Healing Trauma through Somatic Experiencing and Gestalt Therapy

Healing Trauma through Somatic Experiencing and Gestalt

Intervention Strategies

Dr. Bob Witchel, Licensed Psychologist, NCC

Department of Counseling, IUP

Private Practice, Pittsburgh

2014 PA Counseling Association Conference

“TOGETHER: Empowerment through Collaboration”

November 8, 2014

• Develop a basic understanding of Somatic Experiencing®, a short-term approach to healing trauma, and the use of Gestalt Therapy in trauma resolution.

Workshop Objectives

• Examine the dynamics of how the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) prepares to meet a threat with orienting, flight, fight, and freeze responses, and after the threat is passed or survived, the ANS may not return to a normal, balanced state, often resulting in trauma.

Workshop Objectives

• Identify the value of a counseling process that includes,(a) review-ing the events surrounding the incident, resulting in trauma and, (b) working with a person’s body by focusing on (re)developing body awareness, body acceptance and body integrity.

Workshop Objectives

Do you believe:

• frightening or life threatening situations “cause” trauma.

or

• trauma results from a highly activated incomplete body response to threat.

Franklin Regional H.S.

Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine) is based on the observation that animals in the wild, though routinely threatened, are rarely traumatized.

Animals know how to regulate and discharge the high levels of energy arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. Animals have a built-in ''immunity'' to trauma enabling them to return to normal after a highly ''charged'‘ life-threatening experience.

Although humans are born with virtually the same regulatory mechanisms as animals, the function of these instinctive systems is often overridden or inhibited by, among other things, the ''rational'' portion of our brains.

“Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself. They arise when residual energy from the experience is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds.” Peter Levine, PhD

Katrina - Immobilization Flight – From WTC

The brain of the traumatized person continues to respond as if the person is still in the life threatening event.

Somatic Experiencing breaks the conditioned behavior and symptoms of ANS activation.

Case Example

Organismic self-regulation

I regulate myself according to needs

that arise from my natural

functioning –

sleep when I feel sleepy

eat when I’m hungry

bathroom when bladder is full

defend myself when under attack

Self-regulation can be interfered with

by upbringing, schooling, social forces,

and environments that are hostile or

offer limited support –

feel sleepy but can’t sleep; have to

pay attention in school

feel hungry but family makes intrusive

comments about my eating habits

need to go to bathroom but I believe

boss will get angry if I leave

meeting

brought up to believe all physical

violence is unacceptable

Gestalt Therapy Basics

Gestalt therapy actively supports a return to

organismic self-regulation by identifying and exploring

the shoulds and should nots that you’ve learned, and

how they disrupt organismic self-regulation

(we are born with).

Gestalt Therapy Basics

When organismic self-regulation is disrupted

Gestalt Therapy Basics

Anxiety

(a signal from the body that something is WRONG)

Mental Health Professionals and Others (including self, family, friends)

too often interrupt the Anxiety (with drugs, forced relaxation)

Increased Anxiety

Gestalt Therapy Basics

• Change occurs when you become more fully

what you are (anxious), NOT when you try to

become what you are not (cover-up anxiety)

• Change does not occur through force or

pressure but through abandoning what you

would like to become and through being more

fully invested in who and what you are

BE THE ANXIETY!

WHAT WOULD IT SAY IF IT HAD A VOICE?

The Paradoxical Theory of Change, Arnold Beisser, M.D.

Through awareness of and experimenting with bodily sensations,

feelings, desires, and assumptions, the person’s range of choices

about how they live their lives, especially how they engage others and

themselves, will be enhanced.

Event or threat

Fight,

flight, or

freeze

Focus on the client’s “here and now”

Increase awareness of what client is experiencing and doing now

Promote direct experiencing rather than the abstractness of talking

about situations

Rather than talk about a childhood trauma the client is encouraged to

become the hurt child

Gestalt Therapy Basics

Remember the threatening experience; who was there? What happened?

Notice where you go to recover from the threatening experience (your

bedroom?);did you tell anyone? Then I want you (at the age you are today) to

visit yourself in that place you went to recover from the threat; have a

conversation, support your younger self to express feelings about what

happened. (Music)

An Experience

Recall a memory from your childhood or teen years

when you felt threatened; Close your eyes

The Truth About Our Childhood

The truth about childhood is stored up in our body, and lives in the depth of our soul;

Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings can be numbed and manipulated,our perceptions shamed and confused, our body tricked with medication

But our soul never forgetsBecause we are one; one whole soul and one whole body.

Someday our body will present its billThe wounded and lost child is only in hiding;

Ultimately, our deepest self will accept no compromise or excuses; it will not stop fermenting or contaminating us until we stop evading the truth.

(Posted on a bulletin board of the First Nation center, Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada); Moose Factory is the site of the oldest(1673)English settlement in Ontario and home of the Moose Cree First Nation.