Episode 51: State Change vs. Trait Change

Listen in to hear Jen, Melissa and Bridger discuss state change vs. trait change, a rather confusing topic in EMDR therapy.

If you haven’t already, check out our previous episode here!

State Change vs. Trait Change can be sometimes difficult to differentiate.

State change: shifting or changing the current state of being. Ex: currently in a state of feeling anxious, overwhelmed, etc. and shifting to a different one through resourcing.
Trait change: longer lasting shifts in perception, perspective and personality. These are bigger shifts completed through reprocessing.
Personality trait instead of personality “state.”

State change:

Goal 1: The ability to change state reliably portrays how well a client is resourced.
Goal 2: Great way to build rapport with a client by them feeling the state changes in their nervous system. This is very supportive to the work of EMDR.
Goal 3: This is a way to increase a client’s affective tolerance. When they have a reliable state change experience, they realize that they can visit harder material and trust we have the tools to regulate.
Goal 4: Helps us change states if we get out of their window of tolerance.
Goal 5: To move towards a trait change

Symptomicological vs. characterological change
- Symptomicolgical being state change
- Characterological begin trait change

Neuro anatomy tells us we have innumerable neurons, and traits are symbolized by the way the neurons are wired and connected together.
“The roads through the city.”
To change the trait, we’d have to “build a new road”
States are like the traffic on the road. If I want a state change, we change the road but a trait change requires a whole new highway to be built.
Story follows state follows story- this creates the trait.
When we are doing trait change, we are changing the story follows state follows story.
Story is one of the ways we can do state change.
Story to influence state is a top-down approach and gives minimal relief and is not very effective.

EMDR reprocessing (back door) finding the deepest roots of the memories and how do we reprocess this? Through enough reprocessing, we will begin to see trait change.
- New information about themselves and the past experience. They see the situation differently.
- Destroying the old highway and building an entirely new one.
Self-regulation vs. coregulation
- Trait change- the system will not create a new way of being, interpersonally, if it is not safe to do so.
- When inviting change to the trait, it must be interpersonally experienced and felt in the system.
- A version of co regulation that is experienced in EMDR that involves the client referencing past coregulatory experiences that we create a link to- if they have them.
- It is the pairing of the internalized resources (if they have them) that creates a trait change.
- This is why it’s so important for internal templating and coregulation resources to be present.
- Some systems cannot receive coregulation because of trauma in the past; shame and fear become dominant.

Very powerful pairing for trait change.
Offering a protective figure in session and the client spirals and becomes activated because they cannot accept that figure.
A dysregulatory system will become very activated because of their experience of interpersonal trauma.
Ego state becomes such a helpful tool with the installment of a nurturing figure. Conflicting parts create a strong push/pull.
There are emotional parts that come forward that are trait-specific and invade on the ANP. There are also story state-dependent parts that are purely affect and overwhelm the person’s ability to explain with left hemispheric language of what’s happening in the body.
This is happening all within the safety of a therapist.
However, some clients never really had a true coregulatory figure.
- These are oftentimes more traumatized people.
- They will need a combination of EMDR, internalized coregulation and integrated sense of self.
- The experience of reprocessing one traumatic incident or short memory is still a trait change but is different than disintegration from trauma in early life.