BondingBoardPLUS --- Trauma Extension
The bonding board gets a trauma-specific extension!
The board, with its colored lines depicting the emotional state of arousal, is a very helpful tool to make clear the parallelisms of physiological and emotional states. In the vast majority of cases, the four-color everyday spectrum from calm to activated and stressed to anger and fear is fully sufficient.
In case discussions, however, it became apparent that an expansion to include additional lines might be useful for understanding traumatic experiences. I was able to submit these considerations to Prof. Henri Julius in the sense of a theory-based review. These discussions resulted in a beta version with the working title BondingBoardPLUS, which I am offering to practitioners for beta testing.
It includes a purple arousal line above the red line with the term ‘beyond oneself’ for traumatic freeze states. Below the blue ‘calm’ line, another line is added: Colored in light purple and labeled ‘slack’, it corresponds to apathy and depressive listlessness.
The extended model is compatible with the trauma concepts of dissociation and the interplay of sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system and will be valuable not only for working with clients but also for psychoeducation of relatives, professionals and trainees.
BondingBoardPLUS chart
In order to better understand and communicate the processes involved in traumatic experiences, a table was created for the PLUS extension, which summarizes elements of trauma therapy from various sources and links them to the PAD emotion model. Emotions, trauma freeze reactions and coping strategies are assigned to the arousal levels or, if Barrett’s extended model (2017) is also taken into account, can be shifted individually. In this way, the parallel processes can be clearly shown in conjunction with the movements of the figures.
This chart, like the BondingBoardPLUS, is still a beta version for which I would like to get feedback from users. You can use the BondingBoardPLUS only if you also have a basic BondingBoard. However, the table is also very informative for users of the basic version.
Beta testers wanted:
We are looking for people who are interested in testing the BondingBoardPLUS and the table in practice and providing structured feedback. A prototype can be ordered from me at: lothar.steinke@bondingboard.com. (To be able to use the PLUS version, you must have a basic version, because you need the figures from the BondingBoard Box).
Conditions of participation:
1. Contribution of CHF 50.- for the bonding boardPLUS and the table.
2. Shipping fee 10.- in Switzerland (free if it can be added to a bonding board order), shipping to other countries on request.
3. If possible, you fill out a questionnaire for some clients (still in development, 5-10min) and give a feedback link to clients (3-5 min).
At the moment, the further procedure is planned as follows: As of now,the beta version is available as a printed version on cardboard. Later an update of the WebBoard will follow. At some point there will be a physical supplement set Bonding Board PLUS, but this will probably not contain any figures, as the figures from the basic Bonding Board set will also fit on the Bonding Board PLUS. The newsletter will inform you again about the next steps.