In nature, balance is never static. It is achieved by constantly re-adjusting and adapting to changing influences. It never stops, there is no time when a perfect balance exists for long. Balance is really a verb, not a noun.
It is natural that all our therapy work is happening with ups and down, constantly shifting, and that we are always busy balancing.
The most basic balance we will face is between stability and change. We can imagine them like opposite sides of a seesaw.
When we have a lot of stability in our life, everything is working within a certain pattern, our life is solid and set in stone, then no change will happen.
The problem is that often we have stability in our symptoms, they are a pattern set in stone. We need to shake up our stability to make changes in the patterns.
When we work on change we will naturally lose some stability, not just in our problematic patterns but in other areas of life as well. Working hard in therapy might come with a drop in self-care or daily functioning. There is something like too much change all at once.
If we strictly stick to stability nothing will ever change. If we try to change too much at once we might end up in a crisis situation because we lost our footing. Every extreme will cost us dearly.
v-square
That is why we always need to keep balance in mind and check ourselves to see where we are at and into which direction to re-adjust.
Some people tend towards being more controlled and change is frightening. It might help to remember that our current stability is not serving us very well and that we are stuck with our symptoms without an effort to change.
Some people want to change everything at once and then we need to remember that at the end of that side of the seesaw there is only crisis waiting and that will keep us from progress.
Balancing is our job between therapy sessions. When we do our homework we usually work on change. Sometimes the session itself brought up so much that we should make a conscious effort to balance towards stability and self-care.
With DID we might realize that with one part changing, the whole system experiences a shift and everyone is influenced Inside. Then it is even more important to counter that with stability on the Outside like routines and calming activities.
It is important to keep balance in mind and consciously choose actions instead of just passively experiencing dysregulation or being stuck. Our time between therapy sessions will be a lot more fruitful and stable if we consciously re-adjust where needed and don’t wait for anyone to do it for us.
A good therapist always keeps the balance in mind and will help us to regulate ourselves one way or the other. They will pace the work so it is fast enough to challenge but not so fast it gets overwhelming. Sometimes even good Ts miss the fact that we are tending too far towards one side and then it is helpful to tell them instead of just obeying. Therapy is not about blindly following another person wherever they might guide us. We need to do our part, be aware of where we are at, and communicate that.
The stability in our everyday life determines what we can do in therapy. We first have to create a solid life without constant crises before we can start to shake things up by approaching the trauma.
Trauma work means moving like a pendulum between stabilizing and processing. That is why Phase 2 is never only trauma work, week after week, it always swings back and forth between Stabilization, Processing and Integration/Mourning (new stability). When we work with a good trauma therapist they will make sure we are not losing too much stability over exposure work.
Sometimes I see Systems who have worked on change for a while and then took a break from therapy and somehow they found stability within the system that is now set in stone, they settled, and every attempt to change it would inevitably end in a crisis. Theoretically you would solve this with titration, changing things in the tiniest steps possible. The radical idea to go inpatient and chose crisis doesn’t seem very appealing to me. The truth is, I don’t know how to solve this. But I want you to know that you are not alone, this is a thing.
The concept of dialectical pendulation, constantly balancing, a back-and-forth movement, is central in a lot of what we do in trauma therapy and DID SystemWork. If we can internalize the feeling of Balancing as a way of being it will help us in all areas of life.
Read more in
The V-Square for theory
Balancing needs (coming soon)
Somatic Experiencing (coming eventually)
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