Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment: Stabilization, Safety, & Nervous System Balance

Book excerpt: Challenges the notion that clients with PTSD must revisit, review, and process their memories to recover from trauma. Being able to monitor and modulate a trauma client’s dysregulated nervous system is one of the practitioner’s best lines of defense against traumatic hyperarousal going amok—risking consequences such as dissociation and decompensation. This paperback edition of Babette Rothschild’s The Body Remembers, Volume 2, clarifies and simplifies autonomic nervous system (ANS) understanding and observation. It includes a full-color table that distinguishes six levels of arousal, which has proven to be an essential clinical tool, presenting a new and useful distinction between trauma-induced hypoarousal and the low arousal that is caused by lethargy or depression. Multiple therapeutic transcripts illuminate key points in trauma treatment, including stabilizing clients who dissociate, identifying and implementing hidden somatic resources, and utilizing good memories and somatic markers. With an authoritative yet personal voice, Rothschild’s book is essential reading for anyone working with those who have experienced trauma. The full-color ANS table is also available separately as a laminated desk reference card.