#SAFE LIFE DEFENSE HOW TO#

Why therapy works: Using our minds to change our brains (1st ed.). The neuroscience of psychotherapy: Healing the social brain (2nd ed.). Interesting examples around the world show how spontaneity and creativity are core to the development of this last prescriptive role.

Role reversal leads to the deepest connection to the new role of the manager in action.

#SAFE LIFE DEFENSE HOW TO#

This chapter provides step-by-step instructions for how to develop this new prescriptive role of the manager of defenses using role taking, role playing, and role creating. We present warm-ups to help people spontaneously make friends with their defenses, rather than letting the defenses take over. We introduce you to the Wobble (Forst, Wobble diagram, 2017) concept of defenses being either intrusive, like flashbacks, body memories, uncontrolled regression, and negative thinking, or avoidant like dissociation, denial, and multiple states of consciousness. We demonstrate how to create a space for defenses where they can be held away from interrupting the drama. We examine how survival defenses are often triggered in experiential work with trauma survivors. We first present the three categories of defenses we have named for the therapeutic spiral model: (1) survival, (2) obsessions and compulsions, and (3) maladaptive defenses (Hudgins, Experiential treatment for PTSD: The therapeutic spiral model. Step 2 is to create the manager of defenses to determine when defenses are needed and when they are automatic. Step 1 is to concretize a place to hold defenses psychologically and physically. It is a two-part experiential intervention.

This chapter presents a unique experiential TSM intervention module the therapeutic spiral model calls the manager of defenses.

Safe life defense