The phobia of fusion is not specifically mentioned in the professional literature that talks about the classic phobias in DID treatment or it is mentioned as a phase 3 problem. I believe it is one way that the phobia of other parts and the phobia of traumatic memories shows up in our life. I will […]
DID
The Phobia of dissociative Parts
Avoiding other parts is common in the early phase of DID treatment. They don’t feel like something we would want to engage with. We might only know them as voices that insult us, overwhelming needs that flood us or outbursts that don’t match our value system. It doesn’t help that structural dissociation often creates opposite […]
The Phobia of Inner Experiences
In DID treatment, there is the concept of different ‘phobias’ that need to be overcome for recovery. The phobia of the inner experience is at the core of the first phase of treatment, stabilization, and needs quite a lot of time to master. What are ‘inner experiences’? Sometimes these are also called mental actions […]
The phobia of attachment and attachment loss
Literature on DID lists a number of ‘phobias‘, patterns of fear and avoidance, that hinder us from getting better. We will take a look at them to see how we as patients can understand them and what might help us in dealing with them. The phobias we will look into here are attachment and attachment […]
Things worth knowing about dissociative parts (advanced mapping)
Early in DID therapy, it is standard practice to attempt mapping the internal system of parts in some way. We try to learn who is who and how these parts relate to each other. We might learn useful things, like the action systems parts operate in or develop names for parts to make communication easier. […]
The therapeutic use of Confusion with DID parts
Sometimes parts are 100% certain of something and they are wrong. They are stuck in memories of a past that is not happening anymore or they stick to old rules that don’t apply anymore. Their undeniably real experiences formed convictions in them that persist even though life has changed. Sometimes re-experiencing creates a loop […]
Holders, Storytellers and Agents in DID
Over the years, I have come across a number of different ways to see and understand parts. None of these are absolute truths. They just offer a framework that makes it easier to understand a certain aspect of parts and it helps with overcoming challenges. Depending on the situation, one framework might be more useful […]
Specific beliefs in parts: everything will fall apart
While typical cognitive errors might play a role in DID treatment, there are other mistakes in our reasoning, and problematic beliefs that are at the core of our trouble. In this small series we are exploring specific beliefs in parts and how to work with them. Falling apart This belief is most often found […]
Specific beliefs in parts: The need for punishment
Every CBT-heavy book on DID will list cognitive errors (e.g. black&white thinking, generalizations, catastrophic thinking etc) when it comes to problematic thoughts and beliefs in DID. I don’t think that these cognitive errors are much more common in DID than they are in other mental health issues. But there are specific beliefs that are […]
Psychological Safety in a DID System
Psychological safety is a term that we will borrow from organizational psychology to look at inner dynamics within a DID system. Psychological safety is described as a shared culture within a group that makes it safe to speak up, express needs, ideas or doubt, take risks, make mistakes, and learn from failure. Tools that are […]
Recovering from bad therapy
With DID, it is not rare at all to experience bad therapy. There are a multitude of reasons why therapists fail us and not being properly trained is just the most common one. Returning to the tasks of therapy with someone else will be exponentially more difficult after we got hurt. When we first started […]
The Discovery of Free Will
There is a small exercise that I have been doing for many years now. It offers a true and free choice within a safe setting. These choices are different from double binds that we might have experienced as we grew up. They are choices between positive or neutral things and whatever a part chooses they […]
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