Comments on: Trauma Research: Changing Paradigms

By: Penny Boreham

Penny Boreham — Mon, 05 May 2014 10:12:47 +0000

In reply to Michelle.

Hello Michelle, both Sensorimotor and SE have a profound impact when working with trauma – here is just a little information re the two therapies so you can find out more..
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (developed by Pat Ogden) is a body centred (somatic) psychotherapy that unites the ‘top down’ and ‘body up’ approaches, concentrating on (amongst many other things) noticing the ‘felt’ sense in the body and acknowledging that the quality of our attachment when young can have an impact on how resilient we are to trauma. Pat Ogden herself said as she started to develop this therapy that “the body had been left out of the talking cure”. She was also influenced by the work of Ron Kurtz at the Hakomi Institute (where she also worked). Somatic Experiencing was developed by Peter Levine, who wrote “Waking the Tiger” and “In an Unspoken Voice” – The SE approach also releases traumatic shock, and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma, and offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, freeze, or collapse responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. I do hope this helps a bit if only to set you on your way to finding out more. Very best wishes, Penny

By: Michelle

Michelle — Sun, 04 May 2014 09:27:51 +0000

What is the difference between sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing?

And to Shona-I have a very good and-in my opinion-affordable sensorimotor psychotherapist. Perhaps I could put you in touch with her?

By: Malak Niakan(Ms)

Malak Niakan(Ms) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 11:00:48 +0000

Thank you for sharing the knowledge. I am a counsellor who’s been in this field for 7 years. Recently I’ve had several clients who’d suffered from sever childhood abuse including sexual, emotional and/or physical abuse all through their childhood. Except one, all of them moved on to the extent of integration in their scattered selves. My interventions were based on integrative approach and mainly using person centre values and interview techniques with some psychodynamics. I believe the core values of person centred approach helped my clients’ damaged and wounded selves to find a base to start the natural process of healing and coming out of their traumas. I am very much interested in the treatments Khyron House is doing and I think as you mentioned on your post we need to consider the links between body and mind in our treatments. This is so valuable that researchers like Bessel Van der Kolk and Dr Levin have and are working on the role our body plays in trauma to the field, however, in my therapy I try not to undermine either.
Thank you.

By: ros

ros — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 23:28:01 +0000

These posts are invaluable and give many people a sense of hope.

By: Shona

Shona — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 20:20:11 +0000

I have found that through adding somatic experiencing work to the psychotherapy I have each week that I have finally begun to change. I have just started to touch traumatic memories in my psychotherapy and actually feel them and feel healed by feeling them. This is after roughly 3 months of S.E. work which I started because I was getting nowhere talking, I feel now I have more access to myself and also have been able to make important lifestyle changes which were beyond me before. I always knew the body held it all and that bodywork was important to me but I was petrified of connecting with my body too – until I discovered S.E. It is talking too but different because it is all helped to be processed through the body. I’ve waited a long long time to get better and often blamed myself for this, thinking maybe other people were right, maybe I did not want to get well. It wasn’t that at all, it was that I didn’t have the right kind of help. The only thing I would like is for S.E. to be more affordable for people, I cannot attend as regularly as I would like and need – and that’s a shame.