December 11, 2010

Are Newborn Babies Born with Innocence and Purity? How about You?

Posted in Child Alters, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Puppies, Therapy Homework Ideas, Transference Issues tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 3:17 pm by Kathy Broady


Hi Everyone –

This post is partly for fun — because you know I just can’t resist sharing more pictures of these puppies — but to be fair, I do have a few thoughts related to trauma issues when I look at these pictures.  I am starting to think that I might just have to make a “puppy series”.  :)

First, let’s do the fun part.   The fun part is when I get to show you all another puppy picture.  This particular picture is picture of the two oldest puppies sleeping peacefully when they were just a few days old.  The little black puppy is a boy, and he is the oldest.  We’ve been calling him Dolce (taken from the incredible cologne Dolce & Gabbana). The brown puppy is a girl – you can, of course, tell that she is a girl by her pretty pink toenails — and she was born second.  She has a little white diamond shape on her tummy, so we have been calling her Diamond.  Plus, there are a number of different perfumes with the word Diamond in the name.

You know how puppies smell so good?  We’ve joked about naming each puppy after a cologne or perfume.  Maybe having nice-smelling names will help the puppies to not make the house so stinky as they get older!

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Dolce and Diamond, a couple days old. And no, those are not my fancy fingernails, lol

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Aren’t they just adorable?!

Mind you, both of these puppies are considerably bigger this week than they were last week, so I will have to get updated pictures soon.  But for now, I wanted to show these pictures to you and make a few comments that are actually related to trauma issues.

What do you think when you see little teeny tiny babies?

Baby puppies or baby kittens, or even baby people are truly amazing to me.  When you look at the tiny perfectly formed selves – they are so very little — but everything is there.  The purity, the innocence, the newness of life is just so prevalent.  These little puppies are alive and well, comfortably sleeping, but completely trusting of and relying upon those around them.

Do you see how sweet and vulnerable these little ones are?

Now, put yourself in the same place that these little puppies are.  At one point in time, you were born with as much purity and innocence and newness of life as these puppies were.  So many dissociative trauma survivors believe they were born bad.  I have heard dozens and dozens of trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder make comments such as “I am bad” or “I was born bad” or “I have always been bad”.  But how can this possibly be true?  How can this be true for any of you?

Have another look at the innocence of the newly born.  When you see the truly young, you can see how genuinely innocent they are.

I’m sure that most of you can see the innocence of these little puppies.

You had that same innocence.

I can hear the arguments already, so I’ll say it again.

Yes, you had the same innocence.  You are not inherently bad.  You may very well have had a lot of negative, bad, painful experiences in life, but you are not a bad person.  You may have had people tell you that you are bad, and you may have begun to believe them at some point in time, but you were truly born as innocent and pure as these little puppies are.

Parents and caretakers are supposed to nurture and care for a child.  They are not supposed to convince a young child that he or she is bad.  This scars a child in many ways, as so many of you already know.  Overcoming the “you are bad” messages takes a great deal of work in the healing process.

The parents and caretakers are making a serious mistake and they are being poor and inadequate parents when they teach their children that the child is bad.  It is very wrong to beat this message into a child.  The adults are being criminally abusive when they hurt or assault young children in the claim of “you deserved this because you are bad”.  Children are not bad.

Children are not bad.

You were not bad.

Your child parts are not bad.

Children are not bad, inside or out.

It is wrong for any parent to blame any child in these ways.  This is an error and an inadequacy that belongs to the parents.  A parent doing or saying something wrong does not make an accurate description about the worth or value of the child.  Parents projecting their poor behavior choices onto a child is about those parents’ projection and a displacement of blame.  It is the parents externalizing responsibility instead of owning responsibility for their own behavior.  It is the parent blaming someone that is young and innocent, instead of honestly accepting that they are doing something wrong and unacceptable.

For the child parts reading this blog: all those big words mean that you are a good kid.  They mean that even if your mommy or daddy told you that you were bad, or that you deserved bad things to happen to you, your mommy and daddy were telling you something that is just not true.  I don’t know why your mommy or daddy said those mean things to you, but you are not bad, and no child is ever ever to blame, and none of those bad things were your fault.  You are a good child, and that’s that!

Simply put, children are not ever to blame for the inadequate and improper behavior of their parents.

Children are young.  Children are tiny.  Children are vulnerable.

But they are not bad.

Children have a lot to learn, and they might make little mistakes as they are adventuring out in life.  But children are like young puppies who know very little about life.  The young of this world are allowed to learn, and they need guidance, gentleness, and care as they make their way in this big cold world.

Please remember, as a child, you were absolutely as innocent and precious and unknowing as the puppies in the picture.  And just like these tiny puppies, children should be treated with tenderness and caring so they can grow up to be healthy and happy.

———-

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation

May 9, 2010

What Did Your Mother Teach You?

Posted in Child Alters, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Therapy Homework Ideas, Transference Issues, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 10:41 am by Kathy Broady


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It’s Mother’s Day 2010.

Mother’s Day – it’s a hard day for a lot of dissociative trauma survivors.  It’s a day full of mixed emotions, painful longings, unhealed heartbreak.  This day hurts the people who were hurt so much by their mothers.

Mothers are a complicated subject, to say the least, and the impact a mother can have on her children can and does change their lives.  Abusive or neglectful mothers can teach some very damaging life lessons.  Their children will carry those scars for decades of time.

I’ve seen this over and over with the DID survivors I work with.  Years later, the ways their mother treated them affects so much of their life – maybe even more than they realize.  People who were deeply wounded by their mothers often cannot view other maternal figures (Including other female authority figures) without getting confused in that relationship because of who their mother was.  The crimes of the original mother spill over onto the relationship any children they might have, making it harder to be a good mother in their own life.

That original mother relationship affects how DID survivors see the world, how they experience people, what they believe about themselves, what they believe about the world around them, and how they interpret others.  It is very central to the very core of their being.

Working with mother-transference issues is one of the hardest parts of being a DID therapist.  It is the area where the therapeutic relationship is at its most tender.  It is the most vulnerable place.  It is the spot where issues and feelings can get messed with by people who wish harm upon that therapeutic relationship.

To explain this, let me start from further back.

