What is trauma? Marta Thorsheim interviewed by goop.com
Read the interview on goop.com: What It Means to Have a Trauma of Identity
What is trauma?
A psychological trauma, or a psychotrauma, is the sum of the effects of an event that a person does not have the psychological capacity to handle.
Stress reactions are Regularly a useful warning system, but during a trauma situation they may need to be blocked to avoid further provoking an attacker. It's like having one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake. The immediate solution to such a dilemma is to abandon body and mind as a whole. Therefore, the main effect of trauma is disconnection from ourselves, which can inhibit our ability to handle stressful situations in a good way.
As adults, we have many triggers that stem from childhood trauma. These triggers can be an opportunity to understand that we are suffering from trauma. However, this requires that the person feels safe enough to look into the trauma, as well as having someone to guide them with compassion, which can help release the pain behind the trauma - layer by layer.
Why does identity play such a big role in your work?
A healthy identity is the sum of all my conscious and unconscious life experiences. Including my beautiful days and my traumatizing days. I don't deny any part of myself. A healthy identity means that we are integrated with our senses, our feelings, our thoughts, our memories, our self, our will and our behavior. It also means that I don't lose myself in relationships with others. You don't sacrifice any of your identity to anyone else.
When we are children, many of our experiences help to shape us. In extreme situations - and even in those that are not so extreme, because young children are very vulnerable - we often have to give up parts of our identity to survive. Whether it's violence or rejection from an attachment figure at an early stage of development, we begin to give up parts of our identity to endure. This can lead us to identity trauma: We begin to over-identify with others, and in doing so, our identity can become conflated with the identity of our mother, for example. We end up in a state of survival identity.
Identity Oriented Psychotrauma Therapy (IoPT) is the method we use to restore a healthy identity. Its aim is to make the person aware of their trauma biography, to make them aware of their survival strategies, and to enable them to integrate their fragmented, traumatized parts with their healthy identity. This work is done through processes that last approximately one hour.
Can you walk us through what happens in these processes, step by step?
IoPT sessions usually take place in a group and consist of the client (who owns the process) - resonators and a therapist. The client is the person at the center of the process, and he/she is responsible for formulating an intention. This formulation is something that can be prepared in advance, or on the spot, and it can be a word, a sentence, a drawing or a combination. A sentence typically begins with "I". Examples of intentions are "I want a good partnership" or "I want to explore my fears" or "Why am I depressed?" or "How did I experience my birth?". It can be whatever you want to explore that day. The maximum number of words or characters is six. The process owner writes each element or word of their intention on a whiteboard and then on post-it notes.
The process owner then takes the post-it notes and decides who he or she will choose to resonate each word. For example, he/she walks up to a person in the room and asks, "Will you resonate 'I' for me?" The person being asked can say yes or no, it's up to them. When all elements of the intention have a resonator, the process owner steps back and asks the resonators to start with the non-verbal phase. The resonators then stand up without saying anything. They just try to be intuitively aware of what's coming up. After a few minutes, the process owner asks the resonators one by one and they share the information and feelings that have been awakened. The therapist does his/her part by clarifying and supporting the process owner as he/she uncovers the realities emerging from his/her biography. In most cases, these are traumas from childhood, and even from the time in the mother's womb. As a therapist, I do my best to create the safe space that supports this kind of vulnerability.
Some people find it difficult to participate in a group setting and therefore request a one-to-one session, which is done in the same way as the group process. But this time, the person stands on markers on the floor and feels for themselves what comes up. These are also very effective processes for working with the person's trauma biography.
What is happening? How is it possible that people are able to resonate with other, completely alien people?
IoPT processes are based on the premise that everything we have experienced is stored in our memory. To use the metaphor of an iceberg, explicit memories are the experiences we can see and remember consciously, but below sea level is our implicit memory. These are memories we had to cover up and dissociate from when the trauma happened, because it was too much to handle and therefore unbearable.
When we formulate an intention, this is a way of delving into our implicit memory. Every word in the sentence contains information from our implicit memory. We say it's like going through our entire biography, step by step, intention by intention. Through the process, we get the chance to update the system that is our psyche. In an IoPT process, the energy and information presented by the resonator can make the survival strategies conscious for the process owner and bring out emotions from traumas that have been suppressed throughout life. The therapist supports the process owner to help remember, and to help reconnect with his/her healthy self and his/her healthy will. The goal is to process now what happened back then - what could not be handled when the person was a small child. Because when the person is here now, they have people around them who can provide full support and they can therefore begin to trust and feel safe with themselves.
I know that mirror neurons are involved herebut I don't fully know how this works; nobody knows yet. All I know is that it works. I also don't think it would add anything for the process owner if he or she knew exactly how this happens. I think the part that resonates is the same innate sense that works when you, as a parent of a newborn child, can sense what it needs. We, as humans, elevate ourselves when required. Franz Ruppert, the founder of the IoPT, says that we have an ability to connect and that this ability works in the same way as our other senses, like seeing or hearing, but on a subconscious and instinctive level. This ability is very precise. When the client has decided and says: "I want to go through this process, here is my intention", something is set in motion. When people are given the opportunity to express and show themselves exactly as they are, including their traumatized past, and are met with love and compassion, that in itself has a great effect.
Are process owners usually aware of what their traumas are?
It is very individual. Some people know it and they take it into their intention. More often, they don't know exactly what the trauma is, but they know it's something.
IoPT's founder, Professor Franz Ruppert, says that "Everything we need to process trauma is stored in the body and comes out in therapy when we need it."
What happens when it's over?
It's just the start of an integration process, and of course it takes time. Many people find that a symptom can disappear, or they feel freer to do what they couldn't do before. Or they find that their relationship with their partner or children is no longer as difficult as it was before. They feel more at ease within themselves and are more independent. If, with the help of IoPT, you understand the abuser-victim dynamic you're usually in and have now found a way out, it's one of the best things that's happened in your life.
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BIOGRAPHY:
Marta Thorsheim is a therapist and founder of the Institute for Trauma Work in Norway. After earning an MBA, she began studying psychotherapy in the 1990s, where she focused on identity trauma. She is co-author of Professor Franz Ruppert's books Childhood Trauma and My Body, My Trauma, My Self. Thorsheim integrates trauma and attachment theory with clinical work and has spent the last 25 years working with clients and participants in group workshops in Europe, Asia and Australia. You can sign up for her first US group workshop here: https://www.instituteforidentitydevelopment.com/calendar/category/special-events/
