Tift "Trauma integrating flow therapy"

Tift offers a holistic concept that focuses on the treatment of the client's current traumatic gestalt, especially with complex trauma.

This is based on the hypothesis that current gestalt has developed due to a dysfunctional attachment and a suboptimal context during childhood and adolescence. This survival structure represents the optimal possible solution that the organism could develop. The composition and shape of this gestalt varies from person to person: one could say that everyone has a specific "QR code".

The Tift process induces the transition of the traumatic to a healthy gestalt. The therapy follows the characteristic modalities of secure attachment. Single traumatic events are included as "co-" in the resolution process. This holistic approach is organic and involves the somatic aspects as well.

The core element is a dynamic intersubjective connection between therapist and client whose continuum contributes to the healing of the “missed  and missing encounter" of primary attachment.

The integration process uses variable, client-tailored time axis cycles. This time axis is like gossamer, light-footed, serving as a rhythmical “back-ground music”, without excluding traumatic periods and events. As in the Greek myth of Ariadne, this timeline enables clients to find their way into the heart of the labyrinth, to the original attachment violation, and to come back, supported by the dyadic relation to the therapist.

Tift works with an analytical logic based on insights from neuroscience and the laws of complex systems. Tift also uses the dimension of metaphors, such as the Ariadne's thread or the Sisyphus syndrome, to convey implicit reality.

The elements at the heart of this therapy are :

• Creating the "meeting point" between therapist and client
• Understanding the client's gestalt/survival structure as a whole from the beginning
• Name a working goal beyond trauma conditions and symptoms
• The recognition of blocked or chaotic movements on a physical, emotional and   mental level
• Integrating the maladaptive internal working models into the therapy process
• Understanding dissociation as a movement towards more security

Tift brings about the characteristic flow of a healthy system: from chaotic or blocked movement to a coherent flow.

(c) Dr Anandi Janner Steffan