How Does Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) Work?

In the past, I have described Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) in two prior articles:

What is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy and How Does It Heal - Part 1

What is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy and How Does It Heal - Part 2

How Does AEDP Work?

In the current article, I'm focusing on how AEDP works and going into more detail.

AEDP to Overcome Unresolved Trauma

AEDP is a therapeutic modality that focuses on helping clients to process and transform traumatic experiences in a safe and supportive environment (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective to Overcome Trauma Than Regular Talk Therapy).

Here are some of the basics about how AEDP works:

• Building a Secure Therapeutic Relationship: An essential part of AEDP is developing a strong, trusting bond between the client and the therapist. The therapist becomes a secure base for emotional exploration and healing by providing empathy, validation and emotional support so that the client feels safe enough to share vulnerable feelings.

AEDP to Overcome Unresolved Trauma

• Helping Clients to Identify, Connect With and Process Core Emotions: Rather than just talking about emotions in an intellectual way, AEDP focuses on experiencing and processing emotions in the here-and-now with the therapist. This involves becoming aware and processing suppressed emotions related to traumatic experiences. 

• Working Through Defensive Mechanisms That No Longer Work: Clients learn to recognize, understand and modify defense mechanisms that might have served them as part of their survival strategy earlier in life but no longer work for them now.

AEDP to Overcome Unresolved Trauma

• Accessing Transformational Affects: AEDP helps clients to access positive emotions, like joy, love and compassion, which can empower clients to heal unresolved trauma and make positive changes (see my article: How Glimmers Give You a Sense of Ease, Safety and Joy).

• Metaprocessing: This involves reflecting on the therapeutic process including the client's emotional experiences in AEDP therapy, the therapist's interventions and the therapeutic alliance between the client and therapist. This helps clients to develop insight into their emotional patterns and how they apply them to other relationships.

What Experiential Techniques Does AEDP Use?

AEDP's experiential techniques include:

• Mind-Body Focused Techniques: An AEDP therapist helps the client to become aware of bodily sensations and how these sensations relate to their emotional experiences (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

• Guided Imagery and Visualization: An AEDP therapist helps clients to process emotions with guided imagery and visualization exercises.

• Role Playing and Other Interactive Exercises: The therapist helps clients to practice new emotional responses and behaviors in a safe therapeutic environment.

How Does AEDP Help Clients to Have Transformational Experiences?

• Developing Greater Emotional Awareness and Emotional Regulation: Clients learn to identify, manage and regulate their emotions more effectively.

• Strengthening a Sense of Self and Building Resilience: When clients process difficult  emotions related to trauma, they develop a greater sense of self acceptance and capacity to cope with challenges.

• Creating More Fulfilling Relationships: By addressing attachment wounds and developing healthier emotional patterns, clients can develop secure and more fulfilling relationships.

Conclusion

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is a dynamic and experiential approach which facilitates deep emotional healing by creating a safe therapeutic space for clients to explore, process and transform unresolved trauma and current emotional challenges.

Getting Help in AEDP Therapy

If you have been struggling on your own to overcome unresolved trauma, you could benefit from working with an AEDP therapist.

Getting Help in AEDP Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help in AEDP therapy so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Riding the Waves From Trauma to Transformation

What's the Difference Between "Bottom Up" and "Top Down" Approaches to Trauma Therapy?

How Does Parts Work Therapy Like IFS and Ego States Therapy Help You to Understand Yourself?

The current article discusses how Parts Work Therapy, including IFS (Internal Family Systems) and Ego States Therapy, can help you to understand yourself.

What is Parts Work Therapy?

Let's start with the basics about Parts Work.

Parts Work Therapy

Parts Work Therapy is a type of Experiential Therapy which incorporates the mind-body connection.

Parts Work Therapy is a general term that encompasses different types of therapy including IFS and Ego State Therapy.

