. 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...]
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...]
Working with Difficult and Destructive Alters
I'm going to take a slight detour in the internal communication series and write a little about working with difficult alters. It is crucial to work with these internal parts, no matter how challenging and hopeless things seem in the beginning. Your therapy and healing will never be resolved unless you approach the issues connected with these difficult insiders. And for that matter, the whole process of … [Read more...]
Internal Communication – The Core of Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder
Continuing with the topic of Internal Communication, I ended the previous article, Overcoming Instability Issues and Unsuccessful Memory work with this list of Dissoci-ACTION steps: Focus first on relationship building with your parts. Get to know them. Talk to them. Learn their names. Overcome your fears of who they are. Appreciate their strengths. Develop friendships with them. I … [Read more...]
Integration: A Requirement for DID Therapy – Or Not?
I am well aware that many trauma therapists are highly supportive of the treatment goal to integrate dissociative selves. I have a different approach to this topic. Please understand I am not at all opposed to the idea of integration if that is what the person wants. However, that is a very complicated topic, and I'll discuss the integration issue from that perspective at another time. In my experience, by … [Read more...]