t receive the right treatment help t to help me when i disclosed and I speak out and help other survivors and this so helps as we so lack the right help in my area
Especially notable that the attached cry for help has “nothing to do with attachment” and instead is a desperate cry for survival. I have encountered this in my clients and wondered how to handle it especially the issue of boundaries and my own reaction to feeling “invaded” somehow. Thank you.
Thanks very much to all contributors for this very interesting and helpful session.
Hi beautiful people ? I have unfortunately missed the first two sessions. How can I rewatch them. Please advise.
Blessings and love always ?
Caroline Collins ?
As I was listening to this presentation, so many of my clients, past and present, came to mind!
My biggest takeaway was taking a fresh look at learned helplessness and people-pleasing in my clients. This session gave me some greater insight and some practical tools to use.
I can’t wait for my next session.
Great job, folks.
Just watched this webinar for a second time.It’s so good to have the opportnity to do this to consoliodate my learning from the first watching thankyou.
I also made greater use of the roadmap paperwork which was really helpful.
Really interesting and useful. I particularly appreciated that it was easy to understand also for clinicians that are not expert about Polivagal Theory.
Solid information from trusted sources. Appreciate the energetic and moving pace of the presentations.
Steve
For me as a clinical psychologist, I was most taken with the clinicians’ use of the body to reflect back to themselves and to clients, emotional states. Therapy tends to be a cognitive exchange and I felt this resonated with other ways for dealing with trauma such as NET. Overall the sessions were very well presented. Thank you!
What a rich session! There are so many takeaway messages. I think this is possibly the best of many excellent sessions so far.
It clarified the polyvagal approach for me and gave great illustrations of and insights into trauma responses (survival strategies) and therapeutic strategies.
It was so-o-o good to hear about intercommunication between nervous systems (felt energy) and right brains (non-verbal cues). We live in such a left brain society and culture. That ‘intuitive’ aspect tends to get shut down so it’s wonderfully refreshing to have it affirmed.
The modelling of how the 3 “no”s reflect the 3 ‘vagal’ states provided an “A-Ha!” moment and some sound strategies for self-reflection and exploration of relational habits.
The message about checking in with and trusting our NS responses and about noticing our “boundary muscles” concurrently with soft facial expressions was important to hear.
Thank you.
I liked the distinctions made regarding the BPD and attach/cry type of presentation in the first one and the adaptation to the practitioner by way of agreeing or complimenting for the work done. This got me thinking of one particular client with who I am left baffled when she says she got a lot and I can’t connect with that. Also the part about taking care of our responses and addressing them if we feel triggered in anyway, People pleasing and consequently permission to clients to disagree with us, stood out for me. I got the language to work with a client who is presenting with please/appease style. I could personally identify
Don’t wait. This valuable information must be studied by those in child welfare. Then it must be shared as experiential training developed for direct caregivers of children from hard places.
How can systems expect foster/adoptive parents to do the 24/7 work of parenting children with developmental trauma without this AND without proper ‘supervision’?
How can adoptive primary caregivers of children – especially kids who use the Attach/Cry For Help response and shift easily into angry sympathetic system – be effective and successful without access to this knowledge?
great points!
Thank you for elucidating supportive strategies to: 1) work with the client’s nervous system; 2) attune to the needs of my own nervous system; 3) get past the frustration and “intrusiveness;” 4) recognize the attach cry as an opportunity to assist in client’s self-regulation; 5) never parentify the client; 6) not mistake collapse/submit for compliance; 7) maintain boundaries; 8) promote client’s emotional balance. I already tell clients to say “no” when something does not resonate with them, and will incorporate these strategies in my practice. Again, many thanks for your generous support.
great points and re 4) – a great way to be therapist as teacher vs. rescuer
Monitor / be aware when client is “pleasing” me / encourage client to disagree with me
check when client’s “pleasing others” for self survival started?
help client gradually reconnect with self in small steps (i.e. moving to Being mode vs Doing mode – to please others)
Start with small steps to help client “feel safe” in Being mode to experience a new freedom breaking the chains
of “I am not important”/ “I am not worth it.”
