One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame. For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment. These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming. Some survivors feel immersed in shame from the … [Read more...]
Expressing Anger Instead of Pain
Every now and then, Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) from HBO's series, "In Treatment" comes out with a good line, full of depth, and accurate to the therapy process. In one of the episodes I saw this week, Dr. Weston says, "Is it easier to be angry with me than to look at your own pain?" His client was throwing all kinds of angry jabs at him when clearly she was angry, upset, and miserable about her own … [Read more...]
Lack of Acceptance of Dissociative Parts and Their Life Histories
Many trauma survivors with DID, especially those relatively new in the treatment process, often have difficulty accepting that there are "other people inside your head." The ideas of losing time (including big chunks of time), losing control of yourself and your mind or your body, having a limited awareness of what has happened in your life, sharing your life with a bunch of others of all different ages, and … [Read more...]
Dissociative Trauma Survivors – Must You Be Alone?
Are you alone? Oh, what a tough and painful topic this one is. All too many dissociative survivors are alone. Alone with their pain. Alone with their memories. Alone within their system. Alone in relationships. Alone in a crowded room. Far too many dissociative survivors feel painfully alone. Isolated. Alienated. Separated from others. There are actually a few trauma survivors that genuinely … [Read more...]
Therapy for Dissociative Trauma Survivors
What is therapy? What is a therapist? What is the therapy process? And how can you tell if they’re any good? What is therapy? In my experience, therapy is about speaking the unspeakable. It’s the telling of things that you haven’t had the safety or the opportunity to tell before. It’s expressing your deepest feelings without have to edit or omit or pretend for the sake of someone … [Read more...]