How to Work with Traumatic Memory That Is Embedded in the Nervous System
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with Peter Levine, PhD ;
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with Peter Levine, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; and Ruth Buczynski, PhD
Sign up for a Gold Membership
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with Peter Levine, PhD ;
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Bessel’s comments about imagination were key to what I feel is the greatest healer, and he reminded me of this. I felt my own imagination healing me and therefore adding to the peace of the world. We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving in particular. This series! I studied with Peter in Boulder early on and so love to hear him speak. Really has a language with soothing the central nervous system. Ruth you are quite the moderator. Thanks to all, peace again!
Another great and informative learning session. And importantly so useful to myself and my clients.
I found all of them useful. I now know that it’s important to establish safety support first for the client before tackling their trauma. It’s so true as they need strategies to help themselves to get through outside of therapy.
Another new understanding for flashbacks which can be die to self punishment and self abuse. Thank you again.
Questions – please – for our behavioral health colleagues:
If a child has physical symptoms, (such as the back pain experienced by the man who had unconscious procedural trauma memories – described and helped by Dr Levine) ….. and no physical /pathological source is identified (as can frequently be the case in people with back pain, etc)….
…. how can a physician more effectively assess/screen / rule out – potential unconscious somatic causes such as unresolved trauma, etc – of physical symptoms?
1) What are some effective ways to screen, and
2) What are suggested thresholds of when to refer to a behavioral health expert?
….if a person / child, has physical symptoms – and does not screen positively for signs of depression, anxiety, etc?
Thank you,
Stephanie Tucker, MD
I am not a professional in the field of psychology but I am a life coach and a consultant in the areas of restorative justice and Circle Way work. Although I would not venture into using the techniques you are teaching in that work I do, this is incredibly helpful in helping me understand a bit more of what may be holding my clients back from making progress toward their goals and developing more compassion for myself (child trauma survivor) and others in my family who I know suffered trauma or who may have and not shared that experience with me. Understanding how the brain processes or stores those experiences and how those experiences may not have been processed and continue to affect people’s lives (including my own) is helping me to heal myself and forgive others whose behavior has impacted my life. I have been frustrated by a relative who has recently completed training and education to become a social worker therapist who insists on analyzing family members, some of who are deceased and who she has never met. I don’t know how to stop that unhelpful behavior but at least I understand that she doesn’t understand. Maybe I should encourage her to check out your work and these videos. One memory that is recurring, the first memory of my childhood, is one of an ordinary experience when I was about 3 and 1/2 in which I understood that I was not safe in my own home. I know from this 3rd video that obviously something happened when I was pre-verbal that was not integrated and that still operates in my life as a procedural memory. I am going to explore my body responses to see where that leads me. Thank you for offering this work to such a large audience. I truly wish to improve the lives of as many people as I can in this lifetime and know that begins with healing myself. I am 72 now and grateful that I survived to this age when I was ready and able to work on my emotional and spiritual health and that resources are available for me to do that. Thank you.
This was by far an excellent session today. I liked how Ruth sums up ideas in a clear way. I listen to many of these sessions because they help me be a better human being.
As a client I find this serious more valuable because it allows my rational brain to understand the work we are doing. I need to be a part of the process to move forward. I share what I learn with my therapist.
You should know that many of us assume we are unusually broken and no one understands. This class has made so much sense that I believe it has helped propel my healing and trust that I am an aberration.
As a massage therapist I can say that even though I would never assume to “practice” this with my clients I am able to “hold a space” for them to do their work with their own therapist. The body-mind connection is obvious to me. I am so happy this is now current thought and treatment.
As previously mentioned, I have an Occupational Therapy background, now training in trauma (for personal and professional needs). My adult son & I have PTSD from domestic violence of many yrs duration. Wondering if any others have experienced ongoing “dark energy” from a perpetrator (my ex, also my son’s dad) that seems to reside in us & sabotages every effort that we make towards moving forwards and healing our significant past traumas. This force seems to be parasitic in nature, embedded within us & almost feels as if he is watching our every move & countering it with sabotage. Affecting us in all 4 realms, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It reduces us to utter exhaustion, despondency, hopelessness, and sense of never ending triggers (as someone below also mentioned) to the point of thinking “why bother, there is NO quality of life left.” How does one deal with this dark energy, which is a source of constant dread on a daily basis? Welcome any advice from replies
Thank you “All” for this series. Some great reminders and new storyintegrationconcepts to add to my work. Especially increased postural observation and utilisation reminders. I’m looking forward to next weeks episode
Hello from Australia
I am managing to catch most of the broadcasts in spite of the time difference!
