Behavioral therapy heavily relies on analyzing behavior to find out how to improve it. I often get asked if I can provide a worksheet for a behavior analysis for dissociation and the answer is No. Dissociation is not behavior. It is an involuntary stress response. Involuntary means that it is not conscious, by […]
basics
FAQ: When will Flashbacks stop?
One of the most frequently asked questions we get is “When will flashbacks stop?“ So here is the answer, not intended to be exhaustive. Short-term For PTSD Trigger Flashbacks can only stop when we stop being triggered, which means that we need to remove ourselves from the trigger or the trigger from us. […]
Capacity and Avoidance
There are different opinions about avoidance and they seem to fall short when it comes to the reality of living a functional life with cPTSD. So we will take a short look at the extreme statements about avoidance and explore the body work concept of capacity to create more clarity. Avoidance Contra Some believe […]
Dealing with body flashbacks
This article is triggering. I didn’t see a way to openly talk about this subject otherwise. I am limiting the most triggering information to a paragraph that I will mark with **** at the beginning and end and that can easily be skipped without effecting the comprehension of the rest of the text. Because we […]
Orientation and Grounding
When we get triggered our first response should not be an effort in self-soothing. That would be unnecessarily hard to accomplish as long as we are not oriented in time, space and body. Our nervous system is still reacting to the past. First we need to realize that we are safe in this situation, then […]
Integrating ‘new’ parts (DID SystemWork)
When parts have been stuck in TraumaTime for so long, arriving in the present, learning that there are others and all of life has changed, that we have aged, the body is big – all that can come as a shock. That is why we have developed a protocol for ourselves for welcoming ‘new’ parts. […]
Titration in Trauma Therapy
Titration is a chemical term that was taken out of context to explain a technique to approach psychological problems. Say we want to neutralize HCl with NaOH. Mixing the acid with the base should, with an easy calculation, give us H2O and NaCl, harmless water and salt. The problem is that an acid and a […]
The Polyvagal Ladder
When I first wrote about the polyvagal theory I didn’t expect you to be interested. But there has been an ever increasing demand for more information, so here it is. We are still leaving out most of the neuroscience behind the polyvagal theory to make it easier to work with. People used to think […]
Regulating Hyperarousal 2 (Flight Response)
PTSD makes regulating emotions extra hard (more). That is why we will look at ways to deal with different emotions. But first there is one thing we need to take care of and that is hyperarousal (flight/fight response) People differ in their tendencies, some going into fight more regularly, others don’t feel that at all […]
Mindfulness for emotional regulation
Many trauma survivors are annoyed by their therapists persistence in trying to teach them mindfulness. The exercises seem weird and we can’t comprehend how that is supposed to help us with our PTSD. We might not understand it right away, but mindfulness is the key to emotional regulation. As we have explained here, trauma changes […]
The Rhythm of Regulation
My first encounter with the word resilience was not in psychology but in physics. In a psychological context the term is usually used to describe an inner strength that can prevail under a lot of pressure. So the goal of interventions is to make people more resistant to stress by adding positive resources. You can […]
Powerful people – powerful relationships
All people are powerful. But some don’t know it yet. Or they confuse being powerful with being controlling or intimidating. At the core of being a powerful person is self-control: the ability to make choices and follow through with them, to regulate our own emotions and needs and take responsibility for our own life. Self-control […]