September 11, 2025 • 30 mins
Dr. Rachel Aarons has over 40 years of experience as a psychotherapist. Initially trained as a philosopher, she served as an Associate professor at the University of Toronto before transitioning to therapy and earning her Masters in Social Work. Dr. Aarons initially specialized in hypnotherapy and became a Certified EMDR therapist in 2004. Her current focus in the Early Trauma Protocol, a ground-breaking approach to addressing early attachment injuries that shape emotional and relational patterns throughout life. Her mission is to train therapists, heal clients and educate the public on how early childhood experiences impact lifelong challenges.
Therapists guide to healing trauma from the roots up.
In This Episode
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Therapists guide to healing trauma from the roots up.
In This Episode
Thank you to our sponsor Jane App - Practice Management Software for Health & Wellness Practitioners.
Use code GUY1MO at check out.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Theypists podcast. My name is got Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest today,
Doctor Rachel Aaron's. Rachel welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Doctor Rachel Aarons has over forty years of experience as
a psychotherapist. Initially trained as a philosopher, she served as
an associate professor at the University of Toronto before transitioning
to therapy and earning her master's in Social work. Doctor
Aaron's initially specialized in hypnotherapy and became a certified EMDR
Therapist in twenty oh four. Her current focus in the
(00:47):
Early Trauma Protocol, a groundbreaking approach to addressing early attachment
injuries that shape emotional and relational patterns throughout life. Her
mission is to train therapists, heal clients, and educate the
public look on how early childhood experiences impact lifelong challenges. Today,
we're going to be talking about her forthcoming book titled
Therapist Guide to Healing Trauma from the roots up. Rachel, welcome,
(01:14):
Thank you for being here. Before we get going, share
with our listeners where you're from originally and where you
are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I was originally in Canada in the East. I grew
up in in Toronto, and I moved then to Vancouver
to the other coast, and from Vancouver, I came to
Santa Barbara, where I am currently living.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Okay, so again, we are going to talk about your book,
but just give our listeners a nutshell of how you
got into this field. Give us, give us, give us
the nutshell.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, do you mean, in general, how I got into
being a therapist or how I got into being a trauma.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Therapist the latter.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Okay, So, actually, I, as was mentioned, I was using
hypnotherapy until I discovered EMDR, and I got excited about
the fact that we could make very immediate and effective
changes very quickly using EMDR as a methodology. As I
(02:24):
moved forward and was inspired by a teacher of mine,
I realized that there's a whole other range of experience
that has been largely underestimated and somewhat ignored because it
comes prior to language and explicit memory. So it seemed
(02:50):
like it was inaccessible, and I began being interested in
working through how to access that period of time because
it is my conviction that that is what shapes all
the problems that human beings experience later in life, and
so it's crucial and we need to know where all
(03:13):
those patterns began.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So it is, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's our
earlier preverbal life patterns that shape are the issues the
trauma that we experience.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
That's right. They underlie the trauma.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
They underlie the trauma, correct. Okay, so they underlie the trauma.
Does that mean are you saying they cause the trauma
or what's the relationship between them and the trauma.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
What I've discovered is that it is insecure attachment in
the relationship between parents and children from the get go
that shapes the concepts that people have about themselves and
the ways they develop their approach to relationships, their behavior
(04:13):
in the future, and how they develop their career or
work history. All of those things stem from having usually
insecure attachment.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay, that makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The book's titled Therapist's Guide to Healing Trauma from the
Roots Up. Why did you write this book?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Thank you for asking that I was actually reviewing what
my lofty goals were for this work. I was recognizing
that my ambitions were probably not going to get fulfilled
in the timeframe that I have I have given I
(05:04):
guess it was about five webinars, and I have those
webinars were introductions to this methodology, so there were literally
hundreds of people that attended, so they know a little
bit about my work, but not enough to be trained
as the therapist we need if we want to address
the problems that clients have and get to the roots,
(05:27):
get to the original source, and that would require that
I do, like I don't know how many practicum trainings
which are fourteen hours, and then follow up practice in
consultation groups to make sure that people have the skills
(05:49):
to help people go through this methodology, and the methodology
I developed is pretty intense and pretty complicated. And you
and I spoke recently. When we first met, we shared
the opinion that the best training for therapists is experiential,
(06:10):
not academic or cognitive primarily, and that it works with
the unconscious mind, and that people need to deal with
their own problems using this methodology if they're going to
be able to extend that understanding to their clients, and
I think we both shared that view that that's a
(06:32):
really key way of having therapists develop their understanding of
themselves and then of clients.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, I think you said a lot right within that
chunk of three sentences. I think you said a lot.
