The Trauma Series Part III: Overcoming Dissociation
This webinar was recorded and is now available as a Talk on Demand. Click here for more details.
Friday 12 November 2021
With Janina Fisher, PhD
- Includes a recording of the event with access for a year (14 days post the event)
- Bookings close at 9:00am GMT Tuesday 9 November
Disconnection from self in the context of traumatic experience is a survival strategy that allows victims to disown and distance themselves from what is happening. But it comes at a cost: long-lasting shame and self-loathing, difficulty self-soothing, internal conflicts and struggles, and complications in relationships with others.
READ MORE...Without internal coherence or compassion, fragmented individuals are vulnerable to suicidality, self-harm or substance abuse, and often marginalised by the label of “borderline.”
But the brain and body have an innate ability to heal. All human beings have a brain capable of visualising experiences of acceptance, closeness and comfort that evoke the same emotional and somatic sensations associated with early secure attachment. Helping clients discover their split-off younger selves and imaginatively bringing them “home” can spontaneously lead to an internal sense of warmth and safety most trauma survivors have never known.
In this presentation, we will explore the therapeutic power of using somatic experience to foster internal attachment to clients’ most deeply disowned younger selves.
FULL PROGRAMME
16.00 GMT (11.00 EST)
Introductions
16.05
How Dissociation Facilitates Survival Under Threat and its Long-Term Repercussions
In normal life, dissociation aids peak performance, but in traumatic environments, it is the brain’s way of splitting off the traumatic event so humans can go forward as if everything is ‘fine.’ The painful repercussion of survival is fragmentation, self-rejection, self-attack, and self-alienation.
16.45
Q&A
17.00
Break
17.15
Befriending One’s Fragmented Selves: Learning to Recognize Painful Emotions as Communications from Parts
To re-connect to all aspects of one’s being requires recognition of the patterns of thoughts, feelings and physical reactions encapsulated in each part. Mindful observation and curiosity are usually easy for clients. Learning to interpret distress as the distress of a wounded part, rather than “my” distress, takes patience and practice.
18.00
Q&A
18.15
Break
18.30
Welcoming ‘Home’ Disowned Traumatized Parts: Visualization Techniques that Evoke Self-Compassion and Self-Connection
The use of guided visualization and imaginal techniques capitalize on the dissociative client’s ability to alter consciousness and makes possible an increasingly warm and empathic relationship to the parts that build self-compassion and self-acceptance.
19.15
Q&A
19.30
End