·

Fear in the Therapy Room A survival guide for working with complex trauma

The human fear system – a set of automaticbiological responses to threat – is essential for our survival but whenactivated too often or for too long, it can lose its capacity to switch off. This can have a significant impact on our energy, our physical and mentalhealth, our behaviour and our capacity to think clearly and to relate toothers. We can get stuck in ‘fear-mode’, and this lies at the heart of complextrauma, a condition that is perhaps the chief cause of human misery. Complextrauma, with its most common symptoms being anxiety and depression, is the mainreason that people seek the help of counselling and psychotherapy. Fear in the Therapy Room is written fortherapists to help them to better notice and understand their own fearresponses and how these are constantly triggered as th