For example, I was blessed to have a very good mother and she taught me a lot of valuable life lessons. She wasn’t perfect, but she was and is about as close to perfect as one could ever hope for in a mother.  She is kind, loving, compassionate, caring, generous with her time, good with children, full of wisdom, patient, gentle, and self-less in so many incredible ways.  She has been an example to me for how to interact with people, especially with children.  My mother is non-judgmental, and she is willing to dig in and help anyone that she meets.  She is a beautiful soul, and she leaves a positive impact wherever she goes.

Yes, my mother has taught me a lot.  And almost all of what she has taught me has been good.  I do much of what I do because I had an incredible mother who taught me to be kind to others.

Those that spend time with me will see this in my work with them.  They will see that kindness, acceptance, gentleness, and generosity in what I do.  They will reap the benefits of what my mother gave to me as I pass that on to those that I work with.

So what makes that so hard?

If I am pulling from a good place, what makes mother issues so complicated and difficult to work with?

It’s because not everyone can interpret today’s kindness as genuine kindness.  The past wrinkles in and rolls up into the present, and the present becomes twisted into the past in an emotional kind of way.

Sometimes the damage done to trauma survivors confuses kindness with abuse.  Sometimes the damage done by an abusive or neglectful mother is so pervasive that it colors all acts done by other females, and the perspective becomes so tainted that nothing is seen clearly.  Female therapists are seen through the perspectives of “mother figures will abuse me”, “mother figures will hate me”, “mother figures will think I’m bad”, “mother figures will abandon me”, “mother figures are to be hated”, etc.

When trauma survivors truly believe, in their deepest selves, that women are there to abuse them, it is not an easy job to overcome that belief.  The fear is too huge.  The expectation of horrible doesn’t end.  The fearful expectation of abuse can often overtake everything else.

Frequently the pain-anger-guilt-shame at not having a good mother can get thrown at the female therapist, and displaced and projected onto her as a safe place to express such deep heart-wrenching emotions.  Therapeutically, this is expected to happen, and the goal is to work through that in a healing way.  Most therapists and clients understand that, and will work through it as a team.  It can be done, and when it is, very deep healing can occur.

However, sometimes trauma survivors get a little messed up along their journey.  They truly get confused in this area, and understandably so.  It’s an emotionally complex point, and trauma survivors are extremely vulnerable in this place.   And because of those vulnerabilities, they can be easily misguided.  They can get easily confused over who is the “good mother transference figure” and who is not.  They listen to poor advice, or bad rumors, or are too unwilling to let go of their fears in order to heal.  They stay convinced that women are out to get them, and they quickly join in with thinking that female therapists are abusive.

This breaks my heart.

I found it horrifically sad that some trauma survivors are willing to hold onto such beliefs that they would bring harm to themselves and to others.  This only continues the cycle of abuse.  It is not about healing.  It is destructive.

(Yes, there are a few female therapists who are harmful to their clients, but those are few are far between, and those are not the people I am writing about in this particular article.  That’s a completely different topic, to be discussed another day.)

This article is about genuinely good therapists who are mistaken as the “bad mother”.  This article is about finding ways to heal from your abuse.  It is about finding a woman of kindness, and not confusing her with your not-so-kind mother.  It is about recognizing the differences, and not being pulled into old fears, old beliefs, and old ways, just because they are more familiar to you.

It is about learning to recognize someone that can be positive, helpful, and kind to you, and to your inner children.  It is allowing that healing to occur.  It is keeping clear on what happens in the present, and not distorting it or twisting it into something negative from your past.

It does not help your healing to project your “bad mother issues” onto a good therapist and then stay stuck in that spot.  It only confuses you, and it prevents your healing.  It brings harm to you and your system to stay stuck there.

Your female therapist can and will teach you something very different from what your mother taught you.   Don’t assume the two women will be the same, because they will not be.  Don’t project so much of your abusive past onto your current day therapist that you cannot see who she really is.  Work hard at recognizing true kindness and gentleness for what it is.

Let yourself and your inner child parts have those corrective emotional experiences with a kind therapist and don’t let anyone mess with that.  If you let someone distort those experiences – if you let someone convince you that something was abusive when it wasn’t — then you have brought emotional pain to your inner world that didn’t need to happen.  If you weren’t abused, don’t let yourself believe that you were just because that is more familiar. Separate the past from the present.

Haven’t you been hurt enough?  Why add to that?

It is important to try to believe that women are not out to get you.  Female therapists are not here to harm you.  What your mother taught you can apply to her, but it really and truly does not have to apply to everyone else.  Your mother may have been cruel, cold, uncaring and abusive towards you.  But not everyone will be.  Not everyone wants to be.

Don’t assume the worst, and please don’t treat other women as if they did what your mother did.

It is very hard for trauma survivors to come to terms with these truths.  But the sooner you do, the sooner you will find that place of genuine healing.

Don’t let the harmful lessons that your abusive or neglectful mother taught you ruin or destroy any more of your life.  You truly can heal from the hurt and the trauma that you went through – I promise!

There are lots of good, helpful, kind, compassionate, caring women out here in the world.  I encourage you to be one of them.

———-

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation

August 30, 2009

Protecting Your Therapeutic Relationship and the Therapeutic Community

Posted in Borderline Personality Disorder, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Self Injury, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Therapy Homework Ideas, Transference Issues, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 2:44 pm by Kathy Broady


There are thousands of clinical therapists in the world.

However, of all the therapists in the world, only a few work with trauma and PTSD.

Of all the trauma therapists, only a few work with the areas of sexual abuse and severe trauma.

Of those therapists, only a few work with dissociative disorders, DID/MPD and DDNOS.

Of the DID therapists, only a very few work with issues relating to organized perpetrator groups.

And in that small subset of therapists, only a few work with more than two or three dissociative survivors at any one time.

And it is the rare therapist among that already vanishingly small number who stay in the field for more than a few years… or long enough to gain the experience they would need in order to be most helpful to the population of clients they serve,

So of all the thousands and thousands of therapists in the world, there are relatively very few who will have the kind of knowledge and experience that you are looking for when you need a specialist in the areas of trauma and dissociation.

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Why do so many therapists refuse to work in this area when there is so much need?

And why do so many therapists leave the field after committing years of dedication to dissociative survivors?

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It’s time to be honest.

