Posts Tagged ‘Sensorimotor Psychotherapy’

The Paradigm and Benefits of Psychodrama

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

by Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C DAPA, with Yehuda Bergman, PhD RDT

We are excited to have Yehuda Bergman teach our upcoming training “Expressive Therapy Intensive: Using Psychodrama and Other Creative Modalities to Process Counter-Transference When Working with Traumatized Clients.”  I asked Yehuda to respond to a few questions about the paradigm, and I think you will find his answers very informative!

Q.) Can you briefly describe what psychodrama is and how it is used in therapy?

Yehuda) Psychodrama is a holistic, strengths based method of psychotherapy in which people are helped to enact and explore situations from their own life, addressing issues that can relate to the past, present and future.  It utilizes dramatic action to create a safe, supportive setting that allows people to practice new and more effective roles and behaviors.  Individuals are offered the opportunity to become creative in developing new solutions to old and tired problems.  For more than half a century, Psychodrama has been identified as one of the most powerful ways in which to treat traumatized people. It reaches into the hearts of people who cope with the everyday difficulties, misfortunes, and crises of life.  Each Psychodrama, whether in a group or individual setting, conveys the hidden, horrific realities of such victims and survivors through enactment. As a healing art, Psychodrama is a flexible form of brief experiential treatment typically including in its sessions a warm-up, action, working through, closure, and sharing.  A variety of standard interventions such as doubling, mirroring, role reversal, soliloquy, concretization and maximization are used.

Q.) What are the most common misconceptions about psychodrama?

Yehuda) One of the main misconceptions of Psychodrama is that it is a relatively new field in the world of psychotherapy. In fact, developed by Psychiatrist Dr. J. L. Moreno (1889‐1974) from the 1920s onwards, psychodrama was the first recognized method of group psychotherapy and is practiced in more than 100 countries!  Psychodrama is fully accredited as a psychotherapy by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). It has an extensive body of literature of more than 6,000 publications, plus many national and regional journals around the world. It has contributed ideas and techniques used in many other forms of psychotherapy. In 1912, Moreno attended one of Sigmund Freud’s lectures. In his autobiography, he recalled the experience: “As the students filed out, he singled me out from the crowd and asked me what I was doing. I responded, ‘Well, Dr. Freud, I start where you leave off. You meet people in the artificial setting of your office. I meet them on the street and in their homes, in their natural surroundings. You analyze their dreams. I give them the courage to dream again. You analyze and tear them apart. I let them act out their conflicting roles and help them to put the parts back together again.”

Another common misconception about psychodrama is that it is necessary to recreate the traumatic scene in order to access traumatic memory. This is not the case. It is only necessary that clients revisit their own sense of vulnerability, helplessness, rage or whatever they are carrying from the trauma. Revisiting the scene can be re-traumatizing and is not necessary for healing.

Also, many people think that you must know how to act in order to participate in a Psychodrama group.  In reality, this is not necessary at all.  Everybody can participate and benefit from Psychodrama!

Q.) What are the ways in which clients benefit from psychodrama?

Yehuda) Psychodrama can help people better understand themselves and their history, resolve loss and trauma, overcome fears, improve their intimate and social relationships, express and integrate blocked thoughts and emotions, and practice new skills or prepare for the future.

Psychodrama allows for the safe expression of strong feelings and, for those who need it, the practice of containing emotions. As participants move from ‘talking about’ into action, opportunities arise to heal the past, clarify the present, and imagine the future.  Psychodrama can offer a wider perspective on individual and social problems and an opportunity to try out new behaviors.

Let us know, in a comment, what your experience has been with psychodrama.  If you have any questions about the benefits of using psychodrama in your practice, we’re happy to get an answer for you!



Getting Back to Basics: Approaches to Treatment and Prevention of SAD

Monday, November 21st, 2011

I felt so validated reading an excerpt from Andrew Weil, M.D.’s new book, Spontaneous Happiness.  To paraphrase his take on why there is a seeming epidemic of Seasonal Affective Disorder, Depression, widespread vitamin D deficiencies and out of whack serotonin and melatonin levels; our bodies have not evolved as quickly as our technologically advanced world has required of them. The adjustment is beyond just “culture shock”; it’s our very biology struggling to adjust.  

