August 21, 2025 • 22 mins
Dr. Graham Taylor—clinical psychologist, educator, and founder of The Taylor Study Method—brings 25+ years of wisdom and warmth to his work in Honolulu.
Dr. Lawrie Ignacio, also based in Honolulu, blends clinical expertise with a rich academic background in philosophy and literature, specializing in couples and trauma therapy.
And Dr. Janina Fisher—international trauma expert, former Harvard instructor, and creator of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST)—continues to shape the field with her groundbreaking work and publications.
In This Episode:
You can learn more about what I do here:The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
Dr. Lawrie Ignacio, also based in Honolulu, blends clinical expertise with a rich academic background in philosophy and literature, specializing in couples and trauma therapy.
And Dr. Janina Fisher—international trauma expert, former Harvard instructor, and creator of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST)—continues to shape the field with her groundbreaking work and publications.
In This Episode:
- https://www.triadhq.com/behavioral-health-today
- https://www.hellotriad.com
- https://twitter.com/BHT_Podcast
- https://selfmeaningbasedtherapy.com/about
- https://janinafisher.com/
You can learn more about what I do here:The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the special guest host series of The Trauma
Therapist podcast, where I'm going to be handing over to
mic to some incredible guest hosts. In each episode, you'll
hear fresh perspectives and unique insights to inform and inspire you,
all the while keeping the heart of this podcast alive.
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Project.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm doctor Graham Taylor and this is my colleague, doctor
Lori Ignacio. Hello, Doctor Guy McPherson has kindly invited us
to guest host.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
On his impressive and very well respected podcast.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
We're so excited today to have as our guest doctor
Janina Fisher.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
Janina, it's so nice to have you with us.
Speaker 6 (00:39):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
As we start, if you would share with us how
you came to develop your model and method of working
with trauma.
Speaker 6 (00:49):
Well, you know, back when I started in the trauma
field in the Age of the Dinosaurs, it was back
in the nineteen nine ninety one, and we didn't know
anything about trauma. It's very sad to look back. I mean,
the good news was that it had been identified and
(01:13):
things like childhood sexual abuse which had never been recognized
as traumatic. Strange as that sounds was finally recognized as traumatic,
but we hadn't a clue how to treat it other
than to get people to talk about what happened to them.
And that wasn't working so well because when they talked
(01:36):
about what happened to them, they became suicidal, self destructive, overwhelmed,
a shamed. They didn't feel liberated, they felt ashamed. So
in the old days, we were just experimenting. Anything that worked,
we would say, okay, that's trauma treatment. And then over
(02:00):
the years the field developed more and more sophistication. EMDR
came along and helped a lot of people whom we
couldn't help before. You know, the sematic approaches, sensory motorcycle
therapy and sematic experiencing added a whole new group of
(02:24):
clients we could help. But still there was and still
is a group of clients that we are not so
successful with or they're not so successful with our methods,
and usually they get very stigmatizing diagnoses like borderline and
(02:51):
so they get relegated to the difficult client personality disorder
group when they're trauma survivors. So I started very early
on there were two things I had in mind. One
was we have to be able to help that group,
(03:12):
not just the majority, but all trauma survivors. And I
also had this very crazy idea that I didn't tell
anybody because I thought they will think I'm nuts. I
thought trauma treatment shouldn't have to hurt so much. It's
(03:33):
just not right that people who have suffered should have
to suffer all over again. There is something wrong with that,
and we have to look for ways of treating trauma
that don't hurt so much. But again, I didn't tell
anybody for years and years until I developed enough of
(03:56):
a reputation that I could say crazy things. People might
not believe it, but they would at least listen.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
That's really good. I love the idea of having a
capassionate approach to something in someone's life that more times
than not they had nothing to be able not to
do with it, but to be able to control around it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And it's painful enough to have lived it, let alone,
to have to go back and rehab yourself out of.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
It, right to re experience it all over again. I mean,
we would never imagine a medical a medical issue you
go in with an injury and they injure you again
as a way of treating you, we would say this
is totally crazy and unethical, that's right, but that's.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, we know that.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
In your approach, Junina, you incorporate your structural association model
as part of a MAP as part of your trauma
informed stabilization treatment you refer to as TIST, which works
with the living legacy of one's trauma and more specifically
the emotional and the somatic memories held by the younger
(05:09):
parts of the person within within theirselves, their deeper parts
of themselves, and they get re experienced in the here
and now in their lives. Show more about it with us.
