The Toolbox at LisaKiftTherapy.com

We started by checking in – as we always do.  I’m enjoying the level of safety that has been created by us five women in this group.  Several have some very intense personal things going on and it’s clear we all feel emotionally held and secure with each other.  We reviewed the assigned chapters from our current book, Being a Brainwise Therapist by Bonnie Badenoch which looks at depression, anxiety, dissociation and addiction through the lens of diagnosis from a neuroscience perspective.  We also asked Linda Graham – our facilitator and expert on attachment, neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology – to help break down the process to work with individual clients in the way we’ve been discussing.  (It’s very easy to get lost in all of the brain-anatomy-speak in the book and get tongue tied around how to break it down to our clients in a coherent way.)

Linda had attended the recent Psychotherapy Networker symposium so we got some insight from some of the speakers we saw as well.  She’s hoping to present next year.

Here are some nuggets of info mined from our group today:

• Depression, anxiety, dissociation and addiction are all adaptations to stress
• Three basic steps (very simplified) around working with clients involve 1) creating safety, 2) identifying the trauma and how it’s held (looking for verbal or physical signals) and bring in personal and emotional resourcing (inner community or a time they felt personally, emotionally connected) to help process the trauma.
• If the client has no memory of safety, security and connection to assist building the inner community, help them make one up.
• The brain can rewire when you bring the client back to the time of the trauma and bring in the resources at the same time to create a new emotional experience of the same experience.  This literally can unlock the synaptic connection. 
• Mindfulness is self-directed neuroplasticity.
• Cognitive, somatic and neurofeedback can all change neural structure. 

I’d like to share a few particularly powerful quotes from the book we’re reading as well:

“The influence of parents on their children’s temperament takes us back to the main theme of the book: the impact of early attachment experiences on mental health.  Even at the level of basic science, disturbances in the process of regulation/integration are being recognized as the core of mental suffering.”

“Even before birth, research is now showing us that the emotional-neurochemical environment in the womb can cause newborns to enter this life calm, depressed or anxious.”

“As we learn more, we learn that addiction is very much a whole-brain process, drawing many neural circuits into destructive cooperation, particularly in the absence of empathic, interpersonal connections.”

Next group meets Wednesday May 5th.

If any therapists who know something about this subject would like to share their information “nuggets,” all the better!  Insights and links to additional resources are all welcome on the comment form below.

Lastly, check the “notify me of new comments” to be kept in the loop.

See the previous sessions:

The Therapist Consultation Room: Parent-Child Pairs, Mirror Neurons and Embracing Shame 

The Therapist Consultation Room: Empathic Failure, Adult Attachment Styles and Toxic Shame

The Therapist Consultation Room: Caring and Empathy in Relationships Rewires the Brain

The Therapist Consultation Room: Attachment and Neuroscience

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Lisa Brookes Kift is a psychotherapist and creator of Notes from a Therapist’s Chair: The Therapy and Counseling Blog; a feature of The Toolbox at LisaKiftTherapy.com.  To stay updated on the most recent therapy / therapist related posts subscribe to Notes from a Therapist’s Chair Blog RSS Feed.

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