Aquatic bodywork and trauma healing: After Diane Poole Heller, PhD. NICABM Seminar title: How Attachment Affects Trauma
This post is part of the series New treatments for trauma: a review with special reference to aquatics.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the roar of the ocean without the roar of its many waters. Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, 1845
Childhood attachment wounds and later relationship issues have been linked with trauma. In aquatic bodywork with a traumatized person, we may witness this as sudden violent movements or extreme passivity. This post looks at the work of Diane Pooler Heller and gives an example of an aquatic session with someone showing a range of trauma symptoms.
A traumatized person, says Diane Poole Heller can be overstimulated (effectively trapped) in either their sympathetic nervous system (recurring anger bouts) or parasympathetic nervous system (depression and lethargy). The key in therapeutic approaches is to appropriately restore nervous system balance, so we need to understand how the nervous system works when healthy and when stuck in chronic trauma.
Though it is important to lift the brake that has been applied to the nervous system when it shuts down in the face of life-threatening trauma (a kind of death preparation), it should not be released too fast, since underneath lies considerable charge and fear. Allowing time and support to mobilize a safe active response (sympathetic driven) is crucial.
To illustrate the diversity of response one might see in the water with someone, here is an example from the very early days of my own practice alongside a male partner. We were working in a spa, not in a clinical setting. In retrospect, it is clear that this person was processing trauma. We were not trained to work directly with that and did not go beyond bodywork and compassionate support for her own processing.
Diane Poole Heller is a trainer in Somatic Experiencing (see Peter Levine) and (like Pat Ogden) specializes in attachment issues and trauma. Her workshop DARE (Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience) sets out to give therapists and lay people tools for healing attachment wounds and creating better relationships. Topics include childhood bonding, adult relationships, sensuality/ sexuality, and victim perpetrator/ dissociation issues.
Four attachment styles - secure, avoidant, ambivalent/anxious, disorganized - were outlined in the NICABM seminar. The DARE workshops go on to address these attachment styles and their dynamics in personal, interpersonal and trans-personal relationships, integrating body-based therapies, psychotherapy techniques, and spirituality. See more on Diane's website.
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A traumatized person, says Diane Poole Heller can be overstimulated (effectively trapped) in either their sympathetic nervous system (recurring anger bouts) or parasympathetic nervous system (depression and lethargy). The key in therapeutic approaches is to appropriately restore nervous system balance, so we need to understand how the nervous system works when healthy and when stuck in chronic trauma.
Though it is important to lift the brake that has been applied to the nervous system when it shuts down in the face of life-threatening trauma (a kind of death preparation), it should not be released too fast, since underneath lies considerable charge and fear. Allowing time and support to mobilize a safe active response (sympathetic driven) is crucial.
To illustrate the diversity of response one might see in the water with someone, here is an example from the very early days of my own practice alongside a male partner. We were working in a spa, not in a clinical setting. In retrospect, it is clear that this person was processing trauma. We were not trained to work directly with that and did not go beyond bodywork and compassionate support for her own processing.
This young woman is a talented massage therapist and very adept in accessing and working with her body-mind. She asked for a session in order to prepare for a hospital test following a doctor's appointment that found she had a suspect breast lump. Having received many forms of bodywork, including previous water sessions with both of us, she entered a deep space rapidly.
Her flexible, child-like body soon began to lead me with its movements. Notable were the frequent rapid flutters of her hands . Around the middle of the session I sensed a rising of emotion and went to the side in order to hold her in stillness - this offered a natural space for the release of deep uninhibited sobs.
At the end of the session, she reported that she had 'seen' a bright lamp light in the area of the lump and that this had grown stronger and stronger as we went on. The next day, after a long and anxious wait at the hospital, she learned that there was no sign of the lump.
She was certain that the water session had been responsible for its disappearance. She was going through a great deal of stress around her womanhood, and perhaps experiencing nurturing and comfort from another woman did remove an unconscious need for a physical manifestation of this stress.
The same client had a session with X in which she began to pummel him violently and at other points rested in his arms like a very young child - later she shared that she had revisited the childhood trauma of seeing her father taken away (she had not seen him since) and being raped herself by the same oppressors.
Her flexible, child-like body soon began to lead me with its movements. Notable were the frequent rapid flutters of her hands . Around the middle of the session I sensed a rising of emotion and went to the side in order to hold her in stillness - this offered a natural space for the release of deep uninhibited sobs.
At the end of the session, she reported that she had 'seen' a bright lamp light in the area of the lump and that this had grown stronger and stronger as we went on. The next day, after a long and anxious wait at the hospital, she learned that there was no sign of the lump.
She was certain that the water session had been responsible for its disappearance. She was going through a great deal of stress around her womanhood, and perhaps experiencing nurturing and comfort from another woman did remove an unconscious need for a physical manifestation of this stress.
The same client had a session with X in which she began to pummel him violently and at other points rested in his arms like a very young child - later she shared that she had revisited the childhood trauma of seeing her father taken away (she had not seen him since) and being raped herself by the same oppressors.
Diane Poole Heller is a trainer in Somatic Experiencing (see Peter Levine) and (like Pat Ogden) specializes in attachment issues and trauma. Her workshop DARE (Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience) sets out to give therapists and lay people tools for healing attachment wounds and creating better relationships. Topics include childhood bonding, adult relationships, sensuality/ sexuality, and victim perpetrator/ dissociation issues.
Four attachment styles - secure, avoidant, ambivalent/anxious, disorganized - were outlined in the NICABM seminar. The DARE workshops go on to address these attachment styles and their dynamics in personal, interpersonal and trans-personal relationships, integrating body-based therapies, psychotherapy techniques, and spirituality. See more on Diane's website.
Question: Have you ever felt after working with someone, perhaps even over a number of sessions, that they remained stuck in a repeating pattern of trauma and that only temporary relief had been gained? Share your experience and insights if you wish. (Add your comment below. Please be careful to protect the confidentiality of clients in anything you share.)
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