Janina Fisher’s Method for “Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors”

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

For years I have been searching for the right method of trauma treatment for me and my clients with complex developmental trauma.  I am, therefore, very excited to have been learning of late, from Janina Fisher’s latest book and from an online course with her, about helping clients overcome the “internal self-alienation” that can result from such ongoing traumatic experiences as childhood neglect or abuse.

Fisher uses the Structural Dissociation model as the basis for her understanding of trauma symptoms.  This model theorizes that, when trauma occurs, the personality splits into a “going on with normal life” portion of the self and trauma-related parts of the personality which are formed as coping mechanisms to deal with overwhelming experiences.  These parts are: fight, flight, freeze, submit and attach.

Clients with traumatic symptoms blend with one part or another at different times and think that they are that part, rather than a larger self that contains all the parts.  Thus, they may be overcome with anger (fight) at one moment and just want to escape (flight) at another moment.  This internal chaos is very confusing and distressing for clients and can also be confusing to therapists!

Using wisdom gleaned from Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model and from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Fisher demonstrates how to help clients “unblend” from their parts by helping them see their parts via the light of mindfulness.  She then helps them get to know and befriend their parts so that the parts (which are stuck back in the age of childhood in which they were formed) can be brought up to date and get what they needed back then from the client’s adult self now.  In this way the personality gradually re-integrates and trauma symptoms subside.

I am particularly excited by this method of trauma treatment because it jibes well with the attachment basis and techniques of Emotion-Focused therapy which I have been using for years and because trauma can be healed without the pain and suffering of re-experiencing traumatic memories.

Book Recommendation for Childhood Trauma Survivors: Not the Price of Admission by Laura S. Brown, Ph.D.

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

On a trip to New York and back, I recently read Laura Brown’s excellent book for survivors of childhood abuse and neglect (including emotional abuse and neglect):  Not the Price of Admission:  Healthy Relationships after Childhood Trauma.  Here is part of a review by Kathy Steele from the back cover of Brown’s book that I think captures the essence of this book well:

“Laura Brown… has given us a book that is delightfully authentic and readable, chock full of humor, honesty, compassion, and–most importantly–realistic hope. How can people who have been terribly hurt by their caretakers in childhood ever learn to trust and love again?  Dr. Brown explores this agonizing question with refreshing clarity, sharing stories that illustrate tough issues and realistic solutions.  She truly gets the impossible dilemma of desperately wanting emotional intimacy, yet being paralyzed by a belief that you are unlovable, and mired in the deep mistrust and  confusion that only profound betrayal can engender.  Dr. Brown offers realistic and compassionate pathways to (re)learn how to take the tough but essential risks of authentic connection with the right kind of people, so you no longer find you have to pay a price for love.”

In particular, Brown explains how to raise or lower the volume of one’s “cheater detectors”, depending on which way they have been miscalibrated as the result of adverse childhood experience, and how to determine which people are and are not trustworthy.  She also explores how to set new boundaries so as not to continue to pay a price for participation in relationships with reliable people who never wanted the survivor to pay such a price in the first place, and end (or not get involved in) relationships with people who are likely to re-traumatize the survivor.

Brown clearly articulates how the predicaments survivors find themselves in came to be and are not their faults, and also how to start taking responsibility for changing them.  Survivors are likely to find this book eye-opening, affirming, useful and empowering.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy with Trauma Survivors

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

In July I went to a wonderful training with ICEEFT-endorsed trainer Kathryn Rheem on working with “those who have endured more than most” in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.  I was eager to attend this training because I have noticed that, not surprisingly, a very high proportion of my couples include at least one trauma survivor, if not two.   I say “not surprisingly” because survivors of relational trauma in childhood (or even in adult relationships that preceded the current one), when triggered, will often momentarily perceive their partners, who are their primary source of safety, as a source of threat.  Once past trauma is cued in this way, trauma survivors feel as if the danger is present now and react defensively with fight, flight, freeze, submit or appease reactions, all of which tend to lead to their partners thinking, feeling and behaving in ways that then lead to further upsetting the trauma survivor.  In other words, in couples where a trauma history is present, emotion emerges quickly and chaotically and communication is scrambled.  No wonder couples in this situation end up feeling so distressed, overwhelmed and confused.

The wonderful news here is that, because Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy ultimately leads to stronger bonding between partners, which produces a deep sense of safety, it can actually go a long way towards healing the aftermath of trauma in the individual partners who have survived so much.  On the way to sharing their feelings of pain, terror, and shame with their partners, trauma survivors are helped, very slowly and carefully, to come to know and process these emotions within themselves.  Thus, both intra-psychic and inter-psychic healing occurs.  The less wonderful news is that, the more trauma partners have collectively survived, the slower the healing process will usually be.  De-escalation of entrenched reactive patterns between the partners will likely take longer, and restructuring and deepening the partner bond will likely take longer as well.

The hard work that trauma survivors do in facing and processing the fears that lie behind and below their defenses takes great courage and requires skilled, well-paced, and attuned support on the part of the therapist and the therapist-supported partner.  Giving up coping strategies that have served us well for decades feels like a crazy thing to do.  And the only reason people who have endured so much already would do so in this context is because their coping strategies are now blocking them from getting at what they long for most–the deep sense of security they can earn when risking with, and being lovingly received by, their adult romantic partners.