Here are some psychological terms that we use throughout our work.

Attachment:

Attachment is how comfortable you feel being close to another person. When intimacy brings discomfort in the form of fear, anxiety, annoyance, attachment therapy can help to change your responses. When you form responses to other people that feel comfortable and positive, it improves all types of relationships. This requires having new experiences where you learn on a basic level that being around other people is no longer something to fear or avoid.

Autonomic Nervous System:

This is the part of your nervous system that controls thousands of non-conscious physiological functions like heart rate, breathing, pupil dilation, sweating (temperature management), hormonal release such as cortisol and adrenaline, etc. This body system does not involve conscious thought or will power, the responses are automatic. See Sympathetic Arousal, Parasympathetic Arousal, and Dual Arousal.

Containment and Resolution (CAR):

CAR is currently one of the methods that the Love and Trauma Center therapists use to treat trauma. It belongs to the family of evidence-based exposure therapies like EMDR, Prolonged Exposure, and most similarly, such as Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing. CAR specifically targets trauma in your nervous system, and allows your system to
release and reduce traumatic responses.

Contact:

Contact is the act of being present with oneself, the world or another person with honesty. Being in contact is fundamentally an experience,not an abstraction. It is the fundamental sensate experience of oneself, the world or another person. Contact serves as the essential medium through which relationship and therapy take place. Our belief is that at one level or another, contact is the healing force in the therapeutic process.

Dissociation:

This is an advanced defensive response that happens when we experience dual arousal in our nervous system during or after a trauma. It is the body’s way of avoiding an intolerable situation by “blanking out.” This is the physiological reason why traumatic memories are often fuzzy or hard to remember.

Dual Arousal:

During a major threatening event, if we perceive there is no way to flee or fight our way out of it successfully, our nervous system will trigger both sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal. This causes the mix of dissociation, depression, or disconnection with anxiety and fight or flight responses people feel when they experience or recall
major traumas. See Autonomic Nervous System.

Etiological Psychotherapy:

This movement in psychotherapy emphasizes the etiology, or cause, of symptoms in order to determine the best course of treatment.

Experiential Therapy:

Therapy that involves a variety of creative techniques that allow clients to have realistic experiences in the therapy room. Rather than simply talking about it, this allows access to the unconscious feelings, physical responses and thoughts that normally occur out of your consciousness. This is essential for making changes–you can walk out of therapy already having had new experiences.

Exposure Therapy:

Therapy that works to alleviate symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, dissociation, depression or intrusive imagery or thoughts, caused by an initial exposure to traumas. This type of therapy, by releasing the nervous system charge in your body and habituating to triggers, allows you to re-write your responses to trauma. CAR is a highly focused form of expsoure therapy. Research shows that exposure therapy is one of the best models for recovering from trauma.

Gestalt Therapy:

Gestalt therapy is a type of therapy founded by Fritz Perls, that uses here and now experiences to evoke healing. Typical Gestalt interventions include using objects (often pillows or empty chairs) or other people (including the therapist) to map out your internal dynamics and bring them to life. This is a subset of experiential therapy.

Mirror Neurons:

Mirror neurons are cells in your nervous system that actually “copy” the activity in the people who you spend close time with. When they feel anxious, you start to feel anxious. When they feel calm and relaxed, so do you. This is part of the reason why therapy works, and also a cause of vicarious trauma for therapists, care providers, and others who
spend time with people who have had a lot of stress or trauma.

Parasympathetic Arousal:

This is the brakes of your autonomic nervous system. This includes things like slowing heart rate, feeling sleepy. See Autonomic Nervous System.

PTSD:

(Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) The name for a collection of typical symptoms that follow exposure to trauma, including intrusive flashbacks or nightmares, and dissociation or avoidance of triggers.

Resources:

Resources are a shorthand way of describing the things in your life that make you feel good. These might be activities (riding your bike, having coffee) people you feel close to, or memories of certain positive places or times. People need to have plenty of resources when they are doing therapy, and good therapists work to make sure clients can identify and keep these in their lives.

Roles:

When groups experience high stress or trauma, they tend to fragment into different roles. This can be an adaptive way to solve problems. However, once a threat has passed, these roles can become disruptive or harmful themselves.

The 4 roles typically found in stressful or traumatic situations are:

Sympathetic Arousal:

This is your nervous system turned on. In addition to excitement and heightened alertness, it also includes fight or flight responses to perceived dangers.

Trauma:

Trauma happens when you perceive that some danger is inescapable. Your nervous system goes into overdrive, often causing residual harmful psychological and physical effects. See Dual Arousal.

Trigger:
A trigger can be any external event that initiates an episodic memory or unconscious trauma reaction. Usually it is similar in some way to an initial threat the person experiences. It can be quite disruptive, and people spend a lot of energy trying to avoid things they know will trigger them. Planning for triggers is one way to help cope with
traumatic reactions.

Vicarious Trauma:
Burnout, vicarious or secondary trauma are all terms relating to what happens to caregivers to traumatized people. There are real physical and mental consequences that should be addressed when you have this type of exposure. See Mirror Neurons.