What is Trauma Touch Therapy?
by Chris Smith
Trauma is something we’ve all experienced. For some, trauma can be as significant as death, or as maddening as driving a rush hour-packed interstate. “Trauma touches us all,” said Smith. Unfortunately, to the detriment of our physical and emotional health, many of us minimize trauma’s effect and many more don’t understand the value of very goal-oriented trauma work.
Trauma Touch bridges the gap. This unassuming, hands-on modality helps therapists work with trauma and abuse. It’s a simple approach for working with people who’ve forgotten what it means to be in the here and now; people who’ve forgotten what it feels like to “feel.”
Numb from dissociative survival skills learned during the traumatic event(s), numb from drugs or alcohol, or numb from other distractions created to hide behind, survivors of trauma often can’t feel their bodies or have parsed apart their various pieces of being. “Many people might ask why numbing out is a bad thing, especially if you’re numbing out all the pain, the horror and discomfort? The numbing process is not selective,” said Smith. “They numb out everything – their joy, their capacity to feel alive and their ability to feel safe in the world. It’s frustrating. Their capacity to experience life is greatly diminished. This is what brings people into the therapy.”
Trauma Touch Therapy™ works to integrate the pieces again. It provides a slow application of touch that helps bring the client back to themselves – to take residence, if you will, back in their bodies. The work is led by the needs of the client, actually asking them to think through their own somatic needs. Where is the pain? Where is the tension? What does it feel like? Is it okay to touch? Trauma Touch Therapy™ is a process of integration weaving itself through the course of 10 sessions with the client typically clothed. Work can be done on a massage table, in a chair or position most comfortable for the client… Keep reading
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind & Body in the Healing of Trauma
by Bessel A. van der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score is the inspiring story of how a group of therapists and scientists— together with their courageous and memorable patients—has struggled to integrate recent advances in brain science, attachment research, and body awareness into treatments that can free trauma survivors from the tyranny of the past. These new paths to recovery activate the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to rewire disturbed functioning and rebuild step by step the ability to “know what you know and feel what you feel.” They also offer experiences that directly counteract the helplessness and invisibility associated with trauma, enabling both adults and children to reclaim ownership of their bodies and their lives.
Drawing on more than thirty years at the forefront of research and clinical practice, Bessel van der Kolk shows that the terror and isolation at the core of trauma literally reshape both brain and body. New insights into our survival instincts explain why traumatized people experience incomprehensible anxiety and numbing and intolerable rage, and how trauma affects their capacity to concentrate, to remember, to form trusting relationships, and even to feel at home in their own bodies. Having lost the sense of control of themselves and frustrated by failed therapies, they often fear that they are damaged beyond repair… Keep Reading
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
by Peter A. Levine, Ann Frederick
Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed… Keep Reading
