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Understanding Complex
Trauma
Paths to Recovery
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D.
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Social Conditions Producing
Prolonged and Repeated Trauma
• Child abuse
• Domestic violence
• Some religious cults
• Human trafficking and prostitution
• Slavery
• Torture
• Concentration Camps
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Rules for Relationships of Coercive Control
• The strong do as they please.
• The weak submit.
• Bystanders seem willfully blind or
indifferent.
• There is nowhere to turn for care or
protection.
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Coercive Techniques are Organized to
Control and Dominate Victim
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Methods of Coercive Control
• Violence and Threat of Violence
• Control of Bodily Functions
• Capricious Enforcement of Petty Rules
• Intermittent Rewards
• Isolation
• Degradation
• Enforced Participation in Atrocities
---Source: Amnesty International Report on Torture, 1973
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Recruiting Women for Prostitution:
Professional Advice from a Pimp
“Beauty, yes. Sexual expertise, somewhat. That can be taught easier
than you think. What is important above all is obedience. And how do you get obedience? You get women who have had sex with their fathers, their uncles, their brothers---you know, someone they love and fear and do not dare to defy.”
---Richard Kluft, On the Apparent Invisibility of Incest. 1990
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Complex PTSD:
Symptom Profile
• Alienation from the Body
• Dissociation
• Emotional Extremes
• Self-Harm and Revictimization
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Health Risk Behaviors (Felitti et. al., ACE Study, 1998)
N=9,508
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Revictimization (Coid et. al, 2001)
N=1207
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Suicide Attempts (Dube et al, 2001)
N=17,337
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Complex PTSD: Distortions in Personality
• Negative Identity Formation
• Loss of Sustaining Beliefs
• Shame, Guilt, and Self-Blame
• Sense of Defilement or Stigma
• Sense of Complete Alienation (May include sense of utter aloneness, specialness, or nonhuman identity)
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Negative/Defiled Identity
“I am filled with black slime. I think of
myself as the sewer silt that a snake would
breed upon.”
--An incest survivor
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The Experience of Shame
Shame is one’s own vicarious experience of the other’s scorn. The self-in-the eyes-of-the-other is the focus of awareness. The experience of shame often occurs in the form of imagery, of looking or being looked at. Shame may also be played out as an internal colloquy, in which the whole self is condemned.
--Helen Block Lewis
Shame and Guilt in Human Nature, 1987
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Complex PTSD:
Distortions in Relationships
• Intense unstable relationships
• Isolation and withdrawal
• Persistent distrust
• Repeated failures in self-protection
• Repeated search for rescuer (may alternate with isolation and withdrawal)
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Implications for Treatment: Avoiding Re-enactments (Karpman’s Drama Triangle)
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Implications for Treatment:
Antidotes to Coercive Control
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Rules for Relationships of
Mutuality
• Everyone is entitled to respect
• Everyone is entitled to a voice
• Decisions are made by mutual consent
• Power and responsibility are shared
• Relationships are governed by principles
of fairness
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Adaptive Strategies for Recovery
(Burgess & Holmstrom, 1979)
• Problem-Solving Action
• Affiliative Coping Style
• Mature Defenses: Altruism and
Humor
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Stage One: Safety
Focus on the Body
• Daily Cycles of Sleep, Eating,
Exercise
• Drugs and Alcohol
• Basic Health Care
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Stage One: Safety
Creating a Safe Environment
• Physical Self-Protection
• Work and Money
• Secure Living Situation
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Stage One: Safety
Strategies for Self-Care
• Biological: Medications
• Behavioral: Meditation, Relaxation
Exercise
• Cognitive: Journals, Lists & Plans
• Relational: Reliable Connections
• Social: Natural Support Systems
Self-Help Organizations
Mental Health System
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Groups In Early Recovery
• Therapeutic Task: Safety
• Time Orientation: Present
• Focus: Self-Care
• Structure: Didactic
• Membership: Homogeneous
• Boundaries: Flexible, Inclusive
• Cohesion: Low
• Conflict Tolerance: Low
• Time Limit: Limited, Repeating
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The Trauma Information Group
Lois Glass, L.I.C.S.W. & Barbara Hamm, Psy. D. Victims of Violence Program
• Session I Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
• Session II Safety and Self-Care
• Session III Trust
• Session IV Remembering
• Session V Shame and Self-Blame
• Session VI The Recovery Process
• Session VII Anger
• Session VII Self Image/Body Image
• Session IX Relationships
• Session X Making Meaning of the Past
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Sample Worksheet:
Safety and Self Care Diary
• I do not take care of myself when………….......
• Ways in which I do not take care of myself……
• I take good care of myself when………….........
• Ways in which I take good care of myself……..
• Supports in my life………………………………..
• New ways I can take care of myself……………
• If I imagined feeling safe I would imagine……..
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Stage Two: Reconstruction
of Trauma
• Locus of Control remains with patient
• Attention to timing and pacing
• Uncovering proceeds in small steps
• Reconstruction includes all aspects of memory
• Memories evoke intense grief
• Goal is integration, not catharsis
• Creation of new meaning
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Integration of Traumatic Memory
Normal memory, like all psychological phenomena, is an action; essentially it is the action of telling a story…A situation has not been satisfactorily liquidated…until we have achieved, not merely an outward reaction through our movements, but also an inward reaction, through the words we address to ourselves, through the organization of the recital of the event to others and to ourselves, and through the putting of this recital in its place as one of the chapters in our personal history… Strictly speaking, then, one who retains a fixed idea of a happening cannot be said to have a “memory.” It is only for convenience that we speak of it as a “traumatic memory.”
----Pierre Janet, Psychological Healing, 1919
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Groups In Stage Two
• Therapeutic Task: Integration
• Time Orientation: Past
• Focus: Trauma
• Structure: Goal-Directed
• Membership: Homogeneous
• Boundaries: Closed
• Cohesion: Very High
• Conflict Tolerance: Low
• Time Limit: Fixed Limit
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The Trauma Recovery Group
(Mendelsohn et. al, 2011)
• Individualized Goals Developed in Group
• Sharing Trauma Narratives as Means to Achieving Goal
• Shared Expectation for Giving and Receiving Empathic Feedback
• Inclusion Criteria: Safety and Self-Care Established in Present; Appropriate Individual Therapy
• Time Limit: 10-30 Weeks
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Resolution of Shame in Groups
People have at once a sense of their own honour and a respect for other people’s honour; they can feel indignation or other forms of anger when honour is violated, in their own case or someone else’s. These are shared sentiments, and they serve to bind people together in a community of feeling.
----Bernard Williams
Shame and Necessity, 1993
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Stage Three: Reconnection
• Expanded Peer Relationships
• Intimate Relationships
• Family Relationships
• Reintegration at successive stages of
life cycle
• Social Action and the Survivor Mission
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Groups In Stage Three
• Therapeutic Task: Reconnection
• Time Orientation: Present and Future
• Focus: Interpersonal
• Structure: Created by Group
• Membership: Heterogeneous
• Boundaries: Slow Turnover
• Cohesion: High
• Conflict Tolerance: High
• Time Limit: Ongoing