Ego States Therapy was developed by John Watkins, Ph.D and Helen Watkins M.A. in the 1970s to treat traumatized clients. Ego States Therapy combines elements of psychodynamic psychotherapy and hypnotherapy to look at various parts of a client's personality.  The Watkins developed Ego States Therapy to work with traumatized clients.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy was developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s.  Similar to Ego States Therapy, IFS also looks at various aspects of a client's personality. Schwartz, who is a family therapist, began to notice patterns in his work as a family therapist, including certain alliances and conflicts between family members, which were similar to various parts of an individual client's personality. Similar to Ego States Therapy, IFS was developed to work with traumatized clients.

How Does Parts Work Therapy Work?

Regardless of whether a psychotherapist uses Ego States Therapy or IFS, she uses Parts Work to explore the various aspects of a client's personality.

Parts Work Therapy

IFS and Ego States Therapy practitioners believe that everyone is made up of various personality subparts that might be in conflict with each other or might be aligned (similar to individual family members who might be either aligned or in conflict with each other).

Each of these parts has their own individual perspectives, beliefs, thoughts and feelings. 

These parts are often unconscious, which makes it difficult to work with on your own before you're familiar with Parts Work.

The goal of Parts Work Therapy is to identify the various parts related to the client's presenting problem, engage with each part compassionately, resolve conflicts between parts and integrate the various parts so they work together in a healthy way.

Example of Parts Work Therapy   

The Client's Presenting Problem:

The following example,which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information omitted, is a simplified illustration of Parts Work Therapy:

Joe's presenting problem is that he feels scared and conflicted about whether to take a new job.  

Part of him would like to take the new job offer because he would make more money and he would advance in his career. But another part of him is afraid he will fail if he takes the new job.

Parts Work Therapy

The Parts Work therapist's job is to help the client to explore and identify the various parts involved in the presenting problem.

There can be many different types of parts and combinations of parts involved in any given presenting problem.  This example represents a simplified illustration where there are three parts involved (in many cases, there are more than three parts).

Using Parts Work Therapy,  Joe and his therapist identify three parts of himself that create his inner conflict:

• A Younger Child Part:  A six or seven years old frightened child part

• An Inner Critic Part: A part that developed around the age of seven that internalized the clients' critical parents

• A Caretaker Part: A part that developed in the client's early teens who has a compassionate attitude towards the client

Joe discovers that the younger child part of himself is frightened to make a change. He also realizes that this is the part that tends to get frightened whenever he is considering making a change.

He also discovers that the inner critic part is adding to the younger child part's fear by engaging in negative talk like, "You're not good enough to take this other job. You're better off sticking with the job you know, even though you're making less money, because if you take the new job, you're going to fail. Stick with what's familiar so you're safe."

Joe recognizes that this inner critic part, which integrated his critical parents, also developed early in his childhood. 

His Parts Work therapist helps Joe to see that, even though this part comes across as critical, it also has "good intentions" because it's trying to protect Joe from the possibility of failure.  

Joe identifies the caretaker part of himself which developed during his teenage years when he had to fend for himself most of the time because his parents were preoccupied with their own problems. Since he couldn't rely on them to help him, he had to develop (on an unconscious level) this caretaker part to help him through difficult situations.

Joe discovered in Parts Work Therapy that the caretaker part integrated aspects of several important people in his life including his high school basketball coach and his English teacher.

Joe's Parts Work therapist helped Joe to have a dialog with each of these parts so he could understand them better. Then, his therapist helped to facilitate a discussion among the three parts so he could understand their dynamic together and how their ongoing dialog created inner conflict for him.

Through these discussions, Joe's Parts Work therapist helped Joe to befriend and speak compassionately to his inner critic. 

He let the inner critic part know that he understood the inner critic's primary goal was to protect Joe from failure and disappointment. However, he needed the inner critic to step aside temporarily so he could make a decision about the new job offer.

In his dialog with the inner critic, Joe assured the part that he wasn't getting rid of him--he was merely asking him to take a back seat temporarily. 

In saying this, Joe recognized that there were aspects of this critical part that could be useful (without the criticism) to help him in the future. 

Parts Work Therapy

For instance, the inner critic part tended to be careful and cautious. If that part could be softened so it was no longer critical, it could be valuable in another situation that was risky. However, in the current presenting problem, Joe knew objectively that he would most likely succeed in the new job--he just didn't feel that way because of the conflict between the parts.

Once the inner critic part had a chance to be heard, it was willing to step aside, as many parts are often willing to do when asked to do so. That allowed the caretaker part to soothe the younger child part so that Joe no longer felt conflicted about his decision.

How Parts Work Therapy Like IFS and Ego States Therapy Help You to Understand Yourself

The example above, which is a simplified version of this type of therapy, illustrates how Parts Work Therapy can help you.

The client identified the presenting problem. Then, the Parts Work therapist helped the client to identify the various aspects of himself that were involved with the problem.

If the same client presented with a different problem, he might identify a different set of parts.

Parts Work Therapy Can Be Done Online

Once the parts were identified, the client discovered how each part functioned individually as well as how they interact with each other. He also realized how a certain part, the inner critic, was getting in the way.  

At the same time, he realized that no part is bad and no part is meant to be discarded or gotten rid of because every part has good intentions, even though they might be going about things in a distorted way. The problematic part just needs to be worked with so it can function in a healthy way.

Once Joe was able to ask the inner critic to step away, he was freed up to allow the caretaker part to nurture the frightened child part so that Joe could make the decision that he objectively knew was best for him.

Once Joe's dilemma was resolved, he could choose to end therapy or he could remain to deal with the underlying trauma that created aspects of these parts. It would be his choice.

There is more to Parts Work Therapy than can be presented in a blog article, but I hope this gives you an idea of how it works.

Conclusion

Parts Work Therapy recognizes that everyone is made up of many aspects.

Various parts work might together in a harmonious way while other conflicting parts need to be identified and worked with for the well-being of the client.

Parts Work Therapy

There are no bad parts.

As in the example above, there might be parts that need to temporarily step aside to work through the presenting problem. Sometimes this is easier said than done, especially with recalcitrant parts that are attempting to protect the client but who function in skewed way.

In the simplified example above, for the sake of explaining Parts Work Therapy, there was only one part that needed to step aside, but in many cases there might be many parts.  

Sometimes there are several parts and they function in a blended way so that each one needs to be identified separately, determine how they function together and how they might be in conflict with other parts.

Parts Work usually isn't accomplished in just one or two sessions. Depending upon the client, the presenting problem and the parts involved, it could take months or longer.

Parts Work Therapy can be used in combination with any other type of therapy, including psychodynamic therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, AEDP, hypnotherapy and other modalities.

As previously mentioned, Parts Work Therapy, both Ego States Therapy and IFS, was developed for trauma, but it can be used for any problem.

An important aspect of Parts Work Therapy is that, once a client becomes attuned to their parts, they can do aspects of the work on their own.  

I have had many clients who became adept at identifying their parts and having dialogs with these parts, including asking a particular part to step aside temporarily.

Getting Help in Parts Work Therapy

If you have been unable to work through problems on your own, you could benefit from getting help from a Parts Work therapist.

Parts Work Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who does Parts work so you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work/Ego States/IFS, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I have over 20 years of experience helping individual adults and couples to resolve their problems.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

See my other articles about Parts Work Therapy:

How Parts Work Therapy Can Be Empowering

How Parts Work Can Help You to Be More Creative

Understanding the Different Aspects of Yourself That Make You Who You Are

Is an Unconscious Part of You Running Your Life?

Discovering and Giving Voice to Different Parts of Yourself

 

Why is Past Trauma Affecting You Now?

