Integrative Therapy for Attachment Trauma
Pam Dillon, M.Ed., RMFT. | 579-539-0147
Tri-Unitas Trauma Therapy (TRUS-TT) is my offering to the world. It represents an amalgam of 43 years of both my own personal journey of healing from attachment trauma and the powerful medicines I discovered along that path of healing. These are medicines drawn from a vast array of Western mind/body psychotherapeutic approaches, from the work of visionaries such as Carl Jung and Roberto Assagioli as well as from the ancient, energy-healing systems of the East; namely Buddhist, Taoist and Yogic psychology and practices. Combined, these are medicines that produce a Triune psychotherapeutic approach that aims to re-establish an essential sense of secure connection and belonging between, within and beyond our limited sense of ourselves as human beings.
“…effective therapeutic work with ‘primitive’, non-verbal, emotional attachment dynamics focuses on the formation of an unconscious emotion-communicating and regulating bond within the therapeutic relationship.”
–Alan Schore, Ph.D., neuropsychologist researcher
We are all born hard-wired for connection. Our innate talents, creativity and capacity for reciprocal love and joy lie inside as unopened gifts when we first arrive. If our gaze is met by loving, kind eyes gazing back, we instinctively open to our caregivers, to the private inner world of our own body’s experience and to the world around us. We learn how to trust. We know our worth.
Early interpersonal or attachment trauma however overwhelms and dysregulates the developing mind of the child. Chaos, rigidity and/or dissociative withdrawal take root where wholeness rightfully belonged.
Our first work together in Tri-Unitas Trauma Therapy (TRUS-TT) is informed by attachment theory, attachment neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology and the inherently, neuroplastic nature of our human brains for re-wiring and continued growth. From our first interaction, my intention is to offer you a new experience; one that is felt as welcoming, accepting and honoring.
“…The real work is done by someone….digging in the ground.”
–Rumi
Our bodies and especially our right brains are the repositories of our earliest wounding. The body is literally the ground of our being. If our first bonds felt unsafe, the body itself may feel foreign and untrustworthy. An early absence of trustworthy adults can place the child in a seemingly irreconcilable dilemma of conflicting urges for both reaching out and for recoiling back in fear.
Healing from attachment trauma is hard work made easier by the felt presence of a skilled, attuned Other. As my patient, you will learn how to non-judgmentally attend to your mind-body process as it changes and fluctuates moment to moment. There is power in finally seeing an old, reactive pattern of mind and offering it curiosity. There is freedom in finally stepping out of the rut of endless repetition.
As your ability to witness your mind and body in a dis-identified and compassionate way develops, the deep, inner work of digging in the ground can then begin. I think of this process as one of building loving bridges between your adult self and the splintered off urchins (dissociated, young parts) who have long yearned for attention and rescue.
Given that the body communicates through images, sensations, symptoms and dreams, our work together will often include deep, experiential explorations of these right-brained, imaginal processes. At times, I may even invite you to draw or paint these gifts of imagination from the psyche so that you might more fully access their deep wisdom and healing potential. Early unresolved trauma remains housed within our bodies in a type of suspended animation. Image and sensation serve as trails we will often follow together in order to safely melt old, frozen traumas and restore your innate vitality.
Over these years, the joy in my work has come in special moments of bearing witness to my client’s often first-in-a-lifetime, felt experience of finding safety and rest within their own bodies and being. In these novel, fledgling moments of self-discovery, patients arrive in a new place of right inner alignment and embodiment. Old ways of regarding themselves and others begin to transform and a new, more rightful sense of inherent worth and belonging emerges. This new, more coherent sense of self is naturally imbued with life purpose, meaning and the ability to give and to receive love; our deepest longing as human beings.
“Early traumas can wake us to the non-duality of self and world.”
–Polly Young Eisendrath, Ph.D., Psychologist and Jungian Analyst
Neuro-scientific evidence suggests that we are all not only innately wired for deep connection to others and to ourselves but for transpersonal connection beyond our limited sense of self. In fact, science tells us that we are innately wired to seek enlightenment.
There is an energetic field that is naturally created when therapist and client work together. This is a creative, synaptic space of potential and possibility. At peak moments, there is often a palpable sense of flow and rightness within the dyad that some of my clients have described as the experience of two tuning forks vibrating in unison.
A simultaneously experienced sense of authentic safety and trust both within oneself and between client and therapist can indeed open a portal to numinous and ineffable realms of experience. In these instances, I draw from my own personal sojourns into states of non-ego consciousness as I attend to, support and help elaborate my patient’s emergent experience. These are typically shared experiences of awe and sacredness for both client and therapist. Both members of this numinous therapeutic alliance feel safely held within a larger benevolent energetic field of belonging.
In Tri-Unitas Trauma Therapy (TRUS-TT), I, as the therapist, set a very specific and conscious intention that is embodied in my therapeutic presence. My stance is one of unwavering trust and connection to a larger energetic field of belonging. This then offers a subtle, energetic invitation for you, my client, to glimpse and connect to the experience of inherent unity that lies just beyond the veil of your own small and felt-separate sense of self.
“Pam’s clinical work demonstrates beautifully embodied therapeutic presence and powerful skills in multiple domains. Just extraordinary! Pam possesses intense intellectual curiosity, a strong work ethic, and a passion for healing. As an integrative psychiatrist, I appreciate the training she has pursued in this domain. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the field as a result of her prior training, research and lived experience.”