Healing The Fragmented Selves Of Trauma Survivors

Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Readers will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution"—a transformation in the relationship to one’s self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance. Its unique interventions have been adapted from a number of cutting-edge therapeutic approaches, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness-based therapies, and clinical hypnosis. Readers will close the pages of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors with a solid grasp of therapeutic approaches to traumatic attachment, working with undiagnosed dissociative symptoms and disorders, integrating "right brain-to-right brain" treatment methods, and much more. Most of all, they will come away with tools for helping clients create an internal sense of safety and compassionate connection to even their most dis-owned selves.

Traumatic experiences leave a "living legacy" of effects that often persist for years and decades after the events are over. Historically, it has always been assumed that re-telling the story of what happened would resolve these effects. However, survivors report a different experience: Telling and re-telling the story of what happened to them often reactivates their trauma responses, overwhelming them rather than resolving the trauma. To transform traumatic experiences, survivors need to understand their symptoms and reactions as normal responses to abnormal events. They need ways to work with the symptoms that intrude on their daily activities, preventing a life beyond trauma. Dr. Janina Fisher, international expert on trauma, has spent over 40 years working with survivors, helping them to navigate the healing journey. In Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, she shows how the legacy of symptoms helped them survive and offers: - Step-by-step strategies that can be used on their own or in collaboration with a therapist - Simple diagrams that make sense of the confusing feelings and physical reactions survivors experience - Worksheets to practice the skills that bring relief and ultimately healing

This training manual for pateints who have suffered severe trauma includes a short educational piece, homework sheets, and exercises that promote essential emotional and life skills.

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Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors, 2nd ed, is a book for clinicians who specialize in helping trauma survivors and, during the course of treatment, find themselves unexpectedly confronted with client disclosures of self-destructive behaviors, including self-mutilation and other manifestations of deliberately "hurting the body" such as bingeing, purging, starving, substance abuse and other addictive behaviors. Arguing that standard safety contracts are not effective, renowned clinician Lisa Ferentz introduces viable treatment alternatives, assessment tools, and new ways of understanding self-destructive behavior using a strengths-based approach that distinguishes between the "experimental" non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) that some teenagers occasionally engage in and the self-destructive behaviors that are repetitive and chronic. In the new edition, many of the treatment strategies are cross referenced to a useful workbook, giving therapists and clients concrete ways to integrate theory into practice. In addition, Ferentz emphasizes the importance of assessing for and strengthening clients' self-compassion, and explains how nurturing this idea cognitively, emotionally, and somatically can become the catalyst for motivation and change. The book also explores a cycle of behavior that clinicians can personalize and use as a template for treatment. In its final sections, the book focuses on counter-transferential responses and the different ways in which therapists can work with self-destructive behaviors and avoid vicarious traumatization by adopting tools and strategies for self-care. Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors, 2nd ed, can be used on its own or in conjunction with the accompanying client-focused workbook, Letting Go of Self-Destructive Behaviors: A Workbook of Hope and Healing.

Help your clients make sense of their most puzzling and shameful trauma symptoms with the innovative use of simple diagrams and explanations found in The Living Legacy of Trauma Flip Chart. Traumatized individuals often have trouble processing words and information, but visual images draw their attention, allow them to better understand their symptoms or struggles, and help them to engage more easily in treatment. Created by Janina Fisher, PhD, this flip chart makes psychoeducation a relational experience in which the client can feel understood and supported. It presents scientific information in an accessible, easy-to-understand manner that builds trust, even in the early stages of therapy, and allows trauma survivors to feel more empowered rather than victimized by their symptoms. Your clients will thank you for using it! Intended for interactive use in session, this simple, user-friendly format includes: - 21 full-color diagrams on client-facing pages - Explanations and key points on each corresponding therapist-facing page, making the concepts easy to teach - Whiteboard client pages for easy markup and reuse Topics covered include: - Common symptoms of trauma - The triune brain - How trauma memories are remembered or forgotten - Effects of trauma on the brain and body - Nervous system dysregulation - Window of tolerance - Traumatic attachment - Addictions and trauma - Dissociative phenomena - Stages of treatment

This “well-organized, valuable” guide draws from somatic-based psychotherapy and neuroscience to offer “clear guidance” for coping with childhood trauma (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice). Although it may seem that people suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre maintain that most of these can be traced to five biologically based organizing principles: the need for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. They describe how early trauma impairs the capacity for connection to self and others and how the ensuing diminished aliveness is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physiological problems. Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM), a method that integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulate the nervous system and resolve distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment that are the outcome of developmental and relational trauma. While not ignoring a person’s past, NARM emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients’ strengths, resources, and resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.

Psychological trauma profoundly affects the body, often disrupting normal physical functioning when left unresolved. This work provides a review of research in neuroscience, trauma dissociation and attachment theory that points to the need for an integrative mind-body approach to trauma.

This read truly does have something for everyone who works with trauma and dissociative processes. --American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis This volume, which takes a multi-perspective approach to the practice of EMDR and Ego State Therapy, presents a wide variety of ways to integrate these two therapies, both with each other and with other complementary methods in the treatment of trauma and dissociation. --European Association for Body Psychotherapy EMDRIA has approved this book for a Distance Learning Book Course for 8 EMDRIA credits. This book pioneers the integration of EMDR with ego state techniques. and opens new and exciting vistas for the practitioners of each. --From the foreword by John G. Watkins, PhD, founder of ego state therapy This read truly does have something for everyone who works with trauma and dissociative processes. --American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis The editors have gathered many experts in the field who explain in clear informative ways how to expand the clinician's abilities to work with this terribly injured population. This book blends concepts from neurobiology, hypnosis, family systems theory and cognitive therapy to enhance treating this population. It is a well written book that the novice as well as the seasoned clinician can benefit from." --Mark Dworkin, author of EMDR and the Relational Imperative [This book] conveys complex concepts that will be of interest to seasoned therapists... with a clarity that will appeal to the novice as well. This is really a wonderful text with many excellent ideas and I highly recommend it to anyone who treats trauma. --Sarah Chana Radcliffe, M.Ed.,C.Psych.Assoc. Author, Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice "I believe that this book is a significant contribution to the fields of psychology and EMDR. It is the first of its kind... anyone who reads this will gain greater confidence in using EMDR and ego state therapy witih highly dissociative and complicated clients." --Sara G. Gilman, in Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, Volume 3, 2009 This is a book about polypsychism and trauma. It offers a number of creative syntheses of EMDR with several models of polypsychism. It also surveys and includes many other models of contemporary trauma theory and treatment techniques. The reader will appreciate its enrichment with case examples and very generous bibliographic material. If you are a therapist who works with patients who have been traumatized, you will want this book in your library." --Claire Frederick, MD, Distinguished Consulting Faculty, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center Training in EMDR seems to have spread rapidly among therapists in recent years. In the process, awareness is growing that basic EMDR training may not be adequate to prepare clinicians to effectively treat the many cases of complex trauma and dissociation that are likely to be encountered in general practice. By integrating it with ego state therapy, this book may just serve as a crucial turning point in the development of EMDR by providing a model for productively applying it to the treatment of this important and sizeable clinical population. --Steven N. Gold, PhD, President Elect, APA Division of Trauma The powerful benefits of EMDR in treating PTSD have been solidly validated. In this groundbreaking new work nine master clinicians show how complex PTSD involving dissociation and other challenging diagnoses can be treated safely and effectively. They stress the careful preparation of clients for EMDR and the inclusion of ego state therapy to target the dissociated ego states that arise in response to severe and prolonged trauma.

Whether you are stuck in the distress of life, or appear like nothing’s wrong, you may have faced trauma or incredible stress or suffocating fear. Maybe you wonder whether those emotions, memories, and experiences are blocking you from being as fulfilled and happy as you could be. Maybe you’re stuck in patterns that simply no longer work for you. What if you could change it all? What if you could feel safe and solid and secure inside your own body? What if your life could be peaceful and centered and fulfilled? In Becoming Safely Embodied, Deidre Fay shares from her 35 years of psychotherapy and spiritual practice to provide a truly practical way to integrate modern neurobiology and ancient wisdom to finally and completely heal from emotional trauma, no matter how deep or faint, how long ago or recent you experienced the pain. Throughout her years as a therapist, Deirdre noticed that clients would make progress while in a therapy session and then revert to old patterns between sessions. What people need is a set of skills and practices to support ongoing healing and wholeness. That's what this book will help you with. You’ll discover: What “trauma” is and why you might have had a hard time healing from this pain, Why shame is an attachment wound and how to harness self-compassion to truly transform suffering, What to do when you feel like you’re easily “triggered” by a certain person or situation in your life so that you can stay centered and safe, Instantly effective methods of breath work for brain change and emotional regulation so that you can calm your mind or energize your body, The nine core skills that can help you to be more at home with your internal world and cultivate a body that’s a safe place for rest, reflection, and wellbeing, Simple daily practices that (like brushing your teeth) promote ongoing healing in your body, mind, and soul, And much, much more. Whether you are healing from abandonment issues or from pain or from grief—or whether you are helping someone else to heal—Becoming Safely Embodied is your map and guidebook to finally becoming at home with your internal world, cultivating a body that’s a safe place for rest, reflection, and wellbeing, and creating the life you want to live, instead of living in the life your history catapults you into. You may be wondering, “Is it possible for ME? Can I change? Is it possible for me to shift these painful patterns into a more fulfilling life? Can I truly organize this crazy inner world?” The simple answer is, “Yes,” and your journey to becoming safely embodied begins inside the pages of this book.