Havening Therapy: A Guide for Therapists

Havening is a psychosensory therapy that uses touch, attention, and positive visualisation to ease emotional pain and promote healing. It’s based on the idea that these elements can trigger changes in the brain, especially in the amygdala, which is key in processing emotional memories. Developed by Dr. Ronald Ruden and his brother Dr. Steven Ruden, it is a series of procedures based on the principles of psychosensory therapy. Havening can be self-applied or facilitated by a practitioner. It is considered a gentle and rapid method with very few side effects.

How Havening Works

Havening works by triggering the body’s own healing systems. The techniques aim to disrupt the neural pathways in the brain that maintain negative emotions, thoughts, and behaviours.

Key mechanisms include:

• Targeting the Amygdala: Havening targets neurons in the amygdala that hold traumatic experiences. Havening allows for the depotentiation of traumatically encoded experiences in the amygdala.
• Delta Waves: Light, repetitive touch on areas like the forehead, temples, upper arms, or palms stimulates the release of delta waves, which are associated with relaxation and deep sleep. This touch also promotes the release of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding, trust, and relaxation.
• Attention and Visualisation: Focused attention and positive visualisation help to reorganise the brain and promote emotional recovery. Positive affirmations and visualising positive outcomes can create new neural pathways that support well-being.
• Neuroplasticity: Havening works by interrupting negative neural pathways and forming new, positive ones. The brain’s ability to create new connections in response to experiences is known as neuroplasticity
• Electrochemical Changes: Havening uses touch, attention and imagination to trigger electrochemical changes in the brain that alter how memories are processed.
• Depotentiation: Havening causes synaptic depotentiation (removal) on a neuron, disrupting the pathway laid down in the brain during the encoding of a traumatic event. This literally removes receptors on neurons in the amygdala.
• Working Memory: Havening uses distractions to displace emotionally charged memories in the working memory.

How Therapists Use Havening

Havening can be integrated into a variety of therapeutic approaches. Therapists may use Havening to:

• Address Trauma: Havening can be used to treat a range of traumas, including PTSD, phobias, and the effects of physical and sexual abuse. It helps to desensitise traumatic memories and release the associated distress.
• Relieve Anxiety and Stress: It reduces the mental and physical distress linked to anxiety and stress, such as worry, fear and physical tension, whilst also promoting relaxation and calm.
• Manage Pain: It can be used to help people deal with physical pain and conditions where there’s a stress or trauma origin.
• Improve Relationships: Havening can improve communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence, thus improving relationships.
• Treat Addictions: Some practitioners use Havening to treat addictions, focusing on the trauma that might be underlying the addictive behaviours.
• Reduce Compulsions: Havening can be used to reduce compulsions and obsessive thinking.
• Promote Self-Awareness and Creativity: Havening techniques can help individuals understand and accept their emotions, thoughts and beliefs, as well as increase creativity.

Different Havening Techniques:

• Event Havening (EH): This technique alters the response to a recalled traumatic event. It de-links the emotional or somatic content from the retrieved memory, producing a sense of detachment.
• Transpirational Havening (TH): Used to diffuse chronic emotional states, TH removes the emotional component of traumatised memories, even if they’re unrelated. It targets a specific emotion, such as fear, anger, or sadness, and can remove multiple unrelated episodes where that emotion has been encoded.
• Affirmational Havening: Increases psychological well-being and resilience.
• Outcome Havening: This is used to alter the outcome of a recalled event.
• Role Havening: Allows an important individual involved with the trauma to speak.
• Hopeful Havening: This is often used at the end of a session to promote feelings of hope and recovery.
• Iffirmational Havening: Used to move people along a path to acceptance that change is possible.

When working with clients, therapists may:

• Explain the Science: Some therapists explain the neuroscience behind Havening to their clients, to clarify why touch is used, and how it helps the healing process.
• Use Havening Touch: Therapists may apply a gentle and soothing touch to the client’s upper arms, palms, and around the eyes. They will explain the nature and location of the touch and discuss its purpose with the client. Therapists may also allow the client to self-apply the touch.
• Facilitate Self-Havening: Therapists will often teach clients self-havening techniques, enabling clients to use these as a self-care tool at home. This may include teaching the client the Havening Touch and how to use it with distractions.
• Use Distraction Techniques: While applying Havening Touch, therapists may incorporate distraction techniques like counting out loud, humming a tune or visualisations.
• Work Content-Free: Havening can be done without the client needing to disclose the content of a traumatic event. Therapists can work with a client’s emotions and physical disturbances without a specific diagnosis.
• Use a SUD Scale: Therapists will often ask clients to rate their distress on a scale of 0-10, known as the Subjective Units of Distress (SUD), before and after Havening to measure its effectiveness.

Examples of Havening in Practice

• A client with a phobia experiences rapid relief after a 20-minute Havening session.
• A client who has experienced childhood trauma is able to release negative emotions and create a new, more resourceful sense of self.
• A client suffering from severe anxiety is taught self-havening techniques as a self-care tool to use at home.
• A client with chronic pain finds relief through Havening, which addresses the emotional roots of their physical discomfort.
• A client who has had long-term relationship difficulties is able to use Havening to communicate more effectively, and empathise more with loved ones.
• A client with anger issues experiences a significant reduction in their anger.
• A client with emotional eating is able to use Havening to clear the drivers that are causing the unwanted eating patterns.
• Clients who have experienced abuse for many years use Havening to heal their trauma and build a new sense of self.
• A client who had a rape at the age of 8, after Havening, had no recollection of the rape itself but recalled leaving the room.
• Professionals experiencing severe anxiety are taught Havening to help them manage their symptoms.
• Havening is used by therapists with clients when they found EMDR processing too intense.

Summary

Havening is a powerful and versatile psychosensory therapy that can be used by therapists to help clients heal from trauma, reduce stress and anxiety, manage pain, improve relationships, and much more. It combines touch, attention, and positive visualisation to alter brain activity, and facilitate emotional and physical well-being. It can be used by itself or alongside other therapies. A key benefit of Havening is that it can be done with or without the client disclosing the content of their trauma, making it particularly useful for those who find talking about their experiences difficult. Havening is also easy to learn and can be self-applied, making it a valuable self-care tool that empowers the client. This makes it a very powerful technique that is both gentle and effective. It is a rapidly evolving therapy and is hoped to be adopted more widely as the benefits are better understood. Havening also has the advantage of being able to protect the therapist from vicarious traumatization.