Metaphor: Dip Your Toe In – The EMDR Podcast

Understanding “Deep Breathing Doesn’t Work for Me” and Other Problems of Resourcing with Complex Trauma

“Deep Breathing Doesn’t Work for Me”

Understanding that Pervasively Traumatized Nervous Systems are Different than Non-Traumatized Nervous Systems
Don’t Tell Clients What they Will or Should Feel in Resourcing, Think of it as an Opportunity to Get Helpful Information
Car with a Cinder Block on the Gas Petal Metaphor
Pairing Body Scan and Resources
The Importance of Asking Permission and How Long Resource will Last
Modeling a Single Breath and Using that Information Select a Breath that May be More Tolerable
With Some Clients, the Goal is to Find a Resource that Isn’t Actively Triggering
Using Body Scans without Much of an Agenda
Understanding What a Resource “Working” Looks Like… If it Calms You, It May Only Calm You for a Moment
Noticing the Body is Also a Crucial Phase Two Resource
Body Scanning is a Good Strategy to Promote Embodiment, So Clients Can be Imbodied Enough to Notice
Homework: Practice Resources During the Times of the Day When Anxiety Isn’t Going Straight Up, Noticing the Layer Below is a Good Way to Lower Baseline Anxiety in the Short Term and Prepare for Reprocessing

The AIP Model

The Difficult Stuff Connects to Right Now/Existing Adaptive Information
Enough Adaptive Information Must Be Present
You Can’t Easily Connect Maladaptive Information to Maladaptive Information
What’s Complex About Complex Trauma Related to the AIP Model?
- A Different Way of Thinking About Complex Trauma
- Mountain Ranges of Adaptive Information vs Mountain Ranges of Maladaptive Information

The Mount Everest Metaphor

You Cannot Metabolize a Trauma the Size of Mount Everest into Adaptive Information the Size of a Walnut—You Can’t
Where to Start with Complex Trauma?
- Where Not to Start
- Types of Targets that Make Good Early Targets with Complex Trauma

The Whale Metaphor

What are the Whales?
What is the Size of the Client’s Boat?
You Cannot Land a Whale into a Canoe
Helping the Client Build a Bigger Boat
What Clients Learn when Working with “Smaller” Wounds First
- Test the Gear
- Learn How to Notice Effectively
- They Learn that the Can Heal
- Healing Builds Adaptive Information/Makes the Boat Bigger
If the Client in a Canoe Connects to a Whale we Need a Strong Pair of Scissors to Safely Disconnect

Dip Your Toe In: Phase One
- Be Careful What You Ask
- Safer Ways to Work with Lava
- Assess for Adaptive Information
- Helpful Assessments, Helpful Questions

Dip Your Toe In Metaphor

Understanding Traumatized Nervous Systems
- Bodies Can be Triggering
- Inside Can be Triggering
- Noticing Can be Triggering
- Calming or Slowing Down Can be Triggering
- Paying Attention to the Body Before an Audience Can be Triggering
- Performance Anxiety Related to All of This Can be Triggering
- Resistance Not a Useful Concept
Dip Your Toe In Provides Needed Information
Beware Agendas
- Beware Informing Clients What the Should Feel or What Mindfulness Will Do
- Therapist Agendas: Back to How we Teach Mindfulness, and the Cinderblock on the Gas Pedal
- Many Clients with Complex Trauma Believe that they have Failed Trauma (and are about to Fail EMDR Therapy)
- Aspirin for a Headache Metaphor