Often, our attitudes toward anxiety symptoms are misguided, says Richard Schwartz, the originator of Internal Family Systems. By understanding responses like cold sweats and heavy breathing, for instance, as positive expressions of a wish to protect oneself, rather than simply negative symptoms, Schwartz says, trauma survivors are in a better position to begin the process of healing.

By Joyanna Silberg - Working with dissociative children can be unnerving. As important as it is to have a theoretical understanding of what’s happening, a clinician needs a pragmatic, strength-based, problem-solving focus to feel prepared to treat such entrenched dissociative reactions.

By Jeffrey Von Glahn - Many clinicians are unaware of the difference between clients' therapeutic crying and situations in which clients are forced to deal with an overwhelming incident. Just a minute or two of deep therapeutic crying can bring about profound changes. And facilitating therapeutic crying isn’t complicated. Most of the time, the less the therapist does, the better.

By Alison Lighthall - Despite good intentions, therapists working with combat veterans face several challenges. To start with, engaging combat veterans in counseling of any kind. The first session may afford your only opportunity to ease the suffering of the veterans you encounter. You have to make every interaction with them count. Here's a blueprint for making it happen.

In this interview, Networker Assistant Editor Chris Lyford talks to family therapist and trauma specialist Mary Jo Barrett about the evolution of trauma treatment and the importance of bringing families into the mix.

By Patrick Dougherty - In the sea of trauma that surrounds us in our daily lives and in our offices, self-care is a life jacket. But collective trauma needs a collective response. Being part of a group of therapists dedicated to talking about vicarious trauma and sharing their own experiences is more than a life jacket—it's a human lifeboat, one with more resilience than we could ever generate alone. 

By Harriet Lerner - There’s no greater challenge than listening to the anger and pain of someone who’s accusing us of causing it. To do so, people need to have a solid platform of self-worth to stand on, from which they can look out at their bad behavior and apologize because they see their mistakes as part of a much larger, complex picture of who they are as a human being.

By Kevin Anderson - This is the story of one of the most turbulent storms in my personal and professional life. After the storm, I learned there’s something about healing from deep emotional suffering that feels like death and rebirth—the kind that asks us to be open to changing our contract with life.

In our own small way, the Networker has tried to revive the ancient, tribal practice of storytelling. At our third annual Symposium storytelling event, Kirsten Lind Seal shared the story of her attempt to rescue an immigrant client in a desperate situation.

Among the first to fully realize that humans have an innate psychophysiological capacity for overcoming trauma and recovering physical and emotional wholeness, Peter Levine developed Somatic Experiencing, a simple yet profoundly effective mind-body healing technique. In this video clip, he shows how simply noticing a client's body sensations can lead to therapeutic breakthroughs.