Your article and its tone highlight a disconnect between the Client and the Therapist. The Client comes to you in the middle of an inner journey that has its own inner landscape and landmarks, which cannot be accurately shared in words with another human unless that have travelled the same road. The therapist, however, comes to the meeting with an entirely academic road map based on someone else's ideas. They can't help but approach the client much like a "one-armed bandit".
Sometimes, the Client is just not ready to see what their mind is hiding. This is why I abandoned the Cognitive Behavioural approach for Maté's Compassionate Inquiry.
Thanks for this. I’d push back gently on the framing though. The entire argument of this piece is that blocked processing is information from the client’s nervous system. The sequence I describe is a framework for listening more precisely, not for overriding what the client is ready for. On the readiness point, I agree completely. That’s often exactly what a blocking belief is pointing to.
Hi Pria, I’m so sorry for the delay in replying to your kind comment; I can only say that it’s been a crazy week.
I probably didn’t explain myself very well in my comment as you seem to have missed my point. Suzy Rosen is quite right, your article is very well written and the exiting first paragraph made me feel I was back offshore working with Remote Operated Vehicles or interrogating a system’s database. And it was to this excellent use of mechanistic language to which I was referring.
But this is not a criticism of you personally. Your statement, “blocked processing is information from the client’s nervous system” is typical of the language of EMDR – neurocentric - and it lies at the root of my worry.
Clinical language for students of neuroscience, and latterly psychology, has been influenced by the hyperbole around brain mapping and the work of Professor Wilder Penfield. Somewhat later Christof Koch and Francis Crick gave rise to Functionalist theory (the mind is a meat computer). Together, and amongst others, they gave rise to neurocentrism, which pervades Substack today.
Language expresses our inner reality but it also constrains it; by speaking of living beings as if they were machines, or computers to be interrogated, blocks our own access to natural empathy.
I’m speaking both as a trained psychotherapist and as someone who has suffered early complex trauma and the associated addictions. I have also spent over 50 years on the inner journey, both as a Zen Buddhist (England, Sri Lanka and Vietnam) and later within Orthodox Asceticism.
Living beings experience the inner journey out of trauma, as vertically linear, much like Sigmund Freud’s conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious, which is in agreement with Professor Wilder Penfield’s actual position, that the mind is not the product of the brain. Professor Michael Egnor, the neurosurgeon, has shown that abstract thought, reason, the observer cannot be found in the brain. To use your mechanistic language, the “Nervous System” is just our way of referring to the functions in the body that are mostly automated – the body’s engine: the “nervous system” is not a control system.
In short, the activity in parts of the brain sometimes correlate but it is also true that many people born without those parts sometimes have a functioning mind (Egnor: The Immortal Mind)
It seems that the mind can impose systems on the brain and one such system is the DMN and it is the Default Mode Network that sometimes becomes dysregulated in a person who has suffered trauma.
The image looping or intrusive thoughts is a symptom of this problem and here’s the root of my worry – you can’t think you way out of the DMN – the client has to learn to turn the volume down themselves. By trying to solve intrusive thoughts by asking the client to focus on them, the therapist can’t help but generate more intrusive thoughts. Which is why your clients become "blocked."
This is why I give my clients the mental and physical skills to control their own DMN and with compassionate inquiry, I support their need to understand the damage that has been done to them.
The EMDR therapist provides process structures for the client’s trauma but true long-term recovery depends on the individual gradually internalising that the trauma was not their responsibility and having the neural plasticity to canalise a new way of living.
I love how this article includes Polyvagal and somatic aspects. It really is a powerful way to address the trauma on all levels. Very well written and strength based. EMDR is so thorough sometimes it’s hard for me to follow all the threads in the moment
Your article and its tone highlight a disconnect between the Client and the Therapist. The Client comes to you in the middle of an inner journey that has its own inner landscape and landmarks, which cannot be accurately shared in words with another human unless that have travelled the same road. The therapist, however, comes to the meeting with an entirely academic road map based on someone else's ideas. They can't help but approach the client much like a "one-armed bandit".
Sometimes, the Client is just not ready to see what their mind is hiding. This is why I abandoned the Cognitive Behavioural approach for Maté's Compassionate Inquiry.
Thanks for this. I’d push back gently on the framing though. The entire argument of this piece is that blocked processing is information from the client’s nervous system. The sequence I describe is a framework for listening more precisely, not for overriding what the client is ready for. On the readiness point, I agree completely. That’s often exactly what a blocking belief is pointing to.
Hi Pria, I’m so sorry for the delay in replying to your kind comment; I can only say that it’s been a crazy week.
I probably didn’t explain myself very well in my comment as you seem to have missed my point. Suzy Rosen is quite right, your article is very well written and the exiting first paragraph made me feel I was back offshore working with Remote Operated Vehicles or interrogating a system’s database. And it was to this excellent use of mechanistic language to which I was referring.
But this is not a criticism of you personally. Your statement, “blocked processing is information from the client’s nervous system” is typical of the language of EMDR – neurocentric - and it lies at the root of my worry.
Clinical language for students of neuroscience, and latterly psychology, has been influenced by the hyperbole around brain mapping and the work of Professor Wilder Penfield. Somewhat later Christof Koch and Francis Crick gave rise to Functionalist theory (the mind is a meat computer). Together, and amongst others, they gave rise to neurocentrism, which pervades Substack today.
Language expresses our inner reality but it also constrains it; by speaking of living beings as if they were machines, or computers to be interrogated, blocks our own access to natural empathy.
I’m speaking both as a trained psychotherapist and as someone who has suffered early complex trauma and the associated addictions. I have also spent over 50 years on the inner journey, both as a Zen Buddhist (England, Sri Lanka and Vietnam) and later within Orthodox Asceticism.
Living beings experience the inner journey out of trauma, as vertically linear, much like Sigmund Freud’s conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious, which is in agreement with Professor Wilder Penfield’s actual position, that the mind is not the product of the brain. Professor Michael Egnor, the neurosurgeon, has shown that abstract thought, reason, the observer cannot be found in the brain. To use your mechanistic language, the “Nervous System” is just our way of referring to the functions in the body that are mostly automated – the body’s engine: the “nervous system” is not a control system.
In short, the activity in parts of the brain sometimes correlate but it is also true that many people born without those parts sometimes have a functioning mind (Egnor: The Immortal Mind)
It seems that the mind can impose systems on the brain and one such system is the DMN and it is the Default Mode Network that sometimes becomes dysregulated in a person who has suffered trauma.
The image looping or intrusive thoughts is a symptom of this problem and here’s the root of my worry – you can’t think you way out of the DMN – the client has to learn to turn the volume down themselves. By trying to solve intrusive thoughts by asking the client to focus on them, the therapist can’t help but generate more intrusive thoughts. Which is why your clients become "blocked."
This is why I give my clients the mental and physical skills to control their own DMN and with compassionate inquiry, I support their need to understand the damage that has been done to them.
The EMDR therapist provides process structures for the client’s trauma but true long-term recovery depends on the individual gradually internalising that the trauma was not their responsibility and having the neural plasticity to canalise a new way of living.
Very informative Pria - always love your work!
- Allen Kanerva
I love how this article includes Polyvagal and somatic aspects. It really is a powerful way to address the trauma on all levels. Very well written and strength based. EMDR is so thorough sometimes it’s hard for me to follow all the threads in the moment