A Chronic Illness Therapist's Take on DNRS and Primal Trust

As a trauma therapist that specializes in complex chronic illness, many of the clients that reach out to me have tried what we often label as "brain retraining programs". DNRS, or Dynamic Neural Retraining System, and programs like Primal Trust focus on rewiring the limbic system to interrupt its threat detection loop that it's stuck in. They work off of the premise of neuroplasticity, and use tools like positive affirmation, positive visualization and behavioral modification to build new neural pathways and re-orient the nervous system towards safety. This can be an incredibly helpful tool for clients with conditions like Mast Cell Activation Disorder, Dysautonomia, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and Central Pain Syndrome, where clients' bodies and nervous systems are consistently responding to a perceived threat.

However, as a therapist, I think it's important to point out that these are tools. I view DNRS and Primal Trust as self regulation tools that can make a significant impact on your baseline. This is not a trauma re-processing modality. I view these important mindfulness techniques as tools to "pause, regulate and re-direct". These are crucial tools I also work on developing with clients as a way to resource them before and during trauma processing. However, they don't address the roots of the trauma itself.

Complex Chronic Illness and Trauma

Many of the clients that see me have sustained profound physical and medical trauma as they've navigated their path with complex chronic illness. This trauma often becomes deeply entrenched and branches into deep seeded beliefs about one's own body, worth, safety, or sense of self. The trauma often has multiple opportunties day to day to come alive as the mind and body faces triggers and reminders about its worst fears or deepest pains. Tools provided in programs like DNRS or Primal Trust can help us regulate those trauma responses and redirect so they feel like they don't completely derail us every time it happens, but they leave the trauma where it lives in the system. This is often why clients come to me after trying brain retraining programs and express frustration. I often hear "It's not working for me like it's working for my cohort", or "my nervous system still gets activated 50 times per day, am I doing this wrong?" as well as "I keep trying to start the program but I can't make myself do it. Why am I so resistant?" This is often a sign that a somatic trauma processing modality might be necessary first. I think DNRS and Primal Trust can be wonderful adjuncts and supports to trauma processing, especially when we're doing EMDR.

EMDR First, DNRS or Primal Trust Next

EMDR is a trauma re-processing modality that works off of the premise of REM sleep science. We utilize eye movements with bilateral stimulation to access and re-process traumatic or overwhelming experiences that got stuck as an open loop in the brain. Within an EMDR protocol, we work with what we call "schemas", which show up primarily through a negative cognition - the belief about the self that is locked into the traumatic memory. These negative cognitions paint the lens in which we view and experience many of our related experiences. They often sound like "I'm not safe in any environment, I am powerless, my body is broken, I will always be abandoned, I have to stay vigilant to survive." These aren't just thoughts the client holds intellectually, therefore we often can't think them away. These are deeply seeded beliefs that were formed in the context of the overwhelming experience and got encoded at a neurological level, alongside the sensory and emotional material of the memory itself. EMDR allows us an opportunity to re-process all of it, and desensitize the experience the body and nervous system cyclically remembers and returns to. Once we do this, when clients return to DNRS or Primal Trust, they often have an entirely different experience. Re-processing and desensitizing the traumatic event allows us to experience our regulation tools in a different way. It allows us an opportunity to re-file the traumatic material in a way that gives us a chance to stop looping it, creating space for new material to take its place (such as the positive affirmations, positive imagery or behavioral changes in a brain retraining program). The new material is no longer crashing into the old experiences.

Doing EMDR and DNRS Simultaneously

Can you try EMDR and DNRS at the same time? Yes! I often recommend starting EMDR first, then DNRS or Primal Trust second, after a bulk of the traumatic material is re-processed. However, there's a benefit to doing them simultaneously as well. In the context of chronic illness and experiences like post exertional malaise and cognitive fatigue, we want to be careful about how much we're asking the body and brain to do at once. If you find that it's tolerable for you though, engaging in a brain retraining program while you're also utilizing EMDR can help us identify which negative cognitions are interrupting your ability to integrate new positive material or utilize your self regulation tools, and we can use EMDR to follow that negative cognition to its roots. Once we re-process what's at its roots, we often see the evidence of that re-processing in the way your experience of your brain re-training program changes. A take home reminder from a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in chronic illness and trauma: there is not just one way to heal. You deserve a team that adapts the tools to you, and your unique needs.

Candice Craft, LMFT

LMFT # 154305

soulcraftcounseling@gmail.com