One of the questions that I often hear from clients in my New York City psychotherapy private practice is, "Why is trauma from a long time ago still affecting me now?" (see my article: Reacting to the Present Based on Your Traumatic Past).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Before discussing why past psychological trauma can still impact you now, let's first discuss the possible physical and emotional effects of unresolved trauma.

Possible Physical Effects of Unresolved Trauma

• Headaches
• Aches and pains throughout the body
• Tiredness
• Sweating
• Changes in appetite 
• Difficulty managing stress
• Sleep problems
• Memory problems
• Dizziness
• Changes in vision
• Long term health problems
• Fight response
• Fawn response
  
• Flight response
• Freeze response
  
• Substance Misuse and other addictive and compulsive behavior (e.g, gambling overspending, etc)

Possible Emotional Effects of Unresolved Trauma

• Anger/irritability
• Emotional numbing (an inability to feel strong emotions)
• Sadness and Grief
• Worrying
  
• Confusion
• Problems with knowing what you want
• Shame
  
• Fear
• Panic
  
• Hypervigilance: Being very alert to your surroundings because you fear something is going to happen
• A loss of a sense of who you are
• Flashbacks triggered by current situations
• Hypersensitivity to the comments and behavior of well-meaning people who are close to you

What Are Possible Day-to-Day Responses to Unresolved Trauma?

Unresolved trauma can impact your day-to-day living in terms of:

• Taking care of yourself
• Difficulty trusting others even when you have no objective reason to mistrust these particular people
• Difficulty maintaining romantic relationships, friendships and familial relationships
• Difficulty in school and college
• Difficulty setting goals
• Difficulty maintaining a job and getting along with managers and colleagues
• Difficulty making decisions
  
• Lack of motivation
• Difficulty with change
• Difficulty with how to manage free time 

Why Does Trauma That Happened a Long Time Ago Affect You Now?

Unresolved trauma remains stored in your mind and body.  

Regardless of when the trauma originally occurred, the impact can last for years if the trauma remains unresolved and untreated.

Everyone experiences unresolved trauma in their own way and symptoms can change over time.

You might not experience a noticeable impact of the trauma until it gets triggered later in life and, at that point, you might not understand what you're reacting to when you experience symptoms.

Even if the trauma occurred decades ago and the current situation doesn't appear to be related to what happened in the past, you could experience emotional and/or physical symptoms now based on what happened in the past (see Example #3 below).

Examples

#1. As a child, you grew up in a household where your parents would often have loud arguments at night which made you feel scared. As an adult, you live next door to a couple who has loud arguments and you feel scared because your neighbors are triggering your earlier experience.

#2. You were traumatized during combat by a nearby explosion and after you leave the military, you react physically and/or emotionally when a car backfires near you.

#3. When you were a child, you were in a situation where you were scared and helpless and then, as an adult, you're in a plane where there's a lot of turbulence which triggers your childhood feelings of fear and helplessness.

    

    Note: In Example #3 the two situations are different, but what gets triggered, fear and helplessness, is the same.

There are many other obvious as well as subtle triggers that can impact you long after the original trauma occurred.

Shock Trauma vs Developmental Trauma

Psychological trauma is usually categorized as either a one-time trauma, also known as a shock trauma, or developmental trauma, also known as childhood trauma.

Shock trauma tends to be incidents that occur once, such as a tornado, a car accident, a robbery, and so on (see my article: Understanding Shock Trauma)

Developmental trauma, which is trauma that tends to be ongoing during childhood (see my article: How Developmental Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself).

Developmental trauma usually tends to be of a more serious nature because it's ongoing.  However, a shock trauma can also trigger symptoms related to developmental trauma.

For instance, if a person is beaten up and robbed, which is a one-time trauma, that one-time incident can trigger symptoms related to being physically and emotionally abused as a child.

So, even when it appears that there aren't layers of trauma involved with a one-time incident, a trauma therapist needs to explore whether there are underlying traumas that are getting triggered, similar to Example #3 above.

