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
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The pacing approach was very useful
excellent information. it would be great if examples from psychotherapists from clinical experience come more in the form of the abuse clients suffered at the helm of their loved ones (primary care giver(s) in particular). more complex trauma, please
Cathy Bowman, Private Subconscious-mind Healing therapist (P.S.H.), Australia. says
Yes, so much valuable information clearly explained. Thank you. The comments regarding flashbacks and self-loathing (and shame) summed up a key element of what a recent client was experiencing.
Be ever mindful of pacing when working with clients through their trauma
ThankYou. This session has helped me personally as I am going through the grief of losing my husband. Some of the strategies I have been using like mindfulness, this session gave specific words/names to what I’m experiencing. Yes, I do feel grief is a form of trauma. Again, I am a retired LCSW and associate professor emeritus. I wish this information had been available when I studied and worked. I did think of these issues but did not know how or what to do about them ina more structured way.
I will be using these with grief clients who have lost a child.
VERY POWERFUL SUGGESTIONS AND MAKING ME MORE AWARE OF WHAT THEY ARE EXPERIENCING Realy good stuff. The breakdown of all of the topics in this session ( it’s the first one I’ve seen and the precision of the information is very helpful. The various techniques to approach trauma was super helpful. Thank you I look forward to more in the package.
Thank you so much for caring to share your journey into trauma and it’s resolution.
To be mindful,
to be present,
to pace carefully and establish safety;
Getting stronger and making progress with practice.
🗝👏🏽🌈
I’m a client working with a really helpful therapist to properly process some trauma from many decades ago. As someone who has been quite high functioning and intellectually focussed in my life and career, i like to do a lot of reading and try to develop some understanding of the science behind the various treatment strategies. I’ve had a lot of therapy in my life, but it is only in recent years, where I’ve learned about and started using various mindfulness practices, that I feel I am starting to heal properly. Your series has been really interesting and informative for me. My therapist is familiar with your institute and has done some of your trainings as well. Thank you!
Thank you so very much for these presentations. They have each bee n helpful to me personally and professionally!
Very helpful information. I was glad I was home to listen.
These webinars have been so helpful and empowering for me. I’m curious to explore implicit behaviors and gain more understanding of my physical and emotional symptoms with my trauma counselor. Your books and these in-depth discussions have validated my past and current struggles and have empowered me to identify past successes (which fell right in line with these frameworks, by the way — I did the right things! I can do them again!). Today has armed me with a strong resource, so I can begin to rediscover my intuition and purpose. I can remind my self that even though I feel so stuck and incompetent sometimes, I am still on the right track and can find my way through yet again. Thank you for all you do.
I love the way you’ve integrated work from so many professionals around a central topic. I remember the 1980’s, when trauma treatment was in it’s infancy. There was such a push to “get to the bottom of things”, remembering and describing details of the trauma, when the memories weren’t available to verbal expression. The patient was seen as resistant, rather than doing what was normal following trauma. So much has changed and improved in the intervening years!
I do wish there was a way to share short video clips with my patients, such as describing a flashback.
Thanks and appreciation for this series of podcasts — very helpful to me as I try to help a friend, and also helpful as I struggle through the process of finding appropriate professional care.
Ron Seigel’s comments always make sense to me. I am going to review the material and books I have of his to use in my practice. Thanks to everyone.
Thanks again, Ruth for taking up this huge task of organising this whole series.
In this session, I found the 4 ways to help stabilize the client is very helpful. It reiterates what we have learnt in the previous sessions: importance of using client’s own resources and focusing on client’s body and senses. I like especially the somatic and sensorimotor approach that help ground my clients. About the SIBAM model, it seems we just discussed the S omatic aspect, leaving the other parts out. Is it intended ?
Still, much appreciation to you and your team.
I feel happy that the emotional functions/understanding has “got a home”, in the right brain. And begin to realize that I use these skills automatically when meeting people, and both offer and get understanding. It makes me “weigh my words on the golden scale” to choose the emotional (not the semantic) intention I want to bring in. When helping others with problems, half of the “burden” disappear when the help also contain support of already present strengths and skills. So much hope of Life in it!
