Thomas Zimmerman
Welcome everyone. I’m here with Patricia Rotsztain . We’re talking about strategies to help clients connect with safety as as a resource in EMDR therapy, Patricia, would you mind introducing yourself?
Patricia Rotsztain
Sure, I’m an EMDR certified clinician, and I’m located in Miami, Florida, and I’m also consultant in training, working currently with Thomas the great and who’s helping me get my my Approved Consultant status and what else? I’m a Safe and Sound Protocol Certified Provider, and I work with individuals and couples. I really enjoy working with couples and anything that has to do with attachment and relationships, and that’s about it,
Thomas Zimmerman
Excellent. Let’s talk about safety. That sounds like that’s an important thing in attachment work and in therapy in general.
Patricia Rotsztain
So I think that the key factor for healing is safety, that clients heal through feeling safe. And it is very important. It’s a very important element in EMDR therapy, actually, when we talk about having one foot in the safety of the present and one foot in the traumatic or difficult experience, the idea is that the safety in the present, or the more safety in the present, becomes the adaptive information that helps connect with them, with the trauma and lower the intensity. That’s part of the key, the core of the EMDR therapy. So the question is, how do we help clients feel more safe? And one of the challenges is that clients who grew up in chaotic or hostile or violent environments or abusive environments, they train themselves to never feel safe, because feeling safe would open them to danger, would make them vulnerable, so they don’t… they are not used to feeling safe. They have kind of turned that ability off, and their nervous system, often times, has forgotten how to do that. So the nervous system is queued to perceive any cue of danger, but it’s it doesn’t have the it doesn’t remember, sometimes the the capacity to also connect with cues of safety. That’s why they are all the time on guard. So one of the tools that they use is the Safe and Sound Protocol, which uses a mechanism that all mammals have, we have a tiny little muscle in the ear that shifts position depending on the type of sound that we hear. So for example, I have a dachshund, a dog, and if I tell her, Oh, you’re so cute. I love you. You’re such a nice puppy. I can say banana, cucumber. It’s the same thing, because she doesn’t understand the content of what I’m saying. All she follows is the tone, the sound of my voice. If I would use a threatening voice, like deeper, lower key voice, she would get like all tense and see where’s the danger. So that muscle and the same thing happens with animals, because in nature, animals who are predators or who are dangerous, they have this lower vibration of sound. So what happens is this muscle that is supposed to shift to the danger position to notice if we have to prepare for battle or not, and then, if everything is okay, goes back to neutral or goes to relaxed. It’s stuck in the danger position, the Safe and Sound Protocol uses specially engineered music that that makes the muscle. It’s like a workout. It sends a que of danger. Very small, very small, and our work as as a clinician, or as a provider, is to teach the client how to notice and connect and start observing the sensations in their bodies when they are listening to the protocol to the music, so when they notice that, they can either pause or do some self regulating movements. And I use different tools, like sometimes for some of them swaying from side to side, or taking a couple of deep breaths, or depending in which way they are reacting, because they can become tense, or they can start feeling frustrated or angry, or any of this sympathetic kind of expression, or they can go the other way, start feeling numb or lethargic or like zoning out. That case, I invite them to move, to stand up and move and stretch. But the keys here that they are getting into the habit of observing what is happening in them, something that they, most of them, have not done in a long time. They’re starting to connect with their body and and and experiencing that nothing bad happens when they connect to the body, they also start getting agency. Like I’m noticing that I’m getting this reaction, and I know that I have some tools to regulate that, and I start to develop an awareness of when I’m regulated and the intensity that provocation of the nervous system happens in waves, so it’s a little bit and goes down, and it’s progressive every every day, it’s a little more intense the workout, like any workout, and until the point where they can deal with all these fluctuations, and this little muscle recovers the ability to go back to center. So that works very nicely for a lot of clients. The other thing that I use very often is the immediacy of the session. So I ask clients very often during the session. How are we doing? How do you feel here and now? Is there any tension? Is there anything that feels threatening here, or is it okay to relax? And because the term relax triggers many of the clients who have had this kind of difficult experiences or upbringing, I usually say something like helping your nervous system find the optimal level of relaxation, which means we don’t want to take away your capacity to detect danger, because it’s really a useful skill to have. Yeah, we want your nervous system to be able to find what is the optimal, the necessary, the ideal level for this moment. So I check with them, is there anything that is cueing you for danger right here, right now, and I have them look around, and then I say, then is it? Is there anything that’s queuing you for safety right here, right now? And what are the things that help you feel safe right here, right now, or safer, and just helping them develop that awareness of what are the things that help them? It’s, it’s a big advantage for them. It’s, it’s helpful noticing how they feel in the relationship, if they feel comfortable crying or saying something that they judge themselves for that, and and reflecting that back to them, like, wow, that that takes a lot of openness and awareness and courage to say that out loud and reminding them or reflecting that that is a product of perhaps feeling safer, and I say that usually as a question with this tone, so that they can check and they don’t have to take it blindly. What else? I like also, techniques from Jim Knipe and uses the safety of the moment with bilateral stimulation. And that helps them, even in phase two, it introduces them also to that type of work before we get to to reprocessing, then using parts work. Also, it’s very helpful with with safety, because the idea that some parts of them still remember, connect with the feeling of safety, and other parts are not comfortable yet with allowing them to feel safe gives them a little bit of room, of breathing room. So if I have different parts, and some of my parts can and some of my parts have difficulty, but I it gives them hope. It’s not like I’m stuck in one place. So working with which parts are more open, that’s my dog. Which parts are open to experiencing or allowing themselves to notice the cues of safety, which parts become reactive? Yeah. To do that…
Thomas Zimmerman
Very good, yeah. So I’m also, I mean, there’s so many things that come up in what you talk about, I’m thinking about, let’s, you know, how safety is pretty connected to the present moment. Safety, you know, you know, giving people an opportunity to experience fluctuations in feelings of safety, connecting with how we’re doing. You know, how does, how does the the way I am and the way we are in session, how is that affecting your level of safety and comfort? And no, it’s, yeah, good. It’s a lot of nuance. There’s a lot of because a lot of safety is very it’s like one or the other. And we’re trying to bring, we’re trying to bring in a little bit of this middle area, a little bit of..
Patricia Rotsztain
Yes, yes. And because I my, my first love in in therapy was clinical hypnosis. I like imagery very much. So sometimes I try to find with them some image that works for them, where they can dial down or up their feeling of safety, to find where they feel comfortable right now.
Thomas Zimmerman
The other, yeah, the other, the other point that I just want to highlight is is agency, safety and agency are very, very closely related.
Patricia Rotsztain
Yes, because most of the time in their difficult experiences, they didn’t have the capacity to choose. They didn’t have any agency. So giving them back that power, rather than imposing it on them or or, you know, kind of pushing… Well, now… There’s no danger. You should be feeling safe, inviting them to to notice their own experience, and inviting them to experiment with maybe dialing down a little bit that survival center and see what happens. Well, see how you handle that.
Thomas Zimmerman
Wow, beautiful, yeah. Thank you for joining. How can people connect with you? If they’re interested in doing consultation or working with you in other ways,
Patricia Rotsztain
They can send me a message through WhatsApp. They can email me. They can go to my website to check a little bit the kind of work that I do. My website is coachingtherapy.net and there is a special section for therapists. It has tons of resources and videos and some free tools, and also talks a little more about the techniques and the modalities that I incorporate.
Thomas Zimmerman
Excellent, and we’ll put a link to that resource in the notes to this wherever it’s distributed, so people can easily, easily connect with you. Thank you so much for coming.
Patricia Rotsztain
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for that you do for all the community.
Thomas Zimmerman
Thank you. Alright. Bye, bye.
365 Questions About EMDR With Complex Trauma 