Complex PTSD, Polyvagal theory, and EMDR
 
If you have grown up in a threatening environment, you have had to adapt to survive. These adaptations are characteristic of CPTSD (Complex PTSD). The trouble is, these adaptations can leave you stuck in certain states, whether that is fight-or-flight, freeze, or dissociative shutdown.
 
CPTSD often creates difficulties in your adult life, and these difficulties often impact your relationships. For example, if your caregivers only offered an abusive relationship involving shame or manipulation, you will find it hard to identify a healthy, balanced relationship. In fact, you will find it hard to trust someone enough to develop a healthy, balanced relationship. As psychotherapy requires a relationship between client and therapist, CPTSD can often serve as an obstacle in the early stages. To overcome these obstacles, a therapist must be experienced with CPTSD, they must be flexible in their approach, and they must expect a lack of trust in the early stages.
 
CPTSD: What can help?
 
Compassion: Symptoms of CPTSD are adaptations to a chronically unsafe environment that presented itself in the client’s past.
Polyvagal theory helps us to view these symptoms with compassion: Our body and brain is responding in a way that the nervous system is supposed to. When the nervous system senses danger, our heartrate speeds up, or we cannot think about anything but that perceived danger.
 
A somatic approach: Once we view our symptoms as a matter of biology (our body doing what it is designed to do), we realize that we cannot think our way out of this. Instead, we need a somatic approach which includes breathing, tapping, movement, and many more approaches.
You can also mindfully track your bodily responses to certain triggers, so you learn how to befriend these responses, rather than trying to attack them.
Sometimes this in itself won’t be enough, and so we might need something like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy) to help calm the amygdala. Only then can our more developed brain come back ‘online’.
 
Find cues of safety: With time and patience, you can build up a whole ‘filing cabinet’ of cues of safety. For example, there might be certain images or sounds or smells that calm your body and mind. Many people enjoy images from nature, but don’t limit yourself to this. Cues of safety could include the sound of your children laughing, your cat purring, certain calming colors, or even grounding (but calming) objects such as a hard-backed book, a woolly hat, or a jar of coffee beans.
Once you have identified your own cues of safety, you can repeat the mantra “I am safe now.” The key part of this is to distinguish the past environment of chaos and danger from the current environment of calm and safety.
 
To conclude
 
Every time you use a cue of safety, or you exercise compassion, or you use a somatic approach, you are “myelinating the neural pathways of your social nervous system” (Dr Arielle Schwartz). The more you do this, the easier it will become to get back into a safe and calm state. The purpose is not to eradicate all distress, nor avoid it, but to embrace it and ride the peaks and troughs of the experience.
 
I hope you find this useful. Please contact me if you would like to clarify anything.
You can also book online for a free call from me.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Trauma therapist in Ridgewood, New Jersey

Want to know the secret about feeling better? In this series of videos I explain how a combination of EMDR and Polyvagal theory can help you to break free of your symptoms (whether it is anxiety, panic attacks, depression, intrusive thoughts, etc):
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• Part One: You will learn why you are feeling a certain way. For example, why you are feeling breathless, panicky, why you have racing thoughts, or why you feel depressed.
• Part Two: You will explore the impact these feelings have on various parts of your life
• Part Three: You will learn what you can do about those nervous system responses.

Here is part one of this series.

I hope you find it useful. If you have any questions about it, please get in contact. You can also book online for a free call.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist in Ridgewood, New Jersey

How polyvagal theory and EMDR can help with your daily stressors.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist in Ridgewood, New Jersey​

A dysregulated nervous system is the most confining prison that can trap you. But if you can understand the bodily cues of safety and danger, you can learn how to regulate your responses and harness the most effective key to free your mind.

According to Polyvagal theory, your autonomic nervous system can spot cues of danger or safety by analyzing voices, facial expressions, and other bodily movements. When you hear the right intonation or pitch in someone’s voice, for example, you can sense whether that person is safe or unsafe. If your nervous system senses danger, it will make your body feel or do certain things. For example, your heart rate might increase, or you might feel sweaty or shaky, and you might be unable to concentrate on anything but the danger. If your nervous system senses safety, your heart rate will slow down, your muscles will relax, and you will be able to concentrate on other things.

Your autonomic nervous system can be useful when there is a need to spot danger. But if there is a misalignment between your nervous system and reality, if you sense danger when there is none, you can end up trapped from within. Your nervous system becomes your prison, and you can end up having panic attacks or feeling jumpy, or give up and withdraw altogether because you just don’t feel safe.
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Would you like to learn how Polyvagal theory can help you?
Check out this new page.

Addiction isn’t a character flaw. It is a survived response. It is also a survival response that can be unlearned.
 
Healing can only happen when we address both the trauma and the addiction. In therapy, we do this in a non-shaming way. We understand the why of the behavior, and we appreciate that we survive in whatever way we can.
 
In this video, therapist Jamie Willis and I discuss the unique challenges of trauma and addiction:
https://youtu.be/ZOkQQX7jnI8?si=Fs5HNLKbCCcMfJaW
 
If you need to talk to me about trauma and addiction, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
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If you’ve ever said…
 
“I’ll just have one more…”
“I can’t feel anything unless I’m high.”
“I don’t want to feel anything.”
 
