One of the main tasks of therapists in trauma treatment is to be available for the client to express their fears, their needs, their hopes, and their disappointment without them being punished or rejected for it. In a metaphorical sense, the therapist acts as the punching bag that assists in strength building and skill development.
Month: January 2008
Attachment and Trauma: Who’s to Blame?
Often clients chose to isolate themselves because they feel intrinsically bad and responsible for the abuse.This sense of inner badness is the result of the child’s attempt to make meaning out of the abuse. By assigning responsibility for the abuse to their own badness survivors are able to view their parents as good people.
It was just not knowing. A lot had to do with the feeling I had at that time, that it was all my fault. So therefore I didn’t connect with anybody…I isolated myself from my family, because the contact with them always felt is going to cause chaos and pain to other people…when mum died I felt I was to blame (Sue 1/6+7, 2/5).
Transference in DID Treatment
Transference and counter transference are very complex issues in any therapy and volumes have been written about it. Rather than giving an exhausting account of my view on transference I will limit myself to 'A Fuller's Tour' (a NZ expression, the equivalent of 'come and see Europe in 5 days') of transference. Transference issues are a significant contributing factor to DID clients' sense of isolation. They are a dominant feature in relationships between people in general and a cornerstone of DID treatment. The way that processing and working through issues of transference, counter transference, and traumatic transference takes place affects how clients are able to continue their recovery journey. Broadly defined transference is the transferring of an emotion or attitude about a person or significant other from the past onto a person in the present.
Transference in DID Treatment
Transference and counter transference are very complex issues in any therapy and volumes have been written about it. Rather than giving an exhausting account of my view on transference I will limit myself to 'A Fuller's Tour' (a NZ expression, the equivalent of 'come and see Europe in 5 days') of transference. Transference issues are a significant contributing factor to DID clients' sense of isolation. They are a dominant feature in relationships between people in general and a cornerstone of DID treatment. The way that processing and working through issues of transference, counter transference, and traumatic transference takes place affects how clients are able to continue their recovery journey. Broadly defined transference is the transferring of an emotion or attitude about a person or significant other from the past onto a person in the present.
Crisis in DID Treatment
Loneliness and the sense of isolation is a pervasive theme DID clients struggle with during all stages of recovery. When reaching out for therapy it refers to feeling alone, being scared of people, and being surrounded by a lack of understanding. Other people may even be perceived as toxic and dangerous.
I thought if I don’t say anything, if I don’t allow myself to interact with people and be with people, then I am not going to get hurt again (Carol 2/1)
Survivor Mission
Herman (1994) explains how the development of a survivor mission is an important part of trauma resolution. “It offers her (survivor) an alliance with others based on cooperation and shared purpose” (p. 207). The women in this research project were all interested in some ways of helping others. Ideas they had included writing a book, becoming a counsellor, a spiritual guide, a nurse, a social worker, a mother, a volunteer, or a psychologist.
Survivor Mission
Herman (1994) explains how the development of a survivor mission is an important part of trauma resolution. “It offers her (survivor) an alliance with others based on cooperation and shared purpose” (p. 207). The women in this research project were all interested in some ways of helping others. Ideas they had included writing a book, becoming a counsellor, a spiritual guide, a nurse, a social worker, a mother, a volunteer, or a psychologist.
Traumaprocessing
No aspect of one's recovery journey is easy, whether it is the recovery from mental illness, from trauma in general, or from dissociative identity disorder (DID). 'Coming Together', the second stage in the recovery from DID, is no different. The coming together of the different parts of one's personality will come about when the reasons for having to dissociate in the first place are dealt with.
The Impact of Abuse
The trauma of sexual abuse is most harmful to a person’s self-development because it signifies the severing of intersubjective connections with caring others. Honneth (1995b, p. 132) understands sexual abuse as the withholding of recognition through love that deprives a person of “…The successful integration of physical and emotional qualities [which are] subsequently broken up from the outside, thus lastingly destroying the most fundamental form of practical relations-to-self, namely, one’s underlying trust in oneself”.
Goals: What Not To Want
The process of 'Coming Together' was initiated by hope, therapists' emotional support and care and by what clients wanted to get away from. Without having a concept of a Good Life, they were not always able to clearly state what it was that they wanted or needed. Rather than being able to give words to what they wanted, they were motivated in the early stages by what it was that they did not want.
Multiple Voices 