Trauma Therapy: An Interview With Dr Norman Goldwasser

Dr Norman Goldwasser is a clinical psychologist with more than 25 years of experience in trauma therapy. This psychologist uses the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This is an innovative psychotherapeutic treatment methodology, which is designed to relieve continuing psychological distress from trauma. Goldwasser focuses on helping his patients desensitize and reprocess traumatic experiences that may have affected their development or affected their functioning. Here he speaks more in detail about trauma treatment.

What do you feel are the essential ingredients of effective trauma treatment?

Dr Norman Goldwasser: In order to be effective, therapy needs to be safe. The patient needs to feel safe and not at any risk of becoming re-traumatized. Also, it is important know that if the traumatic hyper-arousal is too high, the patient is not going to be able to think and integrate their experience. So, it is important to keep it at a level where the client can digest the therapy. The trauma therapist should ‘put on the brakes’.

What should one look for when choosing the right therapist?

Dr Norman Goldwasser: To provide a trauma therapy that can be tailored to the needs of the client, the trauma therapist needs to be flexible and also trained in several different treatment modalities and theoretical bases.

If the therapist is trained only in one model or method, then patients have to adapt to that model or method. If the patient can’t adapt, the therapy may have a wrong outcome.

Also, it is important for therapists to not be so tied to their methods and techniques. They can put every one of them aside and sometimes just sit and talk with their clients. That’s very important.

What do you think about claims that trauma can be resolved in a single session?

Dr Norman Goldwasser: In my opinion, to make that an expectation is disrespectful to the client. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’ve never had a one or two or three session’s therapy.

Nowadays there’s an over-emphasis on method. This leads to a de-emphasis on the therapeutic relationship. Claims that trauma can be resolved in one session are an emphasis on method.

There are outcome studies that show the effective resolution of trauma in only three sessions. However, these are done on clients who have a single standing trauma and a non-complicated background.

Because the vast majority of our clients have multiple traumas and/ or come from complicated backgrounds, such studies are misleading.

And finally, what do you think about the current state of outcome studies in this field?

Dr Norman Goldwasser: Despite the fact that they offer good guidelines, they have many limitations. For nearly every outcome study that is done by the proponents of some method, and which shows success, there is an outcome study that done by opponents of that method which dispute it.

I prefer to equip my patients to be able to figure out for themselves what works for them. I teach my patients about self-awareness, body awareness and emotional awareness.

In this way, together with the therapist, patients can evaluate, what works best. In my experience this strategy provides better results than just imposing a method, only because it has the best outcome studies.