How to Work with Patients Whose Trauma Triggers Problems in Their Current Relationships
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with Stephen Porges, PhD;
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with Stephen Porges, PhD; Terry Real, MSW, LICSW;
Janina Fisher, PhD Richard; Schwartz, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Martha Sweezy, PhD, LICSW; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Deb Dana, LCSW; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Thank you! I will educate people about the protective teenager as well as about the adaptive child. I also learned how to better work with men who are so defended against facing early sexual abuse.
It was also great to Hear how to involve partners in helping traumatized clients. This will be very useful
Thank you so much for the workshops. They were clear and broken in to small enough sections to be able to be absorbed. I appreciated the explanation for body choosing patterned negative relationship. Also plan to discuss parts idea with couple session coming up.Thank you again for the information provided.
I do appreciate the program on trauma. It gave me a new window into my client who deal with codependency. I have several who have experience d trauma and are please/ appease in their relationship. Thank you again. I would love to buy it but am unable to due to income.
Brenda
Although I do not work with couples, all the modules presented have been profoundly valuable.
With much appreciation!
Even though I am not a practitioner, I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about how to overcome the aftereffects of trauma in my own life and how to be a compassionate and supportive friend to those in my circle who have also experienced abuse. Thank you for offering this information; I find it to be so helpful.
Loved the visual of 2 wise people falling in love but unhealed traumas cause wounded child and adaptive adult to interface instead of mature adult parts–helps clients stand back to observe and correct
So appreciate your insight and application thru experience learned. Thank you!
As a 36 year old survivor since about 4+ this was a blessing to attend virtually! Thank you for all you all are doing! Really great information!
I noticed watching the number of times therapists label their clients as “patients”. This pathologizing of humanity is both potentially shaming but creates a real power imbalance in therapeudic relation. The number of times word “compassion” is used to approach these states of suffering is also interesting.
Witnessing oneself as Bessel suggests (what Loch Kelly who teams with Dick Schwartz related to anchoring in Self calls “Open Hearted Awareness) is needed as a capacity both client and therapist need to be successful as human beings in therapy and out.
Well said.
I agree. I have had doctors referring to my practice what they call ‘patients’ and this has bothered me for the same reasons. Sometimes these very doctors, although competent and non-disordered are they themselves have experienced early unresolved trauma. But their lives remain “unseen” and this relates to my research on an unacknowledged trauma and grief (this research will show up if googling my name: Suzette Misrachi).
I agree. I have had doctors referring to my practice what they call ‘patients’ and this has bothered me for the same reasons. Sometimes these very doctors, although competent and non-disordered according to how society perceived them but they themselves have been traumatised. Their lives remain “unseen” and this relates to my research on an unacknowledged trauma and grief (this research will show up if googling my name: Suzette Misrachi).
I noticed the same thing. As though anyone else can be an expert “doctor” on someone?
MASSIVE POWER DIFFERENTIAL
LoL
Hello friends from Nicabm:
As always your teachings have been extraordinary, very clear, precise and practical to use.
I have been am practicing therapy for 40 years and still learn many things from you.
I want to share my experience in a session today with a patient that experiences panic attacks when she enters her home in a beach, this is due to her fear of earhquakes which are very common in the coast and most of which are scary but not life threatening . She wants to sell her home for 8 years now because of that fear which she had not felt before. We worked together and she could go back to her childhood experience when her family had to sell their home that she expected to be always happy and “not move” (her words). She was surprised by the intensity of that feeling even today . I think we might be able to work on the past trauma of a loss . Any suggestions or ideas that might of help to her?? Thank you for your generosity and thanks to Dr. Ruth for her guidance and leadership.
It’s a total relief! This learning experience affirms much of not only what I’ve been doing in private practice, but also reinforces points raised in my research entitled: “Lives unseen: unacknowledged trauma of non-disordered, competent Adult Children Of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness” at The University of Melbourne, Australia. (If people google my name Suzette Misrachi that research should come up). It also touches on short articles I’ve been invited to write on shame, grief, trauma involving children and adults for an e-publication (aimed at psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners) which I then put on medium.com for free for the general public.
The notion of parts and the “adaptive child” is extremely useful. The power of the implicit trauma memory from earlier abusive attachment patterns towards either proximity or survival reactions as mirrored in partner choices is critical as is rupture and repair beautifully captured by Ruth Lanius. I love the way each of the presenters interweave their knowledge — such a rich carpet! Fantastic.
