[Disclaimer: This article is based on personal experience with a bunch of different but similar rescripting techniques. For DID therapy, rescripting in IFS barely differs from rescripting with IRRT or similar techniques because all of them have to be adapted. Once they are adapted we can notice two different patterns for inner processes instead of just one. Both of them are needed for successful DID therapy. But depending on the pattern we are working with, we should have different expectations of how rescripting can serve us. This is not one of our super scientific articles that are close to textbooks. It is more of a meta perspective that we personally consider useful insight]
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Basic steps of rescripting across techniques:
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We pick a part we want to help and a scene the part is stuck in.
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We imagine some kind of rescue team (could be other parts, could be imaginary helpers)
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The team moves into the scene, changes it in a way that addresses the main stressor of the scene and removes the part from the scene.
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The part is brought to a safe place to heal, experience care and to recover from harm.
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In ego state work, where we deal with less integrated parts of the personality or maybe fragments, this might be enough to integrate the part and find peace. When we use this approach for DID, it is just one step in a longer, more complex process. It will not be the first time or the last time that we worked with that part and they usually don’t just integrate because of an intervention like this. The integrative steps that are needed are always the same but depending on the order we take them in, rescripting takes on a different function and the outcome will be different. We will look at the different order of steps to help you to understand what to expect from each strategy.
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The Rescue Strategy
This pattern is used when we fail in our attempts to help a dissociative part with grounding. They are stuck in a trauma scene and stay mostly unaware of the world today. Maybe they sometimes pick up a detail about the world today but those are usually things that fit into the reality they are stuck in. It also makes sense to use this when a part experiences a constant loop where they move from one memory to the next without being able to stay grounded for long.
In this case we treat the dissociated part as the part that will be rescued. They don’t have to play an active role. Their job is to experience being rescued from the situation they are stuck in. Participating in changing anything about the scene is optional and the rescue team is closely focused on the part and their needs in that situation. Stressors are mainly addressed to create free passage for the team to leave with the part. There is a very high focus on caring for the part after they were rescued. That usually includes medical care, clean clothes, warm contact, caring for physical needs etc.
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The part we are rescuing will usually be in an extreme state of dysregulation, pain or attachment cry. They might even overwhelm us when we are trying to help. To prepare for that, we need to work on our own ability to regulate ourselves in the face of dysregulation. We need techniques to distance ourselves from the flooding that might come from the other part and we need really good grounding skills. The goal is for the rescuers not to blend with the trauma part. It is also wise to reach out to the part, to explain the plan and to seek consent. Parts who are not ready to leave a situation because of difficult relational dynamics with the abuser or certain beliefs might need some extra steps before they can allow us to intervene. The things we need to practice beforehand are mostly stabilization tools for the adult parts and this approach demands very little from the traumatized part. That means that it needs comparatively little preparation and a lot of after-care for them.
The safe place where we take a part to heal functions as a ‘halfway’ house. It creates a space between the old experience and the world today. Dissociative parts who are more complex and interested in life might not want to stay there forever. Integrating them into our system, daily life and current reality can be a lot of work. The scene we rescued them from might not be their only trauma memory that gets triggered. So we teach them all the basics: Grounding, flashback management, reality-checks, separating past from present etc. And it is wise to introduce their own Safe Place, a form of Containment and a personal helper. We offer a full guide on integrating ‘new’ parts where you can check out the useful steps.
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A rescue mission might not be enough to resolve the trauma for this part. There is more to process than the fact that they are safe today. We often learn trauma-based lessons about ourselves, other people, the world and our own place in it; things we need to adapt to the new reality today. There are usually feelings about the trauma situation and relational dynamics with the abusers that need to be addressed to make sense of them. Trauma is not fully processed after a rescue mission, we just started processing it by making sure we at least reach some presentification. Maybe we get a bit of synthesis, where we start to see how the scene fits together. Other parts will probably still feel like the scene had nothing to do with them personally or the other part has nothing to do with their own history. Realization and personification are not always accomplished within this setting. We need to be aware that we probably have to return to at least some elements of the past trauma scene to integrate the experience fully. Talking through it with a therapist can be enough to process what is left. So, in a way, a rescue mission starts a longer process of integration.
