The T.R.I.P Method

What is the T.R.I.P method about?

T.R.I.P is an integrative approached developed by Monique Hoving-Smeets that helps people feel more connected internally, less disjointed, or frequently feeling torn between opposite feelings, thoughts and responses.  

T.R.I.P helps to bring awareness to how past trauma continues to impact the person visually, physically, emotionally, cognitively and relationally. The approach allows different access to the brain and body which facilitates insight into the impact of trauma.

T.R.I.P facilitates three significant processes:
 
1) Projection process - this helps to bring awareness how each eye, brain and body response is different. It demonstrates how the past continues to impact the present at all levels of functioning. As the process continues to heal the trauma, the projection from the past onto the present reduces and people start to experience and discern the outside world more accurately.  
This process helps the person to understand boundaries, safety and recognize dissociation and how this relates to the nervous system.
 
2) Permission process - Trauma often includes experiences that didn’t consider our yes or our no. We may not have had a voice at all, no say in the matter. Because of how the brain  changes due to trauma, parts of us may have learned how to speak up in the present life, but parts of us are still stuck in the trauma in the way it happened then. This often becomes evident when we engage in the eye-brain methods used as part of TR.I.P. We ensure that all parts of us not only understand consent, we let all parts know that we don’t dive into the trauma work unless it is very clear what all parts need in order to the work. The permission process is used each time focusing on trauma work is considered.

3) Compassion process - As a result of trauma people develop certain survival and coping mechanisms that help them to “keep going” and “not look back”. This is essential at the time we need to survive.  

Unfortunately, even when the immediate threat and danger have subsided this part of us continues to “keep going” and is unable to pay attention to our emotional and psychological needs.  

In addition our body stores trauma experiences and holds on to pain, tension, physical symptoms and movements that were unable to be expressed at the time.  

The compassion process helps the different parts of us to reconnect and engage in self-compassion over harsh criticism or ignoring our own needs. The process helps to identify what is happening somatically and reduces the pain and sensations as a result of working through the traumas of the past. The brain and the body will then learn that this is something that happened in the past and is not occurring in the here and now.  
These processes are facilitated using eye-brain techniques, emotional validation and regulation, somatic therapy, psycho-education (sense making) about attachment and trauma, and recognizing our brain exists of different parts of ourselves upon having experienced trauma