A sensorimotor approach to the treatment of trauma and dissociation

Traumatized individuals demonstrate a number of complicated and debilitating signs, symptoms, and difficulties consisting primarily of bodily responses to dysregulated affects. To address these bodily based symptoms of trauma and the psychologic components, the authors propose that it is possible to weave sensorimotor understandings and techniques into existing psychodynamic or cognitive-behavioral models of therapy. In sensorimotor psychotherapy, it becomes possible to address the more primitive, automatic, and involuntary functions of the brain that underlie traumatic and post-traumatic responses. After clients observe and report the interplay of their physical sensations, movements, and impulses and notice their internal reactions, meaning making emerges, with subsequent transformation of habitual response tendencies.