As a client I agree completely with both of your points, Rachel. I thought precisely the same on your first point during the presentation. I’d not considered your second point before, however, you are spot on with that suggestion, too, especially with those of us who analyze and question everything every second of every day to protect ourselves from harm…even during our sessions.
I’m so thankful my therapist has been amazingly helpful and respectful on both counts. I’ve had a couple who were not.
Thank you for reminding me just how lucky I am to work with her, as well as so succinctly encouraging others to practice the same respectful awareness with their clients.
Many positive thoughts and thankfulness to you.
The way you handle your client helps them, their families, their loved ones, and society. If the basic unit of society which is a family is not supported well, there is a ripple effect to the workplace and to society. [By the way, Happy International Womens Day!] Women play a great role in society, as givers, as the source of a life, and as the nucleus of a family. Hoping that society continues to treat them well and that support in any way, extended graciously to them! Hehe 😉
Rachel, thanks. That was very helpful.
I learned about pacing treatment with trauma survivors. The importance of establishing supportive behaviors before processing distressing experiences. I will work with my clients on these skills with more of a purpose of tolerance for deeper work. My practice has been to teach them for tolerating every day life, which is also important. But, now I understand they are also a preparative therapeutic piece.
Also, good refreshers about the different types of memory. Thanks!
Loved the grounding kit, the reminder to establish safety (does the client now have the resources to connect with what couldnt be integrated before? ) and the emphasis on the strengths that helped survive the original trauma. Great teaching material, well presented and accessible
James Coach France
The concept of pacing is so very helpful and validating for my work with trauma clients.
I do this instinctively and purposefully, but to hear it explained and emphasized today provides me with a better understanding and reasoning for a safe, beneficial, and effective approach with my patients.
Very heplful and informative, thank you 🙂
Rembering to be careful, full of care and creating safety and grounding for the client and validating their survival resources and strengths – all of this in today’s session. So valueable and essential to healing. Thank you.
Thank you for this opportunity to listen to this course. Helps a lot to structure knowledge&
I will revisit using the grounding technique today.
These sessions are so informative. How I wish this information had been available 30-40 years ago when I was both a client and a practitioner. Until just fairly recently I was still thinking trauma had nothing to do with me…that it referred only to major remembered events. Now at age 82 I’ve come to realize that early preverbal trauma has been the driving force of my life…quite a shocking realization! I feel both sad and frustrated that my life could certainly have been markedly different, and that it’s too late in the game to seriously undertake healing of such long-standing trauma.
Thank you for making these sessions available for no cost…a much appreciated gift. 🙏
Bonnie, I believe its never too late to heal trauma and come into being you true self. It will involve rejoicing in the gains and also mourning the losses. Best wishes.
Bonnie, I too am in Richmond and would love an opportunity to talk with you. I am not a clinician, I am a wife. I have no idea how to connect with you. Maybe nicabm can help bridge the gap. Thank you!
So appreciated! Healing is very much a partnership built on mutual trust and respect.
Thank you very much! I attended the webinars for the past 3 days and is thoroughly satisfied with what was discussed. Most memorable for me was what Pat Ogden said about how the body manifest trauma through posture. it seemed so simple but posture is very hard to correct. Now, I understand that while correcting the physical manifestation you need to process the trauma behind it too.
In addition to talk therapy, Feldenkrais, breath work, Yoga, therapeutic and myofascial massage and other body work with a trauma-informed somatic therapist can be fabulous partners in healing trauma as the Client feels comfortable, and wonderful additions to your referral network.
Safe spaces before journaling activities! This may apply to many trauma processing techniques. This necessity may not be so obvious to the observer.
Thank you
Thank you for providing such compassionate options. Our clients are wise, even amidst their pain and avoidance. No one can open to trust and heal when they’re actively in fear.
The information on preverbal trauma was also invaluable to anyone who works with children of abuse and trauma with the potential to shift generations of epigenetic physical and mental health issues.
Could someone please share the name of the clinician who specializes in this and the grounding kits?
Thank you.
You mentioned SIBAM and explained the “S”(Somatic). Can you touch upon Images, Behavior, Affect and Meaning Making that you mentioned in their roles as tools, also?
