How to Work with the Limbic System to Reverse the Physiological Imprint of Trauma
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with Pat Ogden, PhD ;
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with Pat Ogden, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; and Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Its great to hear more of this type cutting edge work on trauma.
As a psychologist studying attachment and trauma related issues for over 30 yrs and a personal history of chronic anxiety and PTSD and of a wide variety of treatment approaches. I have been hugely impressed with the work of Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine. However there still seem to be many gaps in the knowledge. For example what makes an event traumatic in the first place, often refer to ‘traumatic events’ without clear definition of what makes an event traumatic. I know from personal experience that it is possible to go through a whole range of dramatic, life threatening, and physically damaging events involving the fight flight and even freeze responses without any hint of trauma involved. Trauma is not an inevitable consequence of a dramatic life threatening events. I feel there is room for much further clarity regarding the very specific elements that lead to an event being experienced as either traumatic or being opposite of traumatic be experienced as strengthening. These types of details and specific examples of peoples direct experiences can be really helpful in teasing out causes of trauma. I am now looking for any opportunities to offer input and discuss observations on these areas to contribute to the knowledge base. If anyone has ideas of how to make contact with the experts or the appropriate forum to submit ideas please let me know. Mary
I agree. The reverse is also true. Trauma can result from a series of multiple events and not just a single life altering event — like emotional abuse over a period of decades (sometimes very subtle like an overly verbally critical mother whose voice I still hear ALL THE TIME). I’d also like the field to start researching birth trauma —- which I never hear anyone speak of. There can be trauma from complications in pregnancy and childbirth and hospitalizations —- even when the outwordly observable elements are deemed “textbook successful procedures” by the medical staff involved. I speak from personal experience as I have come to realize the trauma that sits in my own now hypervigilant and hypersensitive (almost super power level sensitivity in multiple sensory systems) nervous system. I know because my senses weren’t always this hypersensitive. I remember a time in childhood when my nervous system/sensory systems were very neurotypical/“normal”!
I recently watched ‘The Wisdom of Trauma’ showing Gabor Mate’s decades of research into how experiences can be traumatic for some and not for others. The takeaway for me was that it depended whether there was a support system for the person to turn to after the experience. If they had people to help them through, then often the experience did not turn into a trauma for them. Those who had noone to get support from experienced it as trauma. It’s worth watching it if you can.
I am a Waldorf teacher and I been doing an Emergency Pedagogy course. As a teacher I think it is paramount that our practices are informed by trauma, particularly after this year. Thank you for sharing such excellent resources. I want to keep on deepening my understanding of how trauma shows up in children, and how we can work at the school level to help our traumatized children.
Very reassuring. Just wanted to make sure I’d ‘got it’! I worked as a body worker – shiatsu practitioner – many years ago, including with trauma survivors, intuitively applying some of what has been confirmed in intervening years – fortunately for those clients and for me. Now I’m an art psychotherapist, trained also in Process Work (Mindell) and seeking to integrate bottom-up experience in the body with expression through art-making. I’ve also practised aikido for over 40 years and have noticed how my own posture has changed to a more open one over the years (many years in and out of depression), but it’s been a slow process. Aikido gave me only temporary respite and didn’t solve the underlying problem though it helped. I needed to go deeper via Process Work which includes dreamwork and how the body is constantly dreaming. Now I’m finding studying Levine, van der Kolk and Pat Ogden really helpful. I’ve also recently completed a course in Cornelia Elbrecht’s Healing Trauma through Guided Drawing which again works through the body. So a long, slow ongoing process for me of interweaving all those threads. The other important element is studying myself, my own feelings and reactions, and observing the changes happening in my own body, mind and heart. That also is a lifelong study! There’s a compassion-related spiritual dimension also. So I endeavour to bring all those things into my work with others.
Very insightful. Thank you all.
I’m a layperson, not a therapist, but working to mitigate my reactions to current situations that trigger traumatic memories. I was really struck by Pat’s example of the client who literally could not reach out and grasp an item because he was certain it would be taken away. That’s an excellent metaphor for why so many trauma victims themselves withdraw and stop engaging with the world.
I have a similar issue myself. I was kept inside doing homework for much of my childhood and was rarely allowed to go outside and play. 45 years later, it’s still very hard for me to physically leave the house, even to do errands, much less to “play.” I’m still trying to convince myself I have permission to go outside.
It would be good if you could work with someone like that client worked with Pat. It’s hard to do this stuff on our own without support, particularly as that was probably a lonely place to be – maybe still is. You could possibly even do it on Zoom without leaving the house – initially? Seeing as it’s now “normal” to be confined to base. I wish you all the best.
