I'm not sure how to articulate this, but I have come to understand that when I am working with a plural person, that my client is not the one fronting the body, but my client is the system. Whomever I am currently talking to is one identity among many, so in some sense, the system has dissociated one identity to front the body and talk to me. So in that sense, a dissociation is always occurring. As a singlet myself, I have some understanding of how the dominant culture and the culture of psychotherapy and the culture of the medical model assumes everyone has single identity. It's imbues into our language. For example we often talk about an "individual" rather than a "person." Even IFS assumes everyone has a core self, i.e. there is a single unifying self hidden somewhere. So in my mind, one of the enormous challenges is to name this assumption as an assumption, not a fact. Many decades ago this statement helped me to let go of homophobia tendencies "How dare you assume I am heterosexual?" I'd like to consider this one now: "How dare you assume we have a singular identity?"
Really wonderful post and so appreciated by our system and their past experiences. A therapist we saw years ago who boasted about taking your training told us we needed to stop dissociating and even recommended we take medication… only a couple of sessions into meeting.
It made us scared to try EMDR again. Years later, after lots of safety and stabilization work outside of the mental health system, we finally found someone who can meet us where we are at. Who isn’t afraid of our intensity. And works with clients like us, and isn’t surprised by anything we share.
Reading blog posts like yours along our journey has helped us to instill hope that we can try EMDR again. That we don’t need to be perfectly regulated for it to work. We just needed some more capacity on board, and the right fit of provider.
Fingers crossed as we move forward because we are scared but feel appreciative, grateful and hopeful.
I remember Thomas Zimmerman saying in one of his trainings that "dissociation is your co-therapist" (or something to that effect, I don't want to misquote him). That framing helped me immensely. I'm not afraid of dissociation in the therapy room anymore, because I truly believe its there to help. I share that quote with my clients too, and we work together to recognize dissociation when it shows up, and to honour and work with the wisdom.
This is great! Given that any aspect of memory recall involves some aspect of not being 100% in the present moment, where does one even decide on an arbitrary threshold for what is “bad dissociation” in this context? Also, it’s not like people with dissociative parts have one “non-dissociative” part that does the healing work, so if your goal as a provider is to ensure ”no dissociation”, people fail before they even start haha!
I'm not sure how to articulate this, but I have come to understand that when I am working with a plural person, that my client is not the one fronting the body, but my client is the system. Whomever I am currently talking to is one identity among many, so in some sense, the system has dissociated one identity to front the body and talk to me. So in that sense, a dissociation is always occurring. As a singlet myself, I have some understanding of how the dominant culture and the culture of psychotherapy and the culture of the medical model assumes everyone has single identity. It's imbues into our language. For example we often talk about an "individual" rather than a "person." Even IFS assumes everyone has a core self, i.e. there is a single unifying self hidden somewhere. So in my mind, one of the enormous challenges is to name this assumption as an assumption, not a fact. Many decades ago this statement helped me to let go of homophobia tendencies "How dare you assume I am heterosexual?" I'd like to consider this one now: "How dare you assume we have a singular identity?"
Really wonderful post and so appreciated by our system and their past experiences. A therapist we saw years ago who boasted about taking your training told us we needed to stop dissociating and even recommended we take medication… only a couple of sessions into meeting.
It made us scared to try EMDR again. Years later, after lots of safety and stabilization work outside of the mental health system, we finally found someone who can meet us where we are at. Who isn’t afraid of our intensity. And works with clients like us, and isn’t surprised by anything we share.
Reading blog posts like yours along our journey has helped us to instill hope that we can try EMDR again. That we don’t need to be perfectly regulated for it to work. We just needed some more capacity on board, and the right fit of provider.
Fingers crossed as we move forward because we are scared but feel appreciative, grateful and hopeful.
I remember Thomas Zimmerman saying in one of his trainings that "dissociation is your co-therapist" (or something to that effect, I don't want to misquote him). That framing helped me immensely. I'm not afraid of dissociation in the therapy room anymore, because I truly believe its there to help. I share that quote with my clients too, and we work together to recognize dissociation when it shows up, and to honour and work with the wisdom.
This is great! Given that any aspect of memory recall involves some aspect of not being 100% in the present moment, where does one even decide on an arbitrary threshold for what is “bad dissociation” in this context? Also, it’s not like people with dissociative parts have one “non-dissociative” part that does the healing work, so if your goal as a provider is to ensure ”no dissociation”, people fail before they even start haha!
Thank you for this!
Thank you, Dr Jamie.
Thank you for this