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A review by julian7591
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter A. Levine
5.0
Very dense but a must read for anyone interested in inner work. Levine's work is based on the idea that the body is physiologically equipped to adequately process immense stress but that we block that natural processing by being over reliant on our intellect. Trauma is not what happens to us but what happens within the body, how the body reacts to protect itself. So therapeutic approaches that neglect the body and focus on top-down processing (CBT, free association, etc.) are inherently incomplete.
The therapist must guide the patient in accessing those sensations within themselves that they have been too afraid to look at. We don't have to mentally re-enact the trauma, simply revisiting the sensations in our body at our own pace can help us establish a sense of safety within our own being and release the stored energy associated with the trauma.
These are the steps of his method:
1. Establish an environment of relative safety, an atmosphere that conveys refuge, hope, and possibility.
2. Support initial exploration and acceptance of sensation. Traumatized individuals are cut off from their primal sensations, instincts, and feelings. In order to become self-regulating and authentically autonomous, traumatized individuals must learn to access, tolerate, and utilize their inner sensations.
3. Establish pendulation and containment. Help the patient create a larger container within themselves that can allow the unpleasant sensations to exist. Remind them of the body's natural rhythm of contraction and expansion; any sensation is time limited and will eventually pass.
4. Use titration to create increasing stability, resilience and organization. Titration is about carefully touching into the smallest "drop" of survival-based arousal, and other difficult sensations, to prevent re-traumatization. This is important because the process of leaving immobility is immensely frightening. The therapist is there to help neutralize those sensations of intense energy and primal emotional states underneath the freeze response (rage, flight, etc.) without unleashing an explosive reaction.
5. Provide a corrective experience by supplanting the passive responses of collapse and helplessness with active, empowered, defensive responses. Specific tension patterns (which can be experienced through internal awareness) suggest particular movements (uncompleted protective mechanisms), which can then be expressed in minute micro-movements. The bodies learn step-by-step that we were not helpless victims, that we survived the ordeals, and that we are intact and still alive.
6. Separate or "uncouple" the conditioned association of fear and helplessness from the (normally time-limited but now maladaptive) biological immobility response. The ability to go into and then come out of the innate immobility response is the key to both avoiding the prolonged debilitating effects of trauma and healing symptoms.
7. Resolve hyperarousal states by gently guiding the "discharge" and redistribution of the vast survival energy mobilized for life-preserving action while freeing that energy to support higher-level brain functioning. This is a release of potential energy. When threatened, our muscles are energized in preparation for action but when that mobilization is not carried out then that potential energy becomes stored as an "unfinished procedure" within the implicit memory of the system. This is what causes tension in your muscles.
8. Engage self-regulation to restore "dynamic equilibrium" and relaxed alertness. This is the feeling of being "home" within oneself. The sense that no matter what you are feeling in any given moment you have a secure base within your organism.
9. Orient to the here and now, contact the environment and reestablish the capacity for social engagement.
The therapist must guide the patient in accessing those sensations within themselves that they have been too afraid to look at. We don't have to mentally re-enact the trauma, simply revisiting the sensations in our body at our own pace can help us establish a sense of safety within our own being and release the stored energy associated with the trauma.
These are the steps of his method:
1. Establish an environment of relative safety, an atmosphere that conveys refuge, hope, and possibility.
2. Support initial exploration and acceptance of sensation. Traumatized individuals are cut off from their primal sensations, instincts, and feelings. In order to become self-regulating and authentically autonomous, traumatized individuals must learn to access, tolerate, and utilize their inner sensations.
3. Establish pendulation and containment. Help the patient create a larger container within themselves that can allow the unpleasant sensations to exist. Remind them of the body's natural rhythm of contraction and expansion; any sensation is time limited and will eventually pass.
4. Use titration to create increasing stability, resilience and organization. Titration is about carefully touching into the smallest "drop" of survival-based arousal, and other difficult sensations, to prevent re-traumatization. This is important because the process of leaving immobility is immensely frightening. The therapist is there to help neutralize those sensations of intense energy and primal emotional states underneath the freeze response (rage, flight, etc.) without unleashing an explosive reaction.
5. Provide a corrective experience by supplanting the passive responses of collapse and helplessness with active, empowered, defensive responses. Specific tension patterns (which can be experienced through internal awareness) suggest particular movements (uncompleted protective mechanisms), which can then be expressed in minute micro-movements. The bodies learn step-by-step that we were not helpless victims, that we survived the ordeals, and that we are intact and still alive.
6. Separate or "uncouple" the conditioned association of fear and helplessness from the (normally time-limited but now maladaptive) biological immobility response. The ability to go into and then come out of the innate immobility response is the key to both avoiding the prolonged debilitating effects of trauma and healing symptoms.
7. Resolve hyperarousal states by gently guiding the "discharge" and redistribution of the vast survival energy mobilized for life-preserving action while freeing that energy to support higher-level brain functioning. This is a release of potential energy. When threatened, our muscles are energized in preparation for action but when that mobilization is not carried out then that potential energy becomes stored as an "unfinished procedure" within the implicit memory of the system. This is what causes tension in your muscles.
8. Engage self-regulation to restore "dynamic equilibrium" and relaxed alertness. This is the feeling of being "home" within oneself. The sense that no matter what you are feeling in any given moment you have a secure base within your organism.
9. Orient to the here and now, contact the environment and reestablish the capacity for social engagement.