An Exercise for Working with Hypoarousal

Transcript

so in working with clients that come in after a trauma that has kind of flooded and overwhelmed them this can be very very challenging for the clinician especially if the client's orientation is one where they are more checked out and numb you may have clients that are very agitated honestly that in many ways and i'm speaking through my own experience is a lot easier to kind of track and work with and regulate but for the client that comes very very disconnected disembodied it's really hard again it's like truly going into um this kind of cloud with the client and it's it's very difficult and it's honestly in some ways can be very punishing to the clinician because you're just not sure where to be and so i think it's important to discuss various strategies of how do you as a clinician resource yourself with a client that's numb because they're not going to give you a lot of feedback when you're asking them kind of what's happening or i don't really know right i don't know what i'm feeling and there's there's a flatness to it and so what i have found to be very important as a clinician is to have my own grounding techniques to be able to stay present to notice when and tracking in my own behavior when i'm starting to get really light headed and kind of turning into the observer and what i found to be really helpful is honestly having i have like a little pillow in my chair that i kind of press um against my chest sometimes and you know just kind of ground myself ground down into the floor and i often lean a little bit more in with my client so in general when i work with clients that are more numb and disconnected i tend to kind of close a little bit of the proximity to the client so i actually sit a little bit closer there's a little bit of leaning in now we negotiate this at the beginning of our work together but the i often find that my checked out clients are less checked out when i am in you know closer uh physical proximity to them than when i'm farther away the farther away i get the more that kind of disconnection kicks in the reverse is for a client that is more agitated and hyper aroused i give them more space which allows them to come down but a hypo aroused client i lean in and we we talk about that ahead of time which helps them ground as well so it's kind of modeled grounding modeled presence that starts to work with that challenge so i think it's important to think about what are the interventions with someone who has in many ways embodied that hypo aroused response and that their whole body is collapsed it's it's drawn in it's disconnected so right away i start working with clients deeply in movement i want them moving um even just extending their joints and really sensing that right like as i'm just kind of looking at this extension and feeling that in the body we i spend a lot of time with a hypo aroused client or a numb client just experiencing sensation right i literally um with one client who was completely disconnected i went to my um i have a little break room and i boiled some water and put it in a coffee mug and had her hold in one hand that coffee mug to sense heat and then i had some popsicles this is always a great reward for people with sensation exercises because they could have a popsicle at the end but placing the popsicle in the other hand and sensing how cold and heat and feeling the dissipation of heat and that sensation right um really helping them learn about how their body responds so that even to be curious about what numb is like like what num truly feels like in the body right versus kind of the cognitive um and so like holding something really cold for a long time ah that's what numb is because something that's initially starts this num starts to get painful in some ways right and then trying to pair an emotion with the sensation so we do a lot of embodied movement exercises for people who are hypo aroused and to start dropping the narrative because it's the narrative that keeps that survival defense activated and we bring more environmental and body stimulation in to into the healing space [Music] you