Body positive

Abstract

This paper focuses on trauma and the body. It describes mistakes made earlier in the author’s career in over-emphasising the importance of helping to bear pain and suffering. It was learnt that focusing on traumatic incidents too quickly could be profoundly unhelpful, re-triggering PTSD, dissociation and flashbacks. Recent trauma theory teaches the importance of facilitating a sense of safety before processing traumas, including using the thinking of Van der Kolk on the importance of body-awareness in trauma work. Attention is paid to autonomic nervous system states, and in particular of developing ventral vagal capacities and reducing sympathetic nervous system activity and dorsal vagal shut-down. The central role of the embodied countertransference is emphasised.