What is Sensorimotor Psychotherapy?
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a therapeutic modality for trauma and attachment issues. SP welcomes the body as an integral source of information which can guide resourcing and the accessing and processing of challenging, traumatic, and developmental experience. SP is a holistic approach that includes somatic, emotional, and cognitive processing and integration.
SP enables clients to discover and change habitual physical and psychological patterns that impede optimal functioning and well-being. SP is helpful in working with dysregulated activation and other effects of trauma, as well as the limiting belief systems of developmental issues.
SP helps clients cultivate their strengths, while providing enough challenge to stimulate growth, long lasting change, and well-being.
The interview below of Dr. Ogden on The Trauma Therapist Podcast features discussion of a composite case, which helps highlight the use of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in practice.
What can Sensorimotor Psychotherapy help with?
SP can bridge the gap when traditional “talk” therapy has not helped. SP can help with trauma and attachment related issues such as:
Anxiety
Having difficulty concentrating due to fear, upsetting thoughts, or unwelcomed physical (body) sensations
Intense and disturbing emotional reactions that seem out of place with the present situation
Post-traumatic stress: abuse, attack, accidents, flashbacks, nightmares. Feeling frozen or stuck in familiar circumstances without understanding why
Difficulty enjoying life, feeling hopeful, and experiencing pleasure
Relationship related wounds: neglect, harsh parenting during childhood, divorce, child-parent separations
Persistent and regular negative thoughts about one’s ability to achieve, be successful and deserving
Difficulty maintaining a job, a family, friendships and other relationships
Feeling detached from one’s self and the world
How does Sensorimotor Psychotherapy work?
SP is a comprehensive treatment approach developed by Pat Ogden, PhD. Some therapists use SP in addition to other treatment approaches to include the body as a valuable piece of one’s experience. SP is informed by research in physiology, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology. Several Hakomi principles also guide this approach, as Dr. Ogden founded a branch of the Hakomi Institute, Hakomi Integrative Somatics, which is known today as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
SP uses a three-phase treatment approach to gently guide the client through the therapeutic process – Safety and Stabilization, Processing, and Integration. Therapist and client collaboration are essential to the SP approach. The therapist must pay close attention to the client to ensure that they are not overwhelmed by the process while simultaneously engaging their own abilities and capacities for healing.
It is thought that SP strengthens instinctual capacities for survival and assists clients to re-instate or develop resources which were unavailable or missing at the time the trauma or wounding occurred. Once resources are developed and in place, the traumatic event can be processed with the aid of resources.
SP is a well-developed approach with decades of success in the treatment of trauma and developmental wounds. With positive therapeutic outcomes solidly in place, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute aspires to embark on a program of research to study more closely how SP works and establish a strong, evidence base.
For information:
Rui@TheWholisticConnection.com
(310) 918-5885