Caroline Sakai, PhD., a psychologist and TFT practitioner, based in Hawaii, headed a team of therapists who worked with children in an orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda. The children survived the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which 800,000 to 1 million people were slaughtered during the course of 100 days. Dr Sakai was interviewed by Michiko Ishikawa for Share International.
Share International: How did you come to work with the genocide survivors in Rwanda?
Caroline Sakai: The idea came up when I was in New Orleans as part of an ATFT Foundation Trauma Relief Team working with Hurricane Katrina survivors and first responders – doctors, nurses and security people who were working with the survivors. One of the team members, Paul Oas, a psychotherapist and minister, asked me if I could work with the genocide survivors of Rwanda. His church has been helping to support the El Shaddai orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda, by providing necessities like food and shelter. He was seeing the effects of the genocide trauma among the children in terms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, bedwetting, depression, withdrawal and rage. Reverend Oas wanted to take a TFT team there and work with the genocide survivors. Since I had headed the clinical team in New Orleans, he asked if I could do that in Rwanda.
The complete TFT treatment for trauma would be essentially following up with what else comes up for the client after successfully processing through the targeted trauma.
Targeting any residual body sensations often brings up further information to process through, more perturbations. This would be continued until no more perturbations can be found, and client now thinks about the trauma or phobia with clearly changed perspectives, affect, thoughts, intensity, vividness, body sensations, perceptions in all sensory modalities, etc.
Using the Peak Performance protocol to enhance and improve confidence in coping effectively in dealing with the problem is an important component that parallels the future template. The usual instructions for the client to call if there are any recurrence of symptoms would also be in effect, as well as follow-up session(s) to work on residuals or other material that emerges subsequently in awake or dream states.
SI: What is unique about your method of working with trauma?
CS: Thought Field Therapy is the most rapidly effective, and most gentle, treatment of trauma I have come across. Read more