Our Treatment Approach

Conventional trauma treatment approaches work with having trauma survivors report their experience of the trauma, working with cognitions, emotions, and verbal and non-verbal behaviors in relation to the trauma. Cutting-edge psycho-physiological trauma treatment approaches such as Somatic Experiencing (SE) on which our approach is based focuses more on shifting any fixations such as constriction and high arousal that are contributing to the symptom in the traumatized physiology of a survivor.

In most instances, the body and mind of a person overwhelmed by life-threatening trauma usually find their way back to health through the self-regulating and self-healing tendencies that nature has endowed all human beings with. For example, high arousal in the nervous system of a traumatized person might just naturally discharge through the subtle or obvious shaking that most traumatized bodies automatically tend to exhibit after a trauma. Symptoms form and persist if a traumatized person does not have enough inner understanding or external support to encourage such inherent self-healing tendencies towards health and symptom resolution.

The short-term psycho-physiological approach we used successfully in India to treat tsunami survivors for trauma symptoms six months after the tsunami involved focusing on shifting the underlying physiological fixations contributing to the trauma symptoms, educating survivors in a simple manner about the psycho-physiology of trauma and trauma healing so that they can be active participants during and after the treatments in supporting the inherent self-healing tendencies within themselves, and providing enough external support in the form of education, and touch and bodywork, when needed. With even 90% of those receiving only single treatments, follow-up research done four weeks later found significant and lasting symptom reduction in 73% of the presenting symptoms treated.

A Treatment Example

The boy whose heart would not stop beating fast after the tsunami.

As team member Jeanne du Rivage from the U.S. was wrapping up for the day in an Indian fishing village , a young boy (on the right in the photo) approached her, took her hand in his hand, and placed it on his heart and uttered the word 'tsunami'. His heart was beating very rapidly and he communicated his need for help with his eyes and body gestures. He reported that his heart had been beating fast like that since the tsunami.

Moved much by this interaction with the boy, Jeanne sought permission to stay longer to work with him. With the help of a translator, Jeanne helped him to normalize his heart rate by touching his chest and by teaching him how to sense his body and help the discharge of high arousal in his nervous system through his arms and legs. The boy was very responsive and seemed to intuitively understand the process. At the end of the treatment, his heart rate was normal and he was more relaxed and happy.

During the follow-up interview four weeks after the single treatment, the boy reported to our Indian research personnel that he no longer suffered from his post-tsunami symptom of heart disregulation.

For a detailed description of our trauma treatment approach with more examples please view this article on the June/July 2005 Trauma Vidya India tsunami relief project by clicking.