|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Join Our Email List! 
|
 |
|||
[Below are short descriptions of articles by Linda Graham, MFT. To read entire article, click on title link.] The Neuroscience of Attachment (2008) Attachment research and modern neuroscience are teaching us:
Fortunately, the human brain has always had the biologically innate capacity to grow new neurons – lifelong – and more importantly, to create new synaptic connections between neurons lifelong. This neural plasticity of the brain was confirmed by neuroscientists in the year 2000. That’s just 8 years ago. Modern neuroscience IS new. 90% of what we know about how the brain works has been learned in the last 20 years. In that time there’s been an explosion of discoveries relevant to addressing the wounds of less-than-optimal attachment: the social engagement system of the brainstem, the fight-flight response of the amygdala, mirror neurons, bonding hormones, the social-emotional bias of the right hemisphere, the positive bias of the left hemisphere, the neurological substrate of empathy and emotional regulation, the effect of trauma on explicit memory, interoception – how we know what’s going on in our bodies, the role of the pre-frontal cortex in attunement and learning the “rules” of attachment, the resonance circuits we can use in empathic therapeutic relationships to catalyze brain change in our clients. The more we can become comfortable applying these discoveries to our interventions with clients, and the more we can learn specifically which interventions will most effectively accelerate change in our clients’ brains for the better, the more immediate and enduring our therapeutic interventions will be. Click on the title above to read the entire article. Accelerating Psychotherapy through Mindfulness (2008) Mindfulness strengthens the observing ego—our capacity to step back from experience and observe it in the moment, without being hijacked, flooded, or triggered into repression or denial. Mindfulness pulls us out of afflictive states without beating ourselves up for getting caught in them. Paying attention to experience in the moment while simultaneously holding it in a larger consciousness creates new perspectives and choices. Mindfulness thus accelerates the therapeutic process, or any process of change. Mindfulness is the cornerstone of a new alphabet of therapies—DBT, MBCBT, ACT—that help clients recover a sense of emotional equilibrium and begin to reflect on their experience, and the causes of their responses, with clarity and self-compassion. Attachment Theory (2004) Attachment theory explains how the relationship styles and "rules" that form the core of our personalities develop, unconsciously, in early interactions with caregivers. Attachment research explains how therapy, by providing the very same experiences in adulthood that create secure attachment in early development - presence, attunement, empathy, affect regulation, reliable reciprocal communication and practical help - help create the internal secure base in clients that is the foundation of all mental and emotional health. Attachment-based therapy helps clients literally re-program their brains and heal from the maladaptive relational-emotinal-coping strategies we term personality disorders to the flexible, adaptive, cohesive, integrated strategies that support the emergence of a fully authentic Whole Self. Neuroscience and Psychotherapy (2004) Neuroscience has much to teach clinicians about how the brain that emerges the mind that emerges the self actually works. And much to teach clinicians about how therapeutic change actually works and lasts. This presentation explores how therapy can help clients create new neural circuits and better integrate existing circuits to promote mental and emotional well-being. Resilience (2003) The foundation of resilience - the development of capacities to cope - rests in the experiences of our earliest attachment relationships, where we procedurally learn to repair ruptures in relationship, regulate our emotions, and gel a stable yet flexible sense of self -- or not. When clients consistently have trouble coping with their lives in adulthood, they may lack the foundation of resilience - the unconscious internal secure base that comes from early secure attachments. Therapy needs to do - and can do - more than help such clients explicitly learn how to think, how to make decisions, how to plan, how to look for options. Therapists need to - and can - provide a safe, empathic, attachment realtionship - re-parenting, if you will - where clients recover capacities of self, relating, regulating and coping that are the true foundation of resilience. Right Brain to Right Brain Therapy (2004) We now know, from recent discoveries in neuroscience about how the brain actually processs and stores experiences and information, that the largest part of the patterns or "rules" we develop about relationships, emotions, self, and coping with the world, are stored early on in the right hemispheres of our brains, implicitly (unconsciously) and non-verbally. We also know from attachment research and infant development research, what those early response patterns are likely to be, why they can be so problemmatic when they show up in our adult lives, even though we "know better" with the help of the explicit, verbal processing of the left hemisphere of our brains. This article explores how therapists can use the right hemisphere processing of their own brains to help clients access deeply embedded, implicit, non-verbal patterns and change them. Essential when those unconscious patterns are problemmatic or dysfunctional. New interventions and techniques from cutting edge experiential therapies do help clients "re-program" their brains, creating new more functional patterns of response so that clients heal more quickly into a flexible, integrated, authentic sense of self and healthy, adaptive relationships with others. The Reciprocity Principle in the Referral Process (2001) Why referring clients to other clinicians actually helps build a referral base to get more clients...and how to do that. Resourcing Therapy (2001) How referring clients to resources outside of therapy - books, tapes, videos, movies, classes, workshops, seminars, meditation, yoga, exercise - can synergistically accelerate the therapeutic process. _________________________ Linda Graham, MFT |
 |
|||
Home • Welcome • Psychotherapy • Consultation • Coaching • Resources
|