First – please remember, I am one of the rare few who has stayed loyal and passionately dedicated to the fields of trauma and dissociation for more than 20 years.  It is hard to find trauma therapists with that much commitment to the dissociative population.  I am on your side – I will prove that over and over – but I am going to be honest.

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DID’ers are a very difficult population of people for a therapist to work with !!!!

Now don’t get me wrong.  Some of you are absolutely wonderful – without question, the most incredible heroes and the very most courageous people I have ever met.  Those of you in this category are absolute diamonds, and I really cannot say enough positive things about you.  You all are truly inspirational, and I am honored to work beside you.

Unfortunately, those who are genuinely dedicated to their therapy and who work hard to achieve their deepest healing are all too often undermined by the few survivors who are willing to do anything but work on their healing.

Oh, these survivors will SAY they are working in therapy…. They will CLAIM they are dedicated to their healing…. They go through the motions, and they spout all the right words.  To a point.  And then they don’t anymore.

Because in reality, this small number of survivors is more interested in hurting other people than they are in healing their own pain.  They are more interested in destroying others than they are in helping themselves.  They are willing to lie about anything or anyone just to get attention drawn to themselves.  They are very destructive and they are very sick.

And these destructive survivors could be costing you a lot more than you realize.

Ouch.

I am sure as a population, this is not pleasant to hear.  Please know that I am not saying this to all of you.

Those of you that are genuinely dedicated to your healing know exactly what I am talking about – I’m sure – because you have most likely already witnessed your healing resources being used up, beat up, and exhausted by fellow survivors whose intentions were far from honorable.  The survivors that do this are sabotaging those of you that are truly trying to heal, because the therapeutic field gets completely burnt out by “them” and ends up not having the time or energy or interest to work with you.  Many good therapists simply will not be willing to risk working with other survivors after they have had some bad experiences with these destructive survivors.

So… the survivors that are undermining your therapists are doing harm to themselves, to the therapists, and to you.  They are attacking, abusing, and destroying your therapeutic resources, leaving  you with less.  These “bad apples” are giving the whole dissociative population a bad name, and frankly, this kind of behavior should not be tolerated by any of us.

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Now what?

If you all want mental health professionals to stay working in the fields of trauma and dissociation, it is important to make that work worth it to them, and not a “nightmare” for them.

I am not saying that you have to feed the egos of the therapists, or provide support for them, or do any freaky weird boundary violations.  Therapists became therapists for intrinsic reasons of their own.  We don’t need y’all to “make it worth it” to us by what you give to us.

Therapists want you to make their work worth it by allowing them to genuinely do their job.  We want you to address your issues, work on your healing, stay focused on your system, be honest with your feelings, etc.  If you will do your job of focusing completely on your own healing, we as therapists will be thrilled with that.  Your genuine progress will be our reward.

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That being said, what can you do to protect the relationship you have with your therapist in particular? And how can you do your part to protect the resources available in the therapeutic community, so that therapists are more motivated to enter and remain in the field, and more survivors have the opportunity to work with truly skilled professionals?

How can you separate yourself from those survivors that are destructive?

How can you make sure you are helping the problem, and not creating the problem?

Here are some ideas of what NOT to do:

  • Don’t lie to yourself and expect others to believe you.
  • Don’t lie to your therapist.  How can you heal if you are not honest in your sessions?
  • Don’t lie about a therapist.  Don’t believe lies about a therapist.
  • Don’t gossip about a therapist. Don’t believe gossip about a therapist.  Don’t spread unfounded false allegations.  Don’t chase off or destroy therapeutic resources with false accusations.
  • Don’t forget to examine your transference feelings, and recognize them as transference issues.  Don’t forget how projection, transference, displacement, and amnesia can affect your thinking. Work openly and genuinely on these issues instead of blaming the therapist.
  • Don’t attack a therapist because you are too afraid to address the real source of your anger.
  • Don’t let therapists become the “bad guys” in your definition.  Therapists are your helpers. They are there to help with your healing.  Learn quickly how to define the helpers from the hurters, and address that confusion as often as necessary.
  • Don’t assume that all “survivors” are automatically being honest with you (or themselves) when they are trashing a therapist.  Remember, they may be in the “hate” cycle of the love-hate dynamic.
  • Don’t assume that all “survivors” are working for the betterment of the survivor community.  Some so-called survivors are truly moles from the dark sides of the world, and are here to cause trouble in any way they can.
  • Don’t let your jealousies and insecurities consume you and destroy your focus.  If you want your therapist all to yourself, hire them to work 40 hrs per week at their full hourly rates.  If that is not an option, be mature enough to know your therapist is going to have other clients.

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Here are some ideas about what TO do:

  • Be genuinely honest with your yourself. The more honest you are, the more healing you will accomplish.
  • Be genuinely honest with your therapist. Your therapist can help best when they genuinely understand the issues.
  • Remember that your healing is to be focused on you, your behavior, your feelings, your mistakes, your strengths, your weaknesses, etc.  Your therapy is about you, so keep the topics focused on you, even when it is hard to look at yourself.
  • Do your own internal system homework in between sessions.  Your healing will progress as you put your own time and effort into it.
  • Be kind, appreciative, thankful, and polite.  This doesn’t mean to grovel or do penance.  Just use normal social manners and social politeness.
  • Remember that your therapist does not have to be your emotional (or physical) punching bag. If you are hitting too hard, redirect your anger towards your abusers, where it belongs.
  • Give yourself adequate time to work through the complexities of your healing process. An experienced therapist will not rush you, and it is truly ok for you to take as much time to heal as you need.
  • Separate yourself from other survivors that are troublemakers and instigators of negative drama.  Just like school days, if you hang out with people causing harm, you’ll end up doing the same, or being tangled in their web. Their poor behavior will cost you.  You can decide if that is worth it to you or not.
  • Ignore the drama queens determined to cause trouble in front of you.  If you refuse to buy into their antics, they will move on to other pastures.  If you give drama precedence over your own healing, you will not be progressing in your own healing.  Protect the entire dissociative community by supporting your therapeutic resources.
  • Remember to think for yourself.  All too often, survivors listen to any strong, authoritative voice that tells them what to do.  If someone is telling you negative things about your therapist, set a boundary, stop, and re-evaluate all sides of your situation.
  • Talk openly with your therapist about any concerns you have.  Give yourself the chance to problem-solve any difficulties or conflicts that arise.  Working through conflicts is an important part of your healing process, and it does not necessarily require a therapeutic rupture.

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If you can truly apply these guidelines, you will be honoring your own healing. You will also be showing respect to your individual therapist, protecting other ongoing therapeutic relationships, supporting the greater survivor community, and enhancing the larger therapeutic community.

Maybe most of you think that you are not actively involved in the destruction of the therapeutic resources, but if you support it, believe it, allow it to go on by your “friends”, etc, then you could be more involved than you realize. You can either help to maintain effective therapeutic resources, or you can allow their destruction.

It’s a conscious decision that each one of you has to make.

Everyone has to do their part in protecting the few therapeutic resources available for dissociative survivors.  You can choose to support the destructive people, or you can choose to kick them to the curb, and get along with your own healing.

Remember, if you genuinely focus on yourself and your own healing, then you are doing all you need to do.

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By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

August 18, 2009

Depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder, part 2

Posted in Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Internal Communication, mental health, Self Injury, therapy, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:17 pm by Kathy Broady


Welcome to the second half of “Depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder”.  The first seven tips have been previously posted.  At this point in time, I will continue with the list of tips for how to specifically address chronic depression for trauma survivors with DID:

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8. As the memories surface, feelings will also surface.  Expressing genuine emotion is key to working through depression.  Crying tears of grief, screaming out in anger, quivering in fear may not feel comfortable, but holding these very real and intense emotions deep within will create long-term depression.  Allowing these emotions to come out safely and appropriately – even if years after the original point of acquiring these emotions – will help.

9. In the appropriate time, let other parts of your dissociative system know about the information that was held by the depressed parts.  Overcoming the dissociative barriers by sharing that information between the system parts is critical in your long-term healing.  The more that your internal system shares with each other, the more you all can work together towards healing.   The full story line does not have to be shared immediately with everyone. However, keeping pockets of dissociated information will continue to create an underlying cause for chronic depression.

10. Your feelings will need lots and lots of processing time.  Talk, cry, draw, write, vocalize what you are feeling as many hours and hours over time as you feel these feelings.  If you have been holding your emotions in for years of time, it will take oodles of time for these feelings to be worked through.  Talking about it once or twice won’t be enough.  Pushing feelings back down into non-expression will create more depression.  While it will be very new territory to learn how to express your feelings, it is a necessary step.

11. Learn new rules about the expression of feelings.  For example, in the past, when you were at risk of being hurt by your perpetrators, you most likely learned that it was not safe to express anger towards those that violently abused you.  And yes, in that time frame, when you were likely to express direct injury from your perpetrators, it was safest for you to push those angry feelings deep within.  At that time, that was a good decision.  However, once you are away from your perpetrators, and the risk of ongoing abuse is no longer prominent, it is both essential and ok to express anger at your perpetrators’ atrocious, criminal behavior.  Your healing will require that you remember to adjust with your changing circumstances, including creating new rules for expression

12. Learn to direct your anger at an appropriate target, even if that means starting with a “generic” unnamed target.  Talk with your therapist about the variety of anger-expression techniques that allow your anger to be vocalized without creating harm to anyone else.  Learning to express your feelings does not give you permission to take it out on whoever is there.  The more you can express your anger directly towards the perpetrators that harmed you, the more effective it will be.  Likewise, misdirecting your anger towards the wrong target (ie: someone who was not responsible for your abuse or injuries), will only create more problems for you, and will harm a lot of innocent people in the process.  For example, getting angry with your children or your therapist will not resolve the anger you feel towards your parents.

13.  As a continuation of tip #12, be willing to learn specifically about transference, projection, displacement of emotion, etc.  Survivors who have had years of repressed emotion due to duress and abuse will truly need to practice expressing their emotions properly, and will need to learn when they are misdirecting their emotions. All survivors that were not allowed to express anger directly naturally learned to displace any display of anger in sideward ways.  Realize that you will continue to get this mixed up for awhile.  Be very aware that you might first take your anger out on safer targets. These mistakes are to be expected, and not a “fault” of yours, but it is still your responsibility to learn more accurate skills.  Making the mistake of blaming the wrong person will only add to your depression.  It will leave the deeper feelings unprocessed, unaddressed, and unhealed, thereby creating the foundation for ongoing depression and pain.

14. Replace the years of trauma and abuse with your own preferred people and activities that you enjoy. Once your life is full of happier, more meaningful things, you won’t feel as depressed.  This probably will not happen quickly or easily, and you might have to learn how to live again.  It might feel like you are learning to live for the very first time.  You might have to learn how to love, or how to experience joy, or how to play, or how to forgive, or how to explore, etc.  The more you can fill your life with activities of your own choosing, the less depressed you will feel.

15.  Be sure to encourage all of your insiders to have their own individual healing process.  Let each of them work through their own traumas, their own feelings, and let each of them find new and more positive interests in life.  As each individual part of you experiences less depression, the whole of you will experience less depression.  If you let only some parts heal, the whole of you will still be affected by the parts that were not given the chance to work through their healing.  Remember, as split and divided as you might feel, you are still all connected within the same one body and the same one brain.  To truly overcome depression, all of your insiders need the chance to overcome their pain.

Depression can be very debilitating.

Healing your trauma issues will be fundamental to overcoming the effects of the chronic depression.

In other words, in my opinion, you will continue to struggle with depression if you have unresolved trauma issues.  If your dissociative symptoms have a significant negative impact on your ability to function, the liklihood of your having a significant level of major depression (MDD) is also present.

It is true that there may be other reasons for your depression in addition to trauma. (Please note: those topics were not addressed in this blog).

However, it is safe to assume that if you have unresolved trauma issues, you will most likely have chronic depression.  And, the less unresolved trauma in your life, the less depression you’ll experience.

So….. get to work on addressing your DID / trauma issues.  You’ll feel better for it!!

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 20, 2009

Believing a Lie – the Foundation of Dissociation

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, Physical Abuse, Ritual Abuse, sexual abuse, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 12:22 pm by Kathy Broady


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What makes it difficult for trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder to know the truth?

How easy is it to trick someone with DID with a lie?

When are survivors lying to themselves?

When does dissociation block out information to know the difference?

When does pain, especially emotional pain, become the deciding factor in what survivors believe, regardless of truth?

