How to Work with Traumatic Memory That Is Embedded in the Nervous System
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD;
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Ruth Lanius, MD; PhD Dan Siegel, MD; and Ruth Buczynski, PhD
Sign up for a Gold Membership
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD;
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I am a patient and am always searching for answers for the traumas that hurt me especially between the ages of 3 to 9 years old.. I listened to the broadcasts. I want to understand what happened in 2016 when I reached a tipping point and went into black holes and chaos.
I want to explain that talk therapy was a revelation. My therapist puts me in a semi hypnosis state each time he notices that it is the child speaking. He says how old are you. What are you feeling, etc. I put words on my pain that I never had the luxury of doing. I find out who I am really. These mini validations make me exist. Somebody is listening. And also I can pinpoint my adult automatic responses related to events that recall my traumas. Now I make a present acknowledgment of my needs and learn to express them to other people.
I am a therapist working with traumatised clients in Africa, mainly Kenya, and it is wonderful to be up to date with the latest findings in the field of trauma.
I love the way Ruth clearly and concisely summarises everything that is being shared during the session and really appreciate that we are being equipt with knowledge from experts is this area.
It gives me confidence in knowing that i am not missing important things and gives me new insights when i am.
Thank you so much for sharing!
It was very fruitful session. I’m sure all the rounding up about the different kinds of memory will help me center the selection of information when I collect field data. For the moment I keep on researching about familiar bias of healing gifts with Otomi indian people (Doctoral Mesoamerican Studies, UNAM), but even with my consultants (family constellations therapy) I explore and use this information. Thanks you all!
I was very touched by the story of Peter Levine working with Haim’s implicit memory encoded in tension, posture, and pain. I think this will help clients who obsess and over-think whether “the event actually happened or not” even while scoring high on dissociative scales. Of course the skepticism is a defense against affects so it’s utility as a strength that has helped them survive must also be affirmed.
My gratitude to everyone who contributed to this series both on the screen and behind the scenes. I love your creative new use of inserts.
It was very helpful learning about Procedural Memory and how it impacts the client’s body. Using mindfulness to help the client become aware of this physical response to trauma by exaggerating the movement or pattern is a technique I will try in my engagement with students. I also learned a lot about the preverbal client and ways to assist a young child through movement, tone of voice, and breathing patterns. I enjoyed this session because it also provided ways to help the client stabilize and build resources to tolerate trauma memory by building resources, focusing on client’s survival skills, retraining the client’s response to stimuli and using the power of imagination. I can use these concepts with my students.
i am not a practitioner with a license. i am a lay person who spends lots of time on online ptsd/cptsd/trauma support groups and have a long study of anecdotal experiences. the more I have understanding how trauma works, & how to deal, the better i can help. i am not limited to an office, times, dates, charges of price etc. there are times when people like myself may be the first line of defense in one person’s , usually women, beginning to deal with their trauma. online is impersonal, not in one’s space and is usually seen as safe. ive seen hundreds begin the journey, in an online group. online groups may be the first time a person talks about it, or feels safe talking about it. many have gone on to therapy or other ways of healing. some have NO access to any therapy at all. the southern u.s. is particularly bad at this. and online is the only therapy they can get.
just wanted you to know. the south, get more into the southern u.s. it is a wasteland of ignorance.
one thing i noticed is that much of my various memory was inaccessible even tho i knew my trauma didn’t start till after i was verbal. then again, i was never encouraged to talk about anything, or paid much attention to. perhaps, even after becoming verbal, if one is not encouraged as a child to communicate much of anything, or is seen and not heard that old adage, the memory may not be accessible by semantic memory. lack of practice & support. thanks.
I’m really enjoying these webinars. I am surrounded by trauma clients and it’s become a way of life. I notice you have somatic experiencing as part of the input. I’d love to hear more about touch and movement or stillness. I practice Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy and the body is such an amazing tool. I want to see touch & movement enter these conversations, as it’s all connected. Sometimes reclaiming their body is the magic link that sets my clients free. Sometimes it lets them feel the hurt that otherwise just taunts them in flashbacks or odd symptoms. We get to stop and embrace it, and then get to choose if we want to set it free or not. Thanks for reminding me every week to stop for a moment and really pay attention.