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The Closure Strategy
There is a different way to work with parts where we improve our communication, connection and cooperation first. We team up with them to learn grounding, flashback management, reality-checks, separating past from present… We build their own Space with them, figure out how they can contain memory, give them supportive helpers… All the same steps, just a different order. We integrate them into our life and system as much as possible while containing their memory for later. And eventually, we reach a point where they are pretty much stabilized. They joined the team, found a new home in the present and things are much better for them. Except… that the flashbacks haven’t gone away. They still get triggered and then they fall back into the trauma scene. They are competent to get grounded again, maybe in cooperation with other parts, but it simply sucks to keep re-expericning the same things and not being able to leave that behind.
So we face the scene with them. But the inner stance is different. The part is taking a role within the rescue team itself. Think of it as a dissociative part being mostly grounded but a fragment of them is stuck in the trauma scene and that fragment needs rescuing, not the whole part. That means that the main role of the part is putting together the pieces of the scene (proper synthesis) from a point of view that is outside the scene, observing and describing it. They do not enter a first person experience of getting traumatized, they don’t blend with their trauma fragment. Their role is either that of a rescuer or that of a witness of a rescue mission. That depends on their ability to stay grounded when getting in contact with the scene. Staying outside with someone who supports them and adding their knowledge of the scene and the needs of the fragment is enough.
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The steps of the process stay the same. A rescue team moves into the scene to rescue the fragment, get it out and then it is brought to a different place to experience care. There is a bigger focus on changing the stressors though. For some people it seems super important to disable the abuser and to me that seems to make more sense in a rescue pattern where they prevent a swift exit. It can be useful if there is a lingering sense of helplessness that was not resolved through contact with the world today. Within this strategy I prefer to focus on changing the triggers that are within the scene and anything that has a specific meaning to the traumatized part. It can be things that symbolize the message the part learned within the scene or the things that kept them from receiving help, maybe it is something that they have wanted to do the whole time but couldn’t or there is a way to expose the abusers. In the first version, we try to leave the scene as fast as possible, an in-and-out kind of mission. In this version, we take a look around to see if we notice anything that needs changing. The part is not currently re-experiencing anything so there is no need to panic. They are just observing the scene and how we change it or they joined us in changing it. This is an incredibly effective way to resolve triggers, old lessons or old emotions. Ts should not hurry this step. It is an excellent chance for the team of parts who are involved to reach realization and personification. The potential for integrative actions to happen while we are making our changes is big. In my humble opinion and experience, bigger than with other techniques for trauma confrontation.
After-care looks different here. We offer the same kind of safe space for recovery for the part but it is more like a space to process the integration of the trauma memory. There will be more grief involved and less raw pain. If things go well, they might be tired but they also feel a lot better already because of important realizations about beliefs or emotions. The relief can be instant. Most of the inner work was done before the intervention, so there is little work left. These steps end the long process of integration for this part and open up new options of fusion.
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What to use, what to expect
Your therapist should be competent to decide which version to use for specific parts. It is rare that I meet therapists who are aware that there even is a difference… they usually got trained in one version or the other. Both approaches will be needed in DID therapy because some parts are too stuck for stabilization and some just need proper memory processing to move on.
We need to check who we are trying to work with. Are they oriented in daily life today? Do they have regulation skills? At which point are the stuck? Is it early on in stabilization or much later? When we worked on stabilization, did we stabilize an adult part only or did we include this part? Do they have memory loops where they cannot step out of the memory, even when they receive help? Whenever a part is unable to distance themselves from the memory, a rescue pattern is more useful for them. The moment they cannot maintain or regain an outside perspective when looking at the memory, we need a quick job. There is no ‘right’ approach, just one that meets the part where they are at. All the work needs to be done, eventually. But the order of the steps matters because it changes the timing of integrative processes. The majority of it can happen after a rescue mission or it can happen before and within the closure mission itself.
