Sexual Abuse – A Relational & Somatic Approach to Recovery
As a trauma therapist, I work 100% with relational trauma. I would estimate that approximately 90% of cases involve physical or emotional abuse. Half of these cases involve some kind of sexual abuse. Sexual violation ranges from inappropriate patting and touching between siblings and cousins, through to penetrative incest, rape by a family friend or other authority figure like a teacher, through to experiences later in life involving violent rape and gangbanging. I have seen cases at every level of severity.
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How to be a Great Therapist
Being a great therapist has little to do with our training, credentials and fancy techniques. It has more to do with how we engage and cultivate a relationship with, and in service of, our clients.
I choose to write this article from 3 combined perspectives:
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Conversation – an approach to trauma-informed touch therapy
Touch is a wonderful tool and in the case of complex health and trauma, can be incredibly restorative.
Rather than approach touch from any one modality, I like to approach touch from a conceptual perspective. When we look at touch as a conversation, it changes the way that we approach the body and progress through a session. Here are some simple guidelines for navigating the touch conversation with your client
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Shifting to Tele-therapy – Attuning Without Physical Presence
Over recent weeks, many therapists have shifted their practise to tele-therapy. This is in-line with global social distancing directives. Interestingly there is a movement to relabel ‘social distancing’ to ‘physical distancing’. The idea here is that we want to maintain social connection, even when we are physically apart…We can get online and connect as much as we like, but there is no substitute for physical human connection. We simply crave it. So what does this mean in relation to tele-therapy and other online interactions?
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The Trauma Paradox
When considering the crux of the trauma experience, we can suggest in the simplest terms, that unprocessed experience/trauma is a felt-sense of danger that derives from nervous system dysregulation. Again, in the simplest terms, trauma recovery is the return to or discovery of a felt-sense of internal safety; and the ability to keep orientating towards safety over and over again. The qualities of experience (both danger and safety) are specific to the unique individual, but the overarching idea remains the same.
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‘Reaching in’ as a therapeutic imperative for complex health patients with origins of trauma
For many of my patients, their story of trauma is buried so deep inside them that it has never seen the light of day. These patients present to me at our integrated health clinic. Many of them have a complex health or syndromic presentation. And many of them have been doing the rounds of doctors, bodyworkers and therapists for years
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Emotional Homelessness
For many trauma survivors, it is as if there is no safe place for the experience or expression of difficult emotions.
When there has been either a) a disruption to the level of available safety during the formative years, and/or b) a lack of safe attachment to primary care givers, we have to respond accordingly.
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Understanding the Process of Pattern Matching and Distorted Somatic Coupling
The nervous system learns through experience. It is constantly scanning both external and internal environments to make complex assessments and categorise our experience.
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Anxiety
If we consider anxiety from a neurophysiological perspective, in terms of states of vagal arousal, we can start to understand a) what is happening in the client nervous system and b) how to address it.
For clients with anxiety, the experience is very visceral. It is a felt sense that dominates the entire self.
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Craniosacral Attention, Somatic Awareness and Resourcing
When working with trauma clients, we can assume that there is some level of nervous system dysregulation – either a high tone sympathetic base line (fight or flight) or a high tone dorsal base line (freeze/shut down).
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Survivor verses victim mentality as a response to complex trauma
When we experience complex trauma, we move into survival physiology, to do just that… survive. Our bodies are quite wonderful at protecting us.
When we perceive danger, the autonomic nervous system activates into a myriad of nuanced survival responses, but if we classify them into two gross categories, we can recognise that we may either a) fight/flee or b) freeze/shut down. Both of these are protective responses.
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The client who blames
There is a certain kind of trauma client that many practitioners dread to work with… the client who asks for help and then blames the practitioner for undesired outcome.
These clients fall under the gross trauma archetype of ‘victim.’
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