I am a Holistic Nurse Practitioner and have my own practice. I mostly treat people in their 40’s and 50’s who have diabetes, high BMI, and heart disease. Most of these people also have binge eating disorder, trauma and other issues. I purchased Bessel’s book several years ago, and I’ve been aware of the ACE study for quite some time, so I’ve known about the effects of trauma on the body. This series has helped me understand trauma at a much deeper level. Thank you!
I have a relative who has experienced trauma. First in a car accident, then his partner just moved out while he was at work.
He lives in Asia, so I’d like to get him here to see a clinician, but that may not happen.
So I’m glad to know what to do, and what not to do when I’m with him.
I find your program fascinating. It’s changed so much over the years, and is really current and innovative.
Thank you so much.
This trauma work is vital to helping SGA’s (Second Generation Adult) cult survivors deal with and heal from the complex trauma they have endured. Much of what they have experienced is before the age of three therefore there are no memories, but they often attach all their trauma to the memories the have. This can be confusing when they think they have “worked through” everything but still have these reactions they don’t know what to do with. Thank you for bringing these sessions to everyone.
I have a client who has a family history of mental illness and suicidal acts. Her perception of herself is as a bad person. Even with much evidence from others, she continues with this belief. I think the idea that trauma can be expressed as self punishment may be an underpinning in her difficulty giving up her negative perception. She has advanced psychology degrees, so I want to engage in exploring this idea with her further. I will also look for sensory or postural clues and share them with her. Today was very helpful for me, and I hope, for this patient.
Thank you very much for this….I am not only an Emergency Physician who cares for patients who have ben traumatized, but care for them during and after life altering traumas. In addition to this I am a public speaker who educates about Human Trafficking and this is so pertinent. I am also a member of ASCA, adult survivors of child abuse. I have shared these resources with some of our group members so we can understand our own selves better, to empower us to take care of ourselves. And yes…my goal amongst many is to break the cycle. Thank you for helping me to take care of my patients, survivors of HT, the members of my ASCA group, and myself.
Hello,
Great session! Missed the first 10 minutes but caught up. I have taught senior and kids yoga for 15 years and just starting to work with a small group of trafficked victims doing yoga and mindful meditation as part of their recovery treatment. I really connected to the talk at the end when discussing how to bring a client back to NOW if they are having a negative response to apart of the meditation or yoga session. Using the senses (“look at me, you are safe”), imagination, describing a positive happy time, and/or noticing pleasant details in heir environment.
Thank you for this! I haven’t needed to use these strats yet but I know they are coming.
I’ll be listening to the next one for sure!
Terri Rucker (San Diego)
Ruth does a wonderful job of putting these sessions together! It is so seamless and flows so well between segments/presenters! The material is very easy to follow! Thank you for taking the time to make this so useful!
My biggest takeaway from this session is the ways in which trauma can still be treated in cases in which the individual doesn’t have access tot he traumatic episodic memory. Following body tension, and looking at the ways in which the individual’s body and actions are already in reaction to the trauma is a powerful entry point.
hello Ruth and the nicabm team
I have a patient who has a repetitive gesture of rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. Until I saw your video I had no idea what this might mean to her, nor how to address it effectively without making her feel criticised. Now I have learned from yesterday’s lecture on procedural memory (as well as others) that practicing the action can help her calm down; that we can note joyful occasions from culture and nature; that she has strengths which have helped her survive (was rubbing her eyes one of them?) ; and that I can encourage her to use her formidable imagination to discover what she could do today for the small child she was in the past.
Thank you for a useful session.
Kind regards
Victoria, the second clause in your last sentence clarified the 4th tool of using imagination for me. I feel I can now apply this to approach the sexual abuse of my childhood. Thank you. And thanks to NICABM for making these teachings available to us.