Thank you Ruth and everyone at NICABM. I so wish I could afford to buy the gold package! It’s heartbreaking to think that this is the last of the series. Please try to continue. This work is so important… too important to not be shared with the rest of the world.
With much gratitude,
Suzette Misrachi, Melbourne, Australia.
Thank you, Suzette, for the valuable links. I am newly working with a client who was the parentified caretaker of multiple family members who is reluctant to speak ill of anyone because there were positive interactions as well. It helped to see your reference to unmet needs and helped me to realized, as I intuitively thought, that this person is not even aware they had unmet needs. Thank you for your contribution to this conversation; I’m going to read some of your work.
Lori Daren Rosoff
Yeah, got a lot out of learning about the adaptive self.
i had heard of it, but it became much clearer to me today… Thanks!
Great series, thank you so much for making it available to those of us who work for charities and other low paid or voluntary organisations. The section on child parts I found particularly helpful as I have a new client who yoyos between wounded child, often in tears, and adaptive child, coming out fighting with her family, boss and other “authority figures”, possibly including me. Helpful to think ahead about how to bring her to adult and help the child parts to heal.
Just very VERY grateful for the participation opportunity! those sessions make a difference in my mind, my general perception trigged to exploded. Hopefully it will help me to improve lives of others – students with special needs.
Very interested!
Best regards / admiration,
Regarding Module 5: Trauma Problems in Relationships. I have not done any parts work in couples sessions, only individuals, and even in groups, but I’m excited to bring this in to couples counseling sessions. Hoping it will help them see and learn more about themselves and each other’s wounded child within. Equally important is teaching the couple how protecting themselves was adaptive but is now limiting them.
It’s hard to accept these sessions have ended.
I would love to meet all of you at a future conference.
The work you do is so valuable.
I had one of my off experiences today and found myself looking forward to this evening’s session knowing how soothing it would be to help define the painful feelings I was having.
Heartfelt gratitude for your sessions.
If you only knew how many years I have spent researching for a location that would share the exact information you shared in your past 5 sessions.
I was a dedicated and sincere student learning and understanding everything you were sharing.
Blessings to you as you bless others.
The wounded and adaptive child presences in adult relationships is brilliant, as are the recognitions of proximity and fight/flight as disorganized/paradoxical attachment drivers in relational trauma.
Would love to dive into these more deeply, and to include attach/cry dynamics in the future.
Thank you!
Thank you for this program!
wonderful, thanks
Absolutely wonderful, thank you. The concept of the adaptive child/protective teenager really was an eye opener. I can use this immediately in my own work. Am considering getting the Gold Package.
Thankyou nicamb for this fabulous program
I do feel however your objectives are undermined by aggressive marketing strategies – why on earth would you pressure folk to buy now or pay more later🤷♀️
AGREED.
PRESSURE often triggers / activates a Trauma/ Stress Response.
Exploiting FOMO.
A healthy PAUSE in this case is punished with the ‘threat’ of Paying more later.
Great information that I am using already but I am improving by listening to this video. I have also bought some tapes already
Thank you so much for the specificity and care. For those of us who are working with trauma survivors — and especially those who are also survivors ourselves — this work is essential on every level. Huge respect to all of you!
I am presently working with two women in their 40s who are clearly demonstrating the “adaptive Child quote behaviors. This session was invaluable in the inside that it has given to me and how I will be able to apply it when coaching them. Thank you so much for this phenomenal series.
I have a number of people who are waiting to see the original video “The Wisdom Of Trauma”. When will that be available so that I can share it with them?
Rev. Deanne Hodgson, RN
This was remarkably helpful for just what was seen in my office this week. Love the many strategies evidenced to realize all those in the office who could benefit from my avoided parts work for a variety of reasons. After working with DID, a diagnosis I specially have worked I had always been fearful of expanding on subject even though the EMDR protocol addresses this quite effectively. I like what I see here as an enhanced normalizing of this strategy.
It was nice to hear strategies that can be seen within my couples in treatment plus the individual traumatized clients. Thanks for a well thought out presentation, although very complicated. You managed to bring out new ideas from different participants to help broaden our need to expand protocols.
