Havening touch

Treatment

Also known as: Amygdala depotentiation therapy (ADT)

Anatomy or system affected: Mental health, neurobiologic

Definition: A psychosensory healing modality that helps to overcome the powerful effects of extreme stress and trauma, reducing/eliminating symptoms of posttraumatic stress, anxiety, phobia, and pain by disrupting depotentiation of the amygdala pathway.

Overwhelming Life Experience

Overwhelming life events—such as medical illness, violent incidents, and natural disasters—and the extreme stress associated with them are a common feature of contemporary life. Recent technological advances routinely expose the public, often in grotesque detail, to these adverse circumstances via the Internet and social media, resulting in unprecedented exposure to a range of disasters and life-threatening emergencies.

Through personal survival, witnessing or even hearing about an extreme situation, complex automatic biological responses are stimulated, resulting in long term implications. Primitive brain structures and neurobiological processes, designed to protect an organism's survival by enhancing the ability to perceive and escape danger, encode (record) the event to avoid repetition of future life-threatening situations. This indelible encoding may cause vivid recollections and intrusive thoughts, re-experiencing the event as if it were occurring in the present time. Various healing modalities attempt to change underlying brain structure and chemistry to ameliorate the continuing effects of a prior threatening event.

Neuroscience of Traumatic Experience

Brains are “hardwired” to respond automatically to threats of safety, survival, and well-being. Through a complex, integrated electrochemical signal system in the brain, early warnings are perceived, interpreted, and activated to prepare the organism to fight or flee for its survival. This occurs instantaneously by structures in the brain's limbic system that send electrochemical signals to other structures, which activate α-Amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors that facilitate electrical current to the parts of the brain that must initiate the fight-or-flight response. A cascade of neurochemicals (epinephrine, dopamine, cortisol) rapidly prepare the organism to survive the threat by increasing muscle strength, blood flow, and cardiac and respiratory output.

After the threat is resolved, the brain relaxes and embeds the experience so it can rapidly remember the cues, which can increase awareness of future danger. Trauma activation and encoding occurs in the presence of the following three factors: an overwhelming, inescapable event; the meaning of the event (fear of death, etc.); and the neurobiological landscape of the brain (neurochemical state at the time of the event, which shapes vulnerability or resilience to traumatization).

If the early-warning system remains unremitting after the danger subsides, the lack of a shut-off process leads the encoded trauma response to become a continuous, dysfunctional, dysregulated chronic stressor, on high alert, in a constant state of danger. Triggering by general cues that the brain misinterprets as current danger creates an alteration of the neurochemical landscape of the brain. The altered neurobiology increases vulnerability to further traumatization and the risk for other mental health disorders including phobia, major depression, anxiety, panic, posttraumatic stress, substance abuse, somatoform and obsessive compulsive disorders, which may actually be passed on to descendants by way of altered genetic patterns.

The heightened sense of vulnerability, exaggerated by the lack of a safe haven, can lead to a chronic emotional state (shame, anger, rage, fear, jealously, revenge, helplessness, sadness), which distorts perceptions of worldview, self and others, leading to additional problems. Avoidance behavior and altered social interaction are common outcomes of encoded phobias and traumas.

Therapeutic Approaches

Many therapeutic approaches have been developed to facilitate coping and reduce adverse consequences. Psychosensory therapies use sensory input to alter the underlying responsiveness to the encoded traumatic event, thus modifying thought, mood, and behavior patterns. Some are nonspecific and work towards a global reduction in stress responsiveness (yoga, massage, aromatherapy), while others stimulate specific healing, enhance resilience, and increase the threshold for further traumatization: eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), emotional freedom technique (EFT), and thought field therapy (TFT).

Exposure therapies down regulate stress and its impact on information processing and response. Medications alter the brain's response to the exposure. The psychosensory therapies use the body's innate senses to alter neurochemical concentrations and produce changes in the neurochemical landscape, emphasizing the mind-body connection and the ways this connection is manifested. The basis for HT/ADT is altering the response to a fear stimulus by increasing serotonin in the brain using the extrasensory aspects of touch.

Havening Touch/Amygdala Depotentiation

Havening Touch: Amygdala Depotentiation Therapy is a unique psychosensory therapy that connects sensory input and neurobiological memory to alter the neurochemical landscape of the brain. After seven years of active research, HT/ADT originators describe it as the first and only effective therapy that reduces the impact of overwhelming life experience by changing the brain's encoding and storage of the specific traumatic emotional memory and its negative effects.

The HT/ADT approach involves initiating imaginal exposure, which activates glutamate receptors in the brain. A variety of sensory inputs is applied, particularly HT, which stimulates peripheral receptors in the skin, triggering electrochemical changes, including rising serotonin levels. Distraction, involving visual and auditory tasks, interferes with the consolidated memory, destabilizing and immobilizing storage. The elevated serotonin on recall of the trauma creates safety or a haven for the memory. Decreasing cortisol and the production of a delta wave in the amygdala lead to phosphatase in the postsynaptic neuron that depotentiates the activated glutamate receptors associated with the stimulus input. The receptor becomes internalized, delinking the traumatic memory and current distress. The depotentiation in the receptors allows for a disconnect between the emotional core and the memory, extinguishing the trauma/phobia. The event is no longer perceived as inescapable, thus no longer encoded as a trauma, and permanently eliminated.