Intergenerational Trauma

In addition, psychological trauma can get unconsciously passed on from one generation to the next (see my article:  What is Intergenerational Trauma?).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Unresolved trauma can get worked through in trauma therapy (see my article: What is Trauma Therapy?).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

There are now many different types of trauma therapy, such as:

EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

Somatic Experiencing

And other modalities that were developed specifically for trauma that can help you to work through trauma (see my article: Why Experiential (Mind-Body Oriented) Therapy is More Effective Than Regular Talk Therapy).

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.

Once you have worked through your trauma, you can live a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

With over 25 years of experience as a trauma therapist, one of my specialties is helping clients to work through unresolved trauma.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW.- NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

In a prior article, Becoming Aware of Emotional Triggers, I began a discussion about how to become aware of emotional triggers. 

Coping with Emotional Triggers

In the current article, I'm focusing on tips for coping with emotional triggers.

What Are Emotional Triggers?

A trigger is a person, place, thing or situation that causes an unexpected intense emotional reaction that is rooted in the past.  

For people, who have unresolved trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a trigger can lead to their re-experiencing the past trauma as if it were occurring in the present (see my article: Overcoming Emotional Trauma: Learning to Separate "Then" From "Now").

Coping with Emotional Triggers

Any type of sensory stimulus, including what you see, hear, smell, touch or taste, can be a potential trigger.  

The sensory stimulus you experience, which is usually a non-threatening experience in the present, can trigger an trauma response including:

• Fight: The fight response is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system which is part of the autonomic nervous system. You can feel angry, irritable and even rageful. You can experience increased heart rate and heavier breathing as part of your survival instinct to to protect yourself from danger. If you were experiencing a real danger in the present, the fight response would be essential to protect yourself from a dangerous predator. But when you're experiencing an emotional trigger, you're usually not experiencing a threatening situation in the present.  Instead, you're reacting to memories of unresolved trauma as if it were occuring in the present.

Coping with Emotional Triggers

• Flight: In the flight response, you want to flee to avoid perceived danger. The flight response is also controlled by the sympathetic nervous system but, unlike the fight response, the driving emotion is fear (instead of anger) along with the possibility of worry and anxiety. In some particularly intense situations, you might experience terror.  

• Freeze/Immobilization: The freeze response is a combination of the sympathetic nervous system and dorsal vagal activation (dorsal vagal activation is part of the vagus nerve and responds to danger). Fear is the driving emotion with the freeze/immobilization response but, as opposed to the flight response, the desire to run is overtaken by a sense of immobilization. Outwardly, you might appear calm to others because the freeze response often includes emotional numbing, but internally your experience is fear.

• Fawn: With the fawn response, you're trying to avoid a confrontation as you enter into a dorsal vagal shutdown (related to the vagus nerve). You feel overwhelmed and this can  cause absent-mindedness, dissociation or depersonalization (depersonalization is feeling detached from your body). Overwhelming feelings can lead to a sense of helplessness or hopelessness. In a severe case, you might even pass out or lose consciousness. The fawn response is also referred to as the "please and appease" response (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response).

What Are Common Emotional Triggers?

Common emotional triggers include but are not limited to:

• Past Trauma:Traumatic events or situations from the past can be one-time events like an accident or physical attack or they might have been ongoing events, like developmental trauma from childhood or complex trauma, including abuse or emotional neglect.

• Painful Negative Memories: Painful negative memories can include memories associated with disappointment, fear, failure and shame and guilt, to name just a few. When you experience a similar situation in the present, these memories can get triggered--even if you don't consciously remember them. In other words, there can be explicit memories that you remember and there can be unconscious memories outside your immediate awareness.

Painful Negative Memories

• Fear and Phobias: Fear can be an emotional trigger. Fear can trigger strong emotional and physical reactions.  Similarly, phobias, such as fear of flying or fear of heights, can also act as triggers.

