Understanding Trauma and Dissociation download epub

This is an outstanding book for people challenged with trauma and dissociation, including those who are traumatized, their families and their therapists. A caution, though, for anyone with trauma reading this book: Reading about trauma may stir up any buried traumas in the reader. If you don’t have resources and methods for dealing with trauma already, you would do well to read the chapters on dealing with trauma first.

Lynn Mary Karjala shares here an awesome breadth and depth of experience in helping people to sort out the splits that their psyches
develop under severe traumas. She has a gift for explaining complex issues in clear, simple terms that are easy to understand. This then helps the reader to comprehend some of the depths of human suffering, and to see, as well, the wonderfully healing methods Karjala finds effective releasing the traumas and restoring the traumatized person to a normal life.

Karjala is quick to point out that splitting off parts of ourselves, which is labeled by psychotherapists and psychiatrists as ‘dissociation,’ is not something that is pathological, in and of itself. Everyone does this to some degree. Common dissociations you may have experienced might be driving for a period of time ‘on automatic pilot,’ waking up from wherever your mind had wandered and realizing that you have no recollection of driving during that lapse of focus on your driving. Or you may have behaved in uncharacteristic ways, triggered by unknown stresses, and feel that “this behavior really wasn’t like me.”

Dissociation helps people not feel uncomfortable and painful thoughts, feelings, experiences and memories. Karjala points out that these are helpful mechanisms in that they avoid the experiencing of distress and overwhelm. In mild or moderate forms, this is called repression. The memories of the overwhelming experiences are buried outside of conscious awareness, in the unconscious mind.

With more severe trauma, in order to protect themselves even more strongly from their overwhelm, people split off that part of themselves which remembers the traumatic experiences, leaving the dissociated part outside of conscious awareness, in the subconscious mind. The dissociated part may contain various aspects of the personality that become unavailable to the conscious mind.

Dissociated traumatic memories remain frozen in the unconscious mind, retaining all the details and intensity of the original experiences that caused them. Because they are buried, they are not processed and released – as happens with many conscious memories. These buried traumas may become triggered by later life experiences, leading to expressions of fear, anger, sadness and other feelings, without conscious awareness of the source for these intense feelings – which often are completely disproportionate to the current life situations that triggered their expression.

When parts of the personality are dissociated along with the traumatic memories, they sometimes take turns in coming forward to interact with other people. The core part of the personality remains the one who is ultimately in charge, although the various parts may at times take over interacting with others.

Karjala explains the various degrees of expression of dissociation and points readers to the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) that helps assess the severity of a person’s dissociative disorder.

Karjala teaches the use of imagery of a safe house to help people with dissociated parts of themselves to gradually and safely explore and release their buried traumas. Here is a small sample of this imagery:

More or less in the middle of the meadow, I’d like to suggest that you build a house so that the core, and any parts the core invites in, have a comfortable place to stay in when they’re in the Safe Place. It’s a one-story house, with no attic or basement. It’s built on a foundation of granite or bedrock at least 10 or 12 feet thick. There is no back door, and the windows cannot be opened from the outside. When you’re in your house in the Safe Place, you are completely safe, and no one and nothing can come at you unexpectedly. (p. 63)

… you might want to put in a bank vault. You’ve probably seen a bank vault in the movies or on TV or even in real life. It has very thick, strong walls and floor and ceiling, all made of metal. If you open the door and walk inside, what you’ll find is that it has whatever kind of storage system is perfect for you. It may have shelves or drawers or bins or lockboxes, whatever kind of storage works best for you. The vault will hold as much as you need it to hold – it never gets full. What you can do is to take painful thoughts and feelings and memories that you’re not quite ready to work on yet and store them in the vault. This will keep these thoughts and feelings and memories safely contained, because the vault will hold anything that you need it to hold. By using the vault, you’ll also know exactly where these thoughts and feelings and memories are stored when it becomes time to work on them. (p. 64)

In a form of systematic desensitization, she gradually accustoms people to re-experience very mild levels of intensity of their memories and feelings of the traumas so that they can begin to reconnect with the buried, overwhelming feelings. In stepwise fashion, she then guides them to ever greater levels of intensity of re-experiencing the buried traumas. Eventually, they are no longer afraid of these and no longer need to keep them buried.

Energy Psychology methods are also recommended by Karjala for trauma release, such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Seemorg Matrix Therapy. The advantages of these are that they can be used by the person on their own, once the therapist has taught them the methodologies involved. They are available at any time, in any place a person needs them.

This is the best book I’ve seen on ways to help people who have suffered severe trauma.

I would like to add that in my own experience of working with people who have severe trauma, I find WHEE is enormously helpful – as another of the Energy Psychology techniques. Here are a few further ways I have found that people can be helped:

1. It is possible to release ‘meta-anxieties’ and ‘meta-fears,’ which are the anxieties and fears of being overwhelmed by feelings. Once these are released, it is much easier for people to address the buried memories and feelings. (Possible with any EP and with Karjala’s Safe House imagery)
2. In the Healing Room visualization, people can use WHEE (or other EP) to reduce the intensity of the negativity more rapidly than just imagining themselves being in the room – which is a much slower form of releasing negativity.
3. WHEE can be a particularly helpful resource for use in daily life situations that a person finds stressful or triggering because WHEE can be used discretely, without other people becoming aware that a person is practicing a de-stressing technique.
4. WHEE encourages people to build meta-positives. For instance, people can build confidence in competence to deal with traumatic issues. (Possible with any EP and with Karjala’s Safe House imagery)
5. Therapists can release their own secondary trauma with WHEE as soon as they notice it, even during the therapy session – since the tapping can be done discretely.

Don't let the size of this book surprise you. It's concise yet easy to read and understand by those affected by trauma and dissociation. The information on DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) provides insights and tools that could be life changing, (or life saving), for those suffering from this disorder. I can't recommend this book highly enough for anyone who has DID. It is a "go to" resource on identifying,coping and working through your disorder. You're not alone anymore. This is also a gAnyone that wants to know why you act "strange" at times will get the opportunity to read what a person living with a frequently debilitating condition caused by childhood trauma.

Very helpful for me as someone newly diagnosed. While reading it, I had a few 'aha' moments and several times came across areas thinking, "well, that explains why. : ." To have lived so many years in chaos and confusion, with family and friends wandering away because no one understood, I almost feel relieved to have been diagnosed and I am very grateful to have happened upon this book.

Great info, very easy to read and understand. Accessible for pretty much anyone.

the book is right on as far as the characteristics of trauma and dissociation. I work in the mental health field and found this book very helpful.

a book for those new to DID and wanting to get a basic grasp on just some of the theory & therapy behind it. New to working with this type of patient i found it gave me a lot better working knowledge & back ground understanding of why, how, where my patients are coming from. Loved it, thankyou

I now feel a little more normal about my dissociative tendencies and parts, as a singleton. The book seemed a little DID heavy. The entire book was fascinating, but I will need to read it again to further develop my understanding of the roles/relationships of the parts. If you're the cognitive/analytical type (like me), you may have a hard time "buying into" the imaginary "safe place" and "containers," but I intend to give it a try. It would have bee nice to see how "lost memories," as a result of dissociation, relate to the subject matter. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone trying to understand dissociation as it relates to trauma.

Even if you don't treat DID, this book is excellent for treating trauma clients. There's an excellent choice chapter on creating a Safe Place. Best I've ever read and its clinically sound.