Would you about to TIST.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
A pros that you use yet? I mean I was
very and you know when we were dipping into every
toolbox we could find. One of the toolboxes I discovered
in nineteen ninety six was internal family systems. So I
started to teach myself. There were no trainings in those days,
(05:42):
so I just taught myself. Ifs from they booked The
Mosaic Mind, and it really made a difference for people
clients who were phobic of the body. You could not
ask them to notice the body. They were willing to
notice parts that was not so scary. And so when
(06:10):
I realized that the somatic approaches were not working for
people who were body phobic, I started using part instead
of body, and I was amazed at how people responded.
And then, because internal family systems isn't a trauma model,
(06:31):
it's a psychotherapy model used a lot in trauma work,
but it wasn't designed specifically for trauma, I started creating
my own trauma informed parts approach, which incorporates a lot
of ideas from ifs, ideas, from sensory, motor psychotherapy, hypnosis,
(06:55):
you know, anything that works, and clients really responded to it.
I think in part because the structural dissociation model as
a theoretical foundation is focused not on what happened, but
(07:17):
on how individuals survived it, and it includes. One of
the most important concepts it includes is that it is
normal and natural to split or to fragment under traumatic
conditions because we have a brain that's physiologically split, and
(07:43):
so it's very easy for the brain to compartmentalize. And
the other piece. Two other pieces of this theory I
think are particularly helpful is that we all have an
in state to carry on in the face of trauma, right,
(08:05):
we don't just we don't just experience it. We pick
ourselves up and we go on. And our clients are
poster children for this because they've picked them up selves
up over and over and over and over again, and
they've kept on. They've kept on going, but feeling that
(08:32):
the keeping ongoing is a false self Right, I'm pretending
as opposed to, oh my god, I am actually putting
one foot in front of the other even though I
feel like I'm going to fall apart. So the structural
dissociation really emphasizes that we have two instincts and they're split.
(08:59):
One is to survive in the sense of fighting, fleeing, submitting,
crying for help, and the other is to carry on.
And so they are are the two main parts of
the personality. And then the other very important concept in
(09:24):
tists and it should be in trauma treatment, is that
in traumatic environments there is danger every single day.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
Right.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
There might be X, Y and Z events, but they're
just as scary on the days that nothing happens, because
the threat of what's going to happen is there every
minute of every day. So our clients come from traumatic
environments and their minds and bodies are really wired to
(10:01):
expect the next assault, the next betrayal, the next abandonment.
And so this structural dissociation theory speaks to that because
it says we develop parts that are driven by the
(10:21):
survival defense responses, and they're not focusing on what did happen,
They're focusing on what the sense is about to happen.
And so our clients, carrying on as they do, get
triggered and the parts assume that the worst is going
(10:45):
to happen. And right just as the parts assume all
the things that are so challenging for trauma survivors, you know,
it must have been my fault. Is the belief of
a bit part. I should have fought back, is the
belief of a fight part. I'm worthless is the belief
(11:11):
of a subid part. I will be abandoned, I'll never
be loved, is the belief of a cry for help part.
And so so really, I think everybody, every trauma survivor
struggles with those parts. They don't have to have dissociative
(11:33):
identity disorder, but the mind is fragmented because that was
the best way of surviving, and that is really so
what's the word. It's reassuring for trauma survivors. Oh, I'm
not crazy. I have parts, but it doesn't mean I'm nuts.
(11:57):
It means that I've found a way to survive. Yeah,
and that's a different story.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We talk about the brilliance that come with that will
to live and survive and to thrive even past it,
and also the brilliance of even in its fragmentation, Right,
there's there's incredible brilliance there to survive, to make it through.
Speaker 7 (12:27):
Exactly what you both are talking about here is you're
you're you do such a beautiful job. And I've listened
to other presentations that you've done, and you do such
a nice job of kind of deep pathologizing what this is,
what what what once response to trauma is, And it's
actually a strength based set of steps that they.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Took to survive their surroundings.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
In a way that you're describing, it was.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Brilliant the way you found a way through that. And
maybe it's causing problems now and maybe not necessarily in
the same way that it was then, and maybe we
get to start talking about the different parts and heal them.