So as an entree into getting more specific about the
book and what is involved, help our listeners understand why
(07:05):
this methodology, how this methodology is different from the methodologies
already in existence.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, first of all, it's not essentially an AMDR methodology,
which means that I'm switching in that work to a
different approach that I have developed. And part of that
is attachment photos, which are experiential I call them a
kind of a moving rorshak, and these help people get
(07:39):
in touch with through the photos what they missed, what
they would have wished for and deserved. So it's preparation
for doing the work of the actual time segments, looking
at what went wrong in each period of time from
conception to age four.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So these photographs are tell us more about these photographs
or images or pictures.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, the first set, which is really unique to me,
I guess, are pictures of animals because people are less
defensive in dealing, in viewing, and responding to animals than
they are to human beings in many cases. And these
show how animals offer secure attachment to their progeny. So
(08:33):
they can then say, oh, I didn't have that, or
I did have that, but I didn't have this. They
can begin to explore their own experience through that medium.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So were these photographs that you took or your people
took or what?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
No, they're actually photos that I found on royalty free
images that are available online certain companies.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Interesting, So you help me out here, So as the therapist,
you would lay these out in front of your client
or how does it work?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I use slides which are viewed on a monitor on
a TV monitor, okay, and their color slides, so they're
they're pretty, they elicit strong feelings, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And the idea is to are you asking your client
to react to them or what's the prompt here?
Speaker 3 (09:43):
As they this will be true throughout the whole there's
a lot of photos throughout the whole process that they're
basically looking at what they experience in the slides and
asking themselves is this familiar to me or not in
my own personal experience of being parented by my specific bioparents.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, and you use that information.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
To begin to formulate their own history before there is
explicit memory and language, So they're beginning to recognize that
there was an impact. And part of what I'm about
is convincing people that there is an impact in those years.
(10:36):
They can't be ignored or dismissed because obviously the babies
don't remember those experiences, and that is dangerous because parents
will then act as if how they treat those children
at those ages doesn't matter because they won't remember. Actually,
(10:57):
memory is very much of that, but in a different
form than we're accustomed to.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So compared to say, em DR or another modality, how
is this talk about the differences?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, the main or first comment is that EMDR usually
requires explicit memory. We have a traumatic experience or we're
stuck with a particular pattern of behaving, and we have
(11:44):
experiences that we remember that can explain and be worked
through using that methodology. But the problem the challenges that
in those early years there is no memory and no language,
so we have to find ways to interpret the negative
(12:06):
sensations that arise in the body as we look at
those early experiences and the photos are helping people formulate
what might have happened to them. Then they work it
through in a processing model.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
You talked about the importance of the therapist get involved
involving themselves in this education information as well, and how
integral that is to this work. Talk more about that well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
In the way that I have been teaching this, we
break down into diads or triads, and people share the
responses they're having and the way they're learning about themselves
(13:06):
as very young children, infants and very young children. So
they have an opportunity to participate live well. I mean
it can be online as well, but with other people
who are playing the role of therapist. One of the
(13:26):
challenges of writing a book is you don't have that
possibility because a book doesn't have other people there to
talk to. But my feeling was that I would not
have the time and the energy to do the amount
of training that would be required to have therapists prepared
(13:50):
to work with clients using this methodology, and so I
was afraid that it would it would not have the
impact that I I hoped for in terms of changing
the picture of dealing with trauma for clients.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Talk a little bit about the structure of the book.
How did you lay it out?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Well, I've only mentioned about the very beginning of attachment photos,
but let me explain the book as a whole. As
you're asking. There's an introductory section, and then I broke
it into modules. And the first module are the prerequisites
that are standalone methods that help people in their lives,
(14:38):
but are also required methods to do this work, the
healing trauma from the roots up work. And then the
second module is the one that we had started to
speak about, which is attachment secure and insecure attachment using
the attachment photos. And also, because we do repair through
(15:06):
a mythic family that they develop, we also need to
help them choose the mythic parents that work for them,
the people they would have wished to have as their
parents if they had a choice. And then the third
section is the actual processing of time segments, starting with
(15:28):
preconception and working their way through each segment of time
after that, through pregnancy, birth and each of the trimesters,
and through each of the years of early life. And
that is the actual application of the methodology that will
(15:53):
inquire looking at what went wrong and then of repairing
it with the parents that they have chose because that
gives them the experience in imagination of secure attachment. And
as you know, I think imagination is the vehicle of
understanding of the unconscious mind.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Right the first part you mentioned that there were kind
of standalone what components that were necessary for doing this work.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Say more about.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Those, Okay, sure, two of them are very common and
used by a number of different therapists. I take my
examples from hypnotherapy in those that's container or containment and
safe state. What it does is it helps people to
(16:51):
set aside issues that they can't work on in the moment,
and so worrying about them or being preoccupied just gets
in the way of whatever else they're trying to do.
So we need to be able to put something aside
when we can't sleep because we're worrying or because we're
obsessing about something we can't change. So containment often goes
(17:16):
as a pair with safe state, and safe state is
the experience that someone had of being really calm and
peaceful and being able to go into that state by
experiencing a special place that they felt that way in.
(17:39):
So a safe space and safe state and safe place
are connected. Safe state being the feelings they have when
they are really relaxed and at peace. There's a third one,
and it's more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Okay, Okay, we'll leave that for the people who get
the book and so forth. So that's the first part.
There's a second part, and the third part we'll get into.
But generally speaking, as a therapist doing this work, is
this would you consider this verbal talk therapy or how
(18:23):
would you categorize it? Is this somatic work? Is this
type of hypnotherapy?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Well, I guess I mean it's verbal in the sense
that we talk, but it is not talk therapy in
my view. It's much more involved in experiencing and going
to the roots in the unconscious mind. These memories are
held in the body, so it is also somatic, and
(18:54):
the interpretation of them is the key contribution that the
work makes to helping us understand what actually happened to
our clients in those early years.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The interpretation by the client or the therapist or both.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
The interpretation I'm referring to is all that there are
actually twelve different subjects that can be utilized to fill
in the details of what was going on when someone
is experiencing negative sensations, and they can be fairly subtle.
You know, just a little bit of pressure here, or
just a little bit of disturbance in their stomach, or
(19:37):
you know, kind of anything that bodily response that indicates
that something was going wrong for baby at that time.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I mean, for lack of a better word, Rachel, this
sounds very.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Intense.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I mean when I mean it does, You're inviting a
client to what consider their preverbal experience. I mean, there's
no other way around it. I mean, that's that's pretty intense.
(20:14):
How do you invite someone to do that?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Well, I guess the people that have heard of this work,
and part of what I'm hoping is that more people
will hear because of this podcast and other ways that
I'm trying to explain this our call recognize that something
(20:42):
fits for them, and they are motivated. But because it's
painful to remember or to reframe your own reaction to
what happened to you, we do a repair immediately, so
we don't spend three ye in psychotherapy and then finally
(21:03):
get to prepare. We do it immediately, and that's where
the mythic parents come in. They are the experience they missed,
and they have the feeling of what it would be
like for those experiences that were so negative in the
biofamily to be different in the mythic family with the
(21:25):
mythic parents. And so what happens is cumulatively, they build
a different picture of themselves of who they are really,
who they would have been had they had the parenting
they needed and deserved, and who they can still be
as they recognize their potential and also as they are
(21:48):
parents and parent their own children differently.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Now, how does that everything you just said relate to
one's trauma that they experienced.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Well, a lot of trauma begins in those early years
with either abuse emotional, sexual or physical abuse, or with
neglect either physical neglect or emotional neglect, or with adoption
(22:25):
for example, which no matter how wonderful they adoptive parents
might be, it's still a trauma to be quote unquote.
