By Victoria Lorient-Faibish MEd, CCC
Holistic Psychotherapist

TRAUMA
TRAUMA
TRAUMA

 Norman Doidge says in
 The Brain that Changes itself
“ The idea that an image from the traumatic past can be frozen in the mind and remain unchanged since the time of the trauma is not unlike what happens to patients who have their wounded limbs put in casts and then develop frozen phantom limbs after amputation…”

Norman Doidge says in
The Brain that Changes itself
“The image of a parent lost in earliest childhood can haunt a child the way a phantom limb does and be experienced as a felt presence that makes unpredictable distressing intrusions.”

 RAGE: the thwarted fight response
 TERROR : the thwarted flee response
 When too much rage and terror person FREEZES

 Peter Levine PhD is a researcher of
Medical and Biological Physics at the University of California.
 He conducted a thirty year study on stress and trauma.
 Author of seminal book: Waking the
Tiger: Healing Trauma

Levine says in Waking The Tiger:
 “When our nervous systems prepare us to meet danger, they shift into highly energized states. If we can discharge this energy while actively and effectively defending against threat, the nervous system will move back toward a normal level of functioning. Our felt sense will feel complete, self satisfied and heroic.
If the threat has not been dealt with successfully, the energy stays in our bodies.”

 The trauma lives in the nervous system, not in the event and needs to be unbound and unwound slowly and consciously
 Trauma becomes stuck and can develop Compulsive Repetition behaviours.
 The brain is trying to resolve or understand the trauma event.

Levine says in Waking The
Tiger:
 “Many compulsive behaviours, whether benign or destructive, may be explained as repeated strategies to resolve frozen energy. Anxiety, insomnia and chronic fatigue are just a few examples of the many possibilities.”

The Trauma Vortex (Cont’d)
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Moving to the Healing Vortex
 To bring about the healing vortex, Levine says that working with imagination and visualization is a very effective way to assist the nervous system in organizing itself when processing trauma. (Doidge concurs)
 When starting to work with the trauma: Important to start at the edge of the trauma, not at the centre.
 Need to turn on the Para-sympathetic nervous system: the relaxation response to facilitate unwinding and resolution of trauma (back to core)

Visualization:
The Key to Trauma Unwinding
 The slower the better: Sensory specific; detailed
 Titration model: Science terminology for
“One drop at a time”
 Allow the brain to muse on sensorial details of the image
 Closed eyes is a wonderful way to easily access the client’s sub-conscious.

 Create visuals in which the client can take “control” of an event
 Allow “Ah Hah!” moments to come from the visuals
 Using the imagination to self regulate and self heal through imagery and journeying, storytelling and memory recreating.

“The Felt Sense”:Beyond The Intelligent
Mind
 The “Felt sense” is tuning into the awareness of the subtle senses, images and body messaging sensations as one turns within for the answers.
 Must contact the “felt sense” in order to communicate with the reptilian brain where the trauma is registered.
 Turning on the Para-sympathetic nervous system: the relaxation response to facilitate unwinding and resolution of trauma
 MELTING of the frozen parts

 Client is brought through a process that goes way beyond the intelligent mind (which is rationalizing and making inaccurate conclusions; bypassing the reptilian brain).
 Process includes: Visualizing finding the power again that was lost; finding resources by using imagery to reclaim power stance in the trauma event.
 Also using the imagination to re do and recreate the outcome of the event. Revisiting all the details and noticing the senses and the images that come forward.

The “Felt Sense” Model versus the
“Catharsis Model”
 By going over the event in a fast and un-careful way, the mind is not distinguishing between the re-living and the actual event thus emitting again and again the biochemicals of trauma. (Levine)
 Catharsis model is too fast, too uncontrolled, too right to the centre of it all. (Levine)
 Need to have it all be more about Observing, Slowing,
Sensing, breathing, visualizing, imagining in order to speak with the reptilian brain (Levine)

Focusing:
Created by Eugene Gendlin
 Eugene Gendlin Author of foundational book called
Focusing.
 Created focusing as a technique in response to his years of research.
 He was a psych. professor at the University of Chicago (1963-
95)
 Conducted experiments over years to see what made the psychotherapy experience successful or not.
 He discovered that the successful outcome depended whether the client was able to connect deeply inside themselves or not.
 Also their success depended on the client being able to stay with the bodily felt sense of an issue not just the intellectual knowing of the issue.

Focusing
 Focusing is tuning into The Felt Sense: paying attention to something inside that is not yet clear but bodily felt and listened to in an empathic way by the client and therapist.
 It is an inner open ended process that speaks in images and metaphors.
 A deep listening to what the body/mind is saying
 When Focusing: sensations are more important than content

 Language of the reptilian brain
 Sensations VS. intense emotion
 Titration: One drop at a time
 Images, dreams: sensations not events

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1. Clearing a space
2. The felt sense
3. Naming
4.
Resonating
5. Asking
6.
Receiving of it all

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RELAX
RELAX

 Choose an issue: allow it to bubble up
 Stand at the edge of it; not at the centre
 “What do you sense in your body when you recall the problem?”
 Slowly sense all of that. Even if it unclear or a murky sense of it all in your body
 Be neutral curious: have no agenda
 Slow it all down. Create space. Breathe.

PEACE
PEACE

 Go back and forth between the images and words and the felt sense
 Check to see if it all matches and feels
“right”
 Get a sense of it all resonating within you.
 If something is missing, follow the felt sense until it all matches.

Calm Journey

 What one word or phrase or image comes up from the felt sense.
 Let the word or phrase or image come from the felt sense.
 Try it on for size. See if it fits.
 When you get the right words or image, there is an easing within usually.

FLOW
Flow

 What is it about this problem/issue that makes me so…?
 What is behind the feeling?
 What is the worst of this?
 What’s it all about?

The path to healing…..

6.
 Welcome the information that came in.
 Take it all in.
 Receive a shift or “Ah hah” that may have occurred
 Breathe. Slowly. Taking it all in.
 Stay neutral curious. Stay away from the inner critic.
 May need to go back to step 2, “The felt Sense” to get more information or this may be a good place to stop and continue at the later time.

UNWINDING

Earth, Survival, Base
1st
BASE OF THE SPINE: FOUNDATION

Water, Emotions,
Money, Creative
2nd
NAVEL ,REPRODUCTIVE, SEXUALITY

Fire, Focus, Power
Confidence
3rd
Solar Plexus

Air, Love, Heart, Grief
Compassion
4 th
Heart, Thymus, Lungs

Ether, Space,
Communication
5th
Throat, Thyroid

Third Eye, Intuition ,
“Felt Sense”
6th
Centre of Brow

At the “Crown” top of the head