• Stressful Situations: Stressful situations can trigger anxiety and stress.  Examples of stressful situations can include personal or work-related stressors. 

• Relationship Problems: Current interactions with certain people can trigger intense emotions including sadness, anger or frustration related to the past.

• Loss or Grief: Certain anniversaries, such as the anniversary of the death of a loved one, can be an emotional trigger for sadness and feelings of loss. 

• Major Life Changes: Major life changes, even positive ones, can elicit anxiety and stress as well as emotional triggers. This can include moving, changing jobs, getting married, getting divorced, giving birth, health issues and so on (see my article: Navigating Major Life Transitions).

8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

Just a word about coping versus overcoming triggers: Coping with emotional triggers is important to your day-to-day living, but overcoming emotional triggers requires working with a trauma therapist who can help you to work through the underlying issues related to your triggers so you don't continue to get triggered (more about this later on in this article).

Until you can get help to resolve these underlying issues, you can learn to cope with triggers when they occur.

Here are 8 tips for coping with triggers that can be helpful:

• 1. Learn to Identify Physical Symptoms Associated With an Emotional Trigger: Since your mind and your body are connected, every emotional trigger has at least one  accompanying physical symptom. By recognizing and identifying the physical symptoms, you can respond with self care instead of reacting in a way that keeps you stuck or activates you even more. Physical symptoms can include but are not limited to:

• Heart racing
• Heavy breathing 
• Difficulty breathing
• Pain or muscle soreness in your neck, back, stomach or other parts of your body
• Sweating
• Dizziness
• Crying
• Other physical reactions

• 2. Learn to Pause: By learning to pause when you can recognize when you're getting triggered, you're taking a break to allow yourself to respond instead of react to the trigger. Pausing also allows you to use various coping strategies. Pausing is a skill that takes practice because triggers occur in a fraction of a second and it takes practice to be aware of the need to take a break while the trigger is occurring. So, until you learn to pause, practice patience and self compassion.

Coping With Emotional Triggers

• 3. Learn to Develop Healthy Coping Skills: Once you have paused, you can learn to use healthy coping strategies, including breathing exercises and grounding exercises to slow down and to calm your mind and your body instead (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: Calming the Mind and Calming the Body). 

• 4. Acknowledge Your Emotions: Once you have calmed yourself, acknowledge your emotions--no matter what they are. You might be tempted to suppress your emotions because they feel so uncomfortable, but being aware and acknowledging your emotions is an important part of your healing. When you suppress emotions, they come back even stronger.

• 5. Keep a Journal: Write about your emotions in a journal. Journal writing can help to calm you. It can also help you to detect certain emotional and physical patterns when you get triggered.

Journal Writing to Cope With Emotional Triggers

• 6. Establish Healthy Boundaries: People who have experienced significant trauma often have a hard time establishing healthy boundaries with others. This is often because they experienced boundary violations when they were younger. It's important to your sense of well-being to be able to say no when you need to take care of yourself. In addition to being able to respond assertively to reduce the likelihood of getting triggered, it's also important for you to be able to express your emotional needs to people in your life who are supportive (see my article: Setting Healthy Boundaries).

• 7. Develop a Strong Emotional Support System: Supportive loved ones can provide empathy and give you a different perspective on your situation. Talking to supportive loved ones can also help reduce feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and isolation.

Coping With Emotional Triggers 

• 8. Seek Help From a Skilled Trauma Therapist: As mentioned earlier, you can learn to cope with triggers as they arise, but to overcome the underlying traumatic issues related to the triggers, seek help from a skilled trauma therapist. Trauma therapy is a broad category for different types of mind-body oriented psychotherapy, which is also known as Experiential Therapy including:

• EMDR Therapy
  
• 
  
• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
• 
  
• Somatic Experiencing
  
• 
  
• Parts Work/Ego States Therapy
  
• 
  
• Hypnotherapy (also known as Clinical Hypnosis)

What Are the Benefits of Getting Help From a Trauma Therapist?