In this recent complicated group of clients, devastated by recent world changes, we have all been impacted. This collaboration between your presenters is a good reinactment of surfacing societal, childhood dilemmas between couples.
The presenters also enhanced need to stay aware of the trauma individual’s abandonment fears. In writing comments one becomes aware of just how complicated our work had become and we are in gratitude for NICABM for helping in conceptualizing what is needed in trauma work today. Thanks.
Dear team and presenters,
I caught the last module today and thought it very good and helpful.
What a great collection of speakers beautifully moderated..
I am an experienced Physician and General Practitioner in the UK AND PRACTISED BODY/MIND MEDICINE after semi- retirement 21years ago. I instinctively developed the second general practice along bio-psycho-social lines and introduced side by side social prescribing such as art therapy, yoga, counselling and other therapies. We in the practice so needed the therapies such as IFS and the psycho-social educational content you present on this course.
Now 78y with most trauma I feel worked through I see this fine work at the centre of a world that needs healing of the wounds that create acting out, dysfunction and chaos. And ban from public life the functionally immature and dangerous ‘leaders’. One other question is HOW? http://www.drdavidbeales.com. David Beales.
excellent observation
Thank you for putting this collaborative knowledge together and for all your expertise that you are sharing. I´m very appreciative for your free offering of this program. The idea of the adaptive childpart which gets into problems in adult relationships has been an important insight. Thanks
I´m sorry that I do not have the means to participate in the whole program and buy the gold package.
And – I´m very grateful for your work, research, knowledge and input.
Thank you very much
Petra
I am one of the few non-practitioner viewers. My recent life hasn’t aligned for me to view any but this final segment. What I’ve heard coincides with some of the specifics of my life. Thankyou. I’m considering buying. Constance
While watching this Master Trauma Series, I’ve been reading *All Quiet on the Western Front* about the trauma of troops in WWI Germany. Erich Maria Remarque speaks again and again of LYING and using HUMOR in the PRESENT moment to deflect from the trauma and anguish of persistent bashing and humiliation and physical injury and death all around. Trauma is the greatest teacher of survival through hyperawareness or blocking awareness. But all along a pattern gets punched in which keeps us wary, distrusting, and isolated from one another thereafter.
This segment demonstrated the ways people *fake it ’til they make it*….freeze, collapse/submit, please/appease, shame by isolation (I call it avoidance) and offers some methods to become more and more present to one’s partner….and self reflective as well.
Increased awareness of the power of implicit memories and how they can provide insight person’s trauma related behavior.
Such an amazing journey these 5 weeks have been, thank you Ruth and everyone at NICABM. Today’s session was particularly impactful:professionally and personally. I have new strategies for witnessing and responding to the different coping defense mechanisms from others including myself. In witnessing the cyclical “nature of the beast” has been my life’s work. I see new ways to work, re-frame and disrupt. With gratitude, Jacinta
Thank you so much for this wonderful summary program. I am a semi-retired therapist in a very rural area, with limited funds and I very much appreciate the opportunity. It is very timely in helping me identify things I am already doing and new strategies to try. I am an almost 20 year EMDR practitioner, which I have found to facilitate healing, along with body-focused techniques, Thanks again & keep up the good work.
HI MARY i enjoyed the program as well and have been doing a deep dive into all the current trauma healing modalities. what can you tell me about EMDR? thank you cheers
This learning experience has affirmed much of what I have been doing in my Private Practise.It has also added to my toolbox. Having just retired,I can use all this knowledge to make a continued differences as has been advocated, in all my future relationships and endeavors.This was indeed an awesome Presentation.
Thank you.
I found the concept of traumatic attachment so interesting and it rang a bell for one particular client that came to mind..Just to be able to say to the client that they are actually wired to want more attention….that it comes from their original traumatic experience of growing up … and to work wih their critical protective parts that comment on their ‘neediness’….such a rich set of tools .. this will open up so many doors to healing. thank you so much.
the book “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachement…” by Levine and others has greatly helped me understand our attachment system and strategies for healing.
Thank you for sharing this body of important information. I am studying to be a mindfulness teacher and although I clearly recognize that it is not therapy, I can see how meditations on self compassion, loving kindness and letting go, could be helpful for students working with trauma. Of equal value for me, are insights into my own patterns and how I might be able to meet these parts with greater care as well. Again, thank you for all that you put into producing this series. I learned a lot.
