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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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 […]
Phobic Avoidance and Integrative Capacity
Professional literature about DID lists a number of ‘phobias’ that classically appear in DID therapy and that patients have to overcome. The phobias that are usually listed are the phobia of attachment and attachment loss (both, but showing in opposite parts) thought/feelings/memories/wishes associated with trauma other dissociative parts traumatic memory change and healthy risk-taking […]
Inner Storytelling and Missing Information
Our brain is a storyteller. It continuously receives information about the world through our senses and puts them together to create a picture of the reality around us. These pictures are put together to create a story that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world and ourselves. These stories are personal. Our brain […]
High Stress Events and preventing Retraumatization
[CN: This article might bring up memories of retraumatization. Some people might feel guilt or shame for not ‘having done it right’. The article only offers ideas. There is no way to really do it right. We always do the best we can and positive results are never guaranteed, even if we know all the […]
Resolving complex situations with DID parts
Sometimes we run into problems that are more complex than a flashback. It needs more than simple Grounding or separating past from present. Several parts are activated at the same time and they are influencing each other in a way that maintains the problem. We have to actively intervene. I will explain 3 different versions […]
Summer Break! Sommerpause!
Those who have been here for a while know that we always take some time off during summer (and December) to focus on other tasks. Somehow it is summer already. Where did the time go? We will be back with new articles after our break. Wenn ihr schon länger dabei seid, wisst, ihr, […]
Relational vs Integrative Approaches for inner Work
[CN: this post is very much pro Integrated Functioning and can cause difficult emotions in people who insist in seeing DID as ‘many people in one body’] There are 2 main ways to approach inner work with dissociative parts. One is based on building relationships between parts, the other is based on resolving the […]
Sleep exercise for people who tried everything else
So, you are not a beginner anymore when it comes to relaxation exercises and you’ve been working on your sleep for years. You have tried yoga, stretching, journaling, white noise, changing the white noise binaural beats, soundscapes, guided imagery, with and without inner helpers, micro imagery, mindfulness, listening, breathing exercises, passively watching the breath, […]
The Other Face of DID: Are we forgetting something?
The more recent literature that explains therapy approaches for DID seems to focus on impulsive behavior, visible stress responses and maladaptive coping like self-harm and drug use. It describes how demanding these patients are, how chaotic, and the kind of extreme boundaries it needs for therapists to protect themselves. I feel a growing unrest about […]
The Hours after Trauma Processing
The basic idea behind trauma processing is that trauma memories were stored but they weren’t integrated into our memory properly. They never became part of our life history and when they come up, it feels like they are happening now. Completely over-simplified, we can say that something about them didn’t settle right. When we process […]
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