A trauma therapist is a licensed mental health professional who has training, expertise and experience in various forms of trauma therapy. 

Unlike therapists who are generalists, trauma therapists are specialists who have gone beyond the basic mental health training to learn specific forms of trauma therapy (as mentioned above).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy is different from most forms of talk therapy because it uses specific techniques and strategies to help clients to overcome trauma.  

As a trauma therapist, as a first step, I prepare clients for trauma therapy by helping them to develop the necessary internal resources to cope with whatever comes up during the therapy session or  between sessions (see my article: Developing Internal Resources and Coping Strategies in Trauma Therapy).

As memories are processed in trauma therapy, the client can experience a reduction and, eventually, an elimination of emotional triggers related to trauma.

If you're experiencing emotional triggers, you could benefit from seeking help from a trauma therapist to overcome unresolved trauma and live a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, trauma therapist (using EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, Ego States Therapy/Parks Work and Clinical Hypnosis), couples therapist and sex therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

The Mind-Body Connection: What is Somatic Awareness?

Somatic awareness is a focused attention and interpretation of the sensations, emotions and physiological states of the body.

Somatic Awareness and the Mind-Body Connection

Somatic awareness is essential to understanding the mind-body connection, especially in Experiential Therapies like: 

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Somatic Experiencing

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Ego States Therapy

as well as other mind-body oriented therapy modalities.

What Are the Benefits of Somatic Awareness?

Being able to identify what is going in terms of the connection between what's happening between the mind and the body can help you to understand what you're experiencing in a more integrated way.

How is Somatic Awareness Used in Trauma Therapy?

Somatic awareness can also help you to recognize how trauma gets stuck in your nervous system when you're doing trauma therapy.

For instance, a trauma therapist will often ask the client to slow down to become aware of their emotions and where they feel these emotions in the body.  

This provides a deeper understanding of the client's experience for the client and the therapist.

What Are Techniques Used in Trauma Therapy to Help Clients Develop Somatic Awareness?

Here are some of the techniques that trauma therapists use during trauma therapy:

• Grounding: This technique helps clients to stay in the present moment, which is helpful when doing trauma therapy. There are many different types of grounding techniques:

• Feeling your feet on the floor

• Bringing awareness to other parts of your body

• Running water over your hand

• Tensing and relaxing your hands

• Visualizations: Visualizations help clients to calm themselves by picturing soothing images.  For instance, clients can focus on a safe or relaxing place to help them to regulate their emotions. The place can be either real or imagined. So, a client can picture a place where they have been in the past, like a beach.  They can also imagine a place they create in their mind.  As they're experiencing the calming effects of the visualization, they notice where they feel this sense of calmness in their body as well as the emotions it brings up for them (see my article: Using Your Imagination as a Powerful Tool For Change).

• Body Scans: The Body Scan Meditation is a technique where clients slowly sense into their body starting from the crown of their head down to the tips of their toes to sense what sensations they're experiencing. This meditation helps clients to regulate their internal state.

• Breath Work: There are many different types of breathing exercises, like Square Breathing, which help increase clients' awareness of their emotions, physiological state and sensations in their body.

Conclusion

Somatic awareness is essential to understanding the mind-body connection.  

It is also an important part of Experiential Therapy for overcome trauma (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma?).

Before processing trauma, trauma therapists provide clients with psychoeducation on how to do these various techniques as well as why they're important in trauma therapy.

Aside from processing trauma, somatic awareness is also effective in helping clients with anxiety, depression and other psychological challenges.

Aside from how somatic awareness can be learned in Experiential Therapy, it can also be learned in other mind-body modalities like yoga and mindfulness meditation.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have been struggling on your own to overcome unresolved trauma, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.

Overcome unresolved trauma can help you to live a more meaning life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I have worked with many individual adults and couples to help them overcome unresolved trauma (see my article:  What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.