Bainbridge Institute for Integrative Psychology
1) there is no explicit memory in the first years of life, only implicit memory, so the standard procedure of targeting a memory of trauma could not apply,
2) if a client were able to access early experience in EMDR, it could easily be overwhelming, without adequate preparation,
3) early experence, when accessed, also accesses the client's felt sense from that early time with all the limits of self and inner structure that went along with infancy,
4) because of the paramount importance of relationship and attachment in infancy, the processing of early experience needed modification to insure the client had the felt sense of the therapist's compassionate and attentive presence,
5) because very early experience is ephemeral and not like pictures or videos as later memories may be, the process needed to explicitly accommodate the subtlety of some early processing. For all these reasons, a four step protocol was developed.
The Four Steps
The Early Trauma Protocol includes the following steps
to ensure solutions to the above problems. There
is substantially more to the protocol than shown
here in this brief summary.
here in this brief summary.
1) Containment of all experience yet to be "learned from
or sorted through," to leave a "clear desk top" for the work.
2) A felt sense of safety as a starting point to the work, by strengthening a safe state. Both steps 1 and 2 may require client practice.
3) The most mysterious step, Resetting the Affective Circuits involves clearing the emotional pathways that each of us is born with, but may be congested from early learning and inhibitions about whether emotions are okay and safe. Once the circuits are clear, they can function as they were intended, to conduct emotional information. Like a free flowing stream. This step may work directly on subcortical affective circuits, according to Jaak Panksepp, the author of the important book, Affective Neuroscience.
4) Clearing the early trauma happens by processing small time periods, beginning with conception, through birth and through the first years. These time periods are variable with the client, depending how "gnarled" the roots of the tree have become by growing around early obstacles.
The clearing may be of somatic/implicit memory or of explicit memory, or mental constructs related to the time periods. For each time period, if it doesn't resolve spontaneously, there is an imaginal good outcome of "what you needed, the way you needed it to be."
There is much more to this procedure, but for many individuals, its careful application produces a critical emotional shift with subsequent increase in emotional stability, comfort, and peaceable relation to ones emotions.
For more details about scheduling considerations, mechanics and logistics of this method, click here.
For information about Early Trauma Workshops, go to When There Are No Words
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Our People
Our Approaches
Copyright 2009 Bainbridge Institute for Integrative Psychology: Specializing in EMDR.
All rights reserved.
An important development in recent years is the creation of a special EMDR protocol for use for early trauma, neglect and attachment injury in the first years of life. Both Sandra, and the protocol's originator, Katie O'Shea, teach workshops in this procedure. A child therapist, O'Shea developed the protocol as an extension of Sandra's ego state work, when she observed the limitations of standard EMDR when applied to early injuries, namely:
Katie O'Shea & Sandra Paulsen
