We've gathered Psychotherapy Networkers most popular posts and arranged them here by topic.
One Woman's Story
Lauren Dockett
By Lauren Dockett - Could the insights psychedelic and empathogenic drugs bring—the sense of spiritual grounding and vaporized defenses—finally help trauma survivors and those suffering from common clinical issues turn their lives around? One woman shares why psychedelic-assisted therapy was "the most profound healing she ever experienced."
Read more...
Is Your Client Traumatized? For the Answer, Look to the Body
Bessel van der Kolk
Often we hear things from clients like “My relationship ending was so traumatic for me,” or “When my uncle passed away, I was totally traumatized.” With the word trauma being used so loosely and for such a wide range of problems, how do we know what it actually means anymore?
Read more...
IFS Developer Richard Schwartz on Befriending the Inner "Protector"
Richard Schwartz
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.
Read more...
Handling the Emergency and Navigating the Road Back
Joyanna Silberg
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.
Read more...
...And Why Calming Your Client Can Actually Backfire
Jeffrey Von Glahn
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.
Read more...
...And the One Question You Should Never Ask Them
Alison Lighthall
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.
Read more...
A Therapist's Story of Battling Chronic Pain
Kevin Anderson
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.
Read more...
A Therapist Shares Her Most Transformative Session
Kirsten Lind Seal
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.
Read more...
See Somatic Experiencing in Motion with This Clip from an Actual Session
Peter Levine
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.
Read more...
Finding the "Genuine Hero" in Even Your Most Troubled Clients
Lisa Ferentz
By Lisa Ferentz - In the early days of the trauma field, clients were seen as one-dimensional bundles of dysfunction and pain, who needed to relive their trauma before progress could be made. But an increased interest in post-traumatic growth has allowed many therapists to see that insight and healing can occur not only in the midst of devastating experiences, but even because of them.
Read more...
Page 9 of 25 (241 Blog Posts)