Dr. Andrey Laugman

02/02/2026

01/02/2026

LOOKING AT TRAUMA WITHOUT ENTERING IT

Traditional trauma therapy requires you to remember. To immerse. To relive.

The result is predictable: flashbacks intensify, the body activates its defences, and the client drops out of therapy.

The problem is not the client. The problem is a method that requires you to walk into the fire in order to put it out.
Foa and Rothbaum (1998) documented this phenomenon: 20-30% of clients with PTSD discontinue exposure therapy due to the intolerability of re-experiencing the trauma. The method works through immersion. But for a significant number of people, immersion equals re-traumatisation. The defence system activates even more strongly than before therapy.

Herman (1992) formulated the principle: safety precedes processing.
But how do you process trauma safely if the traditional method requires contact with the most dangerous material?
Mental Engineering uses a different architecture.
Do not enter the event. Explore its structure through questions that study the client's experience without immersing in it. Find a position from which one can look without burning up.

The Clinical Mechanism
The client says: "When I remember, it sucks me back in."
The therapist does not ask them to remember. They ask:
"Where exactly is this 'back'?"
The client points with their hand backwards, to the right, to an area behind their back.

Next question:
"Where are you when that is there?"
Pause. The client realises. They are here. The event is there.
There is a distance. It existed always. The question simply made it visible.
Brewin (2014) described this: traumatic memory is stored in two formats.
1. Verbal: Accessible to consciousness.
2. Sensory: Fragmented, activates automatically.

When a therapist asks a client to "remember," they activate the sensory format. A flashback is inevitable.
When a therapist asks "Where exactly is this located?", the client answers from a position that is already outside the event. "Behind. To the left. At a distance."

The event has turned into an object on a map. You can work with an object.

The next question helps uncover the structure deeper:
"What is between you and that which sucks you in?"
The client names it: "Time. Years. A wall."

A barrier is discovered. It was not created by the therapist. It already existed. The question revealed it.

Ogden et al. (2006) demonstrated: observing bodily sensations without diving into the narrative reduces the intensity of traumatic activation. Mental Engineering uses the same logic but through the exploration of spatial coordinates in a metaphorical landscape.
"And is there anything else about that?"
The client adds details. The image becomes more precise.
"It is like what?" - "Like a dark spot."
A metaphor is found. Not suggested. Found.
From here, the work proceeds with the metaphor, not the event.
"How far is it from you?" - "About three metres."
"And what happens when you look from there, where you are now?"

The client observes. Tension drops.
Van der Kolk (2014) emphasised: trauma lives in the body as a frozen reaction. Direct contact overloads the system. But if the system gets the opportunity to observe itself from the outside through spatial questions, it remains within the window of tolerance.

The Transformation
The questions continue according to the structure:
"Where could this have come from?"
"What is around this?"
"Is there any connection between this and what you are feeling now?"

Every question explores. None instruct. The client maps the landscape of the trauma themselves. The therapist only sets the coordinates for exploration.

Mental Engineering does not require the courage to walk into hell. It requires the precision to describe its boundaries from a safe distance.

Transformation does not start from inside the fire. It starts from a position where the fire is visible in its entirety. And this position is discovered by a question, not a suggestion.

If you have been trying to cope for years, but every attempt at immersion intensifies symptoms - the issue is not your weakness. The issue is the tool.

There is a way to work with this material without burning up in it. When the structure of the metaphor becomes visible, it becomes malleable. And changing the metaphor changes the reality.



References
Brewin, C. R. (2014). Episodic memory, perceptual memory, and their interaction: Foundations for a theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Bulletin.
Foa, E. B., & Rothbaum, B. O. (1998). Treating the trauma of r**e: Cognitive-behavioral therapy for PTSD. Guilford Press.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery. Basic Books.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score. Viking.

30/01/2026

30/01/2026

The clinician's interpretation is unnecessary and often counterproductive. The client's image belongs to their system, carries their meaning, follows their logic. Imposing external meaning disrupts the process. The image knows what it needs. Your role is facilitation, not translation.

This runs counter to training that emphasises understanding. Understanding is the therapist's satisfaction, not the client's cure. When you resist the urge to interpret and instead follow the image where it leads, transformation accelerates. The system does not need to be understood. It needs to be navigated.

28/01/2026

28/01/2026

THE ENDLESS SEARCH FOR THE 'RIGHT' THERAPY WHY THIS DOESN'T WORK

You've become a connoisseur of ther**eutic modalities, collecting approaches like rare stamps and switching practitioners with seasonal regularity. After each disappointment, the familiar refrain plays: surely the next method will unlock everything without demanding too much.

The problem isn't your intention. The problem is the mechanism.
The search itself transforms into an elegant refuge, a perpetual dress rehearsal that never reaches opening night. Meta-analyses confirm that evidence-based PTSD treatments demonstrate comparable effectiveness when applied with commitment and consistency over time. The difference lies not in finding the magical painless method, but in your willingness to face what any effective approach will inevitably demand. Therapy shopping keeps you permanently stationed at the threshold, always with respectable justification for not crossing it fully. Research shows ther**eutic alliance and client readiness outweigh specific techniques in determining outcomes by a considerable margin.

