Working with symptoms of affect and emotions with greater efficiency, Raja Selvam

Raja Selvam

Raja Selvam geeft een workshop voor mensen die de training Primal Somatic Traumatherapie, Somatic Experience of een soortgelijke training hebben gevolgd. Deze workshop is onderdeel van een serie van drie modules, waarin gewerkt wordt met de behandeling van symptomen die te maken hebben met stress, trauma, emotie en hechting. In dit deel zal hij vooral ingaan op emoties en gevoelens. Alle delen kunnen afzonderlijk worden gevolgd. Zie zijn engelse beschrijving:

Working with symptoms of affect and emotions with greater efficiency

Working with emotions (accessing, supporting, validating, mirroring, modeling, developing, tolerating, expressing, containing, and making sense of emotions) is often what psychotherapy is mostly about.  In clinical work, the underutilization of the accumulated knowledge of the physiological theories of emotions is one consequence of the long-term neglect of the role of the body in psychotherapy.  The other consequence is the neglect of the sensor-motor level of affect; psychologically meaningful body states that often dominate intense emotional experiences but are nevertheless an integral part of every emotional experience.  Interventions based on the physiological theories of emotions can ensure a more complete grasp of the spectrum of emotional experience and make all aspects of emotional work more effective.

Emotions are important because they comment, directly or indirectly, on our very survival.  This is because they ultimately arise from and affect the very biological mechanisms in the body and brain that ensure our survival.  Fatal heart attacks from excess fear as well grief are an extreme case in point.  But it is not unusual for our survival physiology to shut down or dysregulate from overwhelm in less dramatic ways.  Since survival physiology in the body and brain are designed by nature to be most self-regulating to optimize our survival, understanding and utilizing the principles of this innate self-regulation can also add much to the effectiveness, efficiency, and consistency with which emotional work is done in clinical practice.

In this workshop, part two of a three part series, Raja Selvam, PhD, PhD will present emotional- physiology-informed clinical interventions for different aspects of emotional work and for working with different levels of affect or emotion (primary, secondary, and sensori-motor).  These interventions are derived from a number of physiological theories of emotions (muscular, visceral, neurological, and relational mediated by central, autonomic, and somatic nervous systems) and will be presented primarily through demonstrations (up to three per day), and supplemented with lectures on various physiological theories of emotions and guided group exercises.  Of potential benefit to anyone who works with emotions in any setting, the workshop will also explore the role of subtle body (or energy) in emotional experience and the additional benefit that can accrue from including this dimension in emotional work.

PLEASE NOTE: The links between stress, trauma, emotions, and attachment make it unavoidable that all three workshops in this series will involve treatment of all of these symptoms to some degree.  However, part one is designed to elaborate more on treating symptoms of stress and trauma, part two on treating symptoms of emotion or affect, and part three (To be announced) on treating symptoms of attachment and resonance.  The workshops can be taken singly or in any order and each workshop is an opportunity to learn directly from Raja.