1.  Preparatory protocol for EMDR or other therapy modalities

Whatever modality you may be using with your clients, i.e. EMDR, Gestalt, Jungian, Psychodynamic, DBT, or others, Super Resourcing may be used as a preparatory phase.  The more resourced a client is going into trauma work, the better they will fare.  Well-resourced clients experience less stuck, looping, and blocked processing.

2.  Enhance EMDR interweaves or positive cognitions

Super Resourcing serves to neurologically integrate the positive states of mind, emotion, and body that result from successful EMDR interweaves.  It is also useful to SR the positive cognition that is generated at the end of an EMDR session.  This serves to enhance its efficacy by neurologically embodying the message.

3.  Neurological integration of any positive feeling, thought, sensation, or moment

Super Resourcing has relevance at any point in a therapy session when a client expresses an important realization, feeling state, or sensation.  Insights have limited value on their own; they need to be more fully embodied in order for the client to derive maximum benefit.

4.  Resolution of an activated disturbance as a standalone protocol

SR is an effective treatment modality for reducing stress and trauma.  Unlike traditional trauma methodologies, SR does not focus on the disturbing event or events.  Rather, it focuses on the person who experienced the event.  A more fully present-time resourced client has less interest or fixation on the past and experiences a reduction of disturbance on the presenting complaint.  The trauma is impacted without having to deal with it directly.

5.  No identified distress: Super Resourcing for increasing self-esteem, well-being, resiliency, performance, or empowerment

SR is an excellent modality for enhancing one’s positive experience of oneself and of one’s pursuits.  Again, rather than focusing on the negative events that underlie limiting mind / emotional and sensate states, or the blocking beliefs that interfere in a more positive and wholesome assessment of self, SR directly downloads a new positive personal narrative.  This results in more increased self-esteem, wellbeing, and performance.

6.  Resourcing parts to heal attachment wounds

Un-resourced parts of the psyche frequently emerge during an SR session precisely because the field is positive and often represents the corrective healing environment and experience.  Each Part is fully potentiated by installing positive resources with their accompanying positive sensations, emotions, and cognitions.  Based on knowledge of a client’s history, the clinician may also invite parts into the field for attachment repair.  Less fragmentation and dissociation occur when the part is not being directly confronted with trauma.

7.  Resolving special issues and populations: Addiction, Depression, Anxiety, Insomnia, and Medical & Health Issues

Super Resourcing is very effective with special populations.  Frequently, these sorts of behaviors and mind states associated with these issues are survival strategies.  By identifying and resourcing the part of the psyche who is caught, for example, in an addiction, in depression or anxiety, or the one who can’t sleep, Super Resourcing alters the client’s relationship to these issues.  A well-resourced client does not need these coping mechanisms and has more fluidity and optimism in evolving healthier habit patterns.

1.  Resource / Attachment Focus vs. Trauma Focus

EMDR is primarily trauma, dysregulation, and distress focused.  Attachment repair may be included as an aspect of EMDR.  This is evident in Shapiro’s inclusion of establishing and testing the efficacy of the Safe Place as part of the preparatory phase of EMDR.  At its core, however, no matter how many attachment features are added, EMDR was conceived and developed for resolving trauma.  In contrast, SR is not trauma / distress focused.  It is designed solely as a resource modality, intended to address and heal attachment wounds.  With SR, the clinician attends to the person who experienced the trauma rather than the trauma itself.  When activation of the attachment wound has been lowered or resolved, frequently, there will be a corresponding lowering of Subjective Units of Disturbance (SUDS) in relationship to the trauma.  A well-resourced client experiences an enhanced state of well-being and a present-time embodiment of wholeness.

As Janice wrote at the close of a series of SR sessions:

“You know, I feel so strong inside now, and I have my voice back.  I know who I am.  I don’t really care anymore about what my father did to me.  I mean, it was wrong and it always will be wrong, but I just don’t care anymore.  It’s kind of crazy, but even though he is dead, it’s like he was haunting me and I was living like he was always abusing me.  It’s finally over, and I can get on with my life.  I can be who I was meant to be.  I thought we were going to have to go into the abuse; that scared me, and I didn’t want to do it.  I was so relieved that I could get over it without having to go into it.  That was amazing.”

2.  Neurological Embodiment of Resources

The Procedural Steps of SR are designed to create a comprehensive positive resource field for healing and attachment repair.  Shapiro developed Safe Place to be used as a resource for the client as needed during an EMDR session.  Schmidt added additional resource figures: Nurturing, Protective, and Wise Figures and others to be called forth as needed.  SR is therefore a further development of EMDR.

