How Trauma Gets Stuck in the Body (and How to Work with It), with Peter Levine

Peter Levine was at a trauma conference in the Middle East when someone in the audience asked a question is it possible to work with a trauma if you don't know what it is so Peter threw the question back and asked if anyone in the audience had a particular symptom that they'd like to work on one man raised his hand it was high in Oxford he just happened to be an expert in the field of treating trauma and Peter shares his story now he was the leading person on pioneering psychoanalytic treatment for Holocaust survivors and he came up and said that he had severe back pain for 30 years none remitting back pain so next Peter did a pain assessment with highing huiying turned out to be a 9 on a ten-point scale that's pretty harsh pain what Peter did next was to draw attention to the area of pain and hyeme's back he asked him to notice any muscle tension that might be lying underneath the pain so he took a few moments and he said ah yes I feel attention I feel a lot of tension in my back and then I said something like is the tension equal on both sides and again he went in to explore said no it's more on the right and then I said okay if that if you feel that tension and that you allow that tension to just slowly move your body in what may way might it move your body and then she feels himself moving and orienting towards the right side then all of a sudden he starts breaking out and sweat autonomic memory emotional autonomic memory and he said I'm afraid I'm falling and I came up and put my hand behind his head to make sure he had support and then can just waves of sweating of Tara Peter began sensing two things number one thought I might be working through an implicit memory and number two Peter sense that hime was getting stuck in an incomplete response this memory was triggering a lot of pain and confusion and it was about to come to the surface and and he then had annexed in the memory of image of he was an army doctor and the truck that he was in was ambushed and he fell out into a ditch on his back everyone else was killed except for him because they didn't see him and it was just a horrific sight and then at the end we reoriented and looked around the room and I asked them about the pain level and they said one or two Oh I barely feel it so that was working with that particular symptom that's a helpful framing of the issue when we're talking about traumatic memory the memory can often live on in the physical patterns and the the cognitive patterns that a client might develop after a traumatic experience this can become a painful paradox because the very response that kept our client from harm can now also be keeping them from healing now I'd like to hear from you how will you use this idea in your work today please leave a comment below and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: NICABM

Views: 266,293

Keywords: peter levine, trauma, treating trauma, memory, body, healing from trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, pts, ptsd, trauma and the brain, trauma healing, trauma therapy, trauma treatment, treatment for PTSD, treatment of trauma, nicabm, psychotherapy techniques, healing trauma, safety, psychotherapy, somatic, clients, dysregulation, trauma and the body, breathing, posture, somatic experiencing, somatic techniques

Id: VQcKbRvYXe0

Length: 3min 53sec (233 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017