"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul."                                                                                                              -Carl Jung

"After intense efforts to ward off reliving the trauma, therapists cannot expect that the resistances to remember will suddenly melt away under their empathic efforts. The trauma can only be worked through when a secure bond is established with another person; this then can be utilized to hold the psyche together when the threat of physical disintegration is re-experienced." 

(van der Kolk, van der Hart, Burbridge, 1995)

Integrative Trauma Project : Getting Clients Un-Stuck

What do we know about trauma?  Lots. We know that what were once considered intractable symptoms; aren’t intractable. We know that what was considered inevitable suffering, isn’t inevitable. We know that those formerly abused children, who have lived as permanently, damaged adults; need not. We know that what were once considered permanent character/personality disorders; are neither characterological nor permanent.  We know that in the current edition of the DSM, the sole diagnosis with criteria implicating trauma and/or interpersonal violence is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  So, although inappropriate for most trauma clients, we use it, a lot.

Thanks to the research done in the field of neuroscience, we also know the basic physiology of trauma-how it is experienced and stored in the body and the amygdala-and how it is best resolved. With those brain-imaging advances, came discoveries and newfound understandings in the fields of human attachment, brain plasticity and traumatology. Unfortunately, these findings conflict with psychiatry and psychology’s presumption that in order to heal trauma, one must talk about it. Seems that the opposite is true; talk therapy for trauma is at best inadequate and at worst, harmful and re-traumatizing. On the bright side, we know one more thing: mindful, somatic, body-oriented therapies transform-not only trauma symptoms- but whole clients.

We firmly believe that he therapeutic relationship-the cornerstone of healing- should not be compromised, therefore there is no need for therapists to permanently refer their clients. Instead, we offer a ten-session intensive program, the Integrative Trauma Project, for clients with histories of trauma/abuse who have reached an impasse in their ongoing therapeutic work with their primary therapist.