The steps recommended by this article on developmental trauma disorder are all things that can be supported and achieved by craniosacral therapy and are relevant to children and adults:
1. Establish sense of safety: craniosacral therapists work on the basis of establishing safety during sessions, so that clients can feel safe and supported to process deeply held physical and emotional patterns. This is done through sensitive verbal skills and interaction with the client, and the process of negotiating contact, creating space and slowing things down when necessary.
2. Regulate affect: Working with the autonomic nervous system, to down-regulate the stress response, helps to regulate the deep brain structures that cause arousal.
3. Re-establish attachment: Regular sessions with a craniosacral therapist can give the opportunity for a new and trusting relationship for the client. Along with the deep physical and emotional changes that often occur as a result of craniosacral therapy sessions, the therapist can help the client to process these changes and achieve a sense of resolution, using verbal skills and deeply listening to the body and creating space for the changes to be integrated.
Craniosacral therapy supports and develops the felt sense and body awareness and helps the client to improve their relationship with themselves, as well as supporting and activating the social engagement nervous system, which in turn supports the client to engage more easily with the outside world.
4. Enhance the brain’s executive functions: as explained in a previous post on ADHD/ADD, craniosacral therapy supports the system as a whole and is useful for treating hypo- and hyperarousal states that may affect cognition and cortical functioning.
5. Reframe and integrate traumatic experiences: Resources, body awareness and the felt sense are key in the trauma healing process. Through regular craniosacral sessions, clients can learn more about the feelings and sensations that accompany traumatic memory or post-traumatic stress reactions and over time self-regulation can be integrated into daily life, empowering the client.
Craniosacral therapy can help to introduce new resources into a client’s life, to help break the negative feedback cycle that creates the ‘unsafe world’ that traumatized people often find themselves in.
