Category: Treating dissociation
Treating dissociation
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Working within my Competence
I had worked as a counsellor for about twelve years before I went on my first PODS training course on dissociation. I had so many lightbulb moments that day, it felt like my brain was burning.
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Me and My Boundaries – A Therapist’s Tale
The issue of boundaries had always been a non-issue for me: I saw my clients for 50 minutes; there was no contact between sessions (no need for contact between sessions, surely?); it was a purely professional relationship. No dramas, no big deal. And then I started work with my first really traumatised client, and everything was called into question
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Impressions from the helpline
Many survivors get in touch with us simply because they need to talk to someone who understands what they’re going through, and to reassure them that they are not going ‘mad’.
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The businessman, the therapist and the brilliant CEO
I came to be a therapist quite late in life after a successful but ultimately unrewarding career in business. I always felt that there should be something more to life than making money, and it struck me repeatedly how mental health difficulties disrupted the lives of so many of my staff.
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What can I do if I can’t get therapy?
… it has really struck me how many people with a history of complex and severe trauma cannot get any help whatsoever via the NHS. Many are passed from pillar to post, either being told that they do not meet the criteria to receive services (they are not quite suicidal/traumatised/distressed/non-functioning enough) or that they exceed the criteria (they are too complex/suicidal/traumatised). This leaves people feeling understandably ashamed, powerless and frustrated…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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‘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.
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EMDR in the treatment of dissociative disorders
WHAT IS EMDR? EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing and was developed in...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Ten steps to becoming a dissociation-friendly therapist
1. ACCEPT THAT DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER IS REAL So the psychiatrist says it doesn’t exist,...
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Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
This article was based on an interview carried out by Rob Spring and edited by Carolyn Spring. It...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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The Nintendo Wii as a therapy tool?
First there was Freud and the ‘talking cure’, then Rogers’ core conditions, then CBT. And now? Now...
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A brief guide to working with dissociative identity disorder
BASIS OF GUIDELINES There are no National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)...
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Twenty helpful things my therapists said
1. I LIKE PINEAPPLE I don’t suppose it’s unusual to like pineapple, but here was a...
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