What a blessing every one of you are! I am using this for myself and my traumatized family members. I took lots of notes and am using the exercise Pat Ogden suggested to write down thoughts and figure out what functions they have. Actually, I will read and re-read the notes, find the things I can do to help my family, find peace inside to be a support when needed, and remember the sense of hopefulness that trauma can be healed, slowly, yes, but healed. I will hold in my imagination an image of us all healthy, happy, fulfilled, at ease, bright again, connected and free. I will keep coming back to this sense in my body. I find my eyes tearing up as I feel the gratitude for your healing work that radiates out all over the world, truly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know this is a kindness and a healing blessing coming from your minds and hearts, powerful and useful. May it help heal our troubled world.
You said it well Elizabeth, you people are heavenly and giving me tool and hope. What I learnt about how to change my epigenetic last week filled my heart with joy and hope. Thank you.
Can you give clients some practical tools to self soothe. Ie get a pet, exercise, a weighted duvet. Etc. I am not a therapist but have been suffering for over 40years with the scars of early neglect. Seen many therapists. Currently seeing a psychologist. Doing EMDR. Exercise, do mindfulness etc. Neurofeedback very expensive in the UK. Still having disassociation. Am desperate.
Sounds like you’ve suffered a lot and tried a lot of things. For dissociation, have you tried balancing on one foot, playing catch, or dancing? These help me. Something about coordinated movement.
I find it increasingly fascinating how Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques, developed in the 1970’s, are finding their way into therapeutic practice as “mindfulness” or other newly named approaches. Being a Hypnotherapist trained in NLP really makes it clear how we need to find a way to teach people at an early age a more holistic way of looking at themselves and the world so they can use their imagination and self awareness to better regulate themselves. I wish I had learned more as a child about how my memories are really “out of time” and I can reframe them using imagination and other creative means that then allow me to come fully back into the present, memory free. I wish also that John Grinder and Richard Bandler would also get their due for developing some of these NLP techniques long before clinical research caught up to validate their experiential research. If more people realized the power of their own minds to solve their own problems, more people would be self-empowered and less people would be medicated and in therapy.
Awesome content as a traumatized person seeking to heal myself, my kids, my ex-husband. Have read The Body Keeps the Score, and am now considering becoming a gold subscriber. Have been self-educating on trauma since discovering Heather Forbes’ books in 2016. Thank you for making this available widely for free! My trauma was from my childhood, growing up with an immigrant mom who was traumatized fleeing China as a child. Recently my boss and landlord’s abusive treatment of me has come to a head, and I’ve been fighting them in the legal arena, while getting trauma therapy. Such important work you’re doing and publishing. Thank you!!!!!!!
The material is amazing! I learned so much. Definitely looking forward to my Gold subscription and grateful for what I can access. Pacing is absolutely key. I will also seek to be more aware of the physical and what resources are being displayed. The grounding toolbox ideas are amazing. Reinforced the use of the imagination. Thank you!
What I took away from tonight’s discussion is a better understanding of how
damage to Episodic memory (in particular) inhibits or stops one from discovering their destiny-
purpose or direction– in my own self-work, our *connection to others*, or sense of efficacy in this life.
Concerning preverbal memories, I want to suggest that Shamanic Journeying and Hypnotic Regression
can help write out or organize a declarative memory. It is accessible. The problem with it, in my experience,
was it then became a prefrontal cognition while it *completed* NONE of the emotional disconnection which
occurred– clearly, in lower parts of the brain. It left a feeling of deep emotional vacancy.
Working with young adults in a residential education program, it is my first priority to help build a sense of safety in their new environment. I appreciated the affirmation that a sense of safety is the first step in healing. The explanations of different types of memory and how they interplay was also very helpful. I think I will add the “mountain through seasons” visualization tool into my classroom mindfulness lessons.
