Category: Treating dissociation
Treating dissociation
Latest
When it all becomes too much: trauma and irritable bowel syndrome
Dr Nick Read, a retired medical professor and now a psychotherapist, explains the link between trauma and irritable bowel syndrome – and what can be done about it.
Read More
Making the most of therapy
We often see therapy – treatment for trauma – as the holy grail, and put an extraordinary amount of effort into obtaining it. But do we make the most of it when we get it? Carolyn Spring shares her thoughts about how to maximise this rare and valuable resource.
Read More
The Beginning of Understanding: Part 2
The beginning of understanding was really just that—a beginning. Little did I know how much I had to learn and how much I really didn’t know. When my peer supervisor mentioned to me this strange word ‘dissociation’, it was an entirely new concept to me. Now I wonder how that can be.
Read More
Should I talk to parts?
Should we talk to parts? Or does that make things worse? When someone switches, is this attention-seeking behaviour? And is talking to a ‘part’ in some way dangerous—does it reinforce pathological behaviour? What should you do?
Read More
The beginning of understanding: my first experience of dissociation
Suddenly, like a party popper, out came her words. ‘It happens all the time. People will be talking to me and I can’t remember what they’ve been saying. I used to think I was just forgetful. But it’s not that. It’s like they can be talking to me and I know rationally who they are but it’s as if I’ve never met them before in my life
Read More
The three phase approach: part three – consolidation, integration and reconnection
Much has been written about the work in therapy in stages I and II of the phase-oriented approach to treating trauma, but less so about the third stage. The work in phase III aims to consolidate the gains acquired in the early stages and to apply these to everyday life in order to develop ‘a life worth living’.
Read More
Done and dusted: giving shame a spring clean
Andrea, a client of mine, cupped her hands, as if around a big cabbage. ‘People think that shame is contained, out there, somewhere, an extra.’ She then swept her hands all over, from top to toe. ‘It’s everywhere.’ She was showing me that shame seemed to be a part of her, transcending time and space.
Read More
My experience of phase three work
I used to struggle to understand what phase III could possibly be about, because my life was so consumed with just surviving, and then so consumed with working through traumatic material to neutralise it, that I imagined that therapy would always be like that, and that once it was no longer happening, there would be no more need for therapy.
Read More
No sex please, we’re dissociative?
My role as a psychosexual therapist is to help a client understand what ‘language’ their body or their behaviours are speaking. Once people understand their triggers and behaviours, they are more likely to allow a change, if that’s what they want.
Read More
The Trauma Traffic Light
The ‘trauma traffic light’ represents three physiological states that the body can shift gear between, depending on levels of threat or security in the world: the green zone, the amber zone or the red zone. Carolyn Spring explains this concept she developed based on Stephen Porges’ polyvagal therory.
Read More
The three phase approach: part two – treating trauma
Phase 2 of the three-phase approach is the aspect of trauma therapy that is most geared towards facing and resolving the intrusive traumatic memories that plague a trauma survivor’s life and manifest in forms such as flashbacks, physiological dysregulation, avoidance, numbing and re-experiencing.
Read More
‘Don’t make me vomit slowly’ – my experience of phase two work
When I first started therapy in 2006, I didn’t know much about trauma and nothing about ‘the three phase approach’. My counsellor didn’t know much more. So although I’d like to say that we started by carefully doing the Phase 1 work of safety and stabilisation, the reality was a great deal messier than that.
Read More
EMDR in the treatment of dissociative disorders
WHAT IS EMDR? EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing and was developed in...
Read More
Working with parts: a therapist’s journey
In 2000 I met my first client with dissociative identity disorder (DID). I was completely unprepared for the onslaught of love and horror. We worked with her internal chaos with mutual bewilderment and devotion. I kept meeting someone different: another age, another gender, another language. More and more parts.
Read More
Boundaries
‘Dissociative parts of the personality’ grabbed the headlines, but my inability to set boundaries was the silent assassin destroying me from the inside… I said yes to everyone else, and no to myself. Other people mattered; I did not. And so, breakdown.
Read More
The three phase approach: part one – safety and stabilisation
EXPERTS OR SKILLED HUMAN BEINGS? Over the last few years it has become very clear to us in PODS...
Read More
Ten steps to becoming a dissociation-friendly therapist
1. ACCEPT THAT DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER IS REAL So the psychiatrist says it doesn’t exist,...
Read More
Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
This article was based on an interview carried out by Rob Spring and edited by Carolyn Spring. It...
Read More
Working with a dissociative disorder diagnosis
Once we understand dissociation as a logical response to overwhelming trauma, it stops being so dramatic and different, and the person suffering dissociation stops being ‘complex’ and ‘bizarre’ too. There is nothing bizarre about dissociative disorders—what is bizarre is how some people can be so badly mistreated that they end up with a dissociative disorder.
Read More
What is the recommended treatment approach for therapy for dissociative identity disorder?
How should dissociative identity disorder be treated? This brief article provides a summary of the generally accepted approaches.
Read More
Confessions of a trauma therapist
I don’t think there was ever any teaching on trauma in the counselling training I did. But when I...
Read More
The Nintendo Wii as a therapy tool?
First there was Freud and the ‘talking cure’, then Rogers’ core conditions, then CBT. And now? Now...
Read More
A brief guide to working with dissociative identity disorder
BASIS OF GUIDELINES There are no National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)...
Read More
Twenty helpful things my therapists said
1. I LIKE PINEAPPLE I don’t suppose it’s unusual to like pineapple, but here was a...
Read More