I am a client with c-ptsd from a childhood of mostly non-physical, neglect and abuse, with so much gas-lighting and always potential rage from my father and always potential emotional-breakdown from my mother. I live what I identified and called “submit and appease” and explained to my therapist 5 years ago. Then I read about Pete Walker calling it “fawn,” and now you are calling it “please and appease.” I have been seeing the same therapist for 6 plus years and understand so much more of how I survive/live. Two weeks ago, I just had many of the client/therapists challenges happen between him and me. And he does not know what is happening in me, because I mask it so well. I have taken notes and will be using this info to explain to him, how I follow his lead with ideas, even when I know it is not an idea that will work for me. If you ever need a research subject, just let me know. Thank you for your cutting-edge research, Roger.
Thank you and God bless you so much for this. As a trauma survivor, I learned a lot which will help me move forward in my own healing and the healing/ or prevention of trauma inducement to members of my family, friends and others I minister too. This will also assist in helping me develop a prevention approach and /or an alerting nod to trauma inducing behavior around myself and others. My prayers are with all of you. Again, so very grateful.
Attach/Cry For Help section sparked ideas re: helping parents navigate behaviors used by kiddos to avoid school, custody/visitation schedules, and other guilt-inducing (for both parents and child) situations. Also am intrigued by the ways we say “no”/“yes”. Will share that with a client who is currently working to improve her ability to experience deeper emotional intimacy in her romantic relationship.
I will be more aware of my clients’ along with my feelings/ nervous systems throughout each session. I know better what to look for in their responses and how to strive for that ventral/vagal state.
Fantastic information and instant skills to use with clients. I can already see dozen of applications of what I learnt today! Thank you!
Your program is something I have recommended, along with the book, “The Body Keeps the Score” to many many people. The help I received from your method of counseling has changed my life significantly, for the better of all. Thank You. Keep Changing The World.
So many rich insights shared here, but there are two in particular that are resonating with me at this time.
The first was the differential diagnostic criteria for BPD and the attach/cry for help defence to be an extremely helpful reference. I have witnessed the BPD diagnosis too easily, sometimes lazily applied, especially to young women.
I was also very intrigued by, and will definitely incorporate into my practice, the act of playing with polyvagal « no » responses to explore a client’s trauma survival defenses.
IFS has so much to offer in this discussion. Why not include it? It is an evidence-based treatment which gives the therapist a very different role and effectively guides the client to ventral vagal experiences and healing of even chronic traumas. More IFS please.
Sometimes people describe behaviour that sounds like it may be depression, but the full diagnostic criteria are not there. Based on what I learned tonight, it may be episodes of collapse states. Deb Dana’s descriptions of how people say know from each of the 3 nervous states was really helpful and I will explore further, and use that in treatment.
As a survival strategy, I learned to please and appease since early childhood. My mother did not allow me to have thoughts, feelings, and needs of my own. I learned to anticipate what she needed me to say, do, or be and behaved accordingly. She glorified me and put me on a pedestal. However, I married an abuser and suffered intimate partner violence. Even though I left the relationship years ago,I continue to deal with PTSD symptoms. This session was very helpful. As my therapist has told me, I needed to use people pleasing as a strategy to survive. This behavior is so automatic with me that it is taking a while for me to learn healthier ways of being. Thanks again for all of your work!
Wow! I do not think I have taken such vigorous notes for any other CPD, (although I missed sessions 1 and 2) and I think of myself as an experienced therapist. I work with so many first responders with sanctuary trauma where they move into “Please and Appease” to survive that world. Empowering them would only make it worse. I have starting writing my notes to include systemic changes so temporary RTW restrictions do no become permanent restrictions. The insight form you BIOPIC speaker (I’m sorry but I don’t recall her name has so many analogies). I will definitely help my clients come up with different scenarios as to how to survive these abusive organizational systems but in the interim, an exit strategy may be the only one. Sad, I know.