Grateful thanks for a superb week of learning. The idea of the body remembering the trauma long after the brain has processed it is not new. Wilhelm Reich’s work talks about muscle armouring as a defense against trauma; there is Ken Dychtwald’s book “Bodymind”; Ron Kurtz and Hector Prestera “The Body Reveals”; and Alexander Lowen’s great book on Bioenergetics.
All the contributors presentations have been very insightful. I learned a lot about neurobiology and how the brain functions which has helped to deepen the way the body, mind and emotions integrate. I trained as a psychotherapist many years ago and although I studied the body works above, neurobiology wasn’t part of the training then. I’m pleased it has developed into a cogent system of integration.
I look forward to future learning and I wish NICABM every success. It’s wonderful that therapists and others all over the world can participate in NICABM.
With best wishes
Pauline
I just want to agree with you – at least I think I’m agreeing with you – that it’s wonderful to see all the body-based practices you mention supported by neuroscience; and to see neurobiology integrated with psychotherapy is so important.
My thanks too to NICBAM for spreading the word and making all these wonderful teachers and teachings available.
I recently encountered a woman who tearfully told of having finished chemo in March, only to learn this week that the cancer was present again. I suggested letting the tears flow and as they did, to label all the emotions and feelings coming up that the tears could help to wash away.. In this presentation’s mention of pillow pounding but labeling emotions while doing so, made me rethink of the woman’s cancer resurgence as being a trauma.
Thank you so much for this wonderful and inspirational program. I learned so much and reaffirmed what I had already known. Extremely valuable, especially the examples and how to integrate the techniques. Thank you so much.
Thank you! This series has been helpful to me in dealing with my husband’s traumatic brain injury.
These sessions have been very helpful for me. From a social work student who chose their university because it has a trauma focus and having had an eventful background myself, these are such useful tools. I could not take notes fast enough to hold on to everything, but there is so much that makes sense. I want to absorb more about the biology of trauma, but I do not feel that can be my first priority.
I would love to recommend a student rate to these as I would love to purchase them, but graduate students aren’t known to be rich!
Thank you!
I agree about the student rate! Also, for the tip on trauma focus! I’m assuming it’s located in Hastings, NE- that’s where I’m going to look, now! Have a good day.
This session really validated my experience of integrating fitness/strength training to empower against feelings of helplessness and defencelessness. I am a social worker and personal trainer who has directly experienced the benefits of using a combo of top-down and bottom-up interventions to heal trauma. I also found it incredibly helpful to find out which clients could have adverse responses to body scans/meditations – this knowledge will help in planning interventions with my clients.
Fascinating and helpful
The sessions every day have been very helpful but not completely understandable as I am only a lay person, not a practitioner. How do I find a therapist that specializes in trauma therapy? SA
Go to Sensorimotortherapy.org
Thank you for using locations of the brain as metaphor for locations of trauma and healing. I think it might be helpful to also share that nowadays we know that the function-feeling delineations are far more diffuse and as interconnections are established via various inter-neuronal events; actual discreet locations for function/feelings are far more diffuse.
Hello,
I am using these with my observations of myself and my voice students and Arts In Health. Thank you for this offering!
These are great therapies; how can we adapt them to virtual therapy during a pandemic ?
I now better understand what is trauma time; not as a concept, but as an experience. Now, I can recognize it, when I am in trauma time. It means I am less identified with it and I can observe that it is happening, when it is happening. So, it is easier to feel compassion for my younger self, when I am in trauma time. In stead of wanting or needing to run away from the feelings in trauma time, I can tolerate the feelings, because of the compassion, that I can feel. So thank you a lot!!!
Thank You for this great and inspiring program that should be the basic for University education for all kinds of treatments for traumatized humans. You are a great team that is bringing theory, research and good practice together. this series gives me new challenges to work in a more flexible and effective way with my clients and all that belongs to them, including their body language.
I appreciate very much the subtitles used in the last series, as they help a better understanding of what was spoken, that is very important for me using English as my second language with some specific terms and names. I hope it can go on. Thank You!
Also wondering if the vertical integration in any way corresponds to chackras.
Fantastic program – thank you. Vertical integration, somatic narrative, etc. very helpful.
Also very interesting at the beginning – how early difficulty (in my case poor attachment and neglect, partly due to being 1 of 10 children, but also having a strange mother who had inaccessible emotions, lacked empathy, and was unpredictable and intrusive, and expected children to be independent; father was terrified and emotionally explosive tho he did have empathy) can create a state where a child doesn’t distinguish danger from safety well.
Then, to see this in relation to highly vigilant post-trauma behavior, where one feels danger everywhere; I felt I grew eyes in the back of my head overnight. I think a lot of rape survivors blame themselves for not being more suspicious.
So can now see how the former could cause the child to distrust bodily sensations of danger, or to laugh it off, bc the caregiver also created discomfort – which seemed normal.
