By Helaina Hovitz
As I worked more furiously towards the deadline of finishing the edits on my memoir about growing up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while verbally telling my story over and over again to others, I noticed things were happening to my mood and to my body that scared me.
What I soon came to realize was that, while Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and 12-Step Programs were all very effective in helping me recover, they didn’t target the way my body experienced and processed the trauma itself.
So, I embarked on a new journey to healing with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) and Somatic Experiencing, which got me thinking about other methods that people might be using as an alternative for working out the way traumatic memories live inside of our subconscious brains, our muscles, and other body systems. And that’s how I stumbled on Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) as yet another approach to healing PTSD and its many systems.
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