Tag Archives: memory

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Posted by: Andrea Cashman on June 4, 2015 9:35 am

My thoughts and a brief introduction on Sensorimotor Therapy for Trauma Clients

In April, I attended a workshop on Trauma and the Body – The Theory and Practice of Sensorimotor Therapy presented by Anne Westcott on behalf of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI). I’m particularly interested in theories designed to implement treatment on trauma clients. This particular workshop opened a new realm of possibilities for me. I had my sights on becoming specialized in EMDR in the future but perhaps SPI’s three level certification program is another avenue to explore for me and for anyone seeking to work exclusively with trauma clients. I don’t necessarily believe that one theory is better than another; however, I do believe it is about what works for you the therapist and your clients. The Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute was founded by Pat Ogden in the 1980’s out of her interest in the correlation of client’s disconnections from their bodies/their physical patterns and their psychological issues. Before PTSD appeared in the DSM, Pat recognized that treatments in that time seemed to trigger traumatic reminders in a detrimental way. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is drawn from somatic theories, attachment theories, neuroscience, the Hakomi method and cognitive approaches. Pat Ogden quotes “most human behavior is driven by procedual memory – memory for process and function – and is reflected in habitual, automatic responses and well-learned action patterns: movements, postures, gestures, autonomic arousal patterns, and emotional and cognitive tendencies.” This SP workshop explores the processes of memory and how this information can be utilised to change procedural learning in a window of tolerance for the client with PTSD. Specific skills such as tracking and attuning the body are taught. Dysregulation is noted with trauma responses of fight, flight or freeze and how the neuroscience behind the sympathetic and parasympathetic brain structures play a role in these trauma responses. SP uses movement to move the client in a state of active mobilizing defenses into a state of triumph.
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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Occupational Information and Its Organization

Posted by: John Stewart on July 13, 2011 11:19 am

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In our last presentation, we identified two types of memory used to store information: procedural and declarative. Within declarative memory we categorized episodic and semantic as two types of memory storage in long-term memory. We think that semantic memory is where occupational information is stored while episodic memory is where information about the self is stored. In this presentation, we want to focus on semantic memory.

Information stored in semantic memory consists of facts, concepts, and relationships among concepts that are verifiable in external reality. For example, we can verify the qualifications and occupational responsibilities of a surgeon. The information in semantic memory is typically structured in a pyramidal fashion. Within this hierarchy, the information is related to more sophisticated concepts (sometimes referred to as superordinate concepts) such as lawyers being one of a number of legal professions; and to lower concepts (sometimes known as subordinate concepts) such as lawyers are people who represent others in courts. Storing information in this manner helps individuals to access their information about occupations and the world of work easily. For example, if the only information a person knows about an occupation is that it is performed outdoors, this information is not very effective in thinking about how the occupation differs from other occupations. However, knowing that part of the occupational role is performed outdoors while the other parts are performed in different contexts is more effective in differentiating occupations.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Why Processing Occupational Information May Be Well-Suited For Your Own “Central-Processing Unit”

Posted by: Jeffrey Landine on July 8, 2011 12:07 pm

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Career development is one area of counselling that appears to have embraced the efficiency and seemingly endless capacity of technology to store information in a readily accessible way. Online assessments and databases such as CHOICES and Career Cruising are now integral aspects of career development curriculum and approaches to career counselling across the country. Government departments in Canada and the US have taken on the task of developing frameworks for organizing occupations and occupational information (NOC and O*NET) using hierarchical relationships that organize occupations in terms of responsibilities and occupation domains, and level of education. These frameworks are akin to the hierarchical manner in which information is stored in a computer.

In the realm of cognitive psychology, information-processing models often represent cognition, our information-processing abilities, as involving a series of sequential stages similar to the functioning of a computer where information, the input, is first into the computer through our sensory register. There it is processed, and the resulting output is an answer or solution to a problem. With computers, as long as the information at the input end is the same and the internal processes brought to bear on the information are similar, the output is the same, regardless of the computer used. When the problem or, in the realm we are addressing, a career decision, involves human processing, however, the resulting answers or decisions are not always the same, even when the information being input is the same from one person to the next. For example, a presentation made to a first-year university class describes the process involved in becoming a corporate banker, the typical duties a banker performs, and future employment outlooks for this occupation. While all students receive the same information, what is done with the information likely varies from student to student. This suggests that there are complicating variables that render each individual’s processing of information unique.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA