OF HEALING THROUGH

"\'Vounding and healing aire

not opposites. They're part
of the same thing. It is our
wounds that enable us to
be compassionate with the
1;vounds of others."

�Rachel aomiRemen

Diane Poole Hel er, Ph.D.

 “​
Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part
of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to
be compassionate with the wounds of others.”
—Rachel Naomi Remen

8​
ELEMENTS OF HEALING
THROUGH
PSYCHOTHERAPY

by Diane Poole Heller, PhD

Hi and Welcome,

I’m Dr. Diane Poole Heller and I want to thank

you for registering for this special report.

In this short report I’ll share with you what I call

“The 8 Elements of the Healing through

Psychotherapy.” These elements highlight some of the major

themes that are emerging in psychotherapy today.

This work makes me so grateful to be in the therapy field, where

we get to simultaneously have a positive impact on so many lives
and work on our personal growth.

I believe that psychotherapy is going through an evolutionary

upgrade. And although human beings have been working on
healing in different ways for thousands of years, many recent
discoveries and systems are helping us to understand healing in a
way that was never possible.

So what’s really new?

© Diane Poole Heller 3 

First I should say that it’s not so much that we are building
anything totally new but rather we are synthesizing and
integrating new knowledge and including many valuable insights
from the past. We are incorporating into psychotherapy new
ideas from fields such as physiology, neuroscience, trauma
resolution, and attachment theory. We are discovering the value
of developing somatic treatment strategies such as Somatic
Experiencing®, Sensory Motor Processing®, Dynamic Attachment
Re-Patterning experience© (DARe), and Hakomi to honor the
wisdom of the body as well as integrating working with the
relational field of what happens “between us.”

It is so exciting to find new and

effective ways to incorporate
this recent and continual
explosion of research and
integrated therapy models into
individual, family, and couples
counseling. We are now even
looking to non-traditional areas such as spirituality, mindfulness,
and meditation research. All of these fields are progressing
rapidly and many have only emerged in the last 25 years in a
“cross-pollinating” kind of way.
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© Diane Poole Heller
In fact, very few of these emergent fields of discovery were
considered or even mentioned when I went to graduate school in
the early 1990s.

Not too many years ago, it was a revolutionary suggestion to say

that the mind and body were connected! Now we know 80
percent of our felt
sense information
flows from the
Body to the Brain.
Knowing our “gut
brain” houses 100
million neurons
gives our intuitive
“gut feelings” the
respect they deserve. Our “heart brain” is the home of 40,000
more neurons and helps us honor our capacity to connect
wholeheartedly even more.

For example, in recent years, neuroscience has expanded rapidly

because of dedicated research and because we are finally starting

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© Diane Poole Heller
to understand how the brain works. Most of what we know about
the brain we’ve learned in the last 10 years. And in just the last
eight years, the whole field of mindfulness has expanded into
both our field and also the mainstream media.

It truly is an exciting time to be a therapist because of this

renaissance that we are going through. What I find even more
intriguing is that many of the advances in the therapy world are
being taken into nontraditional settings such as corporations,
coaching, and into our schools . . . so, as therapists, we are going
to see many applications of what we are learning move out into
the world in an entirely new ways.

These expanding fields no longer exist in isolation but more in a

collaborative synthesis. You may have seen that there is an effort
to integrate and connect everything. A breakthrough in one area
can have ripple effects in another. The researchers and clinicians
as finally talking to each other!

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© Diane Poole Heller  
 I like to think of each area as
having certain pieces of a
giant puzzle that we are all
attempting to put together. It
is only when we come
together enough to connect
the pieces that we can
actually see the whole
picture. This highlights the
importance, at most, of
cross-disciplinary research,
and at the minimum, of we
as therapists talking and sharing with one another in an emergent
and evolving way.

​
This is a big reason for the upcoming Psychotherapy 2.0​
Training
Summit because it enables us to come together as a global

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© Diane Poole Heller  
therapist community to learn and grow as a “Therapist
Transformation Tribe.”

Now, there is the big question of how we take what we are

learning from these fields and put the ideas into our practices and
healing sessions. I believe we should judge our success not by the
amount of knowledge we accumulate, but rather by the results
obtained for those who come to us for help. This is what it is all
about: helping our clients heal and recover.