When does the viciousness of perpetrators demand and create particular beliefs and realities?

Is dissociation built on lying to yourself?

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I recently saw a situation where a DID survivor could not accept the truth.   Despite the facts that pointed to the obvious, the dissociative survivor was determined to believe what her closest confidants had said.  She trusted these loved ones completely, but these were the very people who were completely invested in hiding the secret from her.  Accepting the truth would have been far too painful, and she fought that reality with all the strength and vigor that she had.  She was angry.  She threw out rationalizations.  She projected blame onto others. She railed back through time, pulling out circumstantial evidence that could support her beliefs. She argued like a court room lawyer.  She completely protected her position with every psychological defense available to her.

And she believed the lie.

Because to not believe the lie would have been utterly and completely devastating for her.

So she couldn’t let herself go there.  Not even for a moment.

She absolutely, without question, had to deny the truth and hear only what she could stand to hear.  She had to stay true to her preferred beliefs and rationalizations.  She couldn’t risk losing everything by believing the conflicting information.  The cost of believing the truth was too high.  To believe the truth would have hurt too much, so it was necessary for her to completely refute the truth.

At first I wondered how this survivor could be so staunchly set in her beliefs, even in the face of clear and direct evidence of the contrary.  I marveled at the intensity of her denial, and felt a deep sadness for her.  I was amazed at how completely sold she was on the lie – she would have fought to the death to defend that as truth.

But then I understood.

Believing the truth would have been enormously painful for her.

She would have had to believe that her loved ones betrayed her – that they hurt her beyond comprehension.

How could she believe that?

It would have cost her too much.  To accept the betrayal would have meant she was alone.  It would have completely broken her heart. It would have meant her loved ones abused her.  It would have meant that her trust and faith in them was shattered. It would have created an emotional pain so huge that her body would have felt seared to the core.  It would have left her feeling broken on more levels than words can say.

She would have wanted to die before accepting that truth as a reality.

Yet the truth was so obvious that it seemed undeniable, so it was mind boggling to see the intensity of the denial that could prevent her from seeing the truth standing right before her eyes.

And then I realized I was seeing something stronger than denial.

I was seeing the beginning of a dissociative split.

Dissociation – complete dissociation – is an emotional protection strategy that totally and completely removes painful realities from the mind and body of the survivor.

When the pain of accepting a trauma is too huge, dissociative people split.  They get rid of the excruciatingly painful information by dissociating it.  They don’t accept it as happening to them, and they make it be gone.

They completely refute the truth even as it is happening to them, and they completely separate that painful reality from themselves, blocking it off, locking it away, keeping it as far from themselves as possible.  Thick dissociative walls keep that horrendous information away from them.  It protects them from feeling that unbearable pain.

If they don’t want to believe they were being sexually abused, or physically abused, or spiritually abused, or emotionally abused, or ritually abused, they use that same intensity to tell themselves it wasn’t happening to them.  It doesn’t belong to them.  It was happening to someone else – anyone else – just not to them.

They weren’t betrayed by their loved ones.  They weren’t hurt and destroyed by their loved ones.  That just didn’t happen.  Not to them.  And if it happened to somebody else, they didn’t want to know about it.  Not now, not ever.  That bad news had to be totally and completely separated from themselves.  It had to belong to someone that was not them.   It could NOT be happening to them.

And so they protect themselves from the heart-wrenching truth.

They need to believe the lie.  They want to believe the lie.  The lie feels better than the truth.

Believing the lie that “it didn’t happen” is the very foundation of dissociation.

As understandable as it may be, every time you split, you believed the lie that it wasn’t happening to you.

Ouch.

It still hurts.  It hurts a lot.

And yet, finding the courage to face the truth in the present is as necessary for your healing as dissociating the truth away once was necessary for your survival.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

April 26, 2009

Expressing Anger Instead of Pain

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, HBO's Series "In Treatment", therapy, Therapy and Counseling, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:37 pm by Kathy Broady


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 life.

Even though it was said on television, that line has a lot of truth in it.

Is it easier to be angry with me than to look at your own pain?

I realize that most of you reading this blog are not connected enough with me — Kathy — to make me a likely target for your anger.  Frankly, I appreciate that.  Believe me, I’m not “volunteering” to be the target.

But, have a think about the people that are closer to you — the people that are more visible in your life.

Is it easier to be angry with your therapist than to look at your own pain?
Is it easier to be angry with your spouse than to look at your own pain?
Is it easier to be angry with your friend than to look at your own pain?
Is it easier to be angry with your boss than to look at your own pain?
Is it easier to be angry with a stranger than to look at your own pain?
Is it easier to be angry with yourself than to look at your own pain?

So many people want to deflect their pain by pointing at other people, blaming other people, and being angry with other people.  It’s often too hard to sit with your own pain without doing that.

What makes anger easier to express than pain?

How many times have you argued with or fussed at your therapist when you were in deep pain?

What makes your therapist a safe enough person to be the target of your anger?

For people with DID (dissociative identity disorder), it is even more complicated because there are often insiders with memories of pain that they want to talk about, and the host / front alter part may not want to hear about it.  Host parts can get angry and upset with their therapists for listening to the inside ones.  Why is this so often the case?

Are you getting angry at your therapist instead of looking at your own pain?

Listening to all that a person says is an important part of therapy.  Would you rather your therapist not listen to your inner parts?  Isn’t that the same as asking your therapist to not listen to you as a whole person?   Why should your therapist talk to some of you, but not all of you, especially if those others want to talk about the pain that they are feeling?  Why should they be ignored, neglected, shunned?

What if your therapist listened and talked to them, but not to you?  It probably wouldn’t go over so well if the shoe were on the other foot.

See, even though you are switching, and you feel very much like different people, your therapist will still see you as the same basic person.  While there may be some parts of your system that are more involved with the current day / outside world than others, everyone in your system is still important, and everyone can have their say.

Of course, part of the difficulty here is that some of the insiders speak about things that the host is very very uncomfortable with.  Sometimes the insiders speak of trauma memories that the host doesn’t want to hear about.  Sometimes the insiders speak of ongoing abuse, or abuse by a loved one.  Sometimes the very speaking about abuse at all is more than the host wants to hear.