Thank you.
Some of the graphics were projected too briefly for my information processing ability.
Rachel- thank you very much for sharing your deep insights, perspectives and thoughts with us. Your comments are equally valuable and important to what I have learned from the lesson today!
I’ve been “effective, rushing” most of my life. Not until after retiring two years ago, I experience the great need of TIME, to find th(feel)ings out, make a balanced decision that is mine. So for me, today’s speakers all confirm this path of slow evolving. And this help to be supporting to myself and client, to reveal only small doses of traumatic reactions, and examine them with kind curiosity, from all sides, even imaginary/playful ones. How that?, where going?, feeling? Thank you!
thank syou so much for those informations, I want to know if the person can work with himself those techniques? if the person still live with the harmfull person can she get ok? there is a brave practionner her in morocco??
I’d like to help them connect to all five senses, some beautiful colours or nature, and mindfulness in the present 🎁
I’d also like to shift their focus to beautiful memories rather than revisiting debilitating flashbacks of traumatic memories. Happy memories in the past are key 🔑 to healing ❤️🩹 as well as bringing them back to the here and now! Thanks 🙏 Hania Kabban Art therapy trainee!
Excellent!
mind-blowing – thank you!
The discussion about the various forms of memory was extremely interesting and I wonder if anyone is researching memory loss in dementia and Alzheimers? I would like to see some links between today’s content and current dementia research.
My friend with Lewy Body Dementia seemed to lose procedural memories, for example, how to make a phone call, how to operate electronic equipment like a microwave and her beautiful high-end sound system – despite kindly relatives having added clear instructions for the sound system on what to do and in what order.
As the early, but not so visible, signs of dementia seem to appear decades earlier than a typical diagnosis, I wonder what difference it might make if a person’s experience of trauma were linked to their predisposition to dementia? And what measurements/markers might be most relevant?
My father had Alzheimer and I was always trying to figure out why he got that illness.
One thing was specific for him, most of the time he was dissociated, he was always in his thoughts and mind, he was so focused on his thoughts or to something on TV he usually didn’t hear that you are calling him. He wasn’t grounded, had probably schock trauma and definitely early development trauma. Lots of doubts of his self image, insecurities, low self esteem. And was victim from mother and wife narcissist. His sister has early development trauma and was afraid to be left alone, also was victim from narcissistic husband and because she was afraid that he would leave her she used defence mechanism of denial and repressing just to forget all bad things what he did to her so she could stay in relationship with him – her pain of his hurtful behavior was smaller than pain which she could felt if he leaves her, so she rather forget what he did to her than be alone. I wonder would people with early stages of Alzheimer and dementia would benefit from grounding exercises, working on their self esteem, resources and certainly processing early trauma?
What is this …the third time I’ve watched this? I am still benefitting. Thank you!
I thought to share that I recently had a mini-re-enactment of not being wanted at birth
due to (now I know) having been born with a disability that was very frightening, worrisome, and shocking to my mother: a condition called hyper-trichosis (a bit more than lanugo-which means you are covered with hair like a baby animal). My hyper-trichosis was not the full-blown wolfman syndrome, but a bit of it. This body hair fell out in 5 days (the wolfie-teeth were removed and treated with braces at age 14-17), but in the meantime, my memory was only implicit memory –severe
fear, disgust, denial, rejection. There was attempted murder. I lost consciousness but kept the implicit memory of my presentation!
Hah! Recently I had a hair cut with a true master of women’s styles. But ONCE AGAIN I fled from the
room dreading to see myself in the mirror even one more moment, to thank the stylist…oh no…and she did
a beautiful cut. Implicit means here…I never have felt attractive or wanted *coming out* or afresh, after 69 years!