But I love the fact that it's conveyed in a
way where someone gets to own it, almost kind of
in a way that says I did a good job, didn't.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
I, And to really begin to accept that I wasn't
I wasn't a fraudulent I wasn't a fake person. I
was a person trying to survive in spite of parts
that were constantly threatened by everything in a normal life.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Janine, I'm wondering, if you can speak briefly to for
those that go through how does it either heal trauma
or heal the legacy of trauma?
Speaker 4 (13:51):
What can they expect post I guess.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
Treatment, Well, it defends a lot on the person, as
you would guess. You know, there are some people who
just do a couple of sessions and immediately it's I
was watching a video of such a client just earlier today,
(14:15):
and it was kind of amazing because she immediately felt
a tremendous warmth and kind of loving compassion toward her
little part. And so it was. It went very quickly,
(14:35):
and my guess is was a single session. So I
don't know what happened next, but I would guess that
she had significant relief and a whole different way of
relating to herself and then I have you know, I
have clients who have struggled for years even using TISS
(15:00):
because they have so many parts they experience. Literally, I
have clients who experienced hundreds of acts of abuse, and
can you imagine processing all those events? You know, I
think people couldn't get through a treatment that involved processing
(15:23):
hundreds of events. So the way we heal trauma entisst
is through the development of a secure attachment relationship to
the parts, so and a take. That also can take
(15:44):
time because many clients have parts who are very hostile
to vulnerability and vulnerability parts because their vulnerability was exploited. Right,
that's a reaction. And so sometimes I have clients who
(16:07):
fight compassion for their parts because it's associated with weakness. Right.
You don't survive trauma by being compassionate because it makes
you too soft. And so it can take a while
(16:28):
to build the compassion for the part. But the wonderful
thing is it doesn't hurt. I mean, obviously there are
moments when there are intense feelings, but because the treatment
is about meeting those intense feelings with compassion and validation,
(16:56):
it's a really different experience. I'm a big fan of
Bruce Ecker. Do you know his work. It's all based
around this. It's called memory reconsolidation, and it's based around
this idea that what we need to heal the past
(17:16):
is to have experiences that directly disconfirm the past. And
so it's not about talking about it, it's not about events.
It's about a felt experience that contradicts the past, because
(17:37):
that felt experience could never have happened. So when my
clients take a young wounded part under their wing and
they feel warmth and they feel empathy for that part,
(17:59):
it's an experiences that disconfirms the past because you know,
in TIS, there's a lot of seeing the child, listening
to the child, and all of those are things that
disconfirm the past because these are clients who were never
listened to as children. They were never seen, never acknowledged,
(18:23):
never validated, never comforted. And so all of those experiences
resolve the past, not by reliving it, but by contradicting it.
And it's so cool, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So those corrective almost like.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
A corrective emotional experience, is an opportunity to kind of
change the paradigm in a way. That challenge is an
old one, that they've been functioning under and not just
seeing that well, look what I survived, but also realizing
maybe the thoughts and the beliefs and some of the
protective mechanisms once upon a time to work, but they're
not necessary or real, right.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
And the wonderful thing is they don't have to They
don't have to have that that cognition. They have to
feel it. That's the Bruce Ecker idea that you can
talk about the world now being different, but unless you
(19:24):
feel it, it doesn't it doesn't land.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah, I'm thinking of Leslie Greenberg.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
I think he said you have to feel it to
heal it, right, that idea, right, the experience of.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
That, right, And he's a parts guy too.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
And I love it that the vehicle by which to
heal is compassion and care and love, not hurt having
to in the name of you know, healing, to retail
stories and hurt again, that you just bypassing that altogether.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
The thing that's a little challenging is as I can't
say to my clients, to heal, you have to love
your parts, because they're going to say, no way, right,
there's no way you're going to ever get me to
love these parts. I hate them, I'm ashamed of them,
(20:23):
blah blah blah. So I keep that my little secret.
I just kind of lead them, lead them to it
because which I think is true in human life, because
you can't prescribe love, right, You've got to feel it.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Yes, I love that.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Those are great things.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
You know, what a what a wonderful approach you've created,
and it's compassionate, it's very personal and what a what
a what a wonderful experience someone has to go through
this with you, with others that are trained in this area.
We would love to have others following listening to the
day's show to be able to follow up with you,
(21:06):
your work.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Any trainings you may be doing. What's the best way
for them to follow you?
