Digital options for networking and advocacy are becoming more important. It is a lot easier to invite a bunch of people from all over the country to a video conference than it is to bring them all together in one place. Add special interests or a niche topic and it starts to become impossible […]
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Epiphany #10: Paradox Lost
What is this? Some would insist it is a vase. Others would swear it is two faces. Neither of them is right. It is both a vase and two faces. It needs the existence of the vase to get two faces. It needs the faces to make a vase. Yet it is […]
Extended Summer Break
This year, we are taking a longer summer break to finish working on our book manuscript. Thank you for your patience. Sign up for our Newsletter to receive a message as soon as there are new posts available. The form is at the very bottom of the page. […]
Epiphany #9: Not Alone
The voice of shame tells us that we are all alone. Nobody else experiences the same things. . Nobody else is wearing a mask all the time and never lets anyone see the real person behind it. Nobody else keeps up the pretense at work and crumbles once the apartment door closes behind them. Nobody […]
Epiphany #8 : The Whole
Recently we posted an exercise that uses attention to move between awareness for the details and the whole. We need the same posture in DID therapy. We tend to get absorbed by single parts, their characteristics, needs, emotions, goals etc and explore every little detail. While that is valuable, it is not how we […]
Epiphany #7: War and Peace
Most of my therapy journey was based on scanning my body permanently, looking for early signs of dissociation, so I could choose the right tools to counter it. I was looking for reasons to act. It is stressful to live like that because it keeps up a certain degree of hypervigilance at all times. I […]
Epiphany #6: The Good
The perception of a reward leads to sympathetic arousal in our nervous system. Similarly to flight/fight (run away/ approach to overcome) energy is released to approach and get the reward. When a reward is overwhelmingly big we start to shut down. Think of people winning the lottery and fainting or hearing they won a prize […]
Epiphany #5: The State of Shame
Our stress responses come with emotions attached. In flight we feel fear, in fight anger. The emotion that belongs to freeze is shame. In freeze we submit to the one stronger than us, an ancient way of creating a social hierarchy. Shame supports that by telling us our place. “The story follows the state“. We […]
Gedankenblitze #5: Der Zustand der Scham
Unsere Stressreaktionen sind mit Emotionen verbunden. In Flight fühlen wir Angst, in Fight Wut. Die Emotion, die zu Freeze gehört, ist Scham. In Freeze unterwerfen wir uns dem, der stärker ist als wir, eine archaische Art eine Hierarchie zu bilden. Scham unterstützt uns dabei, indem sie uns unseren Platz aufzeigt. „Die Gedanken folgen dem Zustand“. […]
Epiphany #4: The Hive
“What is bad for the hive cannot be good for the bee” (Marcus Aurelius) It is an illusion that parts of a DID system can have their own life and not influence each other. We are not different people, we share the same brain, the same body, the same life. We deceive ourself, if we […]
Epiphany # 3: The Diagnosis
Is getting a formal diagnosis important? Yes and no and yes. Yes, because it will show you were to research to gain better understanding of what is going on with you and where to find help. It opens the door for you to find healing. No because it is just a label for your symptoms, […]
Epiphany #2: The Truth
Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true. Just because you refuse to believe something doesn’t make it go away. Just because you can’t remember something doesn’t mean it never happened. And just because you remember something doesn’t mean it is the only thing that happened. Just because someone else believes something it […]