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8 Elements of Healing Through Psychotherapy F PDF
8 Elements of Healing Through Psychotherapy F PDF
�Rachel aomiRemen
8
ELEMENTS OF HEALING
THROUGH
PSYCHOTHERAPY
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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.
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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.”
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
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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
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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:
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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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).
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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.
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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 . . .
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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.
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© Diane Poole Heller
8. Spirituality
Clearing attachment wounds and unresolved trauma dissolves
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© Diane Poole Heller
access as qualities of differentiated “beingness”— such as will,
courage, love, joy, strength, passion, and aliveness.
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.
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© Diane Poole Heller
About Diane Poole Heller, PhD
at:
Learn more dianepooleheller.com
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© Diane Poole Heller