Meet Carolyn Daitch

The intensity of my clients’ symptoms severely limited their day-to-day functioning. At that time, there was a dearth of effective medication, and the primary treatment modality among psychotherapists was psychodynamic. I really wanted to help these people, so I began to develop approaches to treat their symptoms that worked more quickly than talk therapy. My interventions were informed by cognitive behavior strategies combined with hypnosis and mindfulness.

My fellow therapists were, and still are, tirelessly looking for new strategies and the best treatment approaches out there to help their clients, including those suffering from anxiety. Many of them, seeing the success my clients experienced in reducing their anxiety asked me about my treatment approach or referred their clients with anxiety disorders to me. Finally, I assembled the most effective of these in my first book, The Affect Regulation Toolbox.

I found myself repeating the same messages, quickly learning that people needed to hear things over and over and it took time to integrate new ideas about how their coping strategies had been designed to keep them safe when there was danger, and were not needed any more. I wanted to offer the group members something more concrete, a way they could remind themselves about the ideas they were learning, and I wrote Outgrowing the Pain.

For many reasons, putting that first little book together was something I could not have imagined. Decades later, I still get letters from survivors of childhood abuse, who find its message relevant and more importantly, causes them to reflect and gain insights that help move them forward. I don’t think any other book has been so rewarding as this one, written in the context of trying to be of service to women who had suffered deep injuries, in order to validate their experiences and help them take small steps forward.

In going through my own psychotherapy, I had the privilege of spending time with Alexander Lowen, the founder of Bioenergetics. This was in the beginning days of all the focus we now have on using the body as a resource. He spent the day with our group and did an evaluation (a body scan) of each one of us. He indicated what he felt was the source of our issues and then prescribed specific body activities for our treatment. At that point in time I was pretty much talked out and was not making a great deal of progress. With the help of my therapist we started those body activities. It was amazing as I was able to release so much that I could not put in words. From that point on I felt that involving the body in some kind of healing process was critical to recovery and growth. Today regulation (resourcing the body) is viewed to be essential to trauma recovery.

The final experience was as a young teen when I was given a camera. I took hundreds of pictures. When I would sit down to look at these, I was amazed by the elements in those pictures that I didn’t actually see when I was looking through the camera lens. Fixed in time, they gave me time to really explore all the elements of those pictures, to discover details of that moment I was not aware I had captured, to look at that moment differently than when I first experienced it. I think that really drew me into developing my evidence-based drawing process. If people are interested in learning more about it they can read the chapter that that I was privileged to be able to write in the new publication by David Crenshaw and Anne Stewart, “Play Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice”. Its an excellent resource for all levels of practitioners.

In going through my own psychotherapy, I had the privilege of spending time with Alexander Lowen, the founder of Bioenergetics. This was in the beginning days of all the focus we now have on using the body as a resource. He spent the day with our group and did an evaluation (a body scan) of each one of us. He indicated what he felt was the source of our issues and then prescribed specific body activities for our treatment. At that point in time I was pretty much talked out and was not making a great deal of progress. With the help of my therapist we started those body activities. It was amazing as I was able to release so much that I could not put in words. From that point on I felt that involving the body in some kind of healing process was critical to recovery and growth. Today regulation (resourcing the body) is viewed to be essential to trauma recovery.

The final experience was as a young teen when I was given a camera. I took hundreds of pictures. When I would sit down to look at these, I was amazed by the elements in those pictures that I didn’t actually see when I was looking through the camera lens. Fixed in time, they gave me time to really explore all the elements of those pictures, to discover details of that moment I was not aware I had captured, to look at that moment differently than when I first experienced it. I think that really drew me into developing my evidence-based drawing process. If people are interested in learning more about it they can read the chapter that that I was privileged to be able to write in the new publication by David Crenshaw and Anne Stewart, “Play Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice”. Its an excellent resource for all levels of practitioners.

Because so many clinicians had asked me about my treatment approach, I wrote that book for professionals who worked with clients suffering from anxiety. The Road to Calm Workbook, co-written with Lissah Lorberbaum, is aimed at helping a wider audience that includes laypeople with anxiety problems. Further, this workbook offers tools for a broader range of emotional challenges than I covered in the Toolbox. For example, in addition to the applications to anxiety issues, the workbook offers strategies for common struggles we all face from time to time, such as loneliness, feeling depressed, hopeless, frustrated, angry, misunderstood, abandoned, among other emotional triggers. So it helpful to any of us humans who deal with the ever-changing onslaught of emotions elicited by stress and interpersonal triggers. The workbook provides explicit toolsets in written form, on audio recording, and on an app. Yes, there is an app for that!

You need to individualize treatment for each client. The strength of many of the treatments for the disorders lies not in one modality’s approach but in the combination of interventions from an array of therapies. I encourage you to plan ahead before sessions and afterward to make brief notes about what you’ve learned about your client that you can incorporate into subsequent interventions.

As you proceed it is crucial that you attend to the moment to moment, and often unexpected, responses of the client and redirect the interventions accordingly. This immediate response to the client’s verbal or non-verbal reactions assures the client you are listening and that his or her responses are understandable, valid and respected. Challenge yourself to change course from one direction to another as you apply the tools during a session. A skilled therapist traverses through a session like a river: when water meets resistance, it changes course and continues in one fluid motion toward its goal.

Dr. Daitch can be contacted at canxietydisorders@me.com or via phone at 248 626-8151