Thank you for the excellent information, experience, application ideas… and more.
I appreciate the style of presentation with different practitioners input being tied together into a cohesive session by Ruth. Thank you.
I have clearer ways of building client resources and assisting them to become aware of those they already have developed.
I’m not a therapist but a client of a godsend of a therapist I worked with for four years who is trained in trauma therapy. I especially appreciate the closing comments on this video about how important the work all of you who are therapists are doing. This is truly life changing. I am very grateful and will remain so for my experience in this healing. These videos are valuable to me primarily for what I once heard Ruth Lanius refer to as psycho education. It helps me when I can better understand what happened and how my system evolved and continues to. It gives me a sense of security. Thank you all.
I just want to thank you so much for making this series available for folks who can’t afford to be gold subscribers. I’m a “baby therapist” fresh out of grad school (e.g. finances are tight) and my caseload has a number of high-trauma kiddos, so having resources like this helps alleviate some of that “holy buckets I know this kiddo would benefit from X but I won’t be able to afford the training to get that knowledge for a long time” anxiety I’m sure most new practitioners have. So, thank you so much 🙂
Thank you for this inspiring seminar. I was particularly interested in the idea that was raised about flashbacks sometimes functioning as self punishment, because of the level of self loathing.
Reply to Dina Mann: Yes, this is an interesting point that you raise. I have some refugee clients who have suffered torture and imprisonment and suffer horrific nightmares. I was recently at a seminar, whereby the psychologist recommended working with the imagination to help ‘re-write’ the nightmares. Asking the clients to re tell the stories/dreams, (after they are safely grounded) and then helping them to play with various endings or to use the imagination to change the dream patterns.
What a wonderful session from an All-Star cast! Especially valuable advice from clearly thoughtful and skilled therapists with the addition of “here’s how it works” brain chemistry. “Go slowly” what a great mantra for working with those who have suffered and are suffering trauma. Thank you. Great stuff. I’ll pass it on. Regards, Greg Anderson, MD
I, also am not a practitioner but am finding your generous gift of allowing us free access to help to heal and validate my own experiences of pre-verbal trauma. I am also so grateful because your insights help me to recognise triggering in both my own behaviour and others – which can reduce conflict in so many areas. I am a community care-giver and use so many of your insights in dealing with my clients and family members. I cannot thank you all enough for this help and support as i am still unable to financially resource outside help to heal. But now I can always see a ray of hope and I am able to shine that ray of hope on ALL the situations I meet in which individuals (even including myself), declare themselves or their situation, hopeless. This is another kind of circle but not a vicious one – a healing spiral and for that I am eternally grateful.
Had a break due to recent trauma in the news today, so this was timely for a new person I shall see tonight in session to help with all these points four points to preparedness. Thanks. Such wonderful synchronicity in my little corner of the world.
A question perhaps for Bessel: What do you do with clients who angrily protest that they no imagination nor hope?
I already used some of the material from this webinar which I listened to earlier today with a client concerning the way trauma is held in the body and the need to address the body first with some clients. Also I am very interested in the concept of “backdraft” that is clients who are triggered by the expression of love and caring by the therapist and why that may occur. I will be much more cautious in the future concerning “backdraft”.
Thank you for this excellent series. I am not a practitioner. I am watching these episodes for myself. I find them so helpful – especially today’s because it validated so many of my experiences. I have PTSD, but am slowly working with an SE practitioner to heal.
It is so captivating! There are so many traumatized human beings who need peace! I cannot thankyou enough!
Great info. Thank you.
I wish you would also include David Grand and Brainspotting. I’ve been using it with clients for about 13 years. It works really well for all that your experts espouse.
I appreciate what you’re doing but I don’t want to receive so many emails. I’m getting so many! I’ve tried to unsubscribe and it’s not working. Please can you help?
How can you use these techniques working with youth who are homeless and who have multiple mental health diagnosis?
By the way, what an impactful, wonderful seminar! It really opened my eyes and I look forward to using this new understanding with many of my clients. Thank you so very much!!
I wonder if any of you have had clients express their traumatic experiences through dreams and nightmares? It is very common for those who have experienced great trauma, have problems sleeping because they re-experience the traumas at night or when they dose off. Often, they wake up in terror or in regret that they did nothing to fight back. They try not to sleep out of fear these experiences will replay themselves over and over again in dreams and when awake, there is a bitter taste to their lives even though they are aware of not being in the dream state again.
