Deborah Lee - The Compassionate Mind Approach to Recovering from Trauma: Using Compassion Focused Therapy

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Hi all,

Has anyone used these techniques to help process trauma? In therapy and between sessions.

Particularly a technique where one conceptualises the feelings into something sensory. To give an analogy - if you had anxiety public speaking you take those feelings or thoughts and may see them as sticky and red and smelling like unwashed socks . You imagine how that would look or smell or feel. You then think of an antidote. Like pouring apple cider vinegar onto it. Or daffodil juice. Or any thing that would nuetralise it in your mind.

If doing it with trauma it means you don't have to look directly at the experience but can start processing some of its edges.

I have started using it is therapy and am supposed to try to soften the edges of intrusive stuff. Hopefully making it easier to talk about. Am not presently managing to speak about it much. I also have a lot of other stuff going on in my life, so need to not fall totally off the deck of the boat.

I wondered if anyone had read the book or used the technique. And if so, if you have any thoughts to share.

Please feel free to move this if it isn't in the best forum. Thank you.
 
I just recall CFT was created by Paul (X)?, I think. Sorry I can't recall much except that's it's possible to teach people empathy, lacking self-compassion is likely the core of treatment resistance or rather failure (it is not intentional) and that our human imagination makes our fears compound.

Caught my eye because someone close to me had that name.
 
@Tinyflame
CFT? compassion focused therapy? just wondering. . . i looked it up and it is a popular acronym.

Particularly a technique where one conceptualises the feelings into something sensory.
could this be what i learned as, "visualizing?" e.g. it is hard for me let down my guard enough to cry. i visualize tears as a shower for my soul. shower freely. shower often. this kind of shower you can share with a friend.

a cousin technique out of that same era (80's) is, "personification." e.g. in processing the confusion and trauma of my childhood, i personify the yaddahs of those blahs as, "mini me.

another cousin on that nut tree is, "allegory." e.g. my favorite allegory for the *joys* of child prostitution is, "DD." daddy dick. it lets me refer to the experience without getting lost in gory details.
If doing it with trauma it means you don't have to look directly at the experience but can start processing some of its edges.
hmmmm. . . i never considered it in this context, but it resonates. i learned my techniques for symptom management, but do feel like i might have been using it for this, as well. the line between the experience and my psych symptoms is fine and fuzzy, at best.
 
I just recall CFT was created by Paul (X)?, I think. Sorry I can't recall much except that's it's possible to teach people empathy, lacking self-compassion is likely the core of treatment resistance or rather failure (it is not intentional) and that our human imagination makes our fears compound.

Caught my eye because someone close to me had that name.
Thank you! It seems so. My therapist just told me about the book, and it seems some of the stuff I've been doing in therapy is this.

I wish I had therapy with her years ago when I was so unstable and trapped in horrible self conflict and intrusive stuff. I may get the book. Just need the brain to work enough to read it!
 
could this be what i learned as, "visualizing?" e.g. it is hard for me let down my guard enough to cry. i visualize tears as a shower for my soul. shower freely. shower often. this kind of shower you can share with a friend.

a cousin technique out of that same era (80's) is, "personification." e.g. in processing the confusion and trauma of my childhood, i personify the yaddahs of those blahs as, "mini me.

another cousin on that nut tree is, "allegory." e.g. my favorite allegory for the *joys* of child prostitution is, "DD." daddy dick. it lets me refer to the experience without getting lost in gory details.

hmmmm. . . i never considered it in this context, but it resonates. i learned my techniques for symptom management, but do feel like i might have been using it for this, as well. the line between the experience and my psych symptoms is fine and fuzzy, at best.
Very interesting, arfie! Those are all wonderful creative ways of making horrible stuff more accessible or tolerable. I love your showers.

I think it may align with Deborah Lee's approach. I haven't actually bought the book as yet but my T has been giving me excercises to do. You are right that they are visualisations.

This last one is my present homework. When something intrusive comes up I am to visualise the emotions or the nature of it without going into it.

At the moment I have never gone into the memory. I have a sense of what happened but my mind has always shut the door when it comes up. And I am finding it hard to go there.

Apparently doing this actually starts processing a little of the emotions, hopefully making it easier to go there. Visualise then visualise an antidote.

I had wondered if anyone else had used this. I'm finding that even coming up with a visualisation is still setting me off.
 

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