It feels like rejected by your actual biological parents.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
But what I guess more specifically we're talking about here.
Your therapy is talking about accessing one's preverbal experiences, and
my question was the trauma that experienced that after that,
how are you addressing what's the relationship between that work
(23:08):
that you're doing with a client to access their preverbal
experience to the trauma that happened maybe four or five
years later or.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Ten or twenty. Yeah, Well, when you have a pattern
of insecure attachment, that means that you're going to have
ways of responding in relationships that are problematic. I mean
they can be extreme as being a perpetrator of abuse,
domestic violence, gun violence, and so on, or they can
(23:39):
be more commonplace. In terms of what our divorce rates
indicate is that people have a lot of trouble getting
along in relationships. Some people are avoiding, some people are ambivalent,
some people I mean, there are different patterns of relating.
So that's the impact in relationships. People in prison, for example,
(24:04):
who are incarcerated, will often have insecure attachment in their
early life, so they don't trust anybody, they don't have
limitations or boundaries around how they treat others. Potentially. I mean,
it's all connected, all of it. It's so much. That's
why I got lofty ideas, because there's so much that
(24:27):
can be helped looking at this basis, this foundation of
behavior that is experienced later and the trauma of that behavior.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And in kind of a shorthand way and correct me
if I'm wrong here. It's the client's.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Ability to quote unquote heal and repair that early experience
which allows them to begin to heal that trauma or
maybe heal that trauma.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yes, experience, Yeah, exactly exactly. So people are different as
they go through this work. Sure, and they experienced emotional resilience.
They're not as easily triggered. They're more calm and more
able to pursue goals that they thought were impossible for them.
(25:29):
They believed the limitations that were set by bioparents, the
criticisms that were made the way they were treated as children,
and for example, that they would never be smart enough
to go to college, or that they could never be
successful in a relationship, or that they could never be
(25:50):
good parents. Whatever it was that limited them begins to
open up and become possible for them as they actually
were or essentially as children, and not the image they
had of themselves through the lens of their biofamily.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
End. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating to me enduring this process.
To what degree are you addressing the directly addressing the
trauma that has happened to this particular client.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, I would say we're addressing it indirectly. I guess
in the sense that it's changing the personality and the
and the sense of self of the client. When it
is direct, it's because something happened later that they feel
is essential and getting in their way. And sometimes we
(26:58):
will stop and do EMDR with an event that occurred
years later and then go back to the early trauma protocol,
or we might even start with the EMDR and then switch,
or we might start with they can shift back and
forth if they're getting in the way.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Okay, as we kind of wind down here, what is
required of the therapist to do this work?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Well, what I would like to say before we run
out of time is that the requirements of a book
are very challenging because you don't have the opportunity for
the direct participation and so therefore, how are you going
to allow people to experience when there's no one there
(27:52):
to supervise them, no one there to help them feel safe,
and no one there to analyze whether they're doing what
they're meant to be doing correct. So that was the
challenge in writing the book. But the book will be
useful for people who have done the training as well
as for people who have not, and therefore I feel
(28:12):
it's worthwhile to have written.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And the training you're talking about is.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
What well I do a practicum training that can be
in person or it can be online. The one that's
coming up in October, the first weekend in October October
third to fifth is an online training and it will
be preceded by a free webinar to give people a
(28:39):
taste of what that will be and hopefully sign up
to do the training. I've also got a list of
people who might be interested in knowing when the book releases,
so that I can let them know when I know
when that's going to be, and so basically getting the word.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Out once again.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
The book's called Therapist's Guide to Healing Trauma from the
Roots Up. Will have those links up to your training,
your online training, as well as links to your website
here at the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist
podcast dot com. Rachel, how do people learn more about
you and your training and your book?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
What's the best way?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
The best way is to go to the website Early
Trauma Protocol dot com and it has pages on all
these aspects of the work and also links to register
for the webinar or and or for the training. The
