Deirdre Fay: Why Trauma Doesn't Heal- Academy of Therapy Wisdom

Trauma-informed care. Treating #attachment #disorder #therapytrainingonline with Deirdre Fay (#freetraining webinar: https://therapywisdom.com/treating-at...)

Attachment styles imprinted before the age of three shape how we experience the world. Unresolved attachment issues can hinder trauma recovery and personal growth. Discover how addressing these early relational patterns can be the key to unleashing healing and transformation.

Be More Than a Therapist, Be a Guide to Transformation

It's time to move beyond clinical protocols and techniques. Deirdre believes in being present and authentic, forming genuine connections with clients. Learn how to listen beneath the stories, bridging the gap between "doing" and "being."

Video transcript:
The big aha for me came after I’d been working with trauma clients, dissociative clients at Bessel Vander Kolk Clinic for probably 10, 15 years. I realized something was missing. What that big aha was then is when I took an attachment course and everything fell into place. That is why trauma doesn’t heal. That’s why it doesn’t clear.

So trauma treatment is so important because it helps stabilize and get a client a little bit more grounded, able to stay in the present moment. Then when that happens, all the rest of the stuff comes up. Then we start hearing what happened then relationally. And the problem is that these relational patterns are attachment styles that are imprinted before three years old. It’s really early. So that is imprinted in a nonverbal non-narrative way, as if it’s how we apprehend the world.
We don’t think about the world that early. That’s how we experience the world, right? It’s like the water that we’re swimming in and the air that we’re breathing. We almost can’t imagine it being any other way. And that pattern, as the research shows, is what rolls out over the rest of our lives unless we intervene. The research shows 77% of the people maintain their same attachment style throughout the years.

All the work that I had done, all the training, all the study with Bessel, with Janina, I was a trainer for sensory motor psychotherapy, I had done so much work, and yet I didn’t know this piece. And so much of attachment, healing is really about attunement.
It’s being able to drop all the protocols that I’ve learned all the right way to do it and just be there with them and listen underneath the story. I’ve had so many clients come in and have been with other therapists who are really well trained trauma therapists are certified in a certain modality. And yet the therapist ends up feeling like they can’t work with a client. And the client feels like there’s something wrong with them.

And the reason as I’ve been exploring this is that therapists are trained to do rather than to be. We have to drop that and learn how to be there and listen into and through the story. I’m Deirdre Fay. I’ve written two books, Becoming Safely Embodied and Attachment-Based Yoga and Meditation for Trauma, as well as co-authored a book with Dan Brown and David Elliott and a small group of others. The Becoming Safely Embodied skills came out of when I was at Bessel’s clinic and Bessel asked me to lead some groups.

And so I put together a series of groups and say, how do you learn to stabilize and live inside your body? And that became the basis. And then Janina was sending her clients to the group and seeing them change all the time. She was like, what are you doing? What’s making the difference here? And she came and joined me and we led the group for a number of years together. So I’m thinking about things like the story we all know about Helen Keller.

You know, she was blind, deaf, mute. And her amazing breakthrough was when she had a teacher, a boldly we’ll call an older, wiser person who was there with her, a guide, a mentor who helped her make sense of the world. There’s a wonderful story that they both talk about Helen Keller and the Insolvent, where Anne was trying to teach her what water was, and she had no concept for it. And so Anne took her hand, Helen Keller’s hand, put it in water so she could feel the water, and she started signing water, water. And Helen’s world completely opened up. That linkage happened. Oh, that’s what it is. The concept is no longer a concept. It makes sense of what’s happening inside. That’s what we’re doing over and over and over with our clients. I’m thinking of a client right now that I’m working with who is terrified of men, terrible history, and wanting to start dating but is terrified. We’re up a very violent family and household. And whenever she’s with people, she literally hears…screaming and yelling and running and her many different parts are scattering all over the place and she can’t stay present to the outside world because she’s in such inner conflict in turmoil. ...