When calm safe place doesn’t work

In the Client Preparation Phase (Phase 2), the client learns self-soothing skills before progressing to trauma processing. It is essential that the client be able to voluntarily change from a state of high distress to a state of lower distress before proceeding to trauma processing. Historically, this has been accomplished through the development of a Calm Place (used to be called Safe Place). Some clients are not able to reach a calm state via this exercise, which may indicate the presence of a Dissociative Disorder, typically requiring a longer Preparation Phase. This workshop will teach how to identify these clients, what it means and two methods to find resources for self-soothing and self-regulation. These resource states provide a base of operations for trauma processing.

Content and Timeline:
1. Introduction of Calm Place as diagnostic 2. The search for a pretraumatic resource. Description of Dr. Brian Lynn article (EMDRIA, 2000) 3. Description and Practical Demonstration of Safe State 4. Description and Practical Demonstration of Prenatal Pretraumatic (PNPT) State 5. Practice of each state. 6. Debrief group 7. Handouts:

Conference

English

Katie O'Shea
Marshall Wilensky

O'Shea, K., & Wilensky, M. (2014, June). When calm safe place doesn't work. In EMDR clinical practice symposium (Eva Zimmermann, Chair). Symposium presented at the 15th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland