When therapists first began treating trauma victims, they heavily relied on a therapeutic tool that is has been the most accepted practice in psychotherapy – talk therapy. In her book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, Janina Fisher refers to this as the “talking cure.” It is a method that allowed therapists to address [...]

A lot of people do not seek trauma therapy until they have been flooded with responses and memories from their “parts.” If you remember correctly, the “parts” are what often happens when people develop depersonalization, chronic depression or other symptoms. This is often falsely diagnosed as dissociative identity disorder, but the presence of certain symptoms [...]

It almost seems inevitable that at some point during trauma therapy, people end up experiencing a sense of “stuckness.” The client starts to feel worse instead of feeling better, and the therapist is left with the worry that they did something wrong. It’s hard place to be in for both sides. It is also quite [...]

Everyone responds differently to trauma, and in the same way, it makes sense to expect that the resulting fragmented self would be unique. People who have histories of chronic trauma, or who have gone through multiple types of abuse or neglect often appear normal. But what has really happened is that they have formulated a [...]

When we think about trauma victims, we often envision images of wounded soldiers or veterans. But trauma is so much more, and it should never be segregated to just one or two groups of people. It happens to just about everyone in one form or another. You may have a friend or relative who struggles [...]

“…during every stage of my medical training, whether I was studying surgery, cardiology, or pediatrics, it was obvious to me that the key to healing was understanding how the human organism works.” ~ Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk began studying post-traumatic stress and trauma in the 1970s. It was an [...]

You may find it odd that it’s possible to have a relationship with yourself internally. But the reality is that we all have relationships with our thoughts or emotions. It is completely unavoidable because they’re with us all the time. Whether we like it or not, we have to relate to them in some way. [...]

So many trauma victims feel trapped because of their thoughts. They may suffer from flashbacks or get triggered when certain painful memories arise. In a way, their trauma locks them inside a mental prison that is impossible to escape. Healing from trauma is not quick, and it is a process that takes time. Even so, [...]

For many victims of trauma, the experiences that traumatized them happened when they were children. The brain resorts to disassociation as a way to protect itself from getting hurt again, and it is very common for people to carry that into adulthood. While disassociation does work as a survival strategy for a period of time, [...]

Many people experience trauma when they’re children, and the effects of that trauma are often carried with them into adulthood. When children are abused or neglected by people who are supposed to love them, they have to distance themselves from it emotionally. This fragmentation is a survival mechanism. It helps them to preserve their self-esteem, [...]