This book is about ordinary people who learn to be happy and resilient. Anybody may find themselves in the pictures […]
About Me
I have been working as a psychotherapist for many years and, during this time, I have learned many methods of therapy. I had the idea to show the patients pictures of various life situations, that show different feelings and relationships, and to let them choose which pictures interested them and were related to their problem. I realized very quickly that pictures are an excellent method of treatment. They can be used at the beginning of therapy as well as in the middle.
The more I use the pictures, the more I see how effective and efficient it is. The pictures reveal a lot and the reactions vary. Choosing several pictures can teach me about the personality of the patient.
Realizing the success of the pictures as a tool for therapy, my sister Yona had the idea to sell them. We decided to create booklets with the pictures and instructions for the user, then sell them to psychologists during workshops. We started a business called KEG Cards (KEYS TO EMOTIONAL GROWTH).
This book describes the use of KEG Cards and gives many treatment examples.
The therapy pictures and KEG Therapy Cards motivate people to be in touch with their inner feelings and help them go through a process of insight that helps them change their lives.
On one level, they are the projections of the individual and almost all of them have many different meanings for different people.
Since they represent a myriad of stories, experiences, and emotions, I provide several examples for pictures because one example for each one limits the wide variety of possible feelings and contrasting narratives.
Another advantage of these original pictures is that the therapist may use them as a tool for identifying the patients’ main issues. In some aspects, it is possible to compare the process to using Rorschach.
When an individual can look at, examine, investigate, and finally accept and forgive all the different parts of his/her psyche and live in homeostasis. Living in equilibrium, in comfort, even though they are self-contradictions, he/she can live a happy, moral life, doing good for himself/herself and for others.
Jung spoke about this issue and even claimed that this self-acceptance of contradictions determined a person’s moral value and how he/she lived life.
These self-contradictions are the essence of many pictures, and several examples of different narratives and personality characteristics are provided in this book.
About Trauma
Trauma is a situation in which the body or the soul is hurt, usually by external factors. Several trauma cases, which were caused by loss, separation, war, accident or any other crisis, are described in this book.
A person who has suffered a trauma almost always reacts in one of the following ways: flight, fight or freeze– the three F’s. These reactions are the result of an elementary instinct, and originate in the limbic part of the brain (the early and elementary part of the brain, responsible for digestion, breathing and reproduction, which also activates the nervous system that regulates all of these). This reaction is common to both humans and other animals.
The trauma returns to the conscious mind in its original form, as if repeating itself over and over, through flashbacks including memories, sounds and smells, just as they were at the time of the original traumatic event. Experiencing the same traumatic event again and again is common in PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
People who find themselves in this situation, are either highly alert, and feel the necessity for fight or flight, or are not alert, and unable to act, as if they were frozen. These reactions are not necessarily negative, and may even be life-saving.
Trauma is a situation rich in emotions, and activates parts of the brain related to long-time memory. It is therefore not only anchored in all the cells of our body, but also affects long-term memory in various ways. For instance, most women who gave birth don’t remember the intense pain and are ready to give birth again. Although giving birth is a traumatic event, it is also accompanied by positive feelings, which neutralize the trauma. Some scientists say that the emotional memory of the trauma is accompanied by a feeling of having assisted in our survival. It could be said, that trauma is an inborn fear, normal and natural.
Even though trauma is necessary for our survival and for the survival of other species, suffering from trauma makes it difficult to function in daily life, and a person who has been traumatized may need psychological treatment.
When given the opportunity, these clients often choose pictures which are connected to parts of the brain affected by the trauma. The choice of these pictures helps release negative energy and helps the client relax.
Other, non-traumatized individuals may choose the same pictures as post-traumatic patients, but they find different symbols and meanings in them. The choice of pictures, and the way the patient talks about them, is significant for the ones suffering from trauma. They see danger in situations which seem natural to healthy people.
Those who suffer from trauma have difficulties in separating the past from the present. They have flashbacks which throw them back into the trauma over and over again. Their stress hormones start functioning and the patient can’t differentiate between the past and the present. They can’t tell themselves that the difficult situation happened in the past, and is now over. They lose control of their body and their spirit, and relive the trauma again and again. The post traumatic disorder also has physical manifestations (somatic awareness), pain, irritable digestive tract, or any number of other physical conditions.
When treating post traumatic patients, several methods are effective:
Psychoeducation: involves actually showing the patient a sketch of the brain and its various parts, pointing out the location of the part which activates the post traumatic reaction – the amygdala and the nervous system. After they’ve seen this, explaining the relationship between the physical brain and the nervous system, as well as the chemical process, which takes place in the brain in a situation of “fear”. It is a firing process, in which electronic processes give the patient a feeling of alertness and a sort of negative excitement.
People like to learn and understand what is happening in their body and spirit. It is important that the patient understands the lifesaving importance of fear.
In addition to asking the patient about the people in his life, one may ask him to choose pictures from KEG Therapy Cards, Keys to Emotional Growth, which are original pictures on one side and guiding questions on the other. He may also bring in pictures of his own, in order to connect to his fears and to discuss and analyze them.
The patient is asked to provide examples from his life, in which he used the Flight, Fight or Freeze strategy. The pictures help the patient remember such incidents. For instance, the picture of a man caught in a spiderweb, reminded one patient, a 45-year-old man of his 7th birthday party. He got so excited, that he wet his pants. His father scolded him in front of the guests and shamed him so much, that ever since, he has been afraid to talk in the presence of other people.
When he remembered this incident in the therapy session, we changed the shame into a positive experience, by visualizing the scenario as positive, and sang “happy birthday to you” together. We role played the event several times, and the father in the scenario laughed and made fun of the situation. Instead of being embarrassing, the event became fun, with singing and dancing and opening presents. We changed the embarrassing event into a positive event. For him it was no longer a traumatic situation.
Having chosen several pictures which represent his trauma, the patient tells me about the degree of distress he felt at the time of the traumatic event (this makes him experience it again). He talks about his feelings in the first person in the present tense. At this point, the usual level of distress as described by the patient is about a 10.
Then I suggest that the patient change something in the picture or the narrative, so that it becomes less intimidating. The patient may change the size of the picture, erase several details or add others to the picture. He may change as few as two details. Having made the change, he tells his story again. After making the changes to the picture, his story is more optimistic, according to the positive components which he has added. Now, the level of his distress usually comes down to around 8.
This process is repeated several times, and every time the patient is asked to change something in the picture and tell his story again. It becomes more optimistic every time, and the level of his distress diminishes, until the story becomes just a regular, everyday story. Sometimes, he moves his body according to his story. This too helps release the trauma and the negative energy. At this stage, he usually reaches a distress level of 2 or 1 and wants to stop. The patient usually tells me that he also has fewer nightmares and less physical pain.
In addition to re-creating his story and making up a new one, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is introduced and also touching energy points (EFT) and tapping. While patients are touching and tapping energy points, they make positive statements and affirmations, which move from the primitive brain to the frontal one, and this helps them to tell a more positive story.
Adding guided, affective imagery, breathing and meditation, which are soothing and help people tell a more positive story, are an integral part of therapy. There are some patients that dance or move with the affirmations, and those that sing the affirmations. All this helps them tell a more positive story.
One client made swimming movements, in order to get rid of his fear of drowning, and another danced and sang, in order to rid herself of a traumatic event.
The process of healing from trauma, includes creating and forming a new narrative and freeing the body of fear and stress. This process takes place in the brain.
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