How to Work with Emerging Defense Responses to Trauma (Beyond the Fight/Flight/Freeze Model)
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with Pat Ogden, PhD;
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with Pat Ogden, PhD; Stephen Porges, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Janina Fisher, PhD; Kathy Steele, MN, CS; Deb Dana, LCSW; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Please and appease is detrimental in the therapeutic setting and now I know how to help a client to stop needing to do with me.
I as a psychotherapist deeply appreciate and resonate with the knowledge shared by experts and its so application oriented. it has attuned me to finer aspects of counselling. This knowledge will certainly add to the depth and richness to the quality of counselling service I offer. I sincerely thank the organizers for the effort of putting together this masterclass and adding value to practitioners in helping profession. Much as I would like to enroll in the Gold Package, currently in Indian INR terms it is not possible.
I will contribute by helping more and more clients which aligns with your value of making this world a better place.
I was amazed by learning about clients who try to please the therapist, and the dangers of encouraging positive feedback for the therapist and how that is transference from the client to the clinician. As a student therapist with Imposter Syndrome, I have felt myself wanting to hear that I am doing a good job. Now I will check myself to make sure I am not doing that…. more self of the therapist work! Thank you for making this available to everyone… I forwarded the sign up to other interns!
I appreciated the idea of working with boundaries from the 3 different vagal states.
I liked hearing more about the attach/cry for help and how to work with it.
I will keep all of this in my mind when with clients allow looking through this lens to inform my interventions. thank you for this course
Again, fascinating stuff. Some of the language was a bit beyond my level of knowledge, but I have jotted these things down and will use them as steppingstones to improving my knowledge and practice. I was very interested in the ‘please And appease’ section as I personally identify with it as a coping strategy within a childhood domestic violence situation. I can see how it has carried through to my adult life and how at times it has affected my responses during confrontational situations. Once again, excited about tomorrow and grateful for this opportunity to expand my knowledge.
Learnt more about the nervous system and attunement and how to help the client with regulation.
Really loved the part about practicing saying “no” from the dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral and then to move on to practicing saying “yes”. What a really great way to apply the theory in a simple, yet so profound and immediately applicable all day long practice that can help folks of many different ages practice self regulation and embodiment.
This has all been so helpful so far. I’m seeing myself, my family members and my clients in these examples.
Part 1 taught me to slow down and notice what is happening in the client’s body. And to invite them to do micro-movements to bring them to presence.
In Part 2 I recognized a particular client who has dissociated herself from her entire childhood and her whole body has symptoms. I especially need to slow down with her.
Part 3 really resonated with me. I saw one client in Attach/Cry for help, another one in Collapse/submit/shut down and most (if not all) women I know in Please/appease. I was reminded that I need to be well regulated before seeing a client.
Fascinating information. i was trained in hypnosis 30 years ago before the polyvagal system was understood. At the time collapse was known as the Walking Zombie Syndrome. We used the term to help the client understand what had happened and how they were living their life because of their trauma. I like learning about the additional states after f/f/f. This is most helpful. i work in an experiential atmosphere so having the client push or scream, or whatever they need to do to reverse the block that has occurred in their nervous system is powerful. Thanks for this session.
Absolutely great and informative. Thank you from Tallahassee, Florida.
We have one precious hour to absorb so many valuable concepts. I wish there was less time spent on being presented with, “what we’re going to learn in this session” and “what we just heard from the expert”, as well as the infomercial on the Gold Package. We have all been presented with the Gold Package option multiple times in the literature/ads. These things take away from the time we could be hearing more information directly from the expert who is explaining a concept.
Thank you for making this available to “regular” folk as well. I find the sessions to be very dense with information, while still quite easy to follow. Hearing from multiple perspectives and experience is very insightful. Thank you, so much, to all of you who participated. I have come such a long way from the little girl who had entire weeks of memory gaps and no coherent thoughts on who I was or how to live life. I identified strongly with the Collapse and Submit response you covered in this session. Some of the clinical stories helped me understand “internal child voices” that sound terrified and desperate when “I” am not. I am inspired now to ask empathetic questions and be patiently curious instead of just feeling helpless.
Blessings on you all.
I’ve read up on the polyvagal nervous system before, but found this video extremely helpful in terms of identifying how to keep things real when I’m helping someone and trying to keep us both relating honestly with each other in the moment. I’m supporting someone right now who fluctuates through these three responses (attach/cry for help, please/appease, collapse/shut down) as a defense mechanism that makes it hard to reach them to help. While you describe these almost like mutually exclusive traits, can you speak more to the complexities of people who can switch between them all, rather seamlessly? Is it because the trauma is so fresh that they haven’t settled into a set pattern, or that the layers of trauma each required different ways of surviving, so they’ve developed specific responses to each cue? I’d love to learn more, thank you.
