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Body therapy
This section adapted from The Body Remembers: The psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment, Babette Rothschild, ch 6.
Employing the client’s own awareness of the state of his/her body – the person's perception of the precise, coexisting sensations that arise from external and internal stimuli- is a most practical tool in the treatment of trauma and post traumatic stress disorder.
Consciousness of current sensory stimuli is our primary link to the here and now; it is also a direct link to our emotions. As a therapeutic tool, simple body awareness makes it possible to gauge, slow down, and halt traumatic hyperarousal, and to separate past from present. Moreover, body awareness is a first step toward interpreting somatic memory.
Massage and body work has been found to be beneficial to survivors of sexual abuse. This work is often done in direct collaboration with a psychotherapist. It is used to assign new meaning to touch and develop healthy boundaries as part of their recovery process. However the therapist needs to be mindful of the extreme sensitivity and often terror of being touched which can be experienced by a client with a history of child abuse. The therapist should check often during the massage as touch can trigger an emotional response or a memory of abuse.
Sometimes even then the survivor may not able to say what is happening as he/she may have been silenced during the abuse.
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