Trauma-Related Disorders

In order to achieve success in addressing post-traumatic disorders, all psychotherapy methods must deal with the dissociation and flashbacks of these patients in a disorder-specific manner. The patient should learn to free himself from flashbacks in psychological crises through self-stabilization techniques. When narrating a traumatizing situation, he should reflect on what he would have needed in the situation instead. He should rewrite the traumatizing situation into a coping fairy tale. The basis of trauma processing is the dissolution of dissociation through the focused external role change between four different metacognitive processes - the patient’s ego in the control and information space, his ego in the observation and narration space, his ego in the interaction space between perpetrator and victim, and his ego in a safe place. In this way, the patient dissolves his metacognitive confusion. He gains ego control over his dysfunctional self-regulation in the as-if mode of play. Psychodramatic acting in the as-if mode is more healing than purely verbal therapy. This is because the patient differentiates and completes the cognitive thought content in the traumatizing situation in psychodramatic action on the psychosomatic level of sensorimotor patterns of action, physical sensations, and affect. Or he completes the psychosomatic level of experience with the associated linguistic terms and thoughts to form a meaningful narrative. The disorder-specific psychodramatic action methods qualitatively enhance the depth psychological, behavioral, and systemic psychotherapy of people with post-traumatic disorders.