We are also finding that the paradigms that we once held are
transforming. For example, it used to be common to JUST focus
on wounds when working with clients. The basic idea was that if
you were not in pain, then you were not in therapy. Literally, “no
pain, no gain.” Even when I studied Rogerian Therapy at UNC with
the its wonderful teaching of unconditional positive regard, it was
focused on drilling deep into emotional pain in order to promote
healing. “Resourcing” someone or helping to regulate their
overloaded nervous system was not a focus back then as was
seen as going off track.

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© Diane Poole Heller  
A natural result of this significant shift can be to start to see our
role as not just as helping to heal a wound, but also to

understand the methods and processes needed to aid someone

to a place where they bring in joy, passion, vitality, and love in
their life as well as enhancing a capacity for Self-Regulation and
Interactive Co-Regulation, greatly reducing symptoms by
including Corrective Experiences© and supporting positive
emotions and states of well-being amidst processing painful
feelings or history.

This paradigm shift dramatically expands the scope and the

possibility for us as therapists. What is important to recognize is
that there are many fields of study we need to learn and bring
into our professional practice in order to be able to make this big
shift.

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© Diane Poole Heller  
When we look into and include these fields to bring a more
complete and expanded knowledge forward, then the whole
picture unfolds. We also have the right tools to further help our
clients. In Psychotherapy 2.0, we are particularly asking all of our
experts to give you clinical takeaways that you can use
immediately in your practice and in your life! That brings us back
to re-visioning the healing process.

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© Diane Poole Heller  
The 8 Elements of Healing

There are many elements in

the healing journey and they
are going to depend on both
the person and the situation.
I’d like to​
share with you eight
critical elements of the
healing journey through psychotherapy and how they relate to
the work being done in our field. These are the particular
orientations that I find personally the most helpful when working
with clients and anyone seeking healing in their life.

Here’s an overview of the 8 elements for understanding the

healing process:

1. Stopping Post-Traumatic Reactions

2. Understanding the Threat Response and Social Engagement
3. Discoveries in Neuroscience​
​
Relevant for Clinical Practice
4. Working with Attachment Theory and Relational Field
5. Uncovering Implicit Memory for Integration and Processing

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© Diane Poole Heller
6. Exploring Developmental Trauma and Character Structure
7. Rescuing the Encapsulated Child​
​
from High Arousal States
8. Spirituality, Compassion,​
​
and​
​
Co–Mindfulness©

If you are a therapist, you probably know a lot about all of these
areas, but let me share with you a short overview of each area of
healing that is especially significant:

1. Stopping Post-Traumatic Reactions

We first learn to quiet the fear and keep the amygdala’s alarm
​​
system from relentlessly signaling threat— stirring us up and
​r. Peter Levine​
keeping us on guard. D provided groundbreaking
work with resolving trauma. He has developed effective
techniques to thaw the freeze response, to evoke and complete
our self-protective fight and flight responses. This releases bound
arousal that was initiated by threat, and which may have been
perpetuating stress, shame, or fear-related symptoms.

2. The Threat Response and Social Engagement

Stephen Porges’ work shows that when we perceive a life threat,
we disconnect or physiologically dissociate to avoid predictable

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© Diane Poole Heller
pain. We shut down and go into an energy conservation “death
preparation” state. But how do we come back out into our joy and
aliveness, after the hard work of successfully surviving the
overwhelming life event?

According to Porges’ research resulting in the Polyvagal Theory or

Social Engagement System work, there is a predictable
physiological sequence we can rely on as we resolve various
levels of threat. After navigating the body’s freeze-immobility
response, we can become active versus passive in the face of
danger and restore the capacity to connect. Dan Siegel says
learning to really connect is the greatest frontier for all of us on
this evolving human journey and we are currently the least skillful
at it. Specifically learning how to work with our physiology and
enhancing the capacity to connect is a definite game-changer and
life-restoring skill we can share with our clients, greatly reducing
their suffering.

As we find strength to defend ourselves in a session in a safe way,

we experience empowerment instead of shutdown related to fear

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© Diane Poole Heller
or shame. The threat response completes, the survival energy of
hyper- or hypo-arousal stuck in the autonomic nervous system
releases. We find the relaxation response. Now we can naturally
access our medial prefrontal cortex part of our brain that
supports relatedness and Social Engagement. We come into a
deep contact with ourselves and can be authentically present
with others. We can show up and connect again! We see we are
physically designed to do this!

