A "Dip Your Toe In" Approach to Calm Scene with Clients with Complex Trauma
In this podcast, I propose a very simple modification to your calm scene mindfulness exercise when clients have struggled with exercises like this: outsource the calm scene to a YouTube video. We may be able to use the video as a bridge resource. Bridge resources are accommodations to standard resources that take into account the difficulties that clients may have with visualization, focus, self-judgment related to the visualization, and allow us to do a version of the resource that lets clients “get to the other side” of the resource rather than falling into the “canyon” of the resource.
What’s important, eventually in a resource, is that the client has a shift in affective state in a way that feels safe and tolerable to their parts. When clients struggle to visualize, a video library of 17 billion videos immediately accessible to the client’s computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones is a portable resource we should have been teaching for a while. When it comes to calm scenes or calm processes, there is no inherent reason why that experience has to be fully imagined in order for it to be experienced. We want to appreciate the difficulty of the cognitive “ask” of having a client with severe trauma conjure water, waves, sky, clouds, sand, buildings, breeze, smell of ocean air, seagulls, etc, etc. It’s a heavy lift, as has been discovered by many therapists who try to develop an imaginary calm scene with clients with severe trauma.
What are the Goals of Calm Scene?
What are the Difficulties of Calm Scene?
How Can Outsourcing the Calm Scene to YouTube Help Us?
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