Into the fear-factory: connecting with the traumatic core

Abstract

This paper describes the person-centered/experiential psychotherapy of Emily, a traumatized, dissociated adolescent. This focusing-oriented therapy is based on the assumption that trauma once struck straight into the body, and that it should be processed in the same bodily way that it came in. Dissociative clients generate a defensive, foggy state on top of the fear that has been triggered by a frightening experience. The "embattled person in there" is caught in a split that needs therapeutic assistance. During the first phases of therapy, when the client cannot bear undistorted reality, reconstitution of experiencing can be initiated by experiential body-mapping, a pre-verbal method of investigation that does not address explicitly to traumatic content. Dissociative phenomena will be described, as well as the approaches that I propose they demand. In Emily's case they sustained courage to reconnect and led to the processing of trauma.

Focusing manner and posttraumatic growth

“…Focusing involves six steps which are: clearing a space, felt sense, a handle, resonating, asking and receiving. The steps can be adjusted to the specifics of working with posttraumatic stress (Coffeng, 2004;Scharwachter, 2005;Santen, 2014) and destructive patterns of behaviour underlaid by trauma (Gunst & Vanhooren, 2017). Rappaport (2010) supports her trauma therapy work with focusing practice combined with tools provided by expressive arts.…”

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“…Zudem wurde über höhere Raten klinisch signifikanter Veränderungen bei der IC und eine niedrigere Fluktuationsrate bei EE (7 % vs. 20 %) berichtet. Santen (2014) stellte in einer Einzelfallstudie detailliert die Therapie einer traumatisierten, dissoziierten jugendlichen Klientin vor, die insgesamt 90 Stunden umfasste und zwei Jahre und neun Monate dauerte. Dabei wurde angenommen, dass ein Trauma unmittelbar den Körper trifft und es daher auf dem gleichen körperlichen Weg behandelt werden sollte.…”

Breathing Scarf: Using a First-Person Research Method to Design a Wearable for Emotional Regulation

“…The Inside-Out Probe workbook (which included a non-judgmental stream of consciousness writing, written questions, and body mapping) was of interest to our research due to the accessibility of potentially using a similar method to collect daily lived experience data. Originally developed for healthcare treatment and assessment, body maps give users an outline of the body where they can sketch or write any notes about bodily experiences during a specific experience [21,25,73,79,90,91]. In HCI, body maps are becoming popular in somatic research and soma design, especially in the design of wearable technology to understand lived bodily experiences.…”