Search results for ""author ellert r s nijenhuis""

Enactive trauma therapy is grounded in so-called enactivism, which holds that, like anyone else, traumatized individuals are (1) embrained, embodied, and environmentally embedded; (2) constitute biopsychological organism-environment systems that are essentially interested in preserving their existence; (3) are primarily affective and oriented toward making sense of things. Individuals exhibit a phenomenal self, world, and self-of-the-world through self- and world-oriented actions. They do not act on the basis of knowledge, but possess knowledge on the basis of world-engaged sensorimotor, affect-laden, and goal-oriented actions. Whenever interpersonal traumatization by significant others occurs, individuals may get caught up in affective and relational conflicts they cannot resolve on their own. Their generation and maintenance of a trauma-related dissociation of the personality involves a kind of sense-making that supports their continued existence when their capacity to integrate traumatic experiences is still too low. However, what starts as a courageous effort to navigate a traumatizing life may at some point in time become a serious problem. Enactive trauma therapy comprises the collaboration of two organism-environment systems: the patient and the therapist. Together they spawn new meaning and adequate actions an interaction that resembles dancing: It takes pacing, mutual attunement, good timing, a sensitivity to balance, movement and rhythm, courage, as well as the ability and willingness to follow and lead.

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They typically have a wide array of symptoms, often classified under different combinations of comorbidity, which can make assessment and treatment complicated and confusing for the therapist. Many patients have substantial problems with daily living and relationships, including serious intrapsychic conflicts and maladaptive coping strategies. Their suffering essentially relates to a terrifying and painful past that haunts them. Even when survivors attempt to hide their distress beneath a facade of normality—a common strategy—therapists often feel besieged by their many symptoms and serious pain. Small wonder that many survivors of chronic traumatization have seen several therapists with little if any gains, and that quite a few have been labeled as untreatable or resistant. In this book, three leading researchers and clinicians share what they have learned from treating and studying chronically traumatized individuals across more than 65 years of collective experience. Based on the theory of structural dissociation of the personality in combination with a Janetian psychology of action, the authors have developed a model of phase-oriented treatment that focuses on the identification and treatment of structural dissociation and related maladaptive mental and behavioral actions. The foundation of this approach is to support patients in learning more effective mental and behavioral actions that will enable them to become more adaptive in life and to resolve their structural dissociation. This principle implies an overall therapeutic goal of raising the integrative capacity, in order to cope with the demands of daily life and deal with the haunting remnants of the past, with the “unfinished business” of traumatic memories. Of interest to clinicians, students of clinical psychology and psychiatry, as well as to researchers, all those interested in adult survivors of chronic child abuse and neglect will find helpful insights and tools that may make the treatment more effective and efficient, and more tolerable for the suffering patient.

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