Twig's SE Reflections

Play Episode 45 Here

One of the most common questions I've received is what to do after completing the official 3-year Somatic Experiencing training. How to deepen, expand or cultivate more skill with this paradigm for working with traumatic stress and integration of experience. Here is a ramble through the brambles of my thoughts on such things where I encourage it all: master classes for cultivating speciality or creating awareness of holes in your abilities, assisting for a thousand reasons most of which I don't name but a few that I do and my strongest suggestion to consider auditing at least 1 course from the training again to consolidate and see just how much you already know.

Play Episode 44 Here

Cogitating, reviewing, pre-playing our sessions after hours, we're bound to do it. Taking work home with you is a known stress point in modern life and yet some professions demand it. The trauma recovery specialization is one of them. We do, and we need to, think intelligently about our sessions to improve our skills. We also need to think specifically about our client's in order to improve their session outcomes. Good. Great. Let's do that, let's just not do such dissection ad-infinitum. Here's one, admittedly rambling, proposal to both permit and simultaneously restrain chronically thinking about our work after work.

We attend to and pace the Red. But we're most interested in helping to balance the two by paying extra attention to the Blue.

Play Episode 43 Here

When listening to a storyline or following a somatic experiencing style investigation it's helpful to have a clear way to recognize what is less and what is more important to reflect. This episode is lifted straight out of the Tips and Suggestions section of Twig's Guide to the SE Language. Here's one way to name: The Formula.

Play Episode 42 Here

Some sessions are going to go places we don't want them to. When that starts to happen we can hope to be skillful in moving things to the better direction. If we can see early on that we're not likely to be successful at redirecting attention later, it can be a good idea to pre-establish a contract so we'll have something to lean on when it comes time to ask for a pause or when we interrupt.

In this episode I mention an earlier blog piece on the same subject of establishing and leaning on the contact which you can read here.

Play Episode 41 Here

The clarity of our feedback is key. From timing, to amount, to directness and indirectness and so much more, the "correct feedback" matters most in a distressed nervous system full of noise and confusion. We can't, and shouldn't, expect ourselves to be perfect. We can hope to continually get closer and clearer at reflecting "the right direction" appropriately. Here's a completely sideways story to help you think about the clarity of your feedback.

Play Episode 40 Here

We're going to make mistakes. It's a fact of the complexity of our work. Fortunately, as part of the learning process mistakes are profoundly helpful. Let's pay attention to them.

“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes” - Richard Buckminster Fuller

Certainly it's not only so that we'll give our clients the feeling of being in an interrogation. We ask all those questions for multiple reasons, the most important being that they help us direct attention without telling our clients what to do. This is a borrowed episode from a chapter in my Guide to the SE Language.

You can learn more about this Guide to the SE Language below.

Play Episode 38 Here

Let's face it. This stuff is massively complicated. Anyone who is going to get good at it is going to need to experiment and try new things on. You know, risk making mistakes! I think we can do that.

Play Episode 37 Here

Closing this mini-series on Choice Points with a brief discussion on choosing when to go to sleep and other - outside of the session space - opportunities to elect for options that are more helpful to our biology.

Play Episode 36 Here

To allow invite an involuntary experience with allowance or to wait and develop the attention more before doing so? That's the choice point behind the slightly tacky phrase Observational Sufficiency. You know, whether they're "paying enough attention."