Since the event is no longer immutably encoded in the mind and the body, the memory becomes stored in a more typical, adaptive mechanism, without the emotional disturbance. As the brain is “tricked” into thinking it has escaped, the encoded memory will not be retained as a phobia, only as a simple memory without fear or physiological dimensions, thus allowing for normative behavior. Practitioners of HT/ADT describe a rapid, almost instantaneous relief from the magnitude, intensity, and severity of the memory, usually resulting in a complete reduction of traumatic stress symptoms and negative effects.

As repeated stressors increase and potentiate receptors, additional long-term benefits may result in the decreased number of receptors, thus enhancing the neural landscape.

Facilitated Event Self-Havening (FESH) is a system of self-administered techniques that similarly alter the brain's landscape and produce a normalization of neuromodulators and neurochemicals.

Protocol

After a careful history and assessment, the individual is asked to bring to mind the circumstances of the memory, including the emotional content of the specific traumatic moment and the recollection of as many sensory aspects as possible: sights, sounds, smells, etc. This emotional, cognitive, and sensory memory activates the feeling of fear, anxiety, or trauma, creating the fearful, anxious or traumatic response as if it were current. The practitioner then follows a protocol that includes three components: activation of the event and its emotional core, application of HT (kinesthetic component), and active distraction through prescribed techniques.

The practitioner combines a series of kinesthetic touch stimuli, composed of soothing, gentle strokes to arms, shoulders, forehead, hands, and face that leads to a surge in serotonin and low voltage delta waves. A calcium channel opens, triggering a phosphatase that removes molecules from activated glutamate receptors. AMPA receptors are no longer potentiated, and the receptor is removed from the pathway that disrupts the traumatic encoding. At the same time, distracting thoughts and tasks are introduced, which shift focus and displaces the distressing mind-set. The combination of activation of the memory and its emotional core along with the stimulation of neurochemicals helps to disrupt the linkage that was encoded at the time of traumatization. The distraction displaces the thoughts from working memory and inhibits/prevents further excessive responsiveness. Since the circumstances of the previous traumatizing moment are not replicated (landscape, meaning, and inescapability), the intensity fades and becomes a simple memory without emotional content and is unable to produce a fear response.

The emotional memory and stimulating cues are removed, creating a safe haven in which to recall the event, resulting in a feeling of calm and emotional detachment from the trauma. Typically, the individual reports looking at the issue from a distance rather than from inside the eye of the storm, the view of a postage stamp rather than a large screen, leading to resolution of the problem and disappearance of the phobia, anxiety, or traumatic stress response.

Several forms of HT/ADT have been developed, including Event, Transpirational, Facilitated Event Self-Havening (FESH), and Affirmational HT. In the FESH model, the client is directed by the practitioner to follow a series of steps and at the same time apply Self-Havening Touch (SHT).

Applications and Uses

HT/ADT is indicated in the treatment of amygdala-based disorders and is considered unique in the resolution of the trauma memory. Extinction therapy, exposure therapy, or systematic desensitization involves exposure to a fear-related stimulus, and through nonreinforcement or habituation, the stimulus loses its ability to produce the fear response. A new response is learned; however, the old pathway that produced the fear is still intact; only the response is changed. HT/ADT involves the elimination of the relationship between the event and the emotion.

There are three distinct applications for use within a psychotherapeutic setting provided by a professional mental health clinician that has been fully trained and certified in HT. It can also be used as a self-help technique to diminish emotional disturbances, enhance wellness strategies such as stress management and peak performance, and to promote self-modulated healing.

Summary and Conclusion

HT/ADT is an innovative psychosensory intervention for the treatment of trauma-based disorders and to enhance general well-being. It utilizes the individual's thoughts and emotions coupled with the extrasensory components of touch to modify encoded neural pathways, disrupting and eliminating unwanted responses (symptoms) from previous traumatic experiences. The effect of practitioner-applied tactile stimulation triggers γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) release and serotonin, increases low frequency delta wave production, and depotentiates activated glutamate receptors. This delinks encoded traumatic memory from the event, resulting in the emotional detachment from its intensity. This nondrug, short duration, individual-focused modality has been demonstrated in thousands of anecdotal cases worldwide to be safe and effective.

HT is considered alternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed in the United States. As a relatively new healing approach, the extent of its effectiveness as well as risks and benefits have not been fully studied. Formal large-scale research endeavors are currently being conducted. While yet to be fully researched by Western academic and medical standards, and therefore may be considered experimental, this approach offers promising opportunities for symptom relief and enhanced quality of life.

Bibliography

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