E12

THERAPY FOR SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILDREN, CBT COMBINED WITH PSYCHOMOTOR THERAPY: BECAUSE THE BODY REMEMBERS

Presenters: Francien Lamers-Winkelman, Margreet Visser

Abstract Category: Diversity   

Instruction Level: Intermediate

Presentation: Not Provided

Description:      

The importance of physical movement as part of a CBT after sexual abuse will be explained and demonstrated with video clips.

Abstract:

Sexual abuse is a direct threat to the integrity of the body and a violation of the physical territory. Children are reduced to objects, and their bodies to articles, when their bodies are used without their consent or under protest. Some victims of trauma, and probably many child victims, are without the symbolic and linguistic representations necessary to place trauma in its historical context (see Van der Kolk & Greenberg, 1987). Moreover, traumatized children often do not trust words anymore because they have been injured by too many ‘bad words’. A verbal approach alone may be ineffective, and therapeutic techniques which incorporate work with bodily states can be helpful in working through the traumatic experiences.

The Children’s and Youth Trauma Center in Haarlem (The Netherlands) developed a combined CBT-Psychomotor program for sexually abused children. It is a multimodal approach, centering on physical activity, yet simultaneously involving emotional experience, cognitive processes, social relationships and environmental influences.

For children, and especially young children who communicate more easily by means of activity than by language, the combined CBT-psychomotor program (movement, dancing, body-awareness exercises, body contact exercises, massage etc.) has been found to be (very) effective. Data of 340 children, 12 years of age and younger, who participated in the therapy were collected before and directly after the therapy, and at follow-up, six months later.

In the workshop, we will explain the theoretical model, demonstrate the combined CBT-psychomotor program with video clips, and show the effectiveness of the therapy based on the data.