‘A man without a vision is a man without a future. And a man without a future will always return to the past.‘ This is a quote that has been going around in my social circles for years. The neurobiology of trauma tells a different story: Having no experience of a present means having […]
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High risk behavior and coherence
The concept that problems can happen ‘because of the nervous system‘ is getting a bit overused these days by people who barely know what that even means. That should not distract us from the fact that chronic trauma does change the brain and it is important to know that when we face specific problems. […]
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 […]
Epiphany #12: Ubi es?
On the hunt for the elusive ‘felt sense of safety’ we might notice that we can only feel safe within the space we are actually in. Our consciousness is a wanderer. It wanders through thoughts emotions the body memories the space we are in an inner world When it is in one […]
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 […]
The Role of Grief in Integration
Grief is a normal response to loss and change. It comes with sadness, sorrow and an inner ache that can be felt with our whole being. Crying is normal and common behavior when grieving, and it can also look very different. While grief is not a comfortable feeling to have, it shows us that […]
Personality in Motion
When trauma has become chronic and our stress responses become the mode of normal functioning in the world, we will notice an impact on our personality. The way we see ourselves and the world and how we act within the world are guided by defensive actions. We might develop patterns of behavior that are based […]
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 […]
Allowing each other to change
In DID therapy, we want parts to change. We want them to be more oriented, to gain new knowledge about the world today and we want them to learn how to live and act in this new world. Old behaviors that belong to TraumaTime are not useful anymore and get in the way of […]
Becoming more Natural (advanced)
There is a curious thing that happens when we have been in trauma therapy for a long time. We get good at it. After years of constantly working on ourselves, we built solid habits around the things we need for symptom management, self-regulation and trauma processing. We probably developed a habit of constantly tracking our […]
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