Gita Canaran,M.A., Clinical Psychologist, London Ontario.
This session was one of the best yet in my opinion: many light bulb moments.
I was interested in what you had to say about first responders and “sanctuary trauma” (which I hadn’t heard of before).
Really enjoyed the session today. I’m not sure that I attach/cry for help but definitely please/appease and collapse/submit. It was how I survived my childhood and has served me well so far in life but definitely needs challenging and adapting.
Extremely informative and useful information and strategies that we can all use in our professional Practices. Very generous of you and the presenters, Ruth.
Deep appreciation for offering this outstanding information gratis for practitioners!
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse I was really interested in learning more about the three states. I need to find my ventral vagal state response. I could relate different aspects of my life to all three responses today and that has helped me to understand why I act in the way that I do. I will be more aware of that now. I would love to do some somatic therapy as I think that would help me. Thank you for enabling me to be part of this program. It is opening my eyes to the possibility of recovery
I really enjoyed the session today. For me the big take-home was to give much more attention to the client’s emotional state and how this may be affecting the therapeutic relationship, wth some good strategies for addressing that with the client.
Thank you for this very informative session today. I’ve been counseling for a few years now but have just begun learning about the Polyvagal System so I was hanging on everything you said. I am also exploring in depth Psychosomatic approaches to therapy. My clients respond more positively to somatic work than to cognitive work so I think this session will be quite helpful (as all sessions have been).
Yes, “a cry” can mean various things and I try to explore that with my clients. Since my work is based on trauma knowledge and informed also by my research at The University of Melbourne entitled: “Lives unseen: unacknowledged trauma of non-disordered, competent Adult Children Of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness” (those interested just need to search using: Suzette Misrachi) I am very careful on what “a cry” is trying to communicate.
Thank you for this great video!
This is life-changing work. I am so grateful that this information is being sent out to the world. Is there a chance these programs could be developed for public television. It is much needed and appreciated. Thank you.
Another great session. I am learning more about myself and my limited beliefs. It has been healing for me in validating some of the steps I have taken, particularly in using the body to change the nervous system response. I am a health and wellness coach and look forward to better understanding my clients with trauma.?
This series is scratching the itch nicely. I’m eager to master more mobilisation strategies for the client that is stuck, immobilised. All ideas are welcome.
Excellent information, thank you. I especially like the focus on keeping an eye on our own internal responses and educating the client on what may be happening with their nervous system. That seems incredibly empowering for those that have lost so much due to trauma.
great session!! it made me think of several of my patients!
Loved the question: “Where did you learn that it was dangerous to have thoughts, feelings, and needs of your own?”
I loved this question too. This resonated with me deeply. I’m going to write it on some washi tape and stick it somewhere i can re-visit.
A powerful question. I would also add “sensations” to this question …
I am going to reflect and journal on this question.
Excellent session thank you …very informative on how to assist my clients who.are exposed to farm attacks.
Seeing how the three nervous systems contribute to relational engagement allows a deeper understanding of trauma response; and, gives me something more tangible to wrap my head around when listening & observing traumatized persons while Spiritual Caregiving.
Unfortunately, without subtitles I cannot follow the course.
I am not a therapist; rather, I’m a learning support staff for adolescent girls at a private high school. I found today’s presentation–especially please/appease–helpful. I especially appreciated Thelma’s discussion about how black clients grapple with this in all-white spaces, and how we might contribute to client erasure of self if we ourselves are not vigilant. I had a student in mind as I was listening to this, and it prompted me to reach out to her today via Teams chat to remind her to ask me questions, push back, tell me why she might prefer one system or another. I said I would always try to explain why I really urge one thing or another, vs “because I said so; it’s too hard to explain” (which I hated to hear as a teenager). She wrote back “LOL, I will do that!”
You are changing the world…
Powerful to release that the more understanding there is, the more free in your approach to others can become thank you Ruairi NI
My question is regarding defense of attach /cry for help would missed sessions and therapist efforts of reaching out to reschedule etc . For those patients with a traumatic background could this be considered a defensive posture?