practicum training.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Okay, once again, that's you said, Early Early Protocol Early.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The name of the website is lowercase Early Trauma Protocol
dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Okay, come all right, Early Trauma Protocol dot com. All right, Rachel, fascinating,
really really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Thank you so much for being here. We'll look out
for that book, all right. Take care,
Welcome to the Trauma Theypists podcast. My name is got Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest today,
Doctor Rachel Aaron's. Rachel welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Doctor Rachel Aarons has over forty years of experience as
a psychotherapist. Initially trained as a philosopher, she served as
an associate professor at the University of Toronto before transitioning
to therapy and earning her master's in Social work. Doctor
Aaron's initially specialized in hypnotherapy and became a certified EMDR
Therapist in twenty oh four. Her current focus in the
(00:47):
Early Trauma Protocol, a groundbreaking approach to addressing early attachment
injuries that shape emotional and relational patterns throughout life. Her
mission is to train therapists, heal clients, and educate the
public look on how early childhood experiences impact lifelong challenges. Today,
we're going to be talking about her forthcoming book titled
Therapist Guide to Healing Trauma from the roots up. Rachel, welcome,
(01:14):
Thank you for being here. Before we get going, share
with our listeners where you're from originally and where you
are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I was originally in Canada in the East. I grew
up in in Toronto, and I moved then to Vancouver
to the other coast, and from Vancouver, I came to
Santa Barbara, where I am currently living.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Okay, so again, we are going to talk about your book,
but just give our listeners a nutshell of how you
got into this field. Give us, give us, give us
the nutshell.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, do you mean, in general, how I got into
being a therapist or how I got into being a trauma.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Therapist the latter.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Okay, So, actually, I, as was mentioned, I was using
hypnotherapy until I discovered EMDR, and I got excited about
the fact that we could make very immediate and effective
changes very quickly using EMDR as a methodology. As I
(02:24):
moved forward and was inspired by a teacher of mine,
I realized that there's a whole other range of experience
that has been largely underestimated and somewhat ignored because it
comes prior to language and explicit memory. So it seemed
(02:50):
like it was inaccessible, and I began being interested in
working through how to access that period of time because
it is my conviction that that is what shapes all
the problems that human beings experience later in life, and
so it's crucial and we need to know where all
(03:13):
those patterns began.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So it is, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's our
earlier preverbal life patterns that shape are the issues the
trauma that we experience.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
That's right. They underlie the trauma.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
They underlie the trauma, correct. Okay, so they underlie the trauma.
Does that mean are you saying they cause the trauma
or what's the relationship between them and the trauma.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
What I've discovered is that it is insecure attachment in
the relationship between parents and children from the get go
that shapes the concepts that people have about themselves and
the ways they develop their approach to relationships, their behavior
(04:13):
in the future, and how they develop their career or
work history. All of those things stem from having usually
insecure attachment.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay, that makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The book's titled Therapist's Guide to Healing Trauma from the
Roots Up. Why did you write this book?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Thank you for asking that I was actually reviewing what
my lofty goals were for this work. I was recognizing
that my ambitions were probably not going to get fulfilled
in the timeframe that I have I have given I
(05:04):
guess it was about five webinars, and I have those
webinars were introductions to this methodology, so there were literally
hundreds of people that attended, so they know a little
bit about my work, but not enough to be trained
as the therapist we need if we want to address
the problems that clients have and get to the roots,
(05:27):
get to the original source, and that would require that
I do, like I don't know how many practicum trainings
which are fourteen hours, and then follow up practice in
consultation groups to make sure that people have the skills
(05:49):
to help people go through this methodology, and the methodology
I developed is pretty intense and pretty complicated. And you
and I spoke recently. When we first met, we shared
the opinion that the best training for therapists is experiential,
(06:10):
not academic or cognitive primarily, and that it works with
the unconscious mind, and that people need to deal with
their own problems using this methodology if they're going to
be able to extend that understanding to their clients, and
I think we both shared that view that that's a
(06:32):
really key way of having therapists develop their understanding of
themselves and then of clients.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, I think you said a lot right within that
chunk of three sentences. I think you said a lot.