Another common reason that dissociative trauma survivors express anger at their therapist is because expressing anger at their perpetrators is too complicated.  Displacing and projecting anger at your therapists instead of your perpetrators may help to find some version of release of anger, but it isn’t really going to get to the root of the problem, so it’s not going to get the kind of resolution that you might be looking for.

Expressing anger at the people that hurt you — while one might think that should be easy — is actually very difficult for survivors with dissociative disorders.  There are a number of different reasons for this:

  • The violent, sadistic abuser is still alive and still poses a threat.  If you are overwhelmed by your fear of this person, it is harder to feel safe enough to be angry with them.
  • You may have been threatened with great harm and more violence if you expressed anger or irritation with your perpetrators.  This “rule” is hard to overcome.
  • You may be too dissociated from your trauma memories to really know who your perpetrators are.  When this is the case, you are at risk of expressing your anger at the wrong people.
  • Due to the complications of your family dynamics and trauma memories, you might feel too trapped by your own guilt, or shame, or humiliation to feel able to be angry at anyone else.

.
Emotions can be very complex and finding a way to safely and honestly express your pain and your anger may take a lot of work and practice.

The next time you are angry at your therapist, think about what Dr. Weston words, “Is it easier to be angry with me than to look at your own pain?”

.
__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

December 23, 2008

10 Qualities Therapists Recognize in Good Clients, part 2

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, therapy tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 7:15 pm by Kathy Broady


Hello to all my Readers,

I hope this day finds you doing well.

The first part of this article certainly caused a little stir, and maybe raised a few eyebrows along the way.  Please know, my intention in posting these blogs is not to offend anyone.  If you have any questions or concerns about anything I’ve posted, please comment and let me know what you’re thinking!  And here’s a big Thank You! to the folks who did comment to the “Part 1″ post.  I appreciate that.

Let me try framing the context of this article.  In previous blog posts, we’ve been discussing questions to ask a new therapist.  This article is, in some ways, a follow-up to that idea, because these are the kinds of things a therapist is going to be thinking about / assessing in new clients as they arrive at their door.  These are also the strengths that you want to emphasize when you are meeting a new therapist.

If you approach your therapy keeping these qualities in mind, you will honestly find that more therapists will stay interested in working with you for the long haul.  That is not to say you have to be perfect.  Who is???!  It means, work on these things.  Be mindful of them.  Developing these strengths will make you a better person overall, and that is very much the goal of therapy.

These qualities, in my opinion, have nothing to do with mental illness.  I have worked with some very disturbed people with huge issues, and yet, they possessed these qualities, and they made huge progess in their healing.  I’ve also seen some folks who appeared to be rather high-functioning, and yet, they did not, or could not grasp some of these basic ideas.

I agree with the brave soul who commented that these qualities are an important part of everyday life.  The more that survivors strive to incorporate these strengths into their approach to everything, the better.  Your self esteem will improve, your self-dignity will be solid, and people around you will appreciate you more.

I don’t expect every trauma survivor to have a solid grasp on these qualities, but I do hope every trauma survivor strives to.

Intermingle these strengths into your life everywhere that you can.  You’ll be glad you did!

And here is part 2 of the article, “10 Qualities Therapists Recognize in Good Clients”:

6. Honesty and Trustworthiness

  • Are you willing to be honest with yourself?
  • Are you willing to lie to your therapist, or hide information, or lie by omission?
  • Do you gossip and tell lies behind people’s backs?
  • Do you gossip about your therapist?
  • Do you lie to your inside parts?  Does anyone in your system try to trick or deceive the others in your system?

Therapeutic relationships are built on honesty and trust.  Your therapist will need to know you possess these qualities as well.

7. Loyalty

  • Will you treat your friends and family members with kindness and respect even if they have done things you do not like?
  • Will you loyally protect your internal system from predators and perpetrators, putting the safety of your inside parts as a priority?
  • Are you loyal to your therapeutic process and will you keep clear boundaries around the therapeutic process?
  • Will you respect your therapist’s trust in you to the same degree that you expect your therapist to respect your trust in them?
  • If you and your therapist experience a conflict, where do you look to resolve that? Do you expect to resolve the conflict within the context of therapy, or will you spread the conflict outside the therapeutic relationship and draw others into it?

Your therapist and support team can be your greatest allies in your healing journey.  However, a deep level of mutual respect is expected and needed in order to progress in therapy.  It is crucial that you thoroughly differentiate the “good guys” from the “bad guys”.  Therapists understand the concepts of transference and projection, and they will work with you in those tender moments, but there will be limits to that. I can promise you, your helpers do not want to be thrown under the bus any more than anyone else.

8. Creativity

  • Are you determined to do the same things over and over again?
  • Are you open to trying new options?
  • Can you think outside of the box instead of being boxed in?
  • Do you help to problem-solve the various dilemmas that surface?
  • Will you work on ways to reach even the most difficult of insiders?  Even if this involves several failed attempts before you successfully connect with these parts?

We’ve all heard the saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, expecting to get different results.”    A huge part of the healing process is learning new things and doing different things.

9. Gratitude and Appreciation

  • Do you appreciate what people do for you?
  • Do you recognize when someone is doing something for you?
  • Do you thank them for helping you?
  • In relationships, do you overlook smaller imperfections in appreciation of bigger strengths?
  • Do you thank others in your dissociative internal system for the ways they have helped you to survive through the years?  Do you recognize their strengths and talents in the current day?

Gratitude and appreciation are key elements of any healthy relationship.  Don’t take the goodness of others for granted.  Be thankful for what you receive from others.

10.  Safety

  • Are you a safe person?
  • Do you use threats of violence, or threats of harm to others, or threats of emotional blackmail, or threats of any kind to destroy or control other people or to get your own way?
  • Do you threaten self-harm or suicide as a way to manipulate others or to get your own way?
  • Are you willing to hurt yourself or someone else in order to get your way, including others in your internal system?
  • How far is “too far” to go to get what you want or prove you are “right”?  Do you think there is such a thing as “too far”?

Therapists will model safe behavior.  If you are acting in ways that are unsafe for yourself or manipulative of those around you, your therapist will set boundaries with you — just as you should set boundaries with someone who is unsafe in your direction.

If you follow these guidelines, you will have a much better relationship with your therapist and others around you.   If you are looking for a new therapist, remember that the more you can genuinely offer in the areas listed above, the more those therapists will view you as a client with potential — and the more positive potential you demonstrate in these areas of your life, the greater interest more therapists will have in working with you.  It goes to your advantage, your healing, your self-respect, and the amount of respect others will feel toward you to learn these things.

All people, including trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD), can claim these strengths as their own.  Work hard to be a “good person” in your therapy, and you’ll be amazed at how much difference this can make in your relationship with your therapist and with your system.  Remember:

Maintain your stability the best you can.
Be dependable in what you do, and do what you say you will do.
Maintain your motivation and your willingness to work hard.
Be courageous, even when it is scary.
Stay clear and upfront about your personal responsibilities.
Be honest and trustworthy at all times.
Stay loyal to your helpers.
Be creative in the hard times.
Have gratitude and appreciation for the good things and good people.
And be a safe person.  Be safe for yourself, and be safe for others.

You can do it.  I’m just sure of it.

__________

by:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

December 14, 2008

Blocking Therapy vs. Therapeutic Mismatch

Posted in mental health, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:36 pm by Kathy Broady


Castorgirl’s comment to the article “Therapy for Trauma Survivors, Part 1″:

Hi Kathy,

An interesting post. It raises many issues that have been a struggle over the last three years of therapy…

The question whenever things don’t seem to be going well in therapy always seems to come back to – “Is this our fault?” Are we sabotaging our own recovery, misinterpreting what has been said or meant.

It always brings forward the issues from the past about the health professionals being infallible and beyond questioning. We’ve just tried to question our therapist, and it hasn’t gone well. Our first foray into challenging a health professional has pretty much come crashing down around our ears…

In a rather rambling way, we’re trying to ask what indicators can you use to see whether it’s a block from us, or a therapeutic mis-match?

Great thought provoking blog…
Take care…

Thank you, Castorgirl, for asking such a great question.  I wish there was an easy answer.  This is actually a very big question with lots of layers to it.  I could probably make several different posts from this question, each with a different approach.

I have a response for you, but please remember, there are just my thoughts, are cannot be taken as medical advice nor are they to replace or usurp the recommendations of your therapist. (Please see my disclaimer.)  For the purposes of this post, I am going to write it from the perspective that the therapist is not making any grave errors.  Addressing therapeutic blunders is a big topic, and will reserved for another day.

I want to commend you for talking with your therapist about the issue at hand.  You have taken an important step in talking to your therapist about it, and that’s excellent.  Even if it didn’t go as well as you wanted it to, you initiated a conversation about it, and I strongly encourage you to keep working on it.  But do your homework – meaning… explore your feelings on your own as well, and see if you can move yourself forward through it.

Actually, I don’t think for a second that health professionals are infallible.  We all make mistakes and that very fact makes therapists’ human too.  However, when we have our “Therapist Hat” on, we make a conscious shift in our heads and our thinking to put our energy and attention on the client.  We’ve also been given rules, guidelines, boundaries, and restrictions to follow from our employment agencies, training institutions, educational facilities, and theoretical perspectives that highly influence our thoughts and our behavior.  We may very well approach conflict in therapy different “in the office” than we do in our personal lives.  Remember that the point of therapy is to be about you, the client, and even in rough patches of the therapeutic process, therapists will tend to keep that mindset in the forefront.

I’m guessing that most therapists examine the interaction between themselves and their clients with the greater focus on their client, what the client is doing (or not doing), saying (or not saying), expressing (or not expressing), etc.  Part of keeping the therapeutic process about the client is by keeping our thoughts and interpretations on the client, while keeping our thoughts about ourselves more neutral or in the background.  Otherwise, the therapy process becomes about us, and that becomes a boundary issue.  Particularly complicated problem points are when the client does something that is actually harmful or damaging to the therapist, or vice versa.

Keep in mind that all relationships have simple misunderstandings and small pockets of confusion.  Little mistakes are not the end of the world.  If you find yourself blowing normal miscommunication issues up into huge conflicts, then chances are, you are adding other personal issues into the situation.

You would probably be surprised to see how many conflicts with therapists are actually directly connected to projections / transference issues related to the client’s painfully unresolved mother- father-family-trauma issues.  As cliché as it sounds, the biggest portion of therapeutic conflict can be seen in the “this is actually about your mother” context.  The therapeutic relationship, while it is a current-day professional relationship, becomes the battleground for all the emotional hurts and deep heart wounds of the years past.  Because an element of caring and emotional attachment builds between the therapist and client, all too often conflicts arise when the client expects the therapist to fulfill too many of their unmet emotional needs.

Of course, a huge part of therapy is experiencing a correction of formerly wronged emotional experiences.  But there is a limit to how far a therapist can go in terms of meeting those unmet needs.  There will be a boundary line. It’s understandable that when this line is approached, and the client wants more from the therapist than the therapist can give within their professional or personal limitations, there will be a conflict.

That means many clients get their feelings hurts.  The therapist often becomes one of the very most important people in the client’s life, especially for trauma survivors who have poured out their heart and soul in their healing process.  Even being as critically important as therapists are, therapists can’t necessarily participate in the important social events for the client, or be emotionally or physically or therapeutically available as their clients want them to be.  Many times, therapists can’t even approach the client, or make the first phone call, or offer extra time.  While the professional opinions on proper therapeutic behavior vary greatly, the point being, to maintain proper boundaries, therapists have limitations to what they can do.  Many client requests will be denied because they go too far outside of the therapeutic box.

One of the very biggest blocks that clients can do that will harm or destroy their therapeutic relationship is to not talk about these conflicts with the focus on their own thoughts, feelings, behaviors.  Remember, the goal in your therapy is for you to learn more about yourself and to learn more about how to be personally responsible for your own health and well-being.  If you insist on defining the issues as “the therapist’s problems”, then you have missed the boat of what your therapy is about.  That doesn’t mean the therapist doesn’t have problems.  It means, you are trying to distract from your issues, and your therapist is not to be the focus of your therapy.  Keep the focus on yourself.  If you want to make gains in your therapy, talk about you.  Examine your wants and needs.  Examine your behavior.  Poke at your beliefs.  Keep it all about you, you, you.  And protect this time.  Treat it as precious for you.  Having the time to work on your healing is incredibly important, so don’t share the focus with anyone else.

Because it is your therapy, claim the issue as your own.  Attacking or blaming your therapist isn’t going to help you address your own issues, nor will it help your therapeutic alliance.  If you are really in therapy to address your own issues, then even in situations where there are potential conflicts with your therapist, first look at how the conflict relates to you.

Talk openly about how the painful conflict at hand affects you.  Be courageous enough to look at the painful historical roots for this issue.  Be willing to see how this current conflict has shown itself in your life, time and time and time again.  Look to old family dynamics and find the parallels.  Look at how this new wound is similar to previous wounds.  When you find those connections, you will be making progress.

Ask yourself: Why does this bother me? And what’s under that?  And then what?  And then what?  Peel the emotional onion, in terms of getting further down into the root of the issue.  Your therapist will be able to help you do this, but you have to be willing to look at it from that perspective.

If you are unsure if there is a therapeutic mismatch, use the same approach in tackling that issue.  For example, write out a list of the things that seem mismatched.  For each individual issue, ask yourself why that bothers you.  Take this first answer, and ask yourself why that bothers you.  Take your second answer and ask yourself why that bothers you.  Take your third answer, and ask why that bothers you.

Remember, there are many good therapists out there.  If your needs truly clash with the style of a particular therapist, then thank them for what they have offered you, and simply move on to someone else.  Don’t assume the therapist will or can change to be what you want them to be. It doesn’t mean the therapist is “wrong” or “bad” for not doing what you want them to do.  They are who they are, and they have their style of working in place.  I use this metaphor:

If you don’t like the food at a particular restaurant, then go to a different restaurant.  It would be unreasonable to throw a hissy fit in a Chinese restaurant, demanding Mexican food.  If you want Mexican food, just go on down the road till you find the Mexican restaurant, and leave the Chinese restaurant to do what it does best – serving Chinese food.

Too many clients expect the therapist to become what they want or need, typically based out of their own trauma-related issues.  Your healing isn’t based on making your therapist change to be what you need.  Your healing is based on your addressing your needs, and making positive changes with the assistance of your therapist.

If you want to do more thinking, here are some sample homework questions:

  • What is a therapeutic mismatch?  How do you define that for yourself?
  • Is your therapist challenging you to think / act in ways that are new or uncomfortable?  Are these harmful challenges?  Or, is your therapist encouraging you to develop new skills?
  • List 5 areas you are mismatched, and for each area, list five reasons that feels upsetting to you.  What are the common themes, and what have you learned from this?
  • What are you doing to encourage or enhance the mismatch issue?
  • What do you want your therapist to do that he (she) is not doing?  Why is this so important to you?  What does it mean if your therapist will never do these things?
  • Are these reasonable requests?  Do any of your requests take the therapist out of the therapy box?

I hope these ideas give you a starting place.

Thanks for the question.

__________

by:

Kathy Broady, LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

December 11, 2008

Therapy for Dissociative Trauma Survivors, Part 1

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 11:52 pm by Kathy Broady


What is therapy?  What is a therapist? And how can you tell if they’re any good?

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 else.  It’s exploring within yourself to find who you are, and who the other parts of you are.  It’s looking at the painful truths of your life, coming to grips with even the most shame-filled realities of the ways you were hurt and the ways you hurt others—and then being able to move ahead with a greater peace, more resolve, a quiet solidity, and an acceptance of what has happened in years gone by.  It’s the process of facing the past while also allowing it to fade away, becoming free from it, instead of being consumed by it or chained to it or terrified of it.  It requires seeing and knowing some very harsh realities, but helps you find a way to be solidly ok with yourself anyway and to live a full and happy life despite the horror and pain.

A therapist is a listening person who can hear what you have to say and help you to process your experiences and move beyond them, a companion in your pain and a witness to your truth.

A safe trauma therapist is one who can contain your feelings and experiences, however intense, and remain themselves, present in the room with you.  It is one in whom you can have the confidence of knowing they are on your side, as well as the reassurance of knowing they are their own confident person who will not be easily steamrolled, bullied, or deceived.  Your listening person can’t be fooled by denial, manipulated by fear, scared off by anger, or accepting of projections.  They must be strong enough to handle your pain, your emotions, your truths, without falling into their own emotional traps, and yet they need to be gentle enough to provide genuine compassion and comfort.  Your listening person must be kind, but firm.  Flexible, but unwavering.  Provoking, but protective.  Accepting, but honest.

Trauma therapy is not just about the recovery and processing of memories.  It is also about learning to think and act in different and better ways.  Emotional fallacies, cognitive distortions, controlling manipulations, and psychological defenses all have to be addressed.  In therapy, your greatest wounds and your worst behaviors both will be exposed, examined, and engaged. Ouch—that’s really hard to do. No wonder therapy hurts.

Therapy is an enormously difficult personal challenge.  It requires courage and willpower by the bucketful.  Beyond that, it also takes a great personal commitment on your part to hold on to the therapeutic alliance through the difficult times. Sometimes this persistence can mean going against what feels “right”—so many of you have learned through hard experience that trust is a myth and caring is a painful lie.

And although healing therapy is desperately sought out by trauma survivors, and although it can be a life-saving, heart-warming, and incredibly powerful process—within each and every trauma survivor, there will also be long lists of reasons, recognized or unrecognized, conscious or deeply hidden, why therapy is not ok, not necessary, or not helpful for them.  So it can be all too easy, when the going gets particularly tough, to turn from the onslaught of truth and from the therapy that has unleashed it.  It is too easy, sometimes, to deflect the truth onto someone or something else, discard that person or thing from your life as you no doubt wish you could do with the truth and just keep running.

Your commitment to therapy will be tested again and again.  I commend each and every one of you who daily move forward on blind faith, against what feels like your better instincts, to find true healing.

Externally, there may other challenges to face.  There may be others in your life that don’t want you to move forward.  Maybe your family likes the status quo, and they don’t want you challenging their norm.  Maybe your perpetrators don’t want you to realize the truth of what happened, or maybe they don’t care if you remember, as long as you blame yourself for their crimes.  Or maybe someone is invested in controlling you now.  They certainly wouldn’t want you to learn healthier ways of thinking and feeling.

It is crucial that you are willing to be honest with yourself in your healing—about yourself and about others in your life—even when painful truths are revealed.  As hard as it is to do, facing the truth is the only way to achieve full healing.

__________

by:

Kathy Broady, LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

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