Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'resources' names a cluster of capacities, relationships, and environmental supports that enable psychological regulation, integration, and growth. The term is most systematically developed in the somatic and trauma traditions, particularly in the work of Pat Ogden and Deb Dana, where it receives a technical precision rarely found in classical analytic literature. Ogden's sensorimotor framework distinguishes internal resources—capacities that reside within the individual, including reflective ability, boundary-setting, creativity, and somatic awareness—from external resources that exist in the environment, including social networks, institutions, and material supports. These two orders are held to be interdependent: the capacity to access external resources is itself grounded in internal ones. A further and clinically vital distinction separates survival resources—adaptive behaviors once necessary under conditions of danger—from creative resources, which represent capacities available in safety. Crucially, the concept of missing resources introduces a developmental and reparative dimension: what was never acquired or was interrupted by trauma can be identified, planned for, and cultivated. Dana's polyvagal reading adds the concept of interactive resources, foregrounding co-regulation and the nervous system's role in making or foreclosing access to connection. Across these authors, resources function not merely as coping tools but as the substrate of integration itself.
In the library
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Internal resources refer to capacities, developed over time, that reside within us... External resources reside outside us, in the environment... Both internal and external resources help us feel safer, stronger, more competent, creative, peaceful, or lighter in spirit.
This passage provides the foundational taxonomy of resources in sensorimotor psychotherapy, establishing the internal/external distinction and asserting their mutually reinforcing relationship.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
This chapter expands on the previous one by delineating various categories of resources: relational, somatic, emotional, intellectual, artistic, material, psychological, spiritual, and nature resources.
Ogden systematically enumerates the full taxonomy of resource categories, positioning their comprehensive inventory as a therapeutic intervention in itself.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
Personal strengths and competencies are resources that help us maintain our arousal within a window of tolerance so we can enjoy the activities and relationships in our lives. All of us possess a myriad of resources.
Resources are defined here in direct relation to the window of tolerance, anchoring them as the primary mechanism by which arousal regulation and quality of life are sustained.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
the behaviors they are trying to change were once adaptive responses—survival resources—that helped them in difficult situations. Clients often view symptoms and certain behaviors as liabilities
Ogden reframes symptoms as survival resources, inverting the clinical tendency to pathologize and instead honoring the adaptive logic that once governed the behavior.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
the primary missing resource, that of feeling safe, must be addressed, often by returning to practicing the regulatory actions and somatic resources described in previous chapters.
The concept of missing resources is here linked directly to neuroception and safety, with felt safety itself named as the foundational missing resource that must precede all other developmental work.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
Each time we inhibit an old pattern and imagine or rehearse a new pattern, the new resources become a little stronger and more easily available to us.
Ogden argues that repeated imaginative rehearsal of new patterns consolidates emerging resources, linking neuroplasticity-informed practice to resource development.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Along with honoring your survival resources, you can learn to recognize your creative resources and enhance them, and practice using them in place of outdated survival resources.
Through Robert's clinical vignette, Ogden illustrates the therapeutic movement from honoring survival resources toward cultivating creative resources as a developmental arc.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
A chronic neuroception of danger or life-threat that is triggered in response to being in connection with others makes using interactive resources difficult.
Dana introduces 'interactive resources' as a polyvagal category, showing how chronic protective states foreclose access to co-regulatory connection.
Dana, Deb, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018supporting
Missing resources for clients who have dissociative disorders often pertains to a loss of continuous awareness—an inability to stay present and aware across time.
The concept of missing resources is extended to dissociative phenomenology, where continuous self-awareness across time is identified as the key missing capacity.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
It is necessary to look for any life experience in which clients felt at least a sense of relative safety. The exercise in Figure 10.1 can be useful in identifying positive internal and external resources.
Heller grounds resource identification in the somatic and affective memory of relative safety, presenting a structured protocol for accessing positive internal and external resources.
Laurence Heller, Ph D, Healing Developmental Trauma How Early Trauma Affectssupporting
it might not be obvious to your clients that a spiritual resource (e. g., prayer), an intellectual resource (e. g., the enjoyment of reading), or an artistic resource (e. g., going to a gallery) would have an effect on the body
Ogden argues that all resource categories—including spiritual, intellectual, and artistic—produce somatic effects, making body-awareness central to embodying any resource.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Each time she deliberately recalled each piece of the memory, she increased her capacity for experiencing herself as a competent, regulated person rather than as someone in a chronic state of distress.
Jane's case illustrates how mindful embodiment of resource-laden memories can directly counter negative self-belief and chronic low arousal, demonstrating the integrative function of resources.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
the therapist adjusts the pace and process of therapy to help clients develop resources needed to self-regulate. The therapist acts as an 'auxiliary cortex'
In Phase 1 trauma treatment, the therapist functions as an external regulatory resource, actively scaffolding clients' development of internal self-regulatory capacities.
Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting
Embodying the memory of the resources they used, or the positive elements that occurred, alongside how painful the experience was, will help them form different associations with the memory.
Ogden presents embodied resource memory as a mechanism for transforming traumatic associations, integrating resource work directly into memory reconstruction.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
In each category below, list an internal resource that has been missing for you and that you want to develop. Describe a plan for how to practice and develop each of those missing resources.
The worksheet structure operationalizes missing-resource identification across all therapeutic categories, making deliberate developmental planning the clinical vehicle for change.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Community-oriented psychology tries to empower those with fewer resources (Rappaport, 1981).
Pargament situates psychological resource-thinking within community empowerment frameworks, noting that American psychology is broadly a psychology of personal control and resource acquisition.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
The resource collaborator model also alerts us to the strengths and limitations of both psychological and religious helpers, and the exciting possibilities for exchange.
Pargament proposes a 'resource collaborator model' for psychology-religion relations, treating institutional and spiritual systems as complementary resource networks for coping.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside