That deeper understanding may lead to a more mature connection and, potentially, to the experience of a return to empathic attunement. This confrontation may be experienced as a temporary break in empathy, but if the counselor and client can sense and articulate the client’s immediate experience during that break, it can lead to a deeper understanding of that experience. A hypothetical example:Ĭounselor: “I wonder if you returned to your medical books with such great fervor last week because your partner has been asking for increased intimacy, and that is scary for you.” ![]() This empathy can be carefully repaired and restored in session through the articulation of feeling and the expression of understanding. In her book chapter “Dyadic Regulation and Experiential Work With Emotion and Relatedness in Trauma and Disorganized Attachment” (originally published in Healing Trauma: Attachment, Trauma, the Brain, and the Mind, 2003), Diana Fosha articulated the way that counselors may, with great care, begin to interpret and confront with the expectation that this may create temporary ruptures in empathy. This can be achieved through a process of both intentional and unintentional rupture and repair of that attachment bond developed in counseling. Once safety is developed along with basic attunement and the capacity to choose constructive action, there is an opportunity to build a more robust and mature attachment via the counseling relationship. Building resilience via attachment rupture and repair This increases the client’s sense of internal safety. ![]() The client may then begin to engage some of these action-based responses when triggered by a reminder of a traumatic event. As Allan Schore (2013), a neuroscientist who has looked at brain activity during attachment experiences, would describe it, these approaches create opportunities for right brain to right brain communication (the foundation of attachment experiences).Īs the client and counselor create together with these practices, the client builds a repertoire of action-based responses. The choice of action-based approaches will depend on the needs and inclinations of the client, but these approaches are all in the service of conveying empathy and expanding interpersonal resonance. Role-plays: Engaging in simple role-plays can offer alternative action-based responses to challenging interpersonal situations. ![]() Breathwork: The counselor may model and practice basic and simple breathwork alongside the client to help the client access more internal quiet and space.Notice that there is no interpreting of the art experience, only the sharing of a visual response to music, and then sharing one’s experience of that response. Then each person can respond to the other person’s artwork through line and color. Expressive arts: Both the client and counselor respond to a piece of music with line and color. ![]() These can range from the very simple to the more complex. In a chapter titled “The creative connection: A Holistic expressive arts process” in the book Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy (1999), Natalie Rogers defined empathy as “perceiving the world through the other person’s eyes, ears, and heart.” She noted that this understanding is conveyed through both our words and body language: “The body language, although usually unconsciously given and received … offers a sense of safety and comfort.” As we offer this opportunity for empathic co-regulation, we concurrently engage grounding approaches to enable a return to safety if anxiety is too high.Īlong with grounding approaches, it is often useful to initiate action-based responses that are shared by the counselor to promote collaboration and attunement. In cases of troubled attachment, the first task in counseling is to build safety through a focus on empathic, attuned responses associated with the client’s primary pathway of learning (for more, see David Mars and the Center for Transformative Therapy Training Center). Building safety via action-based attunement This leads to an inability for these clients to securely attach to others. In these cases, clients often become frozen or, depending on the depth of trauma and the immediate response to that trauma, have an outwardly focused, hypervigilant, fight-or-flight approach to their experiences.Ĭases of troubled attachment are based in this kind of fight-or-flight response, whether it is rooted in large T trauma (i.e., catastrophic accident or abuse) or small t trauma (i.e., multiple experiences with neglect or mistreatment). Those who work with individuals who have been traumatized have noted the need for these clients to reestablish connection to their own internal worlds.
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