Story Behind Deeply Etched
Be careful, it is a long story. I can't make it short, because it is complicated, just as the Complex PTSD itself:)
"There must be something missing." I thought. Years ago, as a graduate level practicum student, after hours and hours seeing individual clients and families experienced toxic childhood traumas, my gut feelings were telling me something was not right. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, ADHD diagnosis, eating disorders and dual diagnosis with substance abuse seems to be just the issues on the surface level. I found similarities after I checked in with client's history using multidimensional model that I expanded from the classic biopsychosocial model. I added spiritual, relational, emotional and mental domain into my session to have a thorough view of my clients.
Not just so-called "childhood trauma", there are similar pattern in my client's life: Compounding adversities and/or never-ending life stress. I did not know how broad and what exactly the impact of "trauma" could mean to a person. Being adopted to a loving family at age 3? That sounds great! But is it true to my client? Yeah, kind of. The answer is a yes and a no. I overlooked the power of life experiences. Whatever a person experienced, whether it had "happened" or "did not happen", it shaped, carved, changed and etched deeply to the person's mind, body and brain, down to a molecular level, and passed down from generation to generation through epigenetics.
I was naive, as a rookie counselor in a faith-based graduate institute. I truly believe (still do) that God will bring everything together for the people who love him. What I did not know then, was how God uses all things to bring healing to a person's life, including equipping clinicians to relate, regulate and connect to a person who experiences the complexities of trauma, whether that person has any spiritual beliefs or not.
I had a rough idea about trauma interventions as a graduate student, more so was related to crisis intervention, acute stress disorder or PTSD treatments. One day, my dear graduate school cohort Kendale Brown recommended me to apply for the Trauma Therapy Certificate through Trauma Care Institute, a program funded by Victims of Crime Act Fund and the Texas Office of the Governor. I was accepted to the program right after I graduated and started my professional counselor post-graduate internship. And yet, I did not know (again) what that would lead me to.
In the Trauma Therapy Certificate program, I was trained with/experienced Trust-Based Relational Intervention, expressive art therapy, movement, music therapy, psychodrama, trauma treatment with different populations, minorities, LGBTQ+, BIPOC and the impact of trauma on different levels: individual, family, community, culture and more. Meanwhile, I was in the process of being trained to be a Registered Play Therapist. That means I had to complete 150 education hours plus 500 supervised play therapy hours, after I was fully licensed as a Licensed Professional Counselor. I delved into the study of interventions based on child development, taking hours and hours of trainings/workshops to learn how to provide proper interventions for child clients and their families. In my level 2 sand tray therapy training at DFW Center for Play Therapy Training founded by Pam Dyson, Amy Hood brought me to the world of the neurobiology of play therapy. We spent an hour in the afternoon painting our hands. (Well, what could you expect play therapists would do together?) It was the hand model of the brain created by Dr. Dan Siegel.
After that two-day training, I started to paint my hand with my child clients in session to teach them the brain model, prefrontal cortex and amygdala (pretty cool, right?). I explained to parents about brain development and the correlation of emotions and behaviors (yes, still using my hand, just not painted). Because of the brain model, I was all in to study Dr. Dan Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) and his work on Mindsight .
As I was searching more ways to support my child clients and adult clients with foster care or adoption background, I found Dr. Bruce Perry's Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics and his book The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog. Understanding the brain development leading to more late night study on the brain structure from Dr. Perry, Antonio Damasio and Dr. Paul McLean. It was tiring, but I was glad that I was able to go beyond my clients' symptomology and find the needs that drive their behaviors and emotional struggles.
"I need more useful tools and practical interventions!" I thought, and I prayed. As I was trying to find ways to provide emotional regulation and somatic regulation, I found Dr. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory, and Dr. Peter Levine's book "Walking the Tiger: Healing Trauma." One day, when I was browsing a Taiwan online bookstore, I found the Chinese version of The Body Keeps the Scores written by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (Finally getting there!!). "The reviews looked awesome. I should get the original copy of it." I told myself. Thanks to Amazon, I got that book in two days.
That was in a summer time, I remembered vividly, because client load dropped during the summer in the University Counseling Center. I spent most of my break reading that book, taking notes, thinking, referencing other resources, and finally, all the dots were connected. "That's it!" I thought. The book became my major guidance and reference. It led me back to Judith Herman's work and help me navigate through the expensive trauma modalities trainings that I wanted to pay for to be well-equipped in the future. I studied more on the interconnections of the individual's internal being (the brain, mind and the body) and external stimuli including interpersonal relationship in the micro, meso and macro level. (Oh, by the way, I have a social science background, studied the development of countries and socialfare system so it was natural for me to think systematically).
Reading The Body Keeps the Scores was just the beginning of my journey in trauma therapy. Thinking back, I was glad that I laid a good foundation with clinical experiences and compassionate inquiries toward clients' struggles before I read that book. After I completed all the clinical hours to be a fully licensed clinician, I wrote A Guide to Trauma Therapy for my internship site for clinicians-in-training.
That should be how Deeply Etched started. Sorry, but no.That was just where I started my clinical work in trauma therapy. A few months after I became a fully licensed clinician, I read Pete Walker's Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. "Aha, now it makes more sense about the symptoms I see in adult clients!" The more I practice, the more I realize the differences between PTSD and Complex PTSD and the depth of the Complex Trauma treatment. Dr. Janina Fisher was the person who brought me into the integration of Internal Family System, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and EMDR therapy.
Looking back, it was not an easy-finding process to learn how to recognize symptoms of Complex PTSD which finally became a formal diagnosis in ICD-11 published in 2018 and became effective in 2022. It is also time-consuming (and cost tons of money) to be equipped with proper interventions to provide precise treatment to people who are in need. My hope and prayer is that Deeply Etched can become a place where both clients and clinicians can find the easy-understood resources about traumas, attachment trauma, intergenerational trauma and complex PTSD. Clients can have a place that WE (yes, we are all part of the traumatized system so it's not just you.) all can feel being heard and seen and clinicians can find support and resources to know how to better facilitate our clients in their healing journey (vicarious trauma is a real thing). I do hope this place can continue to grow into a community though I am not sure how it will play out. Just take it one step at a time, just like how we navigate through our lives :) If you want to know how I got the name "Deeply Etched", stayed tuned! I would love to share the story with you someday!