3. Neuroscience
Neuroscience provides a map of how the brain, ANS (Autonomic
Nervous System), and body work together to process and
integrate our experiences. We can use the current research that is
​​
available in a way that supports its clinical application— how can
we use it intelligently when we are sitting in front of a client, or
our partner or child?

Let’s look at just one simple example related to such a huge topic
that we will certainly explore further in our upcoming
Psychotherapy 2.0 Summit.

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© Diane Poole Heller
We now understand how important it is to challenge the old
neurological patterns with novelty and have our clients access
and embody positive emotional states long enough for new
neural pathways to begin to come into being—at least 30 seconds
with repeated doses. Rick Hanson says, “Positive experience runs
through the brain like water through a sieve!” So we have to help
and “train the brain” to adjust to well-being over fear, relaxed
alertness instead of anxiety and to help our clients give up an
enduring attitude in favor of more enjoyment and aliveness
whenever possible.

We can encourage new neural pathways in this direction. We’ll

learn so much more about neuroscience in a way that is
applicable to interventions with our clients.

4. Attachment
Attachment theory has been around since John Bowlby put forth
the understanding that we are biologically designed for Secure
Attachment. It is inherent in our human design or our design to
be more fully human.

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© Diane Poole Heller
 Currently we are learning how to
understand and use Attachment cues
in sessions to help our clients
recover from many of the limitations
of 3 internalized models of insecure
attachment— Avoidant/Dismissive,
Ambivalent/Preoccupied and/or
Disorganized/Disoriented
Attachment Adaptations. We work to
presence, restore, and teach
embodied Secure Attachment skills
and functioning. As therapists we have our own healing to do so
we too have the capacity to be in Secure Attachment functioning
with our clients to help them participate in Secure Attachment
functioning as well.

We see that Secure Attachment is there already but may have

many wounds in the way. We can excavate it and support it and
learn how to be with ourselves and others from this natural
secure space more and more.

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© Diane Poole Heller
Secure Attachment brings big benefits. It insulates us from PTSD.
We recover much faster from stress. We realize a more global
wanting what is good for “all of us” perspective—instead of “me”
as the center of the universe kind of self-absorption—or being
stuck in “us versus them.” We live in deeper love, intimacy, and
compassion. We experience brain integration supporting higher
levels of functioning. We are consistent, reliable, alive, and
engaging.

It is much easier to be self-regulated and interactively regulated

so we are more relaxed in our aloneness as well as in our
relationships. We repair mistakes or mis-attunements easily,
supporting ongoing well-being. We are playful, protected by and
protective of our loved ones. We know true mutuality and real
connection.

Sound good? More of that, please!

5. Implicit Memory
We also now know that trauma and attachment live in implicit

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© Diane Poole Heller
memory​
—​
as non-conscious, sub-psychological, pre-verbal, “not
integrated yet” experience encoded in the body; and they encode
through fast-circuit learning, bypassing the hippocampus (the
function that gives us a sense of time and place/location).

Without processing in the hippocampus, implicit memory feels

​even if the
​ow—
like the past experience retrieved is happening n
incident occurred several years ago. The mind may know that, but
​​
the body does not— it does not feel it’s over until we can help this
information to become explicit, and be processed in the higher
regions of the brain. The experience literally feels as if it “moves”
into the past and we “move” into the present—and rediscover a
sense of possibility and future.

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© Diane Poole Heller
6. Character Structure Work
Character structure work is age- and stage-related, and reflects
how we have reacted or became wounded in relation to our
natural developmental stages. If our needs were not met well, we
may become an Oral or a Nurture-Nourishment Character type.
We may feel we never receive enough, with a lot of sensitivity
around nurturing or possible abandonment.

There are many developmental stages and Character structures

and here is another example.
It’s important to know that if our personal authority was not
supported, or was overwhelmed by an overly dominant parent,
we may develop the defeatist and/or depressed energy of the
Masochistic or Autonomy type. We may even pick our spiritual
practices in a way that supports our character identification
versus what might better free us from it.