So as an entree into getting more specific about the
book and what is involved, help our listeners understand why
(07:05):
this methodology, how this methodology is different from the methodologies
already in existence.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, first of all, it's not essentially an AMDR methodology,
which means that I'm switching in that work to a
different approach that I have developed. And part of that
is attachment photos, which are experiential I call them a
kind of a moving rorshak, and these help people get
(07:39):
in touch with through the photos what they missed, what
they would have wished for and deserved. So it's preparation
for doing the work of the actual time segments, looking
at what went wrong in each period of time from
conception to age four.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So these photographs are tell us more about these photographs
or images or pictures.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, the first set, which is really unique to me,
I guess, are pictures of animals because people are less
defensive in dealing, in viewing, and responding to animals than
they are to human beings in many cases. And these
show how animals offer secure attachment to their progeny. So
(08:33):
they can then say, oh, I didn't have that, or
I did have that, but I didn't have this. They
can begin to explore their own experience through that medium.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So were these photographs that you took or your people
took or what?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
No, they're actually photos that I found on royalty free
images that are available online certain companies.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Interesting, So you help me out here, So as the therapist,
you would lay these out in front of your client
or how does it work?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I use slides which are viewed on a monitor on
a TV monitor, okay, and their color slides, so they're
they're pretty, they elicit strong feelings, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And the idea is to are you asking your client
to react to them or what's the prompt here?
Speaker 3 (09:43):
As they this will be true throughout the whole there's
a lot of photos throughout the whole process that they're
basically looking at what they experience in the slides and
asking themselves is this familiar to me or not in
my own personal experience of being parented by my specific bioparents.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, and you use that information.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
To begin to formulate their own history before there is
explicit memory and language, So they're beginning to recognize that
there was an impact. And part of what I'm about
is convincing people that there is an impact in those years.
(10:36):
They can't be ignored or dismissed because obviously the babies
don't remember those experiences, and that is dangerous because parents
will then act as if how they treat those children
at those ages doesn't matter because they won't remember. Actually,
(10:57):
memory is very much of that, but in a different
form than we're accustomed to.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So compared to say, em DR or another modality, how
is this talk about the differences?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, the main or first comment is that EMDR usually
requires explicit memory. We have a traumatic experience or we're
stuck with a particular pattern of behaving, and we have
(11:44):
experiences that we remember that can explain and be worked
through using that methodology. But the problem the challenges that
in those early years there is no memory and no language,
so we have to find ways to interpret the negative
(12:06):
sensations that arise in the body as we look at
those early experiences and the photos are helping people formulate
what might have happened to them. Then they work it
through in a processing model.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
You talked about the importance of the therapist get involved
involving themselves in this education information as well, and how
integral that is to this work. Talk more about that well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
In the way that I have been teaching this, we
break down into diads or triads, and people share the
responses they're having and the way they're learning about themselves
(13:06):
as very young children, infants and very young children. So
they have an opportunity to participate live well. I mean
it can be online as well, but with other people
who are playing the role of therapist. One of the
(13:26):
challenges of writing a book is you don't have that
possibility because a book doesn't have other people there to
talk to. But my feeling was that I would not
have the time and the energy to do the amount
of training that would be required to have therapists prepared
(13:50):
to work with clients using this methodology, and so I
was afraid that it would it would not have the
impact that I I hoped for in terms of changing
the picture of dealing with trauma for clients.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Talk a little bit about the structure of the book.