Wondering also how the development of humor works to make something positive from these contradictions – but can also become a defense mechanism / procedural memory.
This program helped me imagine the early life difficulties I had that would have made me more susceptible to PTSD – have never really thought about my preverbal experience before or those of siblings.
Thanks!
I very much appreciated this series and thank you to all the contributors and to NICABM for hosting.
It was informative, stimulating and inspiring. The informal approach enabled a sense that we were ‘in the room together’ or at least I was there! Thank you for this approach/ style of delivery- a very human, personal presence and connection. I think it worked very well. As an Advanced SE student (2 online days away from being a SEP!) I especially enjoyed revisiting the basic SE principles, the neurobiology and the current research perspectives. Well done!
One small suggestion is to have 2 rates of payment for your trainings eg students or low income participants – especially during this Covid time where those of us who are ‘hands on/touch’ therapists are unable to work face to face and therefore have a much reduced income. For this reason I have been unable to subscribe but I am extremely grateful that I could experience this series. Once again, many thanks. Grazie mille. 🙂
like many others here, not a clinician…simply a survivor of complex trauma. i enjoyed the program and very much appreciate that you made it available to the general public (and free). these insights/trainings need MUCH wider distribution across the globe. they are nothing short of revolutionary…which is why wider distribution is going to be such a challenge. many perpetrators/survivors are likely to be quite resistant to these difficult to hear truths. considering the Gold Subscription…and/or a purchase of another one of your fine programs. thanks so much for the great/valuable work that you’re all doing!
Thank you for allowing lay people into this programme. I have generalised anxiety issues. I know from where mine come from. Dr Pat said exactly what I feel. I am in a safe environment but my body somehow does not feel safe and will experience somatic symptoms that come on and off. My body is still trying to protect me. I have learned to do tapping to release when I feel stuck. Dr Ruth revisits the points extremely well after the experts speak their views.
I have the gold subscription 😊.
Thank you to all the team, this has been an inspirational programme addressing trauma and how to work with it therapeutically.
It has prompted me to give more attention to clients postures and ways of moving, and stimulated me to think about possible ways of working with trauma as it is manifested through the body.
And please send me a certificate of completion/ participation, that also mentions the topic content
Of these trauma training series. Time is money for me too😉 thank you!
I am a regular person, not a therapy practitioner. I have experienced counseling at various points in my life for various reasons in both inpatient and outpatient, group and singular scenarios. I have been fortunate to have different basic insights regarding myself and family members for whom I have csred; unfortunately most times at a time that is too late to be effective except for future happenings. But I have always limped along in caring for myself. I am 54 and not pleased with my progress. This series on trauma, tho I have only viewed two sessions, was valuable to me as I am currently facing unexplained physical problems with pain and sensitivities; I have been resistant to the possibility that any childhood or adult trauma has had an impact on thiese symptoms (I’ll say I’m tired of being classified as a “hysterical female”, which has been my perception of my treatment and management) . But I see that my opportunity to heal myself with physical therapy as part of the management, with my attitude toward this P.T. more toward mindfulness and emotion direction with the addition of counseling to help me direct–a new possibility is now open to me. Thank you. And the victims of my misdirected outbursts would thank you.
Thank you for sharing this meaningful information. I’ve been a caregiver for my mother for 5 1/2 years now, and I just realized that at least some of her inexplicable, and erratic meanness is the result of childhood abuse by her older sister. Your program has helped me understand a bit more of the what/why and also how possibly to move into the future.
I am not a therapist but I do work with children and teachers in an inner-city school.
I am a retired rehab specialist and most, if not all of my former clients had some level of trauma. I am a trauma survivor. I used a particular breathwork practice, Transformational Breathwork, to address my early life and multiple trauma history through in depth breath work with facilitation. I became a facilitator myself. I saw the body’s ability to integrate and heal through breath, movement, sound and supportive facilitation. These experiences gave me a window into trauma and helped me rewire my brain and automatic responses to stress. Now I am an herbalist and I am finding a way to weave these things together to work with children from very stressful environments in the inner-city. Coming out of the year of the pandemic has been traumatic for the teachers and students. I am teaching mindfulness to the teachers with the intention of bringing that to the students next year when the teachers have established a daily practice and can embody the presence of mindfulness and exhibit the self-compassion to children. At the same time we are building a perennial tea garden and creating a safe space in each classroom for tea drinking. Tea drinking will be the vehicle to teach SEL skills, herbal action and promote a trust in their personal somatic experience.
I am interested in any research teaching how to teach mindfulness with traumatized youth and meet their needs.
Truly, thank you for making this available to me.
