Have you ever felt that you are in conflict with yourself? That your head says one thing but your heart another? That although you are really invested in being a good mother/ father, you can’t help getting unreasonably angry and then shouting or even swearing at your kids? Despite that fact you value being a responsible hard-working employee or partner, you can’t stop binge drinking on the weekend, and risk jeopardizing your relationship or your work? Have you ever felt that you have so much potential to achieve more career goals, yet you are your own worst enemy, and procrastinate, or avoid doing the simple tasks that would help you achieve your goals? Resource therapy can assist in addressing and resolving many of these inner conflicts.

Resource Therapy is a trauma informed strengths-based-parts psychotherapy, which can assist in relieving post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), which is often the consequence of enduring adverse childhood events such as emotional neglect, verbal abuse, physical assault or sexual abuse. 

Resource therapy can also help address trauma more recent than that, maybe you had a relationship break-up and you just don’t understand how it happened, you never got an explanation, and you can’t stop thinking about the person, or move on in your love life? Or a friendship ended and you just can’t get over the feeling of rejection, since it connects with a pattern of earlier experiences of rejection in your life?

Resource therapy is premised on the idea that our personality is composed of different parts, instead of just one “core personality”. Gordon Emmerson originally followed the teachings of Johan and Helen Watkins who taught Ego State Therapy, with the theory that ego states originate during trauma, as split offs from a core personality. Emmerson however saw parts as being formed in childhood through the repetition of coping skills, which forms a physiological neural network in our brain. Along with other differences he realised that his theory of personality and method of treatment differed significantly from Ego State Therapy and hence developed his own approach, namely Resource Therapy (see a brief history of Resource Therapy).

Parts can be normal, such as when we present with a different personality at work, with our children or different groups of friends. Sometimes, these normal surface states can be in conflict with each other, or one part can dominate the others. For example our “work self” doesn’t allow enough time for our “self-nurturing” part to do its job, or for our inner “playful” child part to have some fun! Resource state negotiation will facilitate a discussion between our different parts so that they can better co-operate and hence improve our quality of life.

In fact, all our parts are “resources” and hence an accurate and eventually positive descriptive name is used for each part, related to its purpose. Often the surface part that presents for therapy seeking treatment, is not the part that needs assistance. The personality part that brings the client to therapy, might complain about the behaviour of another part of the client, for example the part that is smoking weed. However the part that is smoking weed, is actually a retro avoiding part (avoiding the anxiety/trauma) that is trying to help the client to relax, and smoking weed is a coping skill that was developed to help protect another anxious part originally vaded with fear, after childhood sexual abuse, as we discovered with one of my recent cases. 

Similarly a client might be complaining about their own abuse of alcohol, but doesn’t realise or acknowledge how the part that abuses alcohol helps an underlying part that is socially anxious – a part that never learnt the skills of socialising due to a lack of age appropriate exposure because of an abusive, restrictive step-mother, another of my recent case examples. 

This is one of the reasons behaviour change can be very difficult, if the behaviour such as compulsive cleaning, people-pleasing, procrastination, alcohol or drug abuse, binge eating, to name a few, actually has an underlying “positive” motivation, to protect our more vulnerable vaded parts. A resource therapist will skilfully form an alliance with the retro avoiding part, that initially resists any attempts to change its behaviour as it regards its behaviour as an essential survival coping skill. Then the therapist will help empower the vaded parts with specific action steps for each classified vaded state, before the behaviour change of the retro part can be negotiated, so that the new coping behaviour can be more acceptable to the other personality parts, that were complaining about it. 

Parts that need our attention are those underlying parts that are vaded, a term coined by Gordon Emmerson, for example those:

  • Vaded with fear – such as in cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. 
  • Vaded with rejection – whether from parents, extended family, friends, partner.
  • Vaded with confusion – when a loved one suddenly dies, a relationship ends without an explanation, our belief system is shattered by a setback/traumatic event.
  • Vaded with disappointment – often presents as a major depressive disorder, after a business deal or relationship didn’t work out.

Resource Therapy is receiving much attention around the world as a trauma informed strength-based-parts psychotherapy, capable of attending to and relieving PTSD, including complex presentations. Unlike Ego State Therapy, no hypnotic induction is necessary and underlying states are effectively brought to the surface through specific action steps as developed by Gordon Emmerson. The power of RT lies in its ability to treat long standing client issues immediately and effectively within the therapy hour, bringing about significant improvement and often complete and lasting relief from the presenting issue.

Clinical disorders which may benefit from treatment using Resource Therapy:

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex-PTSD
  • Generalized Anxiety disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Major Depressive Disorder
  • Substance-Abuse/ Dependence Disorders and Eating disorders
  • Anger management and impulse control disorders
  • Dissociative identity disorder

For more information visit https://www.resourcetherapyinternational.com/

Written by Maria Cloete
Clinical Psychologist

Maria Cloete and Doreen Hofmeyer at PTC are both trained in treating clients using Resource Therapy. Contact us at 066 301 5149 or email info@paardevleitherapycentre.co.za.