I am so energised by these talks! Such great, practically useful resources from renowned practitioners and pitched in such a refreshingly inclusive and humanitarian way. Each talk has prompted me to reflect on my own practice and expand new ways of working with clients. I’ve found Pat Ogden’s and Alan Schore’s comments about a patient being in the body whilst the therapist heads towards language, particularly enlightening. Thank you to everyone involved.
Great session, – thanks!
I especially appreciated the confirmation that you don’t always need to know the history…sometimes clients don’t disclose and feel intensly private. You can work with symptoms and provide tools for them to cope and grow without them feeling forced to open up to the full extend. I have learned that trauma becomes a part of the persons make up- you can’t totally wipe out its existence..Perhaps ECT does that, and in some cases i saw it works for people. But when trauma it stops interfering with the present and perhaps even informs the future and helps to take up new directions, (when the client deepens understanding, knows how to disarm its disabling effects, and accepts the past as useful in some ways), our work is done.
Wonderfully done! Easy to understand information providing useful examples.
Thanks Ruth, Peter, Bessel, Pat et al.,
This is great stuff. I’m a client (not a therapist) healing himself of severe autoimmune illness which Dr. Gabor Mate once said had it’s roots in trauma. I pick up all kinds of little clues on how to better pursue my healing process through these videos. I’ve passed the link to these sessions onto my therapist and three other local social service organizations in the hopes that support for people like me will improve here. Areas of support that are very poor here in my experience are support for male survivors of sexual abuse and adult men (over 25 years old) at risk of suicide. I’ve done quite a bit to expose that problem and pursue my own healing anyways.
One statement that Ruth mentioned twice is the importance of helping people heal from trauma. That in doing so you are not only helping the client, but their family, the larger community and the world heal. That totally makes sense to me. I experience it directly as a client as I heal in my experiences with myself, my birth family and the larger human community. I felt deeply touched by her statement. To participate in that process IS my life purpose. Thanks Ruth and Namaste! 🙂
I am a Certified Hypnotherapist currently putting together a community workshop on 7 Ways to Manage Stress. With meditation being one way to manage stress, beginning meditators often do not know where to begin. I explain to clients that it is sometimes helpful to to label a thought as either past, or future as thoughts pop up during their meditation. This helps them build awareness of their own thoughts. Your webinar brought up an idea from one of your practitioners to have a client list their current thoughts on paper in one column and list the functions of the thoughts on the other column. I thought this was a great way to practice observing your thoughts on paper before moving into a meditation practice. I will use this in my workshop and I am thankful for the idea.
An absolutely wonderful series of videos. Applause for all the people who are participating. I, personally, am gaining so much that my quality of every day life is being impacted in such a positive way.Thanks to all the professionals who are sharing their time and knowledge. I am a PTSD patient and am being helped in therapy and by this series. Again. so many thanks. You are all brilliant an making such a positive difference.
This session will definitely help me detect trauma. Also, Bessel’s case with Haim has given me some ideas for dealing with a young(ish) patient’s chronic back pain. Futhermore, although I studied Ruella Frank’s body awareness years ago, I haven’t used it so much in recent years. This session renews my faith in focusing more on the body and non-verbal communication and less on the verbal content. Wonderful session. Merci ! (I’m in France)
This series is for professionals, I know. I am a survivor of many years of childhood trauma and recently lost my therapist and counselor so I am desperate for information, insight, and strategies to help myself.
These lectures are difficult to absorb – I know, not meant for me. They often trigger and distress me. But. I am grateful for the access. I love information.
Thanks for putting this together.
I‘ll certainly will take more attention towards the clients postures and impliced signals that are expressed and I want to use this information for the client in the therapy working towards integration. To me this sounds like a very powerful tool. Thankyou Pat!
Thank you for these informative and very compassionate lessons about trauma. They help me remember (and remind my clients) that healing from trauma takes time and patience. I appreciated Ruth’s reminder about how healing an individual’s trauma impacts everyone in his or her family and ultimately changes the world! I feel so privileged be a part of that process!
The talk was very clear and an excellent summary of theory linked to practical suggestions. I like the integrative nature of the information and how we are encouraged to use various tools to provide a comprehensive paced treatment. I will pay more attention to the body language and use the idea of a spotlight.
My takeaway?
Generally: I think realising the fullness of memory impact was helpful.
Specifically:
Working slowly; noticing non-verbal cues and working with them, empowering a client with a tool kit.
Tolerance and Integration of trauma: Focus on client’s survival skills/strengths – empowering.
Small figures might also be useful in using imagination.
Thank you. Really loved todays session and learned lots!I particularly liked the information around working with patterns -the five things to look for. I work with children and so all the time I am translating how this valuable information can work with my clients. I am going to work on watching for patterns and help my clients see what they are responding to.
The 4 ways to help a client stabilize dealing with trauma memories was helping to use prior to doing a Brainspotting session which activates their nervous system.
I am thinking about a client with childhood trauma who I have been seeing for one year. Most of these body/nervous system techniques are not much used as they lack external support and grief for that huge loss as a child and adult is creating a therapy centred in attachment and building a safe enough base between us until they will be ready to take in and start to digest body work. They fill the room with their stories, sadness, disappointment and that seems key for them still. In short, how do you work with an adult who has got no support?
I’m a retired clinical social worker who is also a preverbal abuse survivor/thriver. I’ve been following Bessel for decades and truly appreciate his dedication, intelligence and compassion for us trauma survivors. I didn’t learn anything new, but love the reminders to appreciate my strengths, reorient my focus, use my imagination to see my brilliance and competence, create my own “grounding kit” and meditate. I’m off for a walk in the sun. Thank you all!
I appreciate the very organized approach to this teaching with thorough explanations. I am not trained in somatic experiencing but I can use these ideas to increase my attention to a client’s physical presence to enable a more detailed response to what they are presenting in a session. This teaching has enhanced my understanding of what happens and how the levels of memory are affected by trauma.
I am a children’s yoga teacher. I have been learning about trauma in children and would like to create practices that will help young children work with trauma and it’s affects. I like the very concrete ideas that were given and the emphasis on building support and “kits” within the practice to assist in working with traumatic memories in a pace that will be integrative. Observation is key and will be even more helpful with the suggestions given. Thanks
This is great work and very helpful to me in integrating the use of EMDR/EFT/mindfulness and shamanic journeying in the treatment of trauma. I am a semi-retired PhD/LMFT (80 years old) and am very excited about the evolution of tools that can be used to work with traumatized clients (which includes essentially all of them).
Fantastic thank you! I am working with three traumatised clients at the moment and I appreciate the comments on pacing. I am still in training and definitely went too quickly with my first client. We are still working together a year later and have slowed the work down to a pace that is supportive. I feel empowered that I am doing much of what is covered here and I appreciate the clarity with which the information is presented.
I have a very brilliant friend, who very consciously and intentionally inserted an object, a candle, into her traumatic memory, when she was not having a flashback. In so doing, this allowed her to realize, when she did have a flashback, and saw the candle there, that this was actually a flashback rather than the traumatic event happening again.
Thank you for this session! I have been a gold subscriber before and have benefited from your workshops and presentation. Coming back and listening again reconfirms my own lifelong learning in my work as a therapist. For example, after years of working in the field of child abuse and sexaul assault, i develped a stage model which put resourcing and developing client’s safety first prior to processing the trauma, only to discover through a journal article that across the pond, Judy Herman had also developed the Stage-By-Dimension model of trauma, perhaps by the same experience and observations that I have had in working with these patients.
Thanks for another great presentation.
As a life coach, I don’t work with trauma patients per se. But on a continuum of consciousness, even for experiences that don’t rise to the level of what we call trauma, the methodology here is helpful for anyone to become more present, and to integrate their experiences.
-Awareness and reflection of how we process episodic memory allows us to be more connected to purpose.
-Recognizing where our past intrudes on our present through habituated procedural memories.
-Honoring the contexts and memories we have and how they have been beneficial for our development
-Shifting habitual orientation–choosing what stories we tell
-Use of imagination to rewire not just the past, but the future!
Great stuff!
The practice of pacing reminds me to focus more on the nonverbal symptoms presenting in the session. Ex.: the client who didn’t see value in the resources of self-calming, mindfulness, even simple deep breathing. This has given me language to better assist the patient understand the process of healing takes time, that discussing the trauma to be “done quickly” with feeling/remembering the past is likely going to lead to traumatization.
I find this information extremely helpful. I am working with a client who was abused…and his defenses are very thick and engrained. Using EMDR, but not much movement because the defenses are so strong.
This was amazing and articulated in a way that I could easily understand. It felt like a very slowed down training on a very complex subject. Thank you so much. When it comes to my work with clients it gave me a chance to see how much I’m doing “right”. In my personal healing I came into contract with an image of myself as a little girl and how I held my body in a very protective way. I still do. Thank you so much. I am considering the Gold Membership because I missed the first two lessons.