As I continue to write posts about working with child parts, I want to encourage you to think about this topic as well. Read the following questions, and be honest with yourself – think about them. Journal about them, and make these questions the topics of discussion in your internal meetings. Try the acronym exercises if you need a starting place. What are your beliefs about child parts? Who are they? … [Read more...]
Using the Internal Landscape to Increase Internal Communication
Trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder have an internal world – an internal landscape that is visible, tangible, and very real for the different internal parts. No one on the outside can see this internal world – it is within the mind of the DID person and it belongs totally and completely to them. Many times, this internal landscape is an internalized replica of what happened in the outside … [Read more...]
25 More Ways to Avoid Self-Injury and Prevent Self-Harm
. This blog is a continuation of the initial article posted on December 31, 2008, "25 Ways to Avoid Self-Injury and Prevent Self-Harm." If you are feeling pressured to get past the "heat of the moment" and you need some ideas of how to do this safely, try using a handful of the following ideas. These ideas will not help solve your self-injury issue on a long-term basis, but they could help you to get … [Read more...]
Lists of 100 Reasons
This is an excellent journaling exercise that can be adapted to any topic at any time. The entirety of the exercise is to find a difficult or complicated topic. Ask yourself a question about that topic and then write out 100 responses to that question. For lots of people, one hundred sounds like a huge number for a writing exercise, but once you start thinking about the issue in smaller increments, you might be … [Read more...]
Using Collage as a Way of Communicating
Creating a collage is another way of allowing your internal system parts to tell more about themselves. Pictures can be a powerful way of communicating. And a collage - a collection of pictures - can tell a lifetime of stories. Most trauma survivors were repeatedly told by their abusers, "Do not tell". Violence, threats, abuse, and pain often accompanied these rules. How many times did you hear "don't say … [Read more...]