Traumatology (the study of psychological trauma and how to heal its effects on the psyche)

Eric Wolterstorff began studying with Peter Levine, a leader in the field of traumatology, in 1993. Levine introduced a theoretical model of the behavior of the autonomic nervous system (Accumulated Stress, Reserve Capacity and Disease, 1976) and trained therapists in Somatic Experiencing (taught today through Somatic Experiencing International). 

In 1995 and 1996, Wolterstorff lived in Sherman, Texas, and volunteered psychotherapy one afternoon a week at the local domestic violence and rape crisis center. He wanted to bring Levine’s work to the women in the shelter. The challenges were that the women and their children were rarely in the shelter longer than three weeks, and the women were distressed so it was difficult for them to focus their attention and learn. Wolterstorff felt he needed to make Levine’s work simpler and more accessible. In the first year, he extracted a simple protocol from Levine’s work. In the second year, he made the protocol explicit and taught it to the women to do with themselves, their children and each other. Wolterstorff also volunteered at a government housing project where he led families through the simple protocol.

Buddhist meditation techniques (the foundation of most body based psychotherapy)

At the same time Wolterstorff was studying with Levine, he practiced yoga and meditation many hours a day. Inspired by Levine’s description of defensive responses, Wolterstorff began a series of meditations in which, an hour a day for weeks, he imagined a single defensive response then applied the self-observation techniques of his meditation practice to track his body sensations and impulses. After a few months, he noticed that he was unexpectedly strengthening his ability to relate to other people, and the quality of his personal relationships improved. Wolterstorff began assigning meditations to his clients designed to strengthen defensive responses that had been chronically weakened during periods of sustained traumas.

The neuroscience of memory (which reveals how to heal from trauma more quickly and fully)

Wolterstorff studied for a doctorate in group traumatology from 1998-2003 (his dissertation: A Speculative Model of How Groups Respond to Threats). He learned about the different ways people gain memories, the different ways people store memories, and the different ways people express memories. These different kinds of memory systems revealed why different kinds of interventions were necessary for recover from traumas.

The psychoanalytic tradition (which enables therapists and clients to resolve traumatic transferences)

Dr. Wolterstorff created the basic and advanced Trauma Integration Protocol (TIP) trainings. The advanced trainings work with transference, group dynamics, and the development of the capacity of individuals and groups to collaborate. In particular, TIP draws on Murray Bowen’s family systems therapy, transference and counter-transference theory and practice, Lloyd deMause’s psychogenic modes of empathetic capacity, and Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes.

In the mid-2000s, Wolterstorff built a boutique crisis management firm that evolved into Cooperative Capacity Partners, which strengthens international, cross-cultural partnerships and is now based in Indonesia. See www.cooperativecapacity.com

For the past decade, Wolterstorff’s work has been focused on strengthening the capacity of community members to collaborate to address environmental and social problems. See www.sovereigntyfirst.com

Currently, Dr. Wolterstorff is developing protocols that people can use to help recover from sustained trauma and with attachment wounds—again, to do by themselves, with peers or with a therapist. Sign up below to learn when these protocols become available.

Dr. Wolterstorff’s Trauma Integration Protocol (TIP) draws from four lineages:

• Traumatology

• The neuroscience of memory

• Buddhist meditation techniques

• Psychoanalysis.