Thank you all so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. I have gained much from each of the sessions I’ve attended. Today the special gift was the inspiration to help a client use her defiant 10 y/o self who has enormous power to say “no” to self care, especially medication, as a resource to say “no” to inappropriate requests and demands made on her by anyone and everyone before she tragically burns out. She cry that she can’t say “no” has another side!
I appreciated this session, but I was disappointed that it didn’t address some of the other ways people experience trauma in their adult lives that leaves deep scars on their psychology and has deep impacts on their relationships. For example, someone’s experience of chronic illness, particularly in the United States, or deep abuse by an employer. Trauma is experienced in adulthood. That’s why the rates of PTSD just keep going up in the United States.
YESSS!!!
And then in seeking support & healing, to end up experiencing further re-victimization at the hands of “experts” (psychotherapists / medical “professionals”) who have NEVER done their own healing work with themselves = MULTIPLE TRAUMAS.
Excellent discussion! The practitioners make the work seem very intuitive and natural… be real, listen with your heart, grow yourself and the client forward.
Its good to be reminded of the role of the therapist as a model for rupture repair. It is so tempting for even an experienced therapist to take rupture in the therapeutic relationship personally. I admire Ruth Lanius’s brave exploration of how the person feels about being in her office – and her understanding that a client may even view a therapist as a potential abuser, repeating the trauma of past experiences.
Unfortunately, it happens more often than is recognized. Many people, in seeking support & healing, end up experiencing further re-victimization & trauma at the hands of “experts” (psychotherapists / medical “professionals”) who have NEVER done their own healing work with themselves = MULTIPLE TRAUMAS.
These videos are good. But a couple of things: perhaps therapists find these most targeted to them. But many people suffering from trauma and striving to heal would find the sessions more helpful if they were geared towards the patient rather than therapists. Also, some of the recap of what therapists said seems to miss the nuggets at times. And some very deep issues are only given a short or superficial address. The therapists all seem caring and invaluable. The material is relevant. As a product it might be better if you try to reach the audience of patients rather than of practitioners. And some self help materials are given freely to introduce people, available for a wider expanse of time-so their schedule is accommodated. These are marketing tips. Since business development is my forte’ and you are striving to sell something.
The introduction to thinking about the adaptive child (teenager) as a separate part from the wounded child was interesting and helpful. For me, I see it is often the part that expresses anger and looks outward to blame, when the wounded child has been triggered and feels hurt and shame. I also see another (younger) adaptive child in fawning/appeasing behaviour, and also a much older adaptive part which wears an outwardly confident and bubbly facade. I can see each part has it’s own age and corresponds to main coping strategies used at that time in my life. Thinking about the wounded child, who’s hurt, fear, and attachment needs sits beneath the protective behaviours of various parts will be an interesting consideration when working with the shifts and changes in behaviour that other people present.
Thanks for your comment about other adaptive parts. This hits home and helps me understand my spouse who has all 3.
Thank you very much. So helpful. The strategies demonstrated here will help me move forward with my work with clients. I’m good at recognising the ‘why’s’ this webinar has now given me tips to work through it too and not just sit there with information about it!
The deep presence of the counsellor can unlock the client.
Thans so much for the program that has given me so many ideas to think through and try to work with clients.
Thank you so much for making this series available, it has been very helpful and I think very well done. My biggest takeaway from today is understanding more about how the implicit memory from trauma drives the abusive attachment patterns towards either proximity or survival responses which is mirrored in the choice of partners.
Thank you this, it is so amazing, these tools make it so much more easier. Sensitivity and no assumption is key. To consider the client and check in with them all the time. Staying present Is what i do naturally. Please preserve a spot for me. I will only be able to get the money by the 7th November. I am Maryam Gaffoor-Russon. I have been looking for these breakthrough tools to enhance what i do.
This course seems amazing! I am particularly fond of a few, among which I’d Dr Kelly Wilson but I can’t find any information about him on your website. Is he not part of the course because I’m hoping to hear more of what he has to say if I buy the course?
Thanks!
Thank you so much.
I just discovered your material earlier this year, and I love it! Easy to understand, packed with information, interesting, relevant. Thank you so much!
I just want to thank you for doing this incredible work you do in sharing these invaluable talks. You are assisting me to capacitate myself for my own personal journey and my clients’ healing.
Thank you for this. So good.