We teach six therapeutic principles. The first is about how a person can stay present. The second increases awareness of both mind and body. The third helps a person understand how to let go of difficult forms of distress. The fourth refers to metta, which has to do with loving kindness and self-compassion. The fifth has to do with recentring and decentring, and the sixth with acceptance and change.
I have a couple of slides to show you how we do this. In general, we try to teach a person greater control. PTSD and trauma lead to a sense of inability to control the controls beyond oneself. We're trying to put the control back into a person's hands. We use the acronym PALM to refer to the first four principles of presence, awareness, letting go, and metta.
Presence is the first. This has to do with helping people understand they are in the present and not the past. This has to do with the flashbacks and the re-experiencing and recognizing the influence of the past traumas on their responses in the present.
To assist with the awareness, we're trying to teach people to become more aware of their senses, their body, and their emotions, and to try to label and understand their experiences.
With the letting go, we're trying to help them to be able to let go of the distress as well as teach non-attachment to harmful impulses and desires that can develop from a significant trauma history, such as substance abuse or alcoholism.
We also help with the capacity for metta, for being kind and compassionate to oneself and others.
With the the recentring, people can desire a feeling, but they are feeling too far from it. We're trying to reverse that and bring people back to their sense of self and bring them back to their emotions. At other times we're teaching that if a person is feeling something too much, then the person needs to get outside of that. We're trying to teach a person to be able to develop that experiential distance so as to have the capacity to reflect, decentre, and then wait it out, as the distress will eventually subside.
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