In this deep and personal conversation, Merete Holm Brantbjerg talks about trauma, systemic shame, and the body’s hidden survival responses. Starting from Merete’s own experience of female-to-female sexual perpetration at age 14, the discussion explores how trauma becomes intensified through isolation, lack of acknowledgement, and systemic shame. It also points to how this shaped Merete’s approach to healing trauma in a systemic way.
Merete Holm Brantbjerg has been training therapists in Denmark and internationally for decades. She is a co-founder of Bodynamic Analysis. In 2003, she developed Relational Trauma Therapy (RTT) together with Kolbjørn Vårdal. RTT is a psychomotor, neurocentric and systems-oriented approach. Merete’s work has highlighted the importance of including hypo-states in trauma-work. This makes it possible to establish systems where states that have been held in isolation and dissociation can come into mutual regulation. See website.
See Merete’s article: It isn’t only mine – it’s ours: Lifting hidden trauma out of personalization into a collective container.
Note: A more academic version of this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Body Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy and is for sale by them for $56.
Podcast: Download (35.4MB)
