Online Videos
Lecture: Memory, Trauma and Transference
Lecture: Stress & Trauma 101
A 45 minute video summarizing research and relevant information about how stress and trauma impact the nervous system, somatic approaches to psychotherapy, and how to identify and work with PTSD and other mood disturbances.
Lecture: Traumatic Transference in Therapy
This 12 minute lecture focuses on the transferential aspect of working with trauma that arise when traumatic experiences were highly linked with relational intimacy and family, and where negative transference is an essential part of the therapeutic process. Dr. Wolterstorff describes the 4 basic roles that are often present during traumatic events and which are most commonly enacted in the client’s adult relationships.
Lecture: Relationships & Attachment
This 20 minute video offers a clinical definition of attachment and how it impacts adult relationships.
Demonstration: Riding an Anxiety Wave
In this 5 minute excerpt, the client is in the containment process and his body is resolving a traumatic event from his past. The session began with a retelling of the event until the client experienced reactivity in his body. Notice how the emphasis during the activation wave is mostly sensation based and has very little cognition or insight. Also, note that all the movement in the segment is involuntary in nature (containment is not stillness, containment pertains to the inhibition of voluntary responses in order to allow the involuntary movements to emerge).
Demonstration: Completing a Defensive Response
A 6 minute clip that demonstrates how the body completes a defensive response. In this case, the client is working with an injury in which she was hit by a large, heavy object on the left side of her head. Notice the slow but clear movements of her hands and neck into a defensive posture attempting to shield herself from the blow. Again, all of this is an involuntary movement choreographed by a fight or flight, body process in response to a very specific threat. She is not conducting these movements but rather allowing them to take place.
Demonstration: State 4 Dissociative Response
This 5 minute clip can be difficult to watch as it demonstrates a client in state 4 (the most dissociative, slow, and difficult to track trauma state in the nervous system). Notice the client’s slowed motor response and speech pattern. Notice statements throughout the clip regarding how “dreamy” and “not quite real” she feels. Though this state is a respite from the physical and emotional activation she was having a few minutes prior, she is not calm and relaxed at state 0 but rather numb and disconnected as will be evidenced near the end of the session when she moves from dissociation back to activation. The blankness of state 4 is a defining quality of trauma and is very difficult for therapists to work with for a number of reasons. The therapist in this case, Saj Razvi, works to keep the client associated to her dissociation. He actually allows for the dissociation in order to bring it further into awareness.
Book:
We’ve made four chapters available from Dr. Wolterstorff’s book, Love and Trauma: Healing trauma and its effects on ourselves and our relationships. The excerpts are of the introductory chapters (1-3) and a later chapter (14) which provides detailed information on working with trauma.
The book is an informative and practical guide to strengthening and healing individuals and relationships negatively impacted by sustained stresses and traumatic events, from the past or in the present. It combines psychotherapy with meditation and is grounded in a neuropsychological understanding of memory systems in the mind. We anticipate its arrival in bookstores in 2011.