I want to offer some insight in *treating* implicit emotional trauma. 1). I feel that new information about one’s physical self helps heal preverbal trauma. For me a huge piece of the PROOF, because no one in my family believes that this happened,
was receiving a full set of multi-angled X-rays done for me in 2017, by a chiropractor who said these many injuries to my spine were *very old*. 2) Life experience that repeats–and CONSCIOUSLY connecting the freak-out at ANY hair stylist’s or dentist’s, with my unwelcome birth and childhood. Nothing soothing they can ever say in the present takes the feeling of the implicit memory away! Knowing what is Real is a wonderful thing. 3). Information about others in the same or similar condition may come from reading. Liz Taylor, who was once considered the most beautiful woman in the world was born with hyper-trichosis which lasted a full MONTH. She never thought she was so attractive or worthy either.
I’m so thankful for this opportunity that you offered this weeklong series for free access! I’m not a practitioner but I’m a survivor of childhood trauma and have been diagnosed with CPTSD. My healing journey has been amazing for over 30 years and most recently the past 5 years! I’ve finally gotten a well-trained therapist. She has used EMDR and TFT. They both have been so amazing for my healing that I call it magical! Thanks, again. I always send your link to friends and family that are in the healing field. I’m launching a Trauma-Informed Coaching business so that I can supplement trauma survivors’ therapy and be an advocate for survivors to seek a therapist. Sincerely, Brenda
I am a coach, massage therapist, and transformational breath coach. Lately more and more clients have been coming in with trauma. This has lead me to working with my own childhood trauma. This program is fabulous and so helpful. I will be purchasing it for sure. Just the other day I decided that I want to be a trauma coach. Not sure exactly how I want to go about doing it. Would love to connect with you. My email is blakenelvid@icloud.com. My name is Linda Blake.
Thank you again for many aha’s! I see the importance of learning a broad-based understanding of the impact of types of memory on trauma dynamics. I appreciate the emphasis on the importance of reading the body for clues on how the client organizes their trauma patterns. In particular, I will use more of the mindfulness and imagination suggestions to help stabilize and regulate clients as needed. I also like the idea of justaposing two realities to help clients gain deeper awareness about their own strengths and unlearn and relearn how to keep fragments of the past trauma from interrupting the current life. As I mentioned in an earlier post I will use the strategy of a psychoeducational plan to track our work together, and make necessary changes as we progress in the process of healing.
Thank you very much. I will be endeavoring to pay more attention to my clients posture and positioning, and using these to help guide the session. I have found the whole series to be very inspiring, motivating, and validating of the work we do. All of the presenters have contributed to my practice greatly and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from you all.
Imagination. If you cannot imagine you are stuck. I use imagination with my clients to reinforce that they are capable and creative and I just never really thought of the incredible power of that tool until this presentation.
Thank you.
This was an invaluable session in hearing more about pacing and resourcing, how there are different mindfulness practices to enhance safety and access/develop resources, and all the various ways to help clients tolerate and integrate traumatic memory. I’m so glad I got the gold membership so I can hear these presentations over and over again, as well as have access to the bonus material. Thank you!
I plan to practice more mindfulness and distress tolerance skills with clients starting tomorrow as a group.
I’m thoroughly enjoying ALL the information and words by all the experts in this field. It is quite enlightening and informative. I will certainly be using the flashback/grounding technique and the procedural memory techniques. I really resonated also with coming up with a list of thoughts and functions for a client who may be experiencing their personal responses when triggered. Lastly, the notion, and awareness that safety of a client’s experience, speed, and triggers are theirs and must be addressed cautiously.
I’m listening to this as a CASA volunteer and more importantly, an adoptive mom. So interesting!
Be aware of how meditation can be used- different types of mindfulness
I found it very interesting thinking about the client’s physical presentation and sensorimotor patterns, particularly the idea of following these patterns and seeing where this might lead, as if unfinished actions. It was noted that you might first explore something more helpful first.
I was thinking that with a client I am working with that it might be helpful for me to give more psychoeducation to allow them to control pace; and draw on the idea of grounding techniques when they might feel overwhelmed. My client often refers to wanting peace and this might be a sign for something more relaxing and grounding. I think it will be interventive in itself for them to feel they can control when they want peace and feel safe, versus when they might feel ready to revisit or work on something. I also think that they may benefit from more help to identify their resources, as well as understanding their previous ways of coping as being useful and acceptable at the time.
Many more thoughts but I need to have some dinner 🙂 thank you