His understanding jives with my experience of things, not only as someone for whom the onset of winter brings the challenge of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but also as a trainer of clinicians and a promoter of best practices in treatment approaches for it. It is the frame of our seeing SAD as a ‘normal reaction to an abnormal situation, a natural reaction to an unnatural environment’.

The bottom line is that the mammalian part of us humans are not really built for the current lifestyle we Westerners enjoy; one in which we are cut off from the natural environment and cycles of nature, in what we eat, how much we sleep, what we touch, our limited body movements and amount of sunlight exposure. So many of us are much too sedentary, in temperature controlled, windowless or tinted or even sealed window spaces, staring at computer and other media screens for too many hours. We spend much of our daily life in constantly lighted environments regardless of the time of day or night. Our demands ask for us to keep the same daily and sleep schedule year round, as if our bodies were oblivious to the shifts of daylight hours and seasons through the year. Additionally, our brains are being shouted at more and more from attention seeking sensory stimulating electronic sources than by the more passive and subtle features of the natural environment they were first wired for. These factors, along with the 24/7 media barrage of news and traumatic events and images from the four corners of the globe–as if these events were going down in our front yard–keeps our brains bathed in adrenaline and cortisol, the stimulants that readies the nervous system for dangers, real or imagined, in freeze, flight or fight mode.

The positive side of this holistic perspective is that it informs us, in constructive ways, as to what is needed to maintain our well-being. And for those of us who treat these conditions, it helps us develop an affirming, helpful, multi-dimensional framework for the treatment of our clients coming to us for help with these issues.

Howard Reznick, LCSW-C is currently one of the producer-editors of ifIknew.org, a youth oriented prevention education video and blog site addressing contemporary health issues. A therapist and trainer the past 30 some years, Howard will be leading an upcoming workshop titled; “Ain’t No Cure for the Wintertime Blues?“



Trauma and the Body

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

I hope you are continuing to get the most out of summer.  I wanted to share with you a wonderful experience I had at the Cape Cod Institute, training with Pat Ogden, the brilliant creator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.  The power of this work cannot be under-estimated and I think it is an absolute necessity to incorporate “the body” in our understanding of how trauma is stored, and subsequently retrieved, de-coded, and processed in therapy.

Pat shared many fascinating videos with us illustrating, first-hand, how quickly clients can re-connect with thoughts, feelings, and memories through an awareness of body movement and sensation.  Inviting clients to “go to” body sensation by asking, “what’s happening right now on your body?” not only yields meaningful information, it enhances a state of mindful awareness, which can help clients return to the “present moment” and reduces dissociation.  

Tracking, labeling, and articulating sensations of tightness, constriction, collapse, tingling, etc. also helps our clients to stay in their pre-frontal cortex, rather than their limbic system- where flight/fight and freeze responses get activated.  Helping our clients heighten their awareness of body posture, movements, and sensations, can be used for centering, re-grounding, containment, and the delineation of healthier boundaries.  In turn, these interventions reduce feelings of victimization and strengthen a sense of empowerment.

I was further inspired by Pat’s discussion of how attachment dynamics (secure, insecure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized) all yield messages and affective responses that get imprinted on our bodies and profoundly affect our posture and body movements.  We adopt body patterns that keep us safe in the world.  Children who feel loved, secure, and accepted have body language and posture that exudes confidence, openness, connectedness, etc.  Traumatized, abused, and neglected children have posture that is closed, defeated, collapsed, defensive, protective, etc.   In Pat’s words, “the body tells the story of our history.”  Exploring body postures and gestures can re-connect clients to long forgotten pain narratives.  And when we help clients re-align their bodies, we create the opportunity for new experiences and a letting go of well-entrenched symptoms that often sustain feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, repeated victimization, dissociation, and a sense of being disconnected from others and self.  Simple interventions including: elongating the spine, bringing weight onto the balls of the feet, taking a deep breath, expanding the chest, standing up, pushing away with the arms, or putting both feet on the floor, can create profound cognitive and emotional shifts for our clients.  

Having a simultaneous awareness of our own body movements, postures, gestures, and sensations can help us remain grounded and present during challenging sessions, and reduce counter-transferential responses that communicate confusing messages to our clients or inadvertently undermine our efficacy.  To learn more, I highly recommend Pat’s book, Trauma and the Body.  I also encourage you to take some of our wonderful trainings at The Institute that focus on working creatively with the body.  It will profoundly enhance the quality of your work!  And if you already incorporate Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and other Body Therapies in your work, we welcome your feedback!