Speaker 6 (21:12):
Probably so they can follow they can visit my website
and then check in there, LinkedIn probably, LinkedIn Instagram, they
can follow me probably I would say best on Instagram
or LinkedIn. And we've just we have two hundred now
(21:38):
therapists certified in tests from around the world. Because our
online training is very international, people from all all over
the world join.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
Congratulations, what thank you, It's been great to have you
with us today and you're a wonderful guest and thanks
for all you're doing in the field.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
Yes, well, thank you guys. It's such a pleasure to
talk with you.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It's very mutual.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
Thank you guys.
Welcome to the special guest host series of The Trauma
Therapist podcast, where I'm going to be handing over to
mic to some incredible guest hosts. In each episode, you'll
hear fresh perspectives and unique insights to inform and inspire you,
all the while keeping the heart of this podcast alive.
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Project.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm doctor Graham Taylor and this is my colleague, doctor
Lori Ignacio. Hello, Doctor Guy McPherson has kindly invited us
to guest host.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
On his impressive and very well respected podcast.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
We're so excited today to have as our guest doctor
Janina Fisher.
Speaker 5 (00:36):
Janina, it's so nice to have you with us.
Speaker 6 (00:39):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
As we start, if you would share with us how
you came to develop your model and method of working
with trauma.
Speaker 6 (00:49):
Well, you know, back when I started in the trauma
field in the Age of the Dinosaurs, it was back
in the nineteen nine ninety one, and we didn't know
anything about trauma. It's very sad to look back. I mean,
the good news was that it had been identified and
(01:13):
things like childhood sexual abuse which had never been recognized
as traumatic. Strange as that sounds was finally recognized as traumatic,
but we hadn't a clue how to treat it other
than to get people to talk about what happened to them.
And that wasn't working so well because when they talked
(01:36):
about what happened to them, they became suicidal, self destructive, overwhelmed,
a shamed. They didn't feel liberated, they felt ashamed. So
in the old days, we were just experimenting. Anything that worked,
we would say, okay, that's trauma treatment. And then over
(02:00):
the years the field developed more and more sophistication. EMDR
came along and helped a lot of people whom we
couldn't help before. You know, the sematic approaches, sensory motorcycle
therapy and sematic experiencing added a whole new group of
(02:24):
clients we could help. But still there was and still
is a group of clients that we are not so
successful with or they're not so successful with our methods,
and usually they get very stigmatizing diagnoses like borderline and
(02:51):
so they get relegated to the difficult client personality disorder
group when they're trauma survivors. So I started very early
on there were two things I had in mind. One
was we have to be able to help that group,
(03:12):
not just the majority, but all trauma survivors. And I
also had this very crazy idea that I didn't tell
anybody because I thought they will think I'm nuts. I
thought trauma treatment shouldn't have to hurt so much. It's
(03:33):
just not right that people who have suffered should have
to suffer all over again. There is something wrong with that,
and we have to look for ways of treating trauma
that don't hurt so much. But again, I didn't tell
anybody for years and years until I developed enough of
(03:56):
a reputation that I could say crazy things. People might
not believe it, but they would at least listen.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
That's really good. I love the idea of having a
capassionate approach to something in someone's life that more times
than not they had nothing to be able not to
do with it, but to be able to control around it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And it's painful enough to have lived it, let alone,
to have to go back and rehab yourself out of.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
It, right to re experience it all over again. I mean,
we would never imagine a medical a medical issue you
go in with an injury and they injure you again
as a way of treating you, we would say this
is totally crazy and unethical, that's right, but that's.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, we know that.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
In your approach, Junina, you incorporate your structural association model
as part of a MAP as part of your trauma
informed stabilization treatment you refer to as TIST, which works
with the living legacy of one's trauma and more specifically
the emotional and the somatic memories held by the younger
(05:09):
parts of the person within within theirselves, their deeper parts
of themselves, and they get re experienced in the here
and now in their lives. Show more about it with us.
Would you about to TIST.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
A pros that you use yet? I mean I was
very and you know when we were dipping into every
toolbox we could find. One of the toolboxes I discovered
in nineteen ninety six was internal family systems. So I
started to teach myself. There were no trainings in those days,
(05:42):
so I just taught myself. Ifs from they booked The
Mosaic Mind, and it really made a difference for people
clients who were phobic of the body. You could not
ask them to notice the body. They were willing to
notice parts that was not so scary. And so when
(06:10):
I realized that the somatic approaches were not working for
people who were body phobic, I started using part instead
of body, and I was amazed at how people responded.
