What is The Richards Trauma Process™?
The Richards Trauma Process or TRTP is an emotional release therapy. Judith Richards, creator of TRTP, explains it here.
So in summary, TRTP is an elegantly simple, yet comprehensive, step-by-step process which resolves emotional trauma and trauma-related issues such as anxiety, stress, depression, fears, phobias and PTSD.
This is usually achieved in only three weeks, over three sessions that are scheduled one week apart. Most people however experience significant results after the very first session!
TRTP is safe, gentle, consistent, long-lasting and drug-free. Unlike some therapies, during TRTP clients are NEVER re-traumatised by delving back into the situations that created their issue. In fact, TRTP is currently redefining society's approach to treatment of trauma-related issues due to its effectiveness from such gentle but direct treatment.
How does TRTP work?
Although TRTP is very structured, it is a truly eclectic and dynamic therapy. It includes components of Gestalt, Mindfulness, Ego-state Therapy, Choice Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Parts Therapy, Emotion-focused Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Dream Rehearsal Therapy and others.
The process has already been practiced thousands of times by TRTP practitioners, which include psychologists and psychiatrists, to optimise its effectiveness. It is a dynamic, rich and sequenced series of steps, which if separated, would not be anywhere near as powerful and yet they allow flexibility to meet the individual needs of each client.
TRTP uses hypnosis to unroot emotional trauma where it is stored – in the SUBCONSCIOUS and in the BODY (Levine, van der Kolk, Rothschild, Ogden). TRTP includes the two essential ingredients that trauma experts have identified resolves emotional trauma, which are that:
the person must (somehow) be moved to an EMPOWERED position with regard to the trauma
the body must (somehow) know that the event / events are OVER.
TRTP begins by dealing with the underlying, UNCONSCIOUS core beliefs which keep a person stuck in patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour. This helps avoid the chance of any self-sabotage during the following therapeutic sessions.
TRTP then removes the emotional charge from the past, guiding the client to a place of empowerment in relation to the trauma. Because hypnosis is used, the therapist speaks directly to the body and to the subconscious. The client shifts from a fight/flight/freeze mode to an empowered, self-regulated state. Their sympathetic nervous system is calmed and the memory of the emotional trauma is placed firmly in the past.
Once the client has moved from their state of fight, flight, freeze – ‘I’m not safe!’, to ‘It’s over. I’m safe now…’, then calm returns on ALL levels. Symptoms CEASE.
Why is TRTP different?
TRTP does not merely address the symptoms of emotional trauma. It deals with the UNDERLYING CAUSE of the problem, removing the emotional charge from the past and returning the person to a state of empowerment, returning the sympathetic nervous system to calm.
What causes emotional trauma?
Some people have suffered horrific emotional traumas in their lives such as sexual, physical or emotional abuse, terrible accidents or the violence of war, and they may find it difficult to even get through the most basic of daily activities. However, there are many amongst us getting on with regular lives that suffer greatly from less recognised causes of emotional trauma - the distressing events of our pasts.
It can be as simple as a little girl being told to get out of her father's sight because he's too busy, or a mother whacking her son in front of his friends for doing something wrong.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that it didn't matter, or we've gotten over it, or we don't really care. However, our subconscious may think differently; emotional trauma is the cause of many people's mental health issues and the problems they struggle with over and over again, whether they realise it or not. When we are traumatised, our conscious mind is not really in the driver's seat of our lives.
“Just imagine what it would be like to remove the triggers that bind you. To finally be introduced to the real you. What an extraordinary life is then possible.”
Who created TRTP?
TRTP was created by an extraordinary and pioneering Australian therapist, Judith Richards.
Over a nine-year period, Judith was the victim of sustained extreme emotional and physical trauma. She developed TRTP as the result of her own harrowing journey through a PTSD breakdown created by the trauma.
Told that she would never fully heal and regain emotional health, she embarked on a journey to heal herself and in the process TRTP was born, as she revolutionised the use of hypnosis in the treatment of severe trauma.
Judith has trained over 100 therapists in this ground-breaking technique who are achieving and repeating the same ‘staggering’ results with their clients that Judith achieves.
For more information about her work, visit her official website.
Judith Richards, Founder of The Richards Trauma Process