Janet Lawson
Thank you so much. Today I am at a loss for words, I feel I am absorbing and processing still. What I do remember is also, how much I value I found in the third session, somehow my comment did not post. I feel like my body is already applying some of the content. It makes me smile as my mind is just blank and I am wonderiing at the same time how then I am still writing these lines. A little girl laughing and clapping her hands: Inertia! I shake my head and smile even more. – I guess this is a vivid imagery of how envigorating and joyous it will be incorporating this into my work.
Thank you.
I believe that this research gives hope to individuals who feel they can never change or release trauma patterns. It is powerful to have information “at the level of fact.” It makes it easier to allow those receiving treatment to have concrete evidence that in time, with a multidisciplinary approach, healing can (and indeed does) occur.
This training is a MUST to have in my library & I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from all of the leaders here.
I find it powerful that I can now not only tell a client that active re-patterning through movement and body awareness is a proven way to heal, but also refer them to this evidence in research.
As a pastoral counselor, this has me more aware of body movements that can signal a person needs a referral for in-depth therapy. It’s also made me more personally aware of how even lesser trauma experiences can affect me physiologically when I feel helpless or powerless in aiding another.
Grateful for the free series. I’ve purchased others from NICABM but finances don’t allow this one. However I gained a lot so am grateful for your offering this free. I’m glad the gold subscriptions help you distribute such powerful info to those practitioners unable to purchase over the world.
Wonderful training series! What a great content. Can I get research or resourse links of the studies mentioned in these series? Thank you so much!!
Keep up the good work💪😀you are doing great Dr. Ruth!
Always absolutely insightful, refreshing, innovative content and approach! Very thankful for Ruth’s and Team’s GIFTS to humanity.
I find extremely valuable the way Ruth weaves together into a golden fabric the co-creative dynamics among experienced, luminous experts in the field! There’s openness, emergence of the new, synergy, collaborative effort, solution-oriented, wholistic approach in these programs. Through the years, NICABM has impacted my way of being and therefore, also impacted my network system. It has made the world, better!
Although I know a good deal of the theory already, a number of moments shone light on stuck points with current clients, and also gave insight into therapeutic movements that I now see went unfinished with previous clients – largely due to not paying enough attention to the body. My key take-away is to bring extra sensitivity to posture, movement, repetitive language, and to notice the extent to which the visible aligns with or contradicts the inner experience of the client. Warm thanks for the generous sharing of this material – it was beautifully organised.
I wish I had seen this series sooner. Just this last video was so helpful. Looking forward to being able to purchase at some point.
Thank you for sharing. I am not a therapist, but I have done a great deal of work healing my own trauma. I love finding great info like this that helps me continue my journey of emotional wellness.
I host a peer support group for women who experienced incest or other sexual abuse as children or teens. I am a nurse not a therapist and I every much appreciate the programs you present.
One thing I would like to share in regards to yoga practice…followers of Christ understand that yoga is rooted in pagan worship so are not open to this..however there are alternatives that use movement and my guess is they could be used in the same way.
Thanks again for the presentations.
NLP Submodality Shifts are a game-changer. Easy, fast, incredibly effective.
Your program was very useful to me as a person with PTSD. Wish I had been able to catch all of your sessions but the last 2 will help me. I am also going to share the information presented w my therapist. Very useful. Yoga here I come!!!
As I’ve been listening to this I’ve been similtaneously going into some very deep trauma work myself. It has helped me greatly. I will continue with this through tge gold subscription. Thank you🙂
I’ve worked with clients who have survived trauma for a long time. This series was helpful in filling in some information.
I do wish you would incorporate Brainspotting (originally discovered & developed by David Grand, Phd) in the modalities. It helps clients heal in many of the ways your presenters espouse.
I attended all 5 sessions and I can’t thank you enough. I am an MSW student about to graduate in 6 weeks. My programs has great courses in trauma and attachment and neurobio, but this week I feel has really filled in so many pieces and furthered my understanding. What an amazing opportunity to learn from so many experts. I’m going to share this with classmates and colleagues so they can attend in the future.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR PUTTING TOGETHER NEUROBIOLOGY, TALK THERAPY, AND EASTERN PRACTICES WITH SUCH A STRONG PRACTICAL EMPHASIS!
I used to wonder why I have this habit of raising my eyebrows, and I looked some what shocked all the time. Now I know. ^^
Thank you everyone, this has been a very inspirational programme addressing trauma and how to work with it therapeutically.
I really enjoyed this learning thank you so much
So informative today . Lots of new things to try out.
Thank you so much for this great course.
Thank you all so very much for the brilliant information and strategies that were shared in this series. I wish I learned this sooner! Diana
Going to incorporate yoga into the treatment of my PTSD clients. Thank you very much for this information! I learned a lot.
Great series. This has given me a lot to think about. Thanks so much.
Amazing training! So many useful techniques and insights! Brilliant team, thank you