Each of the four (or more) resources, i.e. Peaceful Place as well as Nurturing, Protective, and Wise figures are not simply called forth, each is potentiated by identifying and developing all three information storage forms – positive sensation, positive emotion, and positive cognition.  Beyond individually developing each resource, a Meta Field is created; each resource is linked to the prior one so an all-inclusive positive field is strategically crafted and integrated neurologically.

3.  Enhanced Present Time Experience of Self

The integrated internalization of resources facilitates an enhanced present-time experience of self.  More fully resourced clients are better able to tolerate doing deep trauma work; resolving the attachment wound interwoven in a trauma unfixes it in the client’s psyche and it processes more easily during subsequent EMDR sessions.  The work goes more smoothly.  Interweaves and interventions are frequently not necessary.  There is less occurrence of resistance, dissociation, looping, or stuck processing.  I came to understand that when these appear in a session, it is a cry for help from a distressed part of the psyche, i.e. what is happening is too much or too scary and coping mechanisms have been overwhelmed.  The part is in survival mode and shuts down the processing in order to protect itself.  This phenomenon confirmed my interest in developing a protocol which focuses on the client’s compromised inner parts and their needs – a protocol which the parts feel no urgency to resort to coping strategies.  Instead, a protocol which creates the optimal healing environment in which un-resourced parts feel safe to come out of hiding and express their needs becomes an optimal healing environment which promotes the development of their vitality, stability, and ego strength.

4.  Developing a New Narrative

Super Resourcing lays a strong foundation for subsequent EMDR work.  Well-resourced clients are more willing and able to explore challenging places they may not have been willing to explore before as well as to feel things they may not have been able to feel before.  They develop a more reliable and more resilient belief about themselves and their ability to heal.  This more positive personal narrative has a beneficial effect in all areas of their lives.  So often with attachment-based trauma, clients constellate their experience of themselves around their trauma; it becomes a defining touchstone in their psyche.  When trauma is resolved, some clients experience a loss of identity.  Their experience of the empty space where the trauma sensations, emotions, cognitions, flashbacks, etc. used to reside is perceived as disorienting and sometimes disturbing.  Some clients unconsciously choose to cling to their trauma as an identity marker rather than face the disequilibrium that comes from that change.  One client, at this juncture in her EMDR therapy, exclaimed: “If I am not that person constantly scanning my environment for danger as if something bad were just about to happen, what will I do with myself?  Who am I?”  Sustaining therepeutic gains is more challenging when the gain itself is destabilizing.  SR frontloads new positive identity markers, and consequently, the transition out of the trauma vortex is not as disquieting.

5.  SR is Time-Efficient

Like EMDR, SR is time-efficient.  In the words of Francine, “Adaptive Information Processing with Bilateral Stimulation results in Rapid Free Association and a beneficial processing of the target moment for the session.”  While the theoretical underpinnings are the same for both modalities, SR distinguishes itself from EMDR in that SR is more time efficient because it directs therapeutic attention toward building a new positive matrix rather than deconstructing a negative one.

Additionally, imagination and positive imagery have the potential to create new neural connections which result in new perspectives on old events.  Consequently, during a SR session, symptoms related to the trauma are less likely to get activated.  Sessions tend to go more smoothly.  Healing takes place on a neurological level, and the client experiences more resolution with less need for interweaves and interventions.  SR capitalizes on a fundamental and inherent human desire toward healing and freedom.  It is easier and quicker to swing with the current of a river than against it.

6.  Transforming Disturbance in the Positive Resourced Field

Shapiro and other EMDR innovators who have adapted the resource installation recommend short sets of BLS during resource installation so that trauma and / or developmental networks do not get unduly activated prior to the EMDR session.  Whether SR is used as a preparatory phase of EMDR or as a standalone protocol, longer sets or continuous BLS are utilized.  Consequently, as Shapiro and others have accurately predicted, disturbance frequently does surface.  Rather than viewing this as an undesirable occurrence, however, any disturbance is welcomed.  Using Ego State Psychology, the distressed part of the client is identified and brought into the positive potentiated resource field for attachment repair.  His / her / their needs are acknowledged, and healing resources are neurologically installed; each resource is Super Resourced.

According to neurological research, the brain does not differentiate between real and imagined.  Developing a Super Resourced positive matrix allows Parts who have experienced significant developmental / attachment repair to better tolerate the distressing feelings, thoughts, and sensations that may emerge.

This points to one of the underlying principles of SR.  As clinicians, we’re taught to track pain, fear, anger, and sadness; we learn techniques to encourage our clients to talk about and express what ails them.  SR, on the other hand, is about tracking strength and positivity.  For some clinicians, this is an enormous paradigm shift and the transition may come slowly.  For as much time as I have spent developing SR, I, too, am not immune from my psychological training and the tendency toward a pathological or negative framework.  I’m still developing my capacity to see clients in terms of strengths and talents.  I am still working on what it means to live in a positive matrix and to work with people through that lens.