And then, because internal family systems isn't a trauma model,
(06:31):
it's a psychotherapy model used a lot in trauma work,
but it wasn't designed specifically for trauma, I started creating
my own trauma informed parts approach, which incorporates a lot
of ideas from ifs, ideas, from sensory, motor psychotherapy, hypnosis,
(06:55):
you know, anything that works, and clients really responded to it.
I think in part because the structural dissociation model as
a theoretical foundation is focused not on what happened, but
(07:17):
on how individuals survived it, and it includes. One of
the most important concepts it includes is that it is
normal and natural to split or to fragment under traumatic
conditions because we have a brain that's physiologically split, and
(07:43):
so it's very easy for the brain to compartmentalize. And
the other piece. Two other pieces of this theory I
think are particularly helpful is that we all have an
in state to carry on in the face of trauma, right,
(08:05):
we don't just we don't just experience it. We pick
ourselves up and we go on. And our clients are
poster children for this because they've picked them up selves
up over and over and over and over again, and
they've kept on. They've kept on going, but feeling that
(08:32):
the keeping ongoing is a false self Right, I'm pretending
as opposed to, oh my god, I am actually putting
one foot in front of the other even though I
feel like I'm going to fall apart. So the structural
dissociation really emphasizes that we have two instincts and they're split.
(08:59):
One is to survive in the sense of fighting, fleeing, submitting,
crying for help, and the other is to carry on.
And so they are are the two main parts of
the personality. And then the other very important concept in
(09:24):
tists and it should be in trauma treatment, is that
in traumatic environments there is danger every single day.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
Right.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
There might be X, Y and Z events, but they're
just as scary on the days that nothing happens, because
the threat of what's going to happen is there every
minute of every day. So our clients come from traumatic
environments and their minds and bodies are really wired to
(10:01):
expect the next assault, the next betrayal, the next abandonment.
And so this structural dissociation theory speaks to that because
it says we develop parts that are driven by the
(10:21):
survival defense responses, and they're not focusing on what did happen,
They're focusing on what the sense is about to happen.
And so our clients, carrying on as they do, get
triggered and the parts assume that the worst is going
(10:45):
to happen. And right just as the parts assume all
the things that are so challenging for trauma survivors, you know,
it must have been my fault. Is the belief of
a bit part. I should have fought back, is the
belief of a fight part. I'm worthless is the belief
(11:11):
of a subid part. I will be abandoned, I'll never
be loved, is the belief of a cry for help part.
And so so really, I think everybody, every trauma survivor
struggles with those parts. They don't have to have dissociative
(11:33):
identity disorder, but the mind is fragmented because that was
the best way of surviving, and that is really so
what's the word. It's reassuring for trauma survivors. Oh, I'm
not crazy. I have parts, but it doesn't mean I'm nuts.
(11:57):
It means that I've found a way to survive. Yeah,
and that's a different story.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We talk about the brilliance that come with that will
to live and survive and to thrive even past it,
and also the brilliance of even in its fragmentation, Right,
there's there's incredible brilliance there to survive, to make it through.
Speaker 7 (12:27):
Exactly what you both are talking about here is you're
you're you do such a beautiful job. And I've listened
to other presentations that you've done, and you do such
a nice job of kind of deep pathologizing what this is,
what what what once response to trauma is, And it's
actually a strength based set of steps that they.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Took to survive their surroundings.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
In a way that you're describing, it was.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Brilliant the way you found a way through that. And
maybe it's causing problems now and maybe not necessarily in
the same way that it was then, and maybe we
get to start talking about the different parts and heal them.
But I love the fact that it's conveyed in a
way where someone gets to own it, almost kind of
in a way that says I did a good job, didn't.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
I, And to really begin to accept that I wasn't
I wasn't a fraudulent I wasn't a fake person. I
was a person trying to survive in spite of parts
that were constantly threatened by everything in a normal life.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Janine, I'm wondering, if you can speak briefly to for
those that go through how does it either heal trauma
or heal the legacy of trauma?
