The gear box: A bi-axial model of psychotrauma intervention for patients with complex trauma and dissociative disorders

Working in psychotraumatology with people with complex trauma often leads to difficulties regarding treatment planning, stabilisation, but also desensitisation and reprocessing of trauma, with a risk of major destabilisation and treatment dropouts. Often many targets, especially those rooted in early childhood, are preverbal in nature and therefore remain implicit. Should we therefore give up working in psychotraumatology? Is it possible to work in EMDR in a safe way, adapting it to each person, to life circumstances made up of fears, emotions that are difficult to manage, interpersonal relationships that are sometimes complicated, somewhat chaotic life circumstances, without getting lost? The gearbox, proposing for psychotrauma therapy the metaphor of a car journey, through therapy with people with complex traumas, suggests a hierarchical treatment structure, which allows the therapist to adapt to emerging phenomena, while knowing what he/she is doing and why. In seeking to integrate current knowledge of EMDR therapy with people with complex trauma, the gearbox provides an adaptive and dynamic navigation tool.

Conference

English

Helene Dellucci

Dellucci, H. (2023, May). The gear box: A bi-axial model of psychotrauma intervention for patients with complex trauma and dissociative disorders. Pre-recorded presentation at the EMDRAA Conference, Melbourne Victoria, Australia