First of all, THANK you for offering this seminar to such a large audience. Easy to understand information, and a great way of providing useful examples. Even though I have been practicing as a Certified Clinical Trauma professional, listening to the presentations reminded me of the importance of building client resources and assisting them to become aware of those they already have developed. Tonight’s session of “How to work with traumatic memory that is embedded in the Nervous System” simply renewed my faith in focusing more on the body and non-verbal communication and less on the verbal content. I’m looking forward to next week’s episode.
Thank you for this informative session. I am not a practitioner helping clients. I am writing a memoir about trauma and mindfulness. My father had post traumatic stress caused by early childhood experiences and his wartime experiences during World War Two. His stress caused cardiovascular disease and other problems, and he used alcohol to assuage his torment. He died early, at age 50, in 1969, when I was aged 18. He never recovered from the disorder. I have had PTSD as well, and have recovered from it with hypnotherapy. I have been practising mindfulness for a long time now, and this has helped my recovery. Among a number of traumas, I was raped at age 21, and I then suffered dissociative amnesia for about 40 years. The memory of the trauma came back to me, but I dealt with it myself, using Peter Levine’s body therapy. I was holding on to a lot of tension in my muscles, and I released it. It was not a big problem for me. Now I want to help other people by telling the story about my father and about myself. I will have a chapter on how to use mindfulness to deal with post traumatic stress.
This was a fantastic session and very informative. The material has given me a much richer appreciation for the here-and-now experience which I use in my clinical work. It has helped me see the deeper connection that the clients physical reactions etc can have in the area of trauma. Looking forward to the next session. I love many things in this session and the one thing that stuck with me was, “track how they are trying to resource themselves” so many fantastic points.
makes sense to me. interesting to know where traumatisation following or during ect woudl fit in. presumably bit different to preverbal memory (as due to brina damage and dagmage of connections) but some similarities too. Has anyone got exerince of people traumatised from conscious ect?
I’m using whatever techniques you are teaching to help myself. I have been in therapy now 8.7 years and what I learn I take back to my therapist so she can helps me navigate what I’m learning. Using your own words, I consider myself to be resourcing information that better helps me to understand what happened to me, a survivor of a 24 year history of abuse.
Thank you for what you (NICABM) does to help therapists and clients on what has been a very long journey for me.
The free access seems to be a scam. Every time I attempt to find the schedule of when the free screenings will happen I get taken to a screen where the only option is to sign up for your paid package.
I used it today and it worked good. I just clicked on the link in the reminder email.
Hi Jacky,
I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble accessing the free links.
We are having some replays today (Thursday 10/25) at 10am, 12pm, 3pm, 5pm, 6:30pm, and 10pm Eastern Time (USA).
I’ll follow up with you via email to make sure you’re set for the rest of our free broadcasts during this series.
Best,
Michelle
NICABM Staff
it should be free for all. don’t real world practitioners get paid enough ? where does the money from this go?
capitalism has invaded everything.
In working with adults who have experienced the insults of living during the apartheid times in South Africa, i can see the value of these sessions. The trauma that that they have gone through which is still embedded in their nervous system , needs release. Whilst i have used similar techniques in the past, i will bo certainly be incorporating this information as well. Thank you.
Pacing…. so incredibly important. I have clients that want to “fix” the trauma symptoms quickly. To move forward without ensuring the safety net of support, resources risks retraumatizing the client. I am also using the word “tolerate” so much more in helping clients understand where the journey is headed. For clients to understand that the objective is to be able to tolerate the discomfort vs make it all go away, helps with more realistic expectations .
I have a question about the relationship between the trauma of parent (I’m mom with an ACEs score of 7) and the rate of diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, social communication disorder, and dyspraxia among the children of mothers like myself.
I am a teacher, and I find these classes so fascinating in how I may apply an awareness of trauma to my communication and observation with my students.
Hi Christy as an ex teacher and a community worker i understand the value of your question. I work closely with children who have had trauma in various stages of their lives. At school i found having the keen observation skills to discern body language/somatic experiences was key to supporting them. In the 1990s not much info was available to map out a child’s inner journey and to resoucre it. So through experience i developed a process to do so. This was then collated into a book The Junior Journey by Brandon Bays. Perhaps,together with the information from these webinars and the case studies and techniques in the book, it will give you a deeper insight on how best to support your students. Many blessings x
Immeasurably helpful in multiples of ways. The pacing and grounding practices and positive reflecting of their resourcing in somatic/emotional responses previously unconscious, and being ready for integrating these in proactive approach was only one profound path amoung so many presented. The understanding that revisiting trauma when sufficiently prepared with their toleration recognition both somatically and neurologically can be so encouraging for the person who has had a lifetime of disassociation from early trauma. The flashback revisits being a self-abuse mechanism was another profound path.
Thank you team!!
Thank you for the clarification without losing the tremendous wisdom that is being shared here. The relationship, as always, is key. I love the way these teachers share their passion for the work they do. I am trying to imagine how these teachings can be incorporated in the treatment and care of patients, and their families and friends, whose lives have been touched by chronic illness.
Maddeningly, I logged in twice today right at the end of the video (and could not locate the later replay times).
I would like to ask someone who has seen D.I.D. in real time, to explain how you discover it.
Check the email you received this morning . . . it is time sensitive so you should click the link a few minutes before it becomes available. I believe the last chance to watch comes a 11pm! Best of luck, it is worth making sure you don’t miss this.
Hi Elaine-
We have replays going throughout the day today, so I hope you can tune in.
Session Three will air for free today, Thursday, October 25th, at 10am, 12pm, 3pm, 5pm, 6:30pm, and 10pm Eastern Time (USA).
Best,
Michelle
NICABM Staff
Elaine, I work with a number of clients with significant dissociation and a few with DID. The thing that has been most important for me in “discovering” DID or developing an accurate diagnosis is time. In order to really understand the parts I have to be with them, to experience each set of behaviors or responses and be able to both remember them and put them together into sets that make sense. Along the way I ask questions to clarify and also to see if the person is aware of what is happening. What I see could be very different than what they’re experiencing. I watch body cues or the lack of them. Access to friends can be helpful – not always. It can be very empowering for a client to have a name to put on the splitting, but navigating that diagnostic conversation requires skill and luck and the right timing, spoken to a part that can tolerate it.
I’m grateful to the presenters and their knowledge. Thank you Ruth for facilitating it. I appreciate the parts where you recap, and I enjoy your humor. I love that the live broadcast is free and accessible (different times of showing). I’m a social work graduate student, and I’m already using a lot of the things I’ve learned from these masters with clients. I share the information I learn with my partner, who is a therapist in private practice. She’s integrating this into her sessions. Also, I love learning more about trauma work for myself and my own healing. I work with a therapist that does Somatic Experiencing (SE), and it’s truly been life changing.
As an Occupational Therapist who works with children on the Autism Spectrum, I believe many of them have experienced trauma. Some of the traumas may be related to a sensitivity in their CNS to a stimulus. These may then have created a parental response that was also traumatizing. I am very interested to try some of these strategies within the work that I do. Thank-you.
The four strategies for helping clients to tolerate and integrate traumatic memories was very useful.
Ruth, it seems that you modified your speech today regarding Gold Subscribers. I often felt that Gold Subscribers were being elevated above other attendees for their monetary contribution. I appreciate that this time, you thanked all of us for attending. For those of us in survival mode emotionally & financially, we tune in for various reasons. In my case, I take notes furiously, with the intent to use info & treatment strategies to help myself and my son to heal from our past traumas (if this is possible) or at least manage them, so they are less intrusive. Intent is to put out to the world from our “lived experience.” I hope to develop trauma groups to share my life journey of handling trauma as best as I can. My son, who is a musician & was a childcare teacher at YMCA (now forced out, due to harassment by a Y director of child care), hopes to find a new healthy & safe venue to help children whose lives are disrupted by problematic dynamics on the home front. So, we are taking it on to heal ourselves within our family & also take it out to the community & the world, however that is meant to evolve!