"Kill the spider" describes what can happen when our client’s minds believe the lies perpetuated by a traumatic event. The result can be the stronghold of shame and require shame therapy. Cobwebs are the metaphor for the child’s trauma symptoms (i.e., depression, aggression, addiction, anger, self-harm) that medicate the stronghold of shame – the spider.
Trauma therapists who attend my workshops tell me it is easy to overlook the spider. They recommend therapeutic interventions that help the traumatized child and family cope with the cobwebs but leave the spider alive and well. When this happens, the root causes remain unaltered, and the child and family continue to relapse again and again.
To address this challenge, the Family Trauma Institute provides an evidence-based FST| Family Systems Trauma treatment model with step-by-step strategies to help the professional become a family trauma expert. One core strategy is the trauma playbook. In this article, I present the case study of 16-year-old Lucy and how the trauma playbook called Kill the Spider was used to heal her stronghold of shame through the vulnerability of her family and grandparents. Read the full trauma playbook here.
Scott P. Sells, Ph.D., MSW, LCSW, LMFT, is the author of three books, Treating the Tough Adolescent: A Family-Based, Step-by-Step Guide (1998), Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager: 7 Steps to Reestablish Authority and Reclaim Love (2001), and Treating the Traumatized Child: A Step-by-Step Family Systems Approach (2017). He can be contacted at spsells@familytrauma.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
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