Why does Tift make sense?
Complex trauma has gained increasing importance, giving rise to various new therapy models.
Starting trauma therapy is a chance for the client but a challenge for the client’s fragile stability. Tift works within the client’s comfort zone with minimal trauma exposure, thus favoring integration and the feeling of being safe.
The holistic perception of the presenting gestalt acknowledges the efforts, the restrictions and the suffering that were necessary to build it, thus fostering a feeling of meaning and self-trust.
The magic of first love
Chaos theory, fractals, strange attractors, and complex systems have accompanied me since my adolescence and through my first career in molecular biology. This experience offered me glimpses into the patterns that organise – disorganise – reorganise living structures continuously.
The beauty of disorganisation
It gave me the confirmation that living systems do not build dysfunctional structures, but only optimally functioning states in tune with the environmental conditions: for ex. Tift sees dissociation and maladaptive behaviors as optimal contextual responses to past conditions.
Being able to join this knowledge to trauma therapy has been a special gift in my life!
Meeting hardship gently
The hardship of complex trauma, the Sisyphus syndrome of having to rebuild one’s unstable stability endlessly are treated with minimal trauma exposure. This attention is a built-in feature in Tift therapy.
It consists in an ongoing adaptation of the therapy dynamic to the changing states of the client, holding the client and his system within a bounded breathing space.
The system knows best
What looks like resistance, avoidance etc. are inbuilt safety locks which allowed and allow the client to stay "upright". Dissociation, lack of body sensations, feelings, emotions, or conversion symptoms are so many important “no-no land” messages. Tift does not build connections to these forbidden aspects but validates them over the lifetime as helpers or even subcortical co-therapists.
The power of We
As intersubjectivity is an indispensable feature in secure attachment, the continuous intersubjective connection is a major supporting base. The client experiences being felt by the therapist, thus creating the emergence of an inner authentic space of being.
Tift is not primarily focused on trauma or symptom resolution but on establishing this implicit and explicit meeting of the client’s innermost loneliness, void and loss of identity.
Tift aims at establishing the experience of this safe inner space of being as a continuity over the lifetime.