Healing the inner child - EMDR imagery re-scripting technique with complex trauma clients

Neuropsychological findings indicate that affect regulation is learned through secure attachment during the first year of an infant's life (Siegel, 1999; Schore, 1994, 1996). Poor affect regulation is one of the main indicators of clients diagnosed with Personality Disorders and those having experienced early life trauma, e.g. CSA or other abuse. Hence, one of the aims of a successful treatment outcome is healthy affect control. Yet, few therapeutic approaches for Personality Disorder or Complex Trauma currently focus ont the quality and re-building of such clients' early attachment relationships. Herbert (2002, 2003) describes a therapeutic framework, utilizing both EMDR and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) technqiues for working with complex client problems, that incorporates an assessment of the quality of early attachment relationships and, based on this, various therapeutic methods, such as imaginal re-nurtuing, which aid clients to re-script and repair ruptures in clients' experiences of their early attachment relationships. Clinical practice indicates that through the use of these techniques, clients with previously poor affect control and functionally disrupted lives, can learn to build a more secure and functionally positive sense of Self with healthy mechanisms of affect regulation. a) The learning objectives for this presentation are to introduce participatns to 1. the concept of attachment and its role ind determining affect control, 2. a therapeutic framework for working with clients with complex problems, and 3, clinicial technqiues that hep repair deficits in early attachment relationships to allow cients build healthy mechanisms of affect control.

Conference

English

Claudia Herbert

Herbert, C. (2004, February). Healing the inner child - EMDR imagery re-scripting technique with complex trauma clients. Presentation at the 2nd annual Conference of the EMDR UK & Ireland Association, Birmingham, UK