…then you are not alone. And you are not broken,
 
I often tell my clients here in New Jersey: Addiction isn’t about the substance. It’s about what the substance is soothing.
Many people are trying to quieten the trauma responses that were never understood, never validated, and never healed.
 
The good news?
You can build new coping strategies. You have also learn to feel without fear.
 
In this video, therapist Jamie Willis and I discuss the unique challenges of trauma and addiction:
https://youtu.be/ZOkQQX7jnI8?si=Fs5HNLKbCCcMfJaW
 
If you need to talk to me about trauma and addiction, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
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When someone turns to substances, they’re not just “making bad choices.”
They are trying to cope with pain that their nervous system hasn’t been able to process.
 
As a trauma therapist in New Jersey, I’ve worked with many clients who have used alcohol, drugs, or other behavior to cope with the pain of emotional abuse, childhood neglect, loss and grief, CPTSD, and PTSD.
 
In this video, therapist Jamie Willis and I discuss the unique challenges of trauma and addiction:
https://youtu.be/ZOkQQX7jnI8?si=Fs5HNLKbCCcMfJaW
 
If you need to talk to me about trauma and addiction, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
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Communication challenges aren’t just about language. They are also about emotional safety.
 
That’s why psychotherapy and speech therapy often work hand-in-hand.
 
A collaboration between a psychotherapist and a speech and language pathologist can make a profound difference. In this video, I discussed this need for collaboration with speech-language pathologist Laura Grube:
https://youtu.be/WeDbYaEcwvM?si=hlyMiNcKWaf6Tg_w
 
If you need to talk to me about how psychotherapy or speech therapy, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey

“If I know what I want to say, why can’t I say it?”

Sometimes the words are there but anxiety, trauma, or something else gets in the way.
 
Speech therapy and psychotherapy aren’t just for “fixing problems”. They are tools for unlocking authentic communication.
 
Therapists like me help with fear, shame, or trauma behind the silence.
Speech therapists can help with expressive and receptive language.
 
This kind of dual support can be life changing.
 
In this video, I discussed this need for collaboration with speech-language pathologist Laura Grube:
https://youtu.be/WeDbYaEcwvM?si=hlyMiNcKWaf6Tg_w
 
If communication feels hard, it’s not a failure. It’s a signal that something deeper might need attention.
 
If you need to talk to me about how psychotherapy or speech therapy, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
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Did you know that psychotherapy and speech therapy often work best together?
 
As a mental health therapist in New Jersey, I often collaborate with speech-language pathologists (SLPs). This arises when clients have to navigate social communication challenges, selective mutism, anxiety that impacts verbal expression, and other speech or language challenges.
 
In this video, I discussed this need for collaboration with speech-language pathologist Laura Grube:
https://youtu.be/WeDbYaEcwvM?si=hlyMiNcKWaf6Tg_w
 
Where speech therapy supports language skills, processing, and articulation, psychotherapy addresses the emotional, behavioral, and psychological layers beneath communication patterns.
 
Together, we support the whole person: Mind, brain, and voice.
 
If you need to talk to me about how psychotherapy or speech therapy, get in contact.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
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Have you ever wondered why you shut down during a stressful experience? Do you apologize even when you’ve done nothing wrong? Do you stay in unhealthy situations out of guilt or fear?
 
These might be trauma responses.
 
Here in New Jersey, I work with many clients who don’t even realize their “habits” started as ways to stay emotionally safe. Therapy can help you to make sense of your reactions, and it can give you the tools to respond from a place of choice, not survival.

There’s nothing wrong with you. You adapted and survived.
Now, you’re allowed to learn a new way and thrive.
 
If you need to talk to me about how trauma responses, get in contact.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey

Have you ever wondered why you shut down during a stressful experience? Do you apologize even when you’ve done nothing wrong? Do you stay in unhealthy situations out of guilt or fear?
 
These might be trauma responses.
 
Here in New Jersey, I work with many clients who don’t even realize their “habits” started as ways to stay emotionally safe. Therapy can help you to make sense of your reactions, and it can give you the tools to respond from a place of choice, not survival.

There’s nothing wrong with you. You adapted and survived.
Now, you’re allowed to learn a new way and thrive.
 
If you need to talk to me about how trauma responses, get in contact.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey

Trauma responses aren’t overreactions. They’re survival strategies.
 
When something painful or overwhelming happens, especially repeatedly, your brain learns how to protect you. These protective responses are called:
 
Fight (your body and mind goes into a state of mobilization; your heartrate increases, blood rushes to your limbs, and you might feel hot, irritable, or angry).
 
Flight (you withdraw, avoid, or shut down).
 
Freeze (you go numb, you feel stuck, you dissociate).
 
Fawn (you people-please to stay safe).
 
These are normal human responses to abnormal experiences.
 
Trauma therapy isn’t about “fixing” you – it’s about helping you to understand these patterns and reclaim your power.
 
If you need to talk to me about how trauma responses, get in contact.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey