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Three Kinds of “Freeze” Response
If you have been reading much about PTSD or trauma, you have probably come across the term: Fight, Flight, Freeze (well, there’s a 4th F, Fawn and I’ll talk about that at another time.) When we’re going along with our lives and all of the sudden something happens, like we’re taking a walk in the woods and we see motion in the leaves and think, “SNAKE” before we actually enter fight or flight or back to enjoyment because you realize it’s just a little black snake, innocuous. There is actually a moment of “freeze” that we go through – things tense up and our body revs up getting ready to…
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Another supportive site for those with DID
Another fine resource who supports not just clients but those professionals who want to gain more inforation about how to support this uniqe set of of surivors is: https://www.aninfinitemind.com/ Z :https://www.aninfinitemind.com
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Beauty after Bruises
Beauty after Ashes offers information, financial aid and the ability to support the community struggling with complex PTSD, dissociative disorders and DID. DID stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder. It was previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. If people know about it, they generally think of things like “Sybil” or “The Three Faces of Eve.” Those depictions of DID are not quite like what it looks like in real life. A number of people living with DID have had successful careers, are wonderful parents and partners. They bring an incredible amount of resiliency because they have survived the unsurvivable. Generally, this is a disorder that occurs because of early, pervasive neglect…
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Information about the “Unspeakable” Dissociative and DID disorders.
A wonderful webinar was offered to the community – both for survivors, those who care for them and professionals who want to better know who to work with this population. So, I’m going to post some links.
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Did you know this about “grounding” exercises?
I found some research and articles that talked about how all grounding exercises are not good for all clients. For some people, they have spent most of their lives “out” of their bodies, experiencing themselves as “unembodied.” So grounding exercises that ask clients to do things like body scans or monitor their breathing may find themselves activated. For people struggling with being in their body, I often suggest other types of grounding exercises that have clients focus on outward objects. Like 5,4,3,2,1 – notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can smell. The body…
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Addiction, Anxiety, attachment, Coping Skills, Depression, DID, Dissociation, Mindfulness, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Somatic, Stillbirth, Trauma
What does “bottom up processing” mean?
A lot of effective therapy is considered “top down.” As in we talk, using our brain, cognitive work. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a tried and true and effective method for therapy. I happen to use “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: ACT ( pronounced like the work “act”) to do this cognitive work. But we know from research (in fact the more research that is done, the more it confirms this fact) that trauma memories are stored quite differently than regular memories. Trauma memories when re-experienced can feel here and now, and unending. Often times, they are experienced as “emotional flashbacks.” That is a feeling that has no words or explanation of…