Brain-Development Expert Bruce Perry
The trauma of the loved-one's death has basically "lodged" in the senses
and the emotions of the right brain because the analytical, thinking, and
verbal side (the left brain) was unable to receive all of the vital information
because the brain was so traumatized by the life-or-death trauma. After such
trauma, the right hemisphere of the brain is given extra "sensitivity and
reactivity" within it to help compensate for the loss of power in the left-brain!
(This explains to me why I started writing poetry "prolifically" after Merry
Katherine's death.)
Therefore, it is very important for therapy to start with that creative
right brain before including intensive talk-therapy.
If you have been to therapy and your therapist ever used such techniques
as EMDR or maybe a Guided Imagery technique, s/he was using “right-brain”
therapy. EMDR is Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which
is a rapid-eye-movement technique to reduce some of the trauma of your story
for you, or if your therapist uses a Guided Imagery technique, s/he is teaching
you how to stabilize your emotions so that you can learn to do the self-care that
restores your calm should the emotions get stirred up too much at any given
time and trigger your body back into "fight-or-flight" traumatic reactions.
Ideally, you eventually will be able to use these techniques for yourself at
home, both for times of crisis and also for healthy maintenance of your war-torn
emotions. These are just two of the kinds of therapy we have discovered now
(since the 90's) that best "work" to initially help traumatized grievers when they
step into our offices.
That is why interventions that are based on a strictly cognitive,
problem-solving approach cannot impact terror-driven behavior.
The primitive brain and mid-brain cannot process cognitive
solutions aimed at the higher cortical functions. But imagery,
with its calming voice tones, soothing music and symbolic
representations of safety, can settle down hypervigilant brain
functioning and allow the higher brain to get back to doing its job.
Psychotherapist Belleruth Naparstek
In focusing on the right brain, your therapist must first teach you what you
must do to get "centered" (stabilized emotionally). After such calming
techniques are in place, then-and-only-then should the therapist proceed to tap
into the left-brain's verbal skills. If done in an appropriately timed way, then
your thinking and verbal skills can be very helpful to process the grief on
through with both left- and right-brains now working together!
For an excellent book to read that further articulates this research and
stipulates the kinds of appropriate therapy called for to effectively treat the
right brain first, you may want to read Invisible Heroes: Survivors of
Trauma and How They Heal by Belleruth Naparstek (New York:
Random House, 2004). (The quotes I have included in this post from
other experts in the field are from Naparstek's book.)
Oftentimes in trauma, healing cannot be completed because
traumatic experience becomes locked in various areas of the
brain. We don’t work trauma through by just talking about it.
Talking is primarily a left hemisphere activity. In order to complete
the healing process, a traumatized person must access the limbic
system and the right hemisphere of the brain, where images, body
sensations and feelings are stored. By activating this area of the
brain and accessing the stored images, body sensations and feelings,
a person is able to attach meaning to them and move this traumatic
material to more adaptive resolution.
Psychotherapist Linda Gould
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