Healing World Trauma with the Therapeutic Spiral Model. Группа авторов

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ utilizes these principles of synergy and support, along with several other fundamental themes. Within the TSIRA template a spiritual or transpersonal context is established—one that is open to individual interpretation and personal religious belief systems, however they may be true for each person. Second, there is a clear sense of purpose: healing, a movement towards wholeness, is suggested, and the person who is the focus of the healing at the time participates and is thus empowered, rather than receiving in some passive mode. This activity adds to what is needed for recovery. Third, the mind is activated in a safe way, with others supporting and even playing the parts of the inner mind, offering reminders of support, of grounding, of time and room to maneuver, of faith in access to creativity, in pursuit of re-integration in a healthier fashion.

      Several elements combine into a potent and compelling ritual, one that can effectively counter the powerful layers of defensive dissociation that operate in trauma: one is the energy of the group, especially a group in action—not just sitting around and talking. There is a kind of vitality of a group doing things, laying down scarves, moving into position—like the activity of nurses and surgeons in an operating room. It is very reassuring, as if to give the protagonist the suggestion that all this is being done just for him or her! Then there is the power of sharing—and the protagonist is reminded that all these caring other people have also been wounded and healed.

      TSM offers a semi-hypnotic ritual process, and it embodies voices faintly heard—spoken by those who play the various types of double roles. Saying the words out loud makes them more vivid in the mind. It seems as if the forces of good are slowly getting louder, drowning out the forces of evil, the other negative voices that say things such as “I can’t, it’s too much, just leave me alone, I want to escape into sleep or booze or drugs, I want to cut myself, or hit my spouse or kids.” Those kinds of inner voices at one point seemed seductively and magically effective in relieving the inner tension, but the new voices recognize these frightened responses, accept them, but also offer healing alternatives.

      Protagonists experience an engagement with, rather than an escape from, the truth of their memories, the trauma, and so they feel a little braver. But it is nicely buffered so they don’t have to be overwhelmed as they were originally. TSM thus operates to offer a little distance, somewhat like a light anesthetic. Yet the protagonists feel involved, they feel that it is they who are “doing” it. They think/feel something akin to “I’m feeling active in healing myself—yes, with help—but at least I’m not so passive anymore.” That is good, too.

      There is great strength in the presence of kind, powerful, caring people, enough of them so they can’t be dismissed as being mean or not empathic enough. (This is a disadvantage of one-to-one therapy, in which therapists too easily become an object of transference or projection.) TSM is also a method that protagonists can track, stay oriented with at a cognitive level. Yet the processes and symbols heal also at more unconscious levels. This offers another good combination: deep participation, a sense of my doing and my not being dis-empowered and helpless any more. It is good to experience others really understanding. It is too easy to forget the feeling of being empathized with—a very compelling experience. Add to this the further corrective emotional experience for the protagonist: “More than my doubles making the effort to understand me, they also invite me to correct them.” This fine-tunes the alignment process.

      Naming roles bridges non-rational and rational functions, pre-conscious and explicitly conscious fields of awareness, and the intuitive and cognitive. Naming anchors the feelings in words so that the experience doesn’t just drift away. Just being a protagonist in a classical psychodrama sometimes leaves protagonists moved, but later they can’t tell you what they learned. Later they might admit that the experience didn’t change them, really. So I think that true maturation and integration needs a certain amount of cognitive anchoring; and ideally this comes not from just talking about things, but deeply experiencing them.

      Shifting to trauma, a condition in which this problem is especially sensitive: people who have been traumatized have been not only deeply wounded, but also profoundly disoriented. For these people it may not have been who the enemy was. Traumatized people sometimes wonder, “Perhaps they were trying to help and maybe I was just being stubborn! I should have stood up to them!” Doubts such as these add to the stress immeasurably. Such people need the equivalent of heart surgery, and time on the psychic equivalent of a heart-lung machine. The team comes in and provides an external ego, playing roles that people who are merely neurotic can generally play for themselves.

      Introspection, the ability to look at oneself, to take an objective stance, is impaired in trauma. There are too many unconscious pathological narratives. So through gentle direction, the protagonist plays a strength, and eventually becomes that strength, reminding themself that there is really something to rely on. People forget this. One of my mottos is that before putting people in touch with their negative voices, get them grounded in their positive voices. This book shows how TSM does this: once the protagonist takes on a strength role, then others play that part of the self that is strong. This process is profoundly effective, especially when one is a quivering mass of jelly. Re-minding is the key. Another double might re-mind the traumatized protagonist that the present situation is populated by real people and relationships that are positively caring—the interpersonal field.

      At some point, after negotiating what images fit the client’s highest value or spiritual system, these sources may also be personified as roles, and that further “grounds” protagonists as they “hear” their “positive voices.” But for the fragile egos of truly traumatized people, even this isn’t enough. They need to be reminded of the activity in the present moment, re-grounded by the double in the here-and-now, or they dissociate into a whole “trauma bubble” of memories and defenses. So a team member may use the specific role of a “containing double” to remind the client on the spot that, hey, they can stop time, slow it down, get some distance. Folks don’t know they can use surplus reality to do this. And meanwhile there’s the body double who is echoing the body’s pain and eventual anchoring security: “I can feel the screaming in the back of my throat.” “I can feel myself aware of the closeness of my double—I’m not alone. I can relax my arms just a bit.” These refinements alone are marvelous! All the others are great too, but the point is that healing happens as one analyzes or breaks down the mess in the mind, naming roles, and adds the potential healing ingredients as if they were people. The enactment of this process goes so very deep, and that is what traumatized people need—nothing less.

      When protagonists are well grounded they can begin to touch the pain; and the level of that pain is calibrated in TSM to be at just enough of a distance so that it is well within the manageable. As an example of role distance, in a re-enactment sometimes the victim role is played by someone other than the protagonist. This “role distance” allows the experience to be contained and mentally “metabolized.” The perpetrator role is also in the mind, what Jungians call a “shadow” function. A third role often played in TSM scenes is the authority who perhaps should have been more protective. This raises a question that may never have been present previously in the protagonist’s mind, and the exploration of that theme offers a hint of the ethos of protection. Such action explorations constitute the “heart” of the “surgery.” Staying with the metaphor, if the various roles were not coordinated, it could generate a re-traumatizing experience, but in TSM they are coordinated, and that’s the beauty of this work.

      All this operates within a larger story: people feel stuck and hopeless. Can they take another role? The sleeping-awakening child role offers an unconsciously remembered state that is close to the most vulnerable and most innocent. Awakening protagonists before the trauma is dealt with can send them back into their inner hell or back into the dissociated “sleep” of their pre-therapy lives. On the other hand, awakening them at the healing moment generates an awakening to a sweet new day. It turns out that there are others—many others—that can show what was lacking at original trauma by offering examples of how it might be handled otherwise, kindlier. The catharsis has protagonists feeling something like “Wow, who knew СКАЧАТЬ