Complex Trauma & Grief Work

You are not alone this time.

Repeated and abrupt early harm experiences that include force, neglect, and safety indifference will have a long-term impacts on important character foundations and affect development of biological and cognitive systems. These systems, if left undiagnosed and untreated, develop adaptively to maintain safety internally while managing the danger and chaos externally with indifference, ambivalence and compliance. (Refer over to the list of symptoms for early intervention.)

As people mature externally there may be internal processing structures that still function in the early patterns. Eventually this may become noticeable and, perhaps, uncomfortable. You and your processing systems are not broken, simply highly adaptive.

EMDR Therapy protocols have several variations to provide gradual system stability, awareness, insight towards increased levels of coherence and integration. We call this ego state/parts work as there is usually comPARTmentalization of information processing. This is a longer treatment plan and may require collaboration of other members of your health care and support team. The work is non judgmental and supportive as you learn more about your amazing protective systems.

General Complex PTSD Treatment Goals

"A successful EMDR and ego state integrated treatment model permits our overarching goals of treatment to become more expansive. These goals include helping clients in a number of crucial areas:

• To provide safety and develop stability in treatment and in current life experiences.

• To help clients become affect tolerant and able to regulate emotional responses.
• To reprocess trauma and manage and eliminate symptoms of PTSD and DD.
• To repair damage to boundaries and the internal structure.

• To resolve relational and trust issues (attachment breaks and losses, fears of intimacy).

• To enable the person to develop empathy for self and the internal family system.

• To help clients reach their potential in a number of crucial areas, including the ability to meet their own needs more effectively and to become effective parents to themselves.

These goals are also described from an attachment perspective by Barach and Comstock (1996), who emphasize stabilizing self-other object representation through facilitation of the development of an internal "secure base." - EMDRMasterclass.com, Carol Forgash LCSD BCD

Complicated Grief/Change Work

Processing loss and change is a capacity of your brain, however, this process may be inhibited from completing. Historical compounding events, fear and missing "permissions" may be determined as we work through your system assessment. Often the capacity to process change is able to gradually recover and come back on-line with EMDR therapy, change education and support. Read more from the Mayo Clinic here.