Essentially, to be effective trauma therapy needs to be safe, so that the client feels safe and not at any risk of becoming re-traumatized.
The Body Remembers: an Interview with Babette Rothschild, Psychotherapy in Australia, Vol. 8, no. 2, February 2002
Applying the Brakes
‘Much as we don’t like to admit it publicly, it’s an open secret among therapists that the road to recovery from trauma can be fraught with clinical missteps. In the past few years, I’ve frequently been consulted by highly competent colleagues who were dumbfounded by the speedy decline of clients contending with traumatic memories...
Dangers of Empathy
‘Trauma–whether the client’s original injury or the clinician’s vicarious injury–happens as much in the body as in the mind. All of us experience the effects of trauma in the arousal of our autonomic nervous system, the fight-or-flight reaction…’
Mirror, Mirror: Our Brains are Hardwired for Empathy
‘Empathy is the connective tissue of good therapy. It’s what enables us to establish bonds of trust with clients, and to meet them with our hearts as well as our minds. Empathy enhances our insights, sharpens our hunches, and at times seems to allow us to “read” a client’s mind. Yet, vital as it is to our work, empathy has remained a rather fuzzy concept in psychotherapy…’
A Trauma Case History
‘PTSD may be the condition that finally convinces both the medical and psychological communities that there is a connection between the mind and the body…’
The Body Remembers: An Interview with Babette Rothschild
‘Essentially, to be effective trauma therapy needs to be safe, so that the client feels safe and not at any risk of becoming re-traumatized. It’s also important to keep the traumatic hyper-arousal at a level where the client can digest the therapy; if arousal goes too high the client’s not going to be able to think and integrate their experience. That is what I call ‘putting on the brakes’.’
Babette Rothschild on What’s Missing in Trauma Work: Choosing the Tools that Fit Your Client
Article in Psychotherapy Networker, December 2023