I wish I could offer you smart tricks on how to reduce amnesia, but I don’t know any. What I know is boring and takes time. First we try to fill in the gaps in our knowledge through inner communication. Later we practice co-consciousness to avoid having amnesia altogether. The solution for not having […]
DID
Intentional Switching (DID)
Teaming in DID requires the ability to switch on purpose. That way, parts with special abilities can manage situations when that is needed. Maybe a well-oriented child part is remarkably good at holding still and that would be an advantage when we need to get an MRI. That is certainly a better solution than forcing […]
Dissociation that looks like Psychosis
There is a phenomenon that can look like psychosis but it is dissociative in nature and treating it like psychosis won’t do us any good. When we take a close look we will see that it makes perfect sense and that we can solve it with simple SystemWork. It is possible for parts to […]
Cornerstones of the therapeutic relationship
Dr. Karen Treisman writes about the therapeutic relationship: The relationships are the glue and the magic that make the strategies meaningful, purposeful, and therapeutic. This is in line with the sayings ‘Relational trauma requires relational repair’ and ‘Relational repair requires safe hands, thinking minds, and regulated bodies’. Without the relationship to anchor to, the […]
Integrating sexual parts
This post talks about childhood sexual abuse and sexuality and it’s potentially triggering. Take care of your own well-being and stop reading when you notice signs of dissociation or flashbacks. It is hard to talk about sexual parts without offending anyone. I will share with you an integrative approach and I need you […]
The difference between Ego States and dissociative parts
Ego State approaches are becoming more popular. People are reflecting on their own identity and notice that they actually aren’t one whole, they have ‘parts’. After the ‘Inner Child’ trend in the 80s we are experiencing a new trend where people talk about ‘their inner child’ or ‘their inner teenager’ in an Ego State context. […]
Hands technique for advanced DID SystemWork
A versatile yet simple technique for working with parts of a DID system uses our hands to represent different parts or groups of parts. All these exercises start with at least one part choosing a hand and imagining ‘going into’ that hand by moving their awareness there. In most of the advanced exercises 2 parts […]
Dealing with trance logic in dissociative disorders
Trance logic describes logical glitches that can exist when people get hypnotized and enter a trance state. In that state of mind we can accept statements as true even though they deeply contradict each other. We simply don’t notice that they can’t possibly be true at the same time. Nothing is questioned or reality-checked, it […]
Classification of Dissociative Parts using Action Systems
The attempt to describe dissociative parts of the personality most accurately led to the incorporation of the concept of action systems into the theory. Action systems are considered the most basic subsystems of our human behavior. Actions toward the survival of the species, energy management, attachment, caretaking and social interaction, exploration, play, reproduction and […]
Elements of Integration 2: Realization
Realization is an integrative mental action that needs more and a slightly different kind of energy than synthesis. We take our traumatic and dissociated experience out of the fog of ‘not knowing’ or only ‘kind of knowing’ and enter a felt sense of its reality. It means knowing with our knower that bad things happened […]
Elements of Integration 1: Synthesis
Ideas people have about integration are often vague. Some of these ideas are romantic, others scary but usually they include imagery that doesn’t tell us how integration is supposed to work and ends up being inaccurate. That is why we will look into the basic elements of integration and explain the meaning of synthesis, realization, […]
Review Of The Day (advanced DID SystemWork)
There is an exercise that helps us to find the small things we can change to improve our life for the whole system. It is inspired by an ancient meditation technique we learned long ago. You could call it a review of the day or an evening meditation. We sit down with those of the […]