Toward a robust psychotherapy
In this concluding installment of “The Science of Connection in a Disconnected World” we will review the key takeaways from this bog series on the Biopsychosocial-AIP model of EMDR. It’s been a challenge to decide what to put in and what to leave out of a subject that includes sub-personal, personal, and interpersonal properties. This is the challenge for therapists, clients, researchers, educators, and policy makers who may be inclined to accept more simple and less accurate account of adaptive information processing. No one sends their brain in to therapy to be perturbed by a therapist. Yet, that can be how therapists and clients approach EMDR which reduces its robustness. Worse still, if researchers neglect the psychosocial components of the AIP system our therapy will continue to to be obscured by critics who exploit its weakness of lacking a coherent integration of the theory, model, and mechanisms of action in EMDR. Likewise, it will be hard to resist the lure of profit making by putting forth methods that unwittingly leave clients still vulnerable to objectification. We are people seeking therapy, not brains. We are people who’s brains are directly effected by psychosocial dynamics, trying our best to make our way in a world of people that isn’t predictably focused on our needs. It’s hard enough to live in a world that exploits psychosocial components of our being that change our brain so it can make a profit, let alone work with a therapist that believes they don’t matter. Living in a disconnected world is intrinsic to being a life form. Making a living by promoting disconnection as a way of life doesn’t have to be!
In conclusion, here are 10 key ideas that come to mind for me when I read my own writing. Let’s consider them as a list:
Thinking of the world as disconnected isn’t a value statement. It’s a universal fact that life is life precisely because it defeats the second law of thermal dynamics (things naturally move toward disorganization) by creating order and organization. Connecting and repairing connection is a fundamental part of life. Life is bent toward it. This is our strongest ally in psychotherapy. Connection begets connection.
Connection in the context of mental health is a type of adaptive information processing best understood as biopsychosocial health. Connection can be rigorously defined and studied and is not the same as indiscriminate social behavior.
Understanding how a dynamic living system functions is not easy, not simple, nor impossible to do in effort to describe and explain how we can develop the best approaches to the treatment of trauma.
When we narrow our description and explanations by decontextualizing our science, clinical practice, and socio-political policies we support the exploitation of consumers of mental health and the profiteering of those outside of mental health who make a profit on the disconnected ways we seek positive feelings. Disconnection begets disconnection.
There is no objective perspective on mental health through which some universal laws can be ascertained to best guide practices. Best practices must yield to the science of subjectivity which keeps in mind that things depend, based on our history and current historical moment.
There is nothing, “just in your head”, unless everything is. Dualism is prevalent in the history of psychotherapeutic models and does a disservice to clients. It’s intellectualizing tendencies make creators of models wealthy along with pharmaceutical companies that offer biologically based alternatives outside of any analysis of socio-political context.
While much of our experience is determined outside of our conscious control, our ability to direct our attention determines what gets highlighted and remembered best. Our experience of free will may be found in attentional agency.
Descriptions of the self that do not include facts and insights from modern day neuroscience have dominated the practice of psychotherapy and do clients a disservice by fostering dualistic and unrealistic ideas. The more we know about how and why our brain creates a self-system the better equipped therapists and clients are to do therapy.
For people of color to de-colonize and white people to un-colonize psychotherapy, we need to recognize how being preoccupied with making a profit inhibits our ability to see how large scale exploitation and subjugation takes advantage of our unwillingness to understand complex systems.
EMDR, when practiced from a biopsychosocial-AIP perspective, is fundamentally an attachment based therapy that is not merely focused on alleviating the symptoms of trauma but enhancing the life functioning of each client. It can be practiced as a life enhancing information processing therapy.
I hope you have enjoyed learning more about Biopsychosocial-AIP and EMDR therapy. Please leave a comment or email me at cotracc@gmail.com if you would like to tell me what you think. You can catch my posts on LinkedIn and other resources on my website tonycotraccia.com.
