In this article we describe how the use of movie(fragments) can help clients with complex trauma to move to an interspace, an in-between. This is a safe space where at the same time there is an embodied knowing, without a direct link with traumatic contents from one’s story. This interspace gives possibilities in feeling, experiencing, moving, so gradually we can weave small threads to form a more coherent self and narrative. This process helps clients to get out of the isolation which is so often the consequence of shame, guilt or dissociation and gives traumatic contents a role again in the fragmented story they where stuck in. We frame the importance of embodied trauma work and give backgrounds from film philosophy where they consider the process of seeing a movie as embodied before more cognitive layers are reached. We extend this embodied sensing towards an interspace where we can experience the start of a felt sense. This felt sense brings direction in the process of growth and becoming a person. The use of this interspace in this process of searching relevant film fragments helps clients stay in their window of tolerance and at the same time moving into almost unreachable parts of their history. Some concrete examples illustrate how images or film fragments can shift something in the story of clients and how this can be integrated in a client-centered and existential way of working.
film, complex trauma, dissociation, interoception, body-oriented, traumasensitive, existential
The tPeP (Journal Person-centered experiential Psychotherapy) is the scientific journal for Dutch and Flemish psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, that work from, or are interested in a client-centered perspective.