How did you lay it out?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Well, I've only mentioned about the very beginning of attachment photos,
but let me explain the book as a whole. As
you're asking. There's an introductory section, and then I broke
it into modules. And the first module are the prerequisites
that are standalone methods that help people in their lives,
(14:38):
but are also required methods to do this work, the
healing trauma from the roots up work. And then the
second module is the one that we had started to
speak about, which is attachment secure and insecure attachment using
the attachment photos. And also, because we do repair through
(15:06):
a mythic family that they develop, we also need to
help them choose the mythic parents that work for them,
the people they would have wished to have as their
parents if they had a choice. And then the third
section is the actual processing of time segments, starting with
(15:28):
preconception and working their way through each segment of time
after that, through pregnancy, birth and each of the trimesters,
and through each of the years of early life. And
that is the actual application of the methodology that will
(15:53):
inquire looking at what went wrong and then of repairing
it with the parents that they have chose because that
gives them the experience in imagination of secure attachment. And
as you know, I think imagination is the vehicle of
understanding of the unconscious mind.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Right the first part you mentioned that there were kind
of standalone what components that were necessary for doing this work.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Say more about.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Those, Okay, sure, two of them are very common and
used by a number of different therapists. I take my
examples from hypnotherapy in those that's container or containment and
safe state. What it does is it helps people to
(16:51):
set aside issues that they can't work on in the moment,
and so worrying about them or being preoccupied just gets
in the way of whatever else they're trying to do.
So we need to be able to put something aside
when we can't sleep because we're worrying or because we're
obsessing about something we can't change. So containment often goes
(17:16):
as a pair with safe state, and safe state is
the experience that someone had of being really calm and
peaceful and being able to go into that state by
experiencing a special place that they felt that way in.
(17:39):
So a safe space and safe state and safe place
are connected. Safe state being the feelings they have when
they are really relaxed and at peace. There's a third one,
and it's more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Okay, Okay, we'll leave that for the people who get
the book and so forth. So that's the first part.
There's a second part, and the third part we'll get into.
But generally speaking, as a therapist doing this work, is
this would you consider this verbal talk therapy or how
(18:23):
would you categorize it? Is this somatic work? Is this
type of hypnotherapy?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Well, I guess I mean it's verbal in the sense
that we talk, but it is not talk therapy in
my view. It's much more involved in experiencing and going
to the roots in the unconscious mind. These memories are
held in the body, so it is also somatic, and
(18:54):
the interpretation of them is the key contribution that the
work makes to helping us understand what actually happened to
our clients in those early years.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The interpretation by the client or the therapist or both.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
The interpretation I'm referring to is all that there are
actually twelve different subjects that can be utilized to fill
in the details of what was going on when someone
is experiencing negative sensations, and they can be fairly subtle.
You know, just a little bit of pressure here, or
just a little bit of disturbance in their stomach, or
(19:37):
you know, kind of anything that bodily response that indicates
that something was going wrong for baby at that time.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I mean, for lack of a better word, Rachel, this
sounds very.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Intense.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I mean when I mean it does, You're inviting a
client to what consider their preverbal experience. I mean, there's
no other way around it. I mean, that's that's pretty intense.
(20:14):
How do you invite someone to do that?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Well, I guess the people that have heard of this work,
and part of what I'm hoping is that more people
will hear because of this podcast and other ways that
I'm trying to explain this our call recognize that something
(20:42):
fits for them, and they are motivated. But because it's
painful to remember or to reframe your own reaction to
what happened to you, we do a repair immediately, so
we don't spend three ye in psychotherapy and then finally
(21:03):
get to prepare. We do it immediately, and that's where
the mythic parents come in. They are the experience they missed,
and they have the feeling of what it would be
like for those experiences that were so negative in the
biofamily to be different in the mythic family with the
(21:25):
mythic parents. And so what happens is cumulatively, they build
a different picture of themselves of who they are really,
who they would have been had they had the parenting
they needed and deserved, and who they can still be
as they recognize their potential and also as they are
(21:48):
parents and parent their own children differently.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Now, how does that everything you just said relate to
one's trauma that they experienced.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Well, a lot of trauma begins in those early years
with either abuse emotional, sexual or physical abuse, or with
neglect either physical neglect or emotional neglect, or with adoption
(22:25):
for example, which no matter how wonderful they adoptive parents
might be, it's still a trauma to be quote unquote.
It feels like rejected by your actual biological parents.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
But what I guess more specifically we're talking about here.