Our T might tell us that they will ‘process trauma’ with us and then lead us through a rescue mission and we need to be aware that this is not going to be the end of our process with this part, it is the beginning. The intervention that makes all the other work possible. And it is fair to acknowledge that after a closure mission, we might experience a disintegration of dissociative barriers and natural blending. Integrating trauma will have an impact on the structure of the system in a way that goes beyond what we could reach through stabilization alone. These are tremendously different outcomes, depending on when in the process the intervention is used.
Rescripting trauma scenes is a relatively gentle, versatile and important tool in DID therapy. It can be woven into the stabilization phase or represent classic trauma processing. The context it is used in makes a difference in the steps that you will take to integrate the part and the memory. All the steps are needed, but the order in which we stabilize parts will differ.
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Typical mistakes therapist make – For therapist
I am aware that a lot of therapists read this blog to learn more about DID therapy. So I have to assume that I have permission to address them directly and point out problems from the perspective of an experienced patient. These are issues that I have noticed in the past:
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Ts are sometimes unaware if they are planning a rescue mission or a closure mission. Rescripting isn’t usually taught within this framework. One of the reason for that is that training for a technique rarely includes adaptions for DID processes.
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Ts sometimes don’t check if they are working with a part that is able to observe or one that will slip into experiencing and then they are surprised about a first-person report. Describing the scene as ‘they’/’he/she’/’we’ is within reason, once language slips into ‘I’ it might not be an observation any longer and it needs a check-in to make sure where the patient is at.
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Ts sometimes don’t check and keep in mind that there might be more than one part in this scene. It will not always be obvious beforehand but plans need to be flexible enough to rescue or manage more than one part.
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T’s sometimes fail to ask parts if they comply with the intervention. Some parts refuse to be rescued. In other cases there might be parts who are scared of the consequences of rescuing the trauma part and they might sabotage the intervention. It needs permission.
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Ts sometimes push patient to do unnecessary things within the scenes because their training in the technique tells them so. Nobody should be forced to disarm an abuser when the important focus of the scene is somewhere else. It is not rare that the abuser is not the main trigger in a situation or draws attention away from the part who needs something different.
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Ts sometimes mess up the pacing of a scene. Maybe they try to rush the patient to leave when more changes to the scene are necessary. Sometimes they don’t realize a patient got stuck in trauma feelings of freezing in place and it needs more guidance to be able to leave.
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Ts sometimes run out of time, so they cut the end of the process, the care, short. Especially in a rescue pattern it is absolutely crucial to do this thoroughly because it is about as important as the rescue itself. The process should be paced accordingly. When a session is divided in thirds as usual (preparation, processing, stabilizing) then the processing needs to be divided too (repeat the plan for everyone and establish stable positions and support, rescue and change, exit and care). A closure mission needs more time for change and a bit less for care, but in a rescue mission, this too should be done in thirds.
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Ts sometimes don’t talk through the whole plan first to make sure that there is no resistance or gaps. A plan should clarify who is on the team, who is observing or supporting parts, who is being rescued from what kind of scene with what kind of setting or people, how to enter and exit the scene, how to move a part from the scene to the safe space, what the safe space looks like and how it can meet the needs of the part and who will take care of them there. Sometimes things get stuck because a patient just can’t come up with a spontaneous idea of how to get to the safe space. Patients who are experienced with the technique might not always need a complete plan because some of the steps are already established.
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Ts sometimes don’t treat plans with enough flexibility. New elements might spontaneously show up that need to be treated differently. Plans regularly fall apart and that is even a good sign because it means that we are working closely with what is really there. Nobody has a textbook case example inside of them. It is necessary to work with whatever comes up, even if that means changing a plan completely to find a different resolution. Those flexible solutions are the most effective ones because now they really fit our needs instead of just following empty steps.
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Ts sometimes learned a rescripting technique in the context of helping less integrated parts or integrating fragments and they believe that all the work is done if they work through a scene. They might not be aware that dissociative parts can remain structurally dissociated even when they are not currently stuck in a trauma scene. They might be ready to end work when it is only just beginning or get frustrated because the technique didn’t work as they expected.
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Ts sometimes only learn a rescripting technique without getting other trauma training. This is a tool that needs to be integrated into a broader treatment plan. It is not enough to know how to use this one tool to master the whole process. Knowing a rescripting technique doesn’t make anyone a trauma therapist.
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