The age that something happened matters—age two , five, or

twenty-one trauma robs energy from us that was originally
dedicated to completing an age-related developmental task. For
example: At age 2, we are learning the capacity to say no that

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© Diane Poole Heller
supports our personal authority and boundaries—and may later
translate into the capacity to resist drugs, bad relationships, or
unfulfilling work . . .

If we have a trauma at age two, like a surgery or a separation from

an ill parent who has to be hospitalized, then the stress of that
incident could take over and we don’t accomplish our
developmental task and have issues with boundary-setting or
saying no. You have to have a “NO” in order for your “YES” to
really mean anything.

Later in treatment, as you resolve the trauma related to illness,

you may find yourself saying “NO” to all sorts of things—even your
therapist or loved ones in a very strong way as the energy for that
original developmental task is released from being trapped in the
traumatic event. As therapists, we need to understand
developmental ages and stages and how they relate to childhood
and adult trauma for understanding and effective treatment.

7. Rescuing the Encapsulated Child

Negative wounding memories have a lot of charge and are mostly

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© Diane Poole Heller
stored in Implicit memory, as described earlier. When we touch
into it, it feels as if the experience is not a memory from long ago
even if it was actually years earlier, but is happening NOW. The
high arousal binds the experience into memory and symptoms in
the body and often we become frozen in time. That unresolved
trauma at a younger age is controlling a lot of our perceptions
from behind the scenes in an unintegrated way . . . as if we are
having an “implicit memory moment” that does not belong to
NOW.

There is actually no such thing as an inner child, but rather a

frozen memory state that we need to go back into and connect to,
as that part of us can be stuck at five, seven, ten, thirty-five— any
age in our past when a traumatic event happened—and we need
to move the experience forward in time to mature that part of us,
to have that unintegrated “sense of ourselves” join and assimilate
into our present-day selves. Encapsulated Child work integrates
well with Trauma, Attachment Wounding, and Developmental
Trauma.

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© Diane Poole Heller
8. Spirituality
Clearing attachment wounds and unresolved trauma dissolves

our conditioning crust or ego structure toward connection, love,

and compassion. Ego is necessary in a way that it helps us
function. However, ego also forms defensive structures when we
feel we need to protect ourselves from excessive hurt and this
can be dissolved in a way that frees us . It takes courage to melt
those blockages and become truly vulnerable and PRESENT to
our pain—but also present to our authentic selves and states of
BEING.

It is predominantly important to open to our natural permeability

to presence and to all the essential states that it’s possible to

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© Diane Poole Heller
access as qualities of differentiated “beingness”— such as will,
courage, love, joy, strength, passion, and aliveness.

As therapists, we use many tools—such as questionnaires,

Corrective Experiences, and live demos to show how to help
implicit memory become explicit, bringing the material that
constitutes those difficult memories into our awareness so that
they can be processed and integrated, and ultimately heal.

When we come out of threat into a relaxation response, then we

have better access to the relational part of the brain. This allows
us to come into deep contact with our own being and into
authentic connection with others—which may lead us to
spirituality. Having trauma resolved—and what keeps us
identified with our history—frees us to integrate essential states
and dimensions of BEING.

My wish is that I’d had found all of these ideas much sooner on
my journey: an understanding of how all these modalities are
interconnected. A synthesis or connection between all of these

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© Diane Poole Heller
wonderful ideas would have made my personal and professional
healing path a lot more integrated—and it probably would have
taken half the time for me to get where I am today.

Photography Credit. Brian Spielmann pages 9, 18,22,24

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© Diane Poole Heller
About Diane Poole Heller, PhD

Diane Poole Heller, PhD, is an established expert in the field of

Adult Attachment Theory, trauma resolution, and integrative
healing techniques. She is a renowned trainer, presenter, and
speaker offering many workshops, teleseminars, and educational
materials on Trauma and Attachment emphasizing their effects
on childhood and adult relationships. Diane has created the
Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning experience or the DARe to
CONNECT series on Healing Early Childhood and Adult
Attachment. With refreshing clarity and humor, she has lectured
and taught professionals internationally as a Somatic
Experiencing® Senior Faculty member and a Somatic Attachment
Educator. She has also created an online Attachment Mastery
Program and Therapy Mastermind Group.

at: ​
Learn more dianepooleheller.com

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© Diane Poole Heller