Speaker 4 (13:51):
What can they expect post I guess.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
Treatment, Well, it defends a lot on the person, as
you would guess. You know, there are some people who
just do a couple of sessions and immediately it's I
was watching a video of such a client just earlier today,
(14:15):
and it was kind of amazing because she immediately felt
a tremendous warmth and kind of loving compassion toward her
little part. And so it was. It went very quickly,
(14:35):
and my guess is was a single session. So I
don't know what happened next, but I would guess that
she had significant relief and a whole different way of
relating to herself and then I have you know, I
have clients who have struggled for years even using TISS
(15:00):
because they have so many parts they experience. Literally, I
have clients who experienced hundreds of acts of abuse, and
can you imagine processing all those events? You know, I
think people couldn't get through a treatment that involved processing
(15:23):
hundreds of events. So the way we heal trauma entisst
is through the development of a secure attachment relationship to
the parts, so and a take. That also can take
(15:44):
time because many clients have parts who are very hostile
to vulnerability and vulnerability parts because their vulnerability was exploited. Right,
that's a reaction. And so sometimes I have clients who
(16:07):
fight compassion for their parts because it's associated with weakness. Right.
You don't survive trauma by being compassionate because it makes
you too soft. And so it can take a while
(16:28):
to build the compassion for the part. But the wonderful
thing is it doesn't hurt. I mean, obviously there are
moments when there are intense feelings, but because the treatment
is about meeting those intense feelings with compassion and validation,
(16:56):
it's a really different experience. I'm a big fan of
Bruce Ecker. Do you know his work. It's all based
around this. It's called memory reconsolidation, and it's based around
this idea that what we need to heal the past
(17:16):
is to have experiences that directly disconfirm the past. And
so it's not about talking about it, it's not about events.
It's about a felt experience that contradicts the past, because
(17:37):
that felt experience could never have happened. So when my
clients take a young wounded part under their wing and
they feel warmth and they feel empathy for that part,
(17:59):
it's an experiences that disconfirms the past because you know,
in TIS, there's a lot of seeing the child, listening
to the child, and all of those are things that
disconfirm the past because these are clients who were never
listened to as children. They were never seen, never acknowledged,
(18:23):
never validated, never comforted. And so all of those experiences
resolve the past, not by reliving it, but by contradicting it.
And it's so cool, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So those corrective almost like.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
A corrective emotional experience, is an opportunity to kind of
change the paradigm in a way. That challenge is an
old one, that they've been functioning under and not just
seeing that well, look what I survived, but also realizing
maybe the thoughts and the beliefs and some of the
protective mechanisms once upon a time to work, but they're
not necessary or real, right.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
And the wonderful thing is they don't have to They
don't have to have that that cognition. They have to
feel it. That's the Bruce Ecker idea that you can
talk about the world now being different, but unless you
(19:24):
feel it, it doesn't it doesn't land.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah, I'm thinking of Leslie Greenberg.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
I think he said you have to feel it to
heal it, right, that idea, right, the experience of.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
That, right, And he's a parts guy too.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
And I love it that the vehicle by which to
heal is compassion and care and love, not hurt having
to in the name of you know, healing, to retail
stories and hurt again, that you just bypassing that altogether.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
The thing that's a little challenging is as I can't
say to my clients, to heal, you have to love
your parts, because they're going to say, no way, right,
there's no way you're going to ever get me to
love these parts. I hate them, I'm ashamed of them,
(20:23):
blah blah blah. So I keep that my little secret.
I just kind of lead them, lead them to it
because which I think is true in human life, because
you can't prescribe love, right, You've got to feel it.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Yes, I love that.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Those are great things.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
You know, what a what a wonderful approach you've created,
and it's compassionate, it's very personal and what a what
a what a wonderful experience someone has to go through
this with you, with others that are trained in this area.
We would love to have others following listening to the
day's show to be able to follow up with you,
(21:06):
your work.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Any trainings you may be doing. What's the best way
for them to follow you?
Speaker 6 (21:12):
Probably so they can follow they can visit my website
and then check in there, LinkedIn probably, LinkedIn Instagram, they
can follow me probably I would say best on Instagram
or LinkedIn. And we've just we have two hundred now
(21:38):
therapists certified in tests from around the world. Because our
online training is very international, people from all all over
the world join.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
Congratulations, what thank you, It's been great to have you
with us today and you're a wonderful guest and thanks
for all you're doing in the field.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
Yes, well, thank you guys. It's such a pleasure to
talk with you.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It's very mutual.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
Thank you guys.
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