7.  Stabilization and Integration of Structurally Dissociated Parts

In more extreme cases of neglect and trauma, structural dissociation occurs.  Babies and young children have immature nervous systems and rely on caretakers to help regulate their needs and disturbances.

There are two kinds of regulation:

1. Interactive regulation: being soothed by others
2. Auto-regulation: soothing oneself

Chronologically, the first precedes the second; being adequately soothed by others provides the foundation for learning how to soothe oneself.  In the absence of interactive regulation, the child must find his / her / their own way to cope, and structural dissociation is the most common solution.  SR does not reconstitute the trauma vortex.  Consequently, these dissociated parts feel safer to emerge (or be invited) into the positive resourced field for stabilization and healing.  The missed developmental stage of interactive regulation may be creatively imagined and neurologically installed in order to provide the experience of loving care and safety.  This allows fragmented parts to reintegrate and orient in present time.  As the clinician, SR supports the client in creating an environment in which interactive regulation is taking place.  The clinician’s genuine interest, inquiries, repetition of the client’s words, and mirroring help supply the missing developmental stage.  SR is also designed to encourage self-regulation and the development of self-soothing in order to maintain optimal arousal as well as sustain gains.

8.  Applicable to a Wide Range of Clients

Typically, SR with clients takes anywhere from one session to many months or years, depending upon the depth of attachment wounding and the fragility of the client’s ego.  Extended SR is especially important for highly traumatized clients who have requested EMDR work and the clinician’s assessment is that they are too dysregulated and do not have the ego strength necessary for a positive outcome.

A common question asked by my consultees is, “How do I tell a client that they are not ready for EMDR in a way that does not make them feel bad about themselves?”  Rather than tell the client that they are not ready (which may indeed have a negative impact on their already tenuous self-esteem), SR is offered as an EMDR-based resource protocol and may be presented as such.  SR is designed to be clinically sound with a wider range of clients.  Its focus on developing positive neurological networks becomes empowering for the client and fosters a more natural “buy-in” to the therapeutic process.  Dysregulation and / or resistence are less likely to occur.  SR is also an effective alternative healing modality with clients for whom trauma-based EMDR may never be indicated.

9.  Subjective to Objective Memory

Adaptive resolution to disturbance may occur entirely within the positively integrated resourced field.  Frequently, I have found that once a client is fully resourced with SR, his / her / their perspective on the disturbing event evolves from a subjective personal narrative to a more objective, reality-based narrative.  Parnell (2007) referred to this phenomenon as the shift from “subjective to objective memory.”  It is a very different psychological constellation to say, “It happened to me,” vs. “It happened.”  In a place of relative objective neutrality, the client is less likely to project the past onto the future.  A stronger reality orientation results in a lowering of disturbance on past events.

10.  Supports Maintaining Optimal Arousal

Greater and more reliable access to resources supports self-regulation and maintaining optimal arousal in that the frontal cortex is more likely to stay online.  The frontal cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for clear, balanced perception.  It is the place of witnessing ego.  During hypoarousal (too little energy) and hyperarousal (too much energy), the frontal cortex goes offline.  Maintaining optimal arousal is necessary for healing old memories and developmental wounds as well as for the integration of new information.  Maintaining optimal arousal in the face of challenging life moments is therefore more naturally possible.  Clients are better able to respond to situations, rather than react.

11.  More Access to Positive Neural Networks

More fully potentiated positive neural networks are developed through SR.  During subsequent EMDR sessions when clients enter an activated trauma network, they have more natural access to resources as they were developed in an Accelerated Information Processing (AIP) manner and are fully neurologically installed.  This access to resources supports self-regulation and maintaining optimial arousal.  Clients frequently report that the empowerment they experience in sessions generalizes into many other areas of their lives.  SR invites the restoration of hope and optimism.

Often in an EMDR session, when processing slows down or gets stuck or looping, the clinician may do an interweave to get the session moving again.  The most common interweave is some version of, “Who or what could help?”  My experience is that the resources obtained in the traditional EMDR fashion rarely become the response to that question.  They were obtained before the network was fully lit up and were not fully installed.  Resources that have been developed in a SR fashion are more reasily accessible because they are more deeply integrated into the client’s psyche.  Neurologically installed resources become a corrective emotional experience for wounded parts and provide not only easier access to the positive matrix but also have a more lasting power over time.  A client is more likely to call on a fully SR-installed resource when asked, “Who or what could help?”

It is also interesting to note, as the clinician, I remember the client’s resources over time in a more immediate and compelling way.  I have theorized that on some level, many of them subtle, in the face of client distress and in the face of their angst and suffering, we protect ourselves from the full brunt of their feelings and predicaments.  Even though we are present and engaged, we rely more on witnessing ego from some distance.  I find this phenomenon is not as present in a Super Resourcing session.  In the face of the delight expressed by the client in creating a positive field in which attachment wounded parts can truly heal is enlivening for them, and by extension, for me.  My body relaxes and my heart softens.  Being in the presence of profound healing creates well-being for everyone in the room.

12.  Identification of Processing Style

Even with just one session of SR, much can be learned about the client’s processing style as well as their readiness for EMDR trauma work.  By introducing extended BLS in a less evocative situation, the clinician can discern whether the client tends to flood or dissociate, as well as their processing style.  In cases where there is sitnificant flooding and dissociation, I recommend not using BLS or using very short sets with keen attention to helping keep the client in an optimal arousal zone.  We quickly learn whether the client processes quickly or slowly, or whether they are a linear processor (likely to remain in one neural network) or a tangential processor (likely to activate multiple networks).  This positions the clinician to better navigate the time management aspect of EMDR sessions and to formulate a therapeutic plan tailored to the client’s processing style.

13.  Identifying Clients Who Have Difficulty In Naming Resources

During the first session of SR, the clinician is able to identify clients who have difficulty coming up with resources.  I have identified three primary origins of this difficulty, and distinguishing among them is important in terms of how one approaches SR.

First, this difficulty may be a trauma or attachment survival strategy.  The client has shut down this imaginative capacity because it is perceived as unaccceptable or dangerous, and not going there may be the only way this part can protect itself.  Consequently, it is important not to pathologize the client, and further to discern the positive intention in the resistance or difficulty.  Essentially, what has transpired is that, at the very start, a part has emerged, i.e., a part who can’t imagine healing or positive possibilities.  This becomes the initial Super Resourcing session in which we establish who is this part, how old are they, what is happening, and what does this part need in order to feel safe enough, nurtured enough, protected enough to reclaim the capacity to imagine, the capacity to reclaim the hope of, in the words of Phillip Moffitt, “the imaginative possible.”  The process of healing this wound takes patience, and for some, may well take an extended period of time.  It signals a deep attachment wound, and resourcing and healing this part necessarily precedes any other work.

Second, the difficulty in coming up with resources is more simply the result of personality types.  People who are very left-brained tend to be more reality-based and more literal.  In this case, I don’t ask the client to imagine anything, nor do I use terms like Nurturing or Protective figures.  I move from the realm of imagination to reality by inviting the client to recall actual past or present experiences.  For Safe Place, I invite the client to recall a time and place in which they felt, for example, smart or strong or in tune with themselves.  Instead of Nurturing figure, I ask for a memory of someone who was kind to them during a difficult time in their life.  For Protective figure, I ask for someone who has had their back; someone who came to their aid or protected them in some way.  And, for Wise figure, I ask them, if they had a problem to solve or needed a sounding board, who would they seek out to help them.

With some clients, I “back in.”  Instead of asking the client to name the place or figure – a task which has proven difficult for them – I inquire about the qualities each resource may embody.  In other words, to generate the characteristics and traits such a resource would possess, then, ask the client who or what someone or something who possessed these qualities could be.

Third, on many occasions, clients think they come up with a resource because they believe it is supposed to come to them in a particular way.  It becomes important to explain to clients that resources are perceived in different ways; some people are visual and see the resource, some people are more somatic and sense the resource, and some people are cognitive and know the resource.  All are valid, all work, and the client should be affirmed for whatever their perception styole is.  Interestingly enough, because the protocol asks for all three, it supports the development of less accessible perception styles.

14.  Client-Centered and Empowering

Super Resourcing is client-centered and offers the corrective healing environment for healing attachment wounds.  In doing so, SR is empowering.  It supports the development of the client’s own imagination for creative solutions to distress.  It supports the strengthening of resilience and encourages innate potential to become more manifest.  A more pervasive experience of well-being becomes possible when previously disavowed or fragmented parts of the self are more fully healed and integrated.  The client becomes more able to reside in present time and to better face and navigate the inevitable challenges of life.  By introducing extended BLS in a less evocative situation, the clinician can discern whether the client has a tendency to flood or dissociate, as well as their processing style.  We learn whether they process quickly or slowly, or whether they are a linear processor (likely to remain in one neural network) or a tangential processor (likely to activate multiple networks).  This positions the clinician to better navigate the time management aspect of EMDR sessions and to forumlate a therapeutic plan tailored to the client’s processing style.