Imagine commissioning endless architectural surveys of a crumbling structure whilst perpetually postponing the actual demolition and reconstruction required. Each new expert offers slightly different terminology for identical foundational cracks, and you archive their reports meticulously. Meanwhile, the building deteriorates steadily whilst you debate which construction methodology sounds least disruptive to your current routine.

All effective trauma work demands moving through discomfort, not circumnavigating it indefinitely, regardless of theoretical packaging employed. The perpetual search represents an attempt to purchase transformation without paying the currency of growth itself.
Real change begins when you commit to one evidence-based approach and remain long enough to encounter what it reveals. The work isn't discovering the perfect method; it's doing the imperfect, uncomfortable work with whichever validated approach you choose.

If you've auditioned therapists for years whilst remaining stuck in identical patterns - we can examine your situation directly. I work with people ready to stop collecting methods and start executing the actual transformation, not managing symptoms indefinitely.

Let's identify what the search has been protecting you from confronting all along.

26/01/2026

GRIEF HAS WEIGHT, COLOUR, AND TRAJECTORY

Ask a person in grief: "Where do you feel this?" They will place a hand on their chest.
"What is the weight of it?" They will say: "Like a stone."
"What colour is it?" - "Black."
Grief is not an abstraction. It has physical parameters within the body. And these parameters are measurable.

Kövecses (2000) systematised metaphors of emotion across different cultures. Grief is consistently described through three physical parameters:
1. Weight (heaviness in the chest, a stone on the heart).
2. Colour (black hole, grey veil).
3. Direction (falling, a void, sinking down).
These are not poetic comparisons. This is a precise map of how the brain encodes loss in somatic coordinates.

Meier and Robinson (2004) demonstrated: the metaphor "sadness is down" is not a cultural convention but a cognitive structure. Participants in a depressive state noticed objects in the lower visual field faster. Their attention literally shifted downwards.
Grief changes the physics of spatial perception.
When a client says "I am falling into a black hole," they are not describing a metaphor. They are describing a real sensation of gravity pulling them down.

The question is not whether this is "true." The issue is that as long as the hole remains black and bottomless, there is no exit. The logic of the metaphor does not allow it.
Here the therapist makes a mistake.
They offer their own metaphor. "Imagine a light at the end of the tunnel."

Beautiful. Comforting. Alien.

If the client sees not a tunnel but a bottomless hole, your light has no relation to their internal geography.

Casasanto and Dijkstra (2010) showed: changing bodily movement changes emotional state. Participants forced to move objects upwards recalled positive events faster. Upward movement activated corresponding emotional schemas. The physics of the body and the physics of the experience are directly linked.
In grief therapy, this means the following.
When a client describes their experience as a "heaviness that presses," you do not replace the metaphor. You work with its parameters.

Does this heaviness have a size, a shape, a colour?
"And the heaviness... and where exactly is this heaviness felt in the body? And when the heaviness is like heaviness that presses, then you are like what...?"

Neimeyer (2001) discovered: successful adaptation to loss correlates not with "acceptance," but with meaning reconstruction.
The client does not "let go" of the loss. They rebuild the internal structure so that the loss has a place but does not define the entire system.

The metaphor "stone in the chest" transforms not into "lightness," but into "a stone that became part of the foundation."
The therapist does not remove the heaviness - and should not, and frankly, cannot. They do not turn on a light in someone else's darkness.

They ask: "And is there anything else about this heaviness? And when that's all, then you are... like what?"
With the change in metaphor, the client sees, notices, and feels it themselves. The weight shifts slightly. Texture appears in the blackness.

Crawford (2009) showed: depression is described through metaphors of heaviness and darkness in 87% of cases. But when clients start working with the parameters of the metaphor, the percentage of spontaneous changes rises. Not because the metaphor is "good." But because it belongs to the client.

Grief has weight, colour, and a trajectory of movement.
It is encoded in the body as physical reality. When you start working with these parameters directly, change ceases to be an abstract hope and becomes a concrete transformation within your own coordinate system.

If you have been stuck in grief that hasn't moved for years - perhaps it is because you tried to change someone else's metaphor instead of transforming your own.



References
Casasanto, D., & Dijkstra, K. (2010). Motor action and emotional memory. Cognition, 115(1), 179-185.
Crawford, L. E. (2009). Conceptual metaphors of affect. Emotion Review, 1(2), 129-139.
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge University Press.
Meier, B. P., & Robinson, M. D. (2004). Why the sunny side is up: Associations between affect and vertical position. Psychological Science, 15(4), 243-247.
Neimeyer, R. A. (2001). Meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss. American Psychological Association.

26/01/2026

25/01/2026

WHAT DECADES OF THERAPY MISSED

You have analysed your childhood. You understand your patterns. You can explain your trauma to anyone who asks. And still, your body holds something that understanding cannot reach. Insight is valuable. But some problems live below the floor where insight operates.

Metaphor reaches that floor. When your system describes pain as a locked door or a frozen lake, it is showing you where the work actually needs to happen. Not in understanding. In the image itself. That image can shift. When it does, everything downstream shifts with it.