Detailed Guide about Trauma-Informed Touch

Touch can be intimidating to many trauma survivors; however, if applied with care, trauma-informed touch therapy proved to be an effective approach to dealing with past traumas and their consequences.

Trauma-informed touch: the basics

Trauma-informed touch therapy can help trauma survivors both overcome their past traumatic experiences and lead them to deal more successfully with current difficulties stemming from the trauma that prevent them from normal functioning. In contrast to trauma-centered therapy, trauma-informed therapy is more focused on effective daily life functioning rather than delving too deeply into past trauma.

Precautions to ensure effective trauma-informed touch therapy

First of all, the relationship between the client and the therapist should be professional and trustworthy. Both parties should set clear but fluid boundaries open to changes as the therapy advances.

Trauma-informed touch therapy shows clients that touch can be empathetic, comforting, reassuring, and soothing, not just violent, harmful, manipulative, exploiting or sexualised.

The therapist should inform the client about what kind of physical contact will be applied. They should explain that clients’ responses to therapy such as breathing changes, crying, twitching, sleep, emotional release are expected and welcome.

At all times, the client should be in control of:

• their body,

• who touches them,

• the kind of touch applied,

• The physical distance from the therapist.

Before the therapy, the client has to either give explicit verbal or somatic consent. If the body braces, that means that it resists touch, there is no somatic consent, and the therapist should wait or start at a different position and/or encourage conversation about the resistance. If the body is neutral, there is no clear consent or resistance, so the therapist should wait for clear signs of consent. Consent is clear when there is somatic resonance in the client’s body – muscle relaxation, changed breath pattern and/or audible exhales, eye-lid fluttering, emotional release; in this case, the therapist is welcome to continue applying the touch.

What does trauma-informed touch therapy look like?

Throughout the session, while applying touch to the client’s body, the therapist should guide the client and either verbally or somatically invite them to relax, ground/release/move body parts, concentrate on particular body areas, and integrate the body with the mind. The therapist monitors the client’s verbal and somatic responses to touch and acts accordingly.

At the end of the session, the client should integrate the therapy holistically (body-mind level), somatically (body level), and verbally.

In conclusion

Although trauma survivors may perceive touch as threatening, trauma-informed touch therapy has proved to be beneficial to overcoming the consequences of trauma. Before and throughout this kind of therapy, the client should always be guided by the therapist, but also in control and informed about what to expect, and the client-therapist relationship should be professional and trustworthy.