Your therapy is talking about accessing one's preverbal experiences, and
my question was the trauma that experienced that after that,
how are you addressing what's the relationship between that work
(23:08):
that you're doing with a client to access their preverbal
experience to the trauma that happened maybe four or five
years later or.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Ten or twenty. Yeah, Well, when you have a pattern
of insecure attachment, that means that you're going to have
ways of responding in relationships that are problematic. I mean
they can be extreme as being a perpetrator of abuse,
domestic violence, gun violence, and so on, or they can
(23:39):
be more commonplace. In terms of what our divorce rates
indicate is that people have a lot of trouble getting
along in relationships. Some people are avoiding, some people are ambivalent,
some people I mean, there are different patterns of relating.
So that's the impact in relationships. People in prison, for example,
(24:04):
who are incarcerated, will often have insecure attachment in their
early life, so they don't trust anybody, they don't have
limitations or boundaries around how they treat others. Potentially. I mean,
it's all connected, all of it. It's so much. That's
why I got lofty ideas, because there's so much that
(24:27):
can be helped looking at this basis, this foundation of
behavior that is experienced later and the trauma of that behavior.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And in kind of a shorthand way and correct me
if I'm wrong here. It's the client's.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Ability to quote unquote heal and repair that early experience
which allows them to begin to heal that trauma or
maybe heal that trauma.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yes, experience, Yeah, exactly exactly. So people are different as
they go through this work. Sure, and they experienced emotional resilience.
They're not as easily triggered. They're more calm and more
able to pursue goals that they thought were impossible for them.
(25:29):
They believed the limitations that were set by bioparents, the
criticisms that were made the way they were treated as children,
and for example, that they would never be smart enough
to go to college, or that they could never be
successful in a relationship, or that they could never be
(25:50):
good parents. Whatever it was that limited them begins to
open up and become possible for them as they actually
were or essentially as children, and not the image they
had of themselves through the lens of their biofamily.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
End. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating to me enduring this process.
To what degree are you addressing the directly addressing the
trauma that has happened to this particular client.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, I would say we're addressing it indirectly. I guess
in the sense that it's changing the personality and the
and the sense of self of the client. When it
is direct, it's because something happened later that they feel
is essential and getting in their way. And sometimes we
(26:58):
will stop and do EMDR with an event that occurred
years later and then go back to the early trauma protocol,
or we might even start with the EMDR and then switch,
or we might start with they can shift back and
forth if they're getting in the way.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Okay, as we kind of wind down here, what is
required of the therapist to do this work?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Well, what I would like to say before we run
out of time is that the requirements of a book
are very challenging because you don't have the opportunity for
the direct participation and so therefore, how are you going
to allow people to experience when there's no one there
(27:52):
to supervise them, no one there to help them feel safe,
and no one there to analyze whether they're doing what
they're meant to be doing correct. So that was the
challenge in writing the book. But the book will be
useful for people who have done the training as well
as for people who have not, and therefore I feel
(28:12):
it's worthwhile to have written.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And the training you're talking about is.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
What well I do a practicum training that can be
in person or it can be online. The one that's
coming up in October, the first weekend in October October
third to fifth is an online training and it will
be preceded by a free webinar to give people a
(28:39):
taste of what that will be and hopefully sign up
to do the training. I've also got a list of
people who might be interested in knowing when the book releases,
so that I can let them know when I know
when that's going to be, and so basically getting the word.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Out once again.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
The book's called Therapist's Guide to Healing Trauma from the
Roots Up. Will have those links up to your training,
your online training, as well as links to your website
here at the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist
podcast dot com. Rachel, how do people learn more about
you and your training and your book?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
What's the best way?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
The best way is to go to the website Early
Trauma Protocol dot com and it has pages on all
these aspects of the work and also links to register
for the webinar or and or for the training. The
practicum training.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Okay, once again, that's you said, Early Early Protocol Early.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The name of the website is lowercase Early Trauma Protocol
dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Okay, come all right, Early Trauma Protocol dot com. All right, Rachel, fascinating,
really really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Thank you so much for being here. We'll look out
for that book, all right. Take care,
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