Havening Techniques for Anxiety Relief

Havening Techniques are a psychosensory therapy that uses touch, attention, and positive visualization to help alleviate stress, anxiety, and trauma. Developed by Dr. Ronald Ruden and Dr. Steven Ruden, Havening is grounded in neuroscience and aims to interrupt negative neural pathways in the brain and create new, positive ones. It is considered a rapid, gentle, and effective method that can be self-applied or facilitated by a practitioner. Havening can be integrated into any therapeutic approach, or even non-therapeutic approaches, as it is considered a tool not a therapy.

How Havening Works

Havening works by activating the body’s natural healing systems. When a person experiences stress, anxiety, or trauma, the body can become locked in a fight-or-flight response, leading to physical and emotional symptoms such as a racing heart, muscle tension, and feelings of fear or panic. Havening helps to release the body from this state by engaging the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in processing emotional memories.

The techniques involve:

• Touch: Applying gentle touch to specific areas of the body, such as the forehead, temples, or upper arms. This touch is believed to induce the release of delta waves in the brain, which are associated with relaxation and sleep, and promote the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. Touch can also promote the release of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding, trust, and relaxation, which can reduce anxiety.
• Attention: Focusing attention on a specific thought, image, or sensation, which helps redirect attention away from negative experiences and toward positive ones. This could be a difficult or traumatic memory, or the feelings associated with it.
• Positive Visualisation: Using positive affirmations or visualisations during the touch, which helps to activate the brain’s reward region, and release dopamine.

By combining these elements, Havening helps to release emotional memories and associated negative emotions, leading to a sense of relief and relaxation. The touch is repeated rhythmically and soothingly while the person focuses on the feeling, or on a positive affirmation or visualization, whilst also being distracted, for example by counting, or humming a tune.

Additional Benefits of Havening

Havening offers a range of additional benefits for both therapists and clients:

• Rapid Relief: Havening can quickly reduce the intensity of negative emotions and increase relaxation, making it an excellent tool for stress and anxiety management. It is known for being a quick, effective, and long-lasting technique.
• Trauma Resolution: Havening can aid in the discharge of emotional memories and the healing of past traumas and unpleasant events. It can help to desensitize traumatic memories, alleviate the emotional and physical distress connected with it, and establish a sense of safety and well-being. Havening can work even if the client does not want to talk about the traumatic memory.
• Physical Health: Havening can help to strengthen the immune system, reduce inflammation, and alleviate pain and suffering in the body. It addresses the connection between physical and emotional well-being, recognising that they are intertwined.
• Improved Relationships: Havening can aid in the development of communication skills, empathy, and emotional intelligence, leading to stronger and more rewarding interactions with loved ones.
• Enhanced Mental Clarity: Havening can help to cleanse the mind, relieve stress, and enhance creativity and productivity.
• Safety and Empowerment: Havening provides a safe space for healing, allowing clients to feel in control during the process. It empowers clients by teaching them self-havening techniques they can use independently. Havening does not retraumatise the client, as they do not have to relive painful memories. The client does not have to go back into the trauma, and can be content free.
• Reduced Vicarious Traumatisation for Therapists: By applying Havening touch to themselves throughout the entire session, therapists can be protected from vicarious traumatization.
• Integration with other Therapies: Havening can be used in conjunction with other therapies to enhance their effectiveness. Traditional psychotherapy will be more effective as Havening removes the amygdala filter from the process.
• Accessibility: Havening is easy to learn and can be adapted and integrated into any therapeutic approach. It can be used by lay people for self-care, as well as by professionals.

Addressing Root Causes of Anxiety

Havening can address the root causes of anxiety by depotentiating (removing) the traumatic encoding of past experiences from the amygdala. Traumatic events can create neural pathways that cause the brain to react to triggers with fear, anxiety, or other negative emotions. Havening disrupts these pathways and allows the brain to release these encoded memories.

The techniques can be used to target the specific neurons that are holding the traumatic experience active in the brain. By releasing these experiences, Havening reduces their ability to act as a filter for present-day information processing. This allows the person to respond to situations with less anxiety and more clarity.

Havening is also able to target the emotional component of an event, even if the event is not known or recalled. As events are emotionally tagged, Transpirational Havening can be used to remove multiple unrelated episodes where shame or guilt or anger or fear has been encoded.

Havening aims to remove the emotional charge associated with the memory, not necessarily the memory itself. This can help clients to see how their trauma was affecting their day-to-day interactions, and to make positive changes. Even when a client is aware of the traumatizing event, they may not wish to share it, and the therapist does not have to know the content of the memory. Havening can work by accessing and processing the emotions related to the trauma, rather than focusing on the content of the story.

By depotentiating the traumatic memories, Havening does not just manage symptoms, but can help clients experience actual change in their quality of life. The client is free to move forward with more ease. Havening can facilitate a shift of perception, allowing clients to examine any secondary gains they were getting from their trauma, and to then coach themselves to a better way of being.

Summary

Havening is a psychosensory technique that combines touch, attention and positive visualisation to alleviate anxiety and other emotional and physical difficulties. Havening is able to interrupt neural pathways in the brain and form new, positive ones. Through gentle touch and focussed attention, it helps to release emotional memories and associated negative emotions and can reduce physical pain and increase a sense of wellbeing. Havening can address root causes of anxiety by depotentiating the encoding of past traumatic experiences, and can be used for self-care and professional settings as it is safe, quick, empowering and effective. Havening does not retraumatise clients, and allows them to experience actual change in their quality of life.