This segment was the most helpful so far. I saw things about my work with current and past clients that helped me understand what was happening in our sessions. Can’t do anything about the past–where I missed opportunities or dropped the ball. But I can do better with current clients. Thanks! I’m looking forward to the next two modules.
Rather than share how I will work with this in my practice, I would like to pose a question that arose – regarding for instance, the please/appease state relatively fixed in a parent and how this may, in turn, disrupt the child’s interpersonal and intrapersonal development. Or a parent that cycles through the please/appease – collapse/submit – attach – cry for help and perhaps fight/flight …. how is a child’s development affected by this in how they navigate life and develop themselves? Wonder if there is research on this?
Thanks so much for these teachings ! So helpful!
I see these three responses in my young clients each day. It is helpful to name these response, to hear techniques and ideas other therapists are using, to hear how to work with these trauma responses more effectively and creatively, and to really be present to the importance of maintaining one’s own regulation, safety and well-being to effect best practice.
A big thank you!
The most important learning was how to recognize please and appease response and work with them. How I was missing them as trauma response….
Thank you…
I liked tuning in to my own nervous system as well as the client’s. I will use this.
Enlightening session as usual! Shedding new light on these 3 emerging trauma defense responses which on the surface may seem so benign when encountered in clients (or clients living with someone who has embodied these trauma responses) and which mimics other trauma responses, thus presenting opportunity for much deeper diving into somatic approaches, attachment types, the polyvagal theory and vagal responses. Key take aways–the nervous system does not lie AND cues for the therapist/counselor/coach to recognize when we are becoming dis-regulated in a session with a client experiencing these types of trauma defense responses.
This is incredibly enlightening, both as someone who has suffered deep trauma, and for those I seek to help. It makes me wonder, when I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression and bipolar, whether my symptoms more closely identified with collapse submit response. I shut down completely for 4 years before gradually resurfacing. Anyway, that was fascinating for me. I am so enjoying your teaching and explanations. It makes so much sense, and I am looking to be more aware of these states and my own as I counsel others.
It is good you survived bad diagnosis from people without knowledge and were able to come out of that protective defense adaptation and heal yourself. NICABM and especially Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Stephen Porges and Peter Levine might be especially useful for you to learn from.
I too was startled at learning about the robotic obedience reaction. I have recognized that at certain key moments in my life, but had no idea how to think about it clearly. I must’ve mentioned it in some of my various therapies, but I’m not sure. I will mention it to my current therapist! Thank you.
I am grateful for the clarity in these sessions. However, it seems to me that MOST people I know regularly engage in these behaviors as part of their personas. I think trauma is much more prevalent than 25%.
Bessel van der Kolk said recently it is 100% in the U.S. with the most severely abused and neglected are young teen girls.
Hello,
I am a patient. You’re all amazingly describing my life’s path. You’ve given me explanations for my behavior. Names for my behavior. The missing time has always been troubling. Compartmentalizing my personalities, or erasing myself. The information presented I understand is for professionals.
I am grateful for your presentations.
session 3 “how to work with emerging defense responses to trauma” gives profound clinical insight. It is essential for educated therapists to learn about the various defense responses to be effective in providing clinical treatment where actual professionals can take place. This essential knowledge especially applies to providing treatment for clients who are victims of long-term early childhood torture and abuse. Thank you, NICABM team.
I had a challenging session that left me puzzled, and I wondered after today’s module, Can a patient from a collapse state can enact 2 responses in a session; for example, attach/cry and please/appease…
Thank you for these free webinars, as we are doing what we can in our communities, helping ourselves and helping others who seek our assistance – day to day. Change the world for the better!
As a new therapist, I often work with the somatic and see that trauma responses do not respond to words alone. It was very validating to see that echoed here. I think adding in more experiential body experiences when working with the nervous system is a huge thing I will add to my practice.
If there is a way that we can obtain some ability to write a grant for assistance with the program so we can have the CE credits, that would be incredible! I had misunderstood that they could be obtained for $40 if the live sessions were attended from the way it was laid out. If not, the teaching is definitely worth us all being thankful for. Thank you all for giving so much with this!
Thank you so much for letting us read other individuals’ comments since it really ends up helping solidify what we’ve learned each day!