Sad to hear. The approach of the therapist is everything. If cognitive-level (top-down) techniques such as CBT/DBT are being used, it’s not surprising at all that the effects are marginal. In my view, true healing requires bottom-up modalities such as Internal Family Systems which work with the unconscious.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life.” – Carl Jung
I think it’s helpful to ask “Why?” until a root cause is found. Regardless of how many people are on drugs for conditions like depression and anxiety, the question is Why have the incidence rates of virtually every mental health condition been steadily increasing for decades and decades? One could perhaps attempt to argue that it all started with over-diagnosis, at which point we over-prescribed and exacerbated the problem even more. But this doesn’t do it for me. The totality of the evidence, from my perspective, points squarely at developmental trauma – both overt and covert.
(At the risk of blatant self-promotion, my article on MIA from a few months ago goes into more depth on this.)
This is a great post. Trauma responses/adaptations/conditioning/etc are driven by the unconscious – there is no “choice” involved in any individual case.
What we can choose to do, however, is get to know these patterns: be aware of them, understand them, get in relationship with them. This is the beginning of true healing. (Note how this fundamentally differs from what we usually do: attempting to control, resist, or distract.)
We all have response-ability – the ability to respond to what isn’t working for us. But this has nothing to do with the type of blaming/shaming that comes along with the illusion that people have conscious control over their trauma responses.
This strikes me as largely being correlation rather than causation, though there’s no doubt in my mind that autonomy in general (beyond just “independent activities”) is a fundamental need of children, one which is often lacking in modern cultures. There are others though, including a child being able to feel their full range of emotions without their caregivers reacting negatively. Thee parent/child attachment relationship is everything.
Fair question. I don’t skip over events later in life to get to the earlier ones. I address things in whatever order they arise, because I trust the client’s inner wisdom – things will come to them in a given order for a reason. So we address things as they come rather than trying to trace back to some kind of “root trauma”. (I’m not aware of any theory which states that healing earlier trauma also heals later trauma, but it’s possible some people think so.)
That being said, I do think that traumatic events later in life such as bullying or abuse – when they are on-going/chronic rather than acute – are often indicators of earlier developmental trauma. Understanding how this works can be helpful for those who tend to self-blame.
Sad to hear. The approach of the therapist is everything. If cognitive-level (top-down) techniques such as CBT/DBT are being used, it’s not surprising at all that the effects are marginal. In my view, true healing requires bottom-up modalities such as Internal Family Systems which work with the unconscious.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life.” – Carl Jung
-Terry
healingtheself.net
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I think it’s helpful to ask “Why?” until a root cause is found. Regardless of how many people are on drugs for conditions like depression and anxiety, the question is Why have the incidence rates of virtually every mental health condition been steadily increasing for decades and decades? One could perhaps attempt to argue that it all started with over-diagnosis, at which point we over-prescribed and exacerbated the problem even more. But this doesn’t do it for me. The totality of the evidence, from my perspective, points squarely at developmental trauma – both overt and covert.
(At the risk of blatant self-promotion, my article on MIA from a few months ago goes into more depth on this.)
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Agreed! Forcing someone makes no sense – almost by definition, they’ll be resisting while being forced, resulting in the worst possible outcome.
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This is a great post. Trauma responses/adaptations/conditioning/etc are driven by the unconscious – there is no “choice” involved in any individual case.
What we can choose to do, however, is get to know these patterns: be aware of them, understand them, get in relationship with them. This is the beginning of true healing. (Note how this fundamentally differs from what we usually do: attempting to control, resist, or distract.)
We all have response-ability – the ability to respond to what isn’t working for us. But this has nothing to do with the type of blaming/shaming that comes along with the illusion that people have conscious control over their trauma responses.
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This strikes me as largely being correlation rather than causation, though there’s no doubt in my mind that autonomy in general (beyond just “independent activities”) is a fundamental need of children, one which is often lacking in modern cultures. There are others though, including a child being able to feel their full range of emotions without their caregivers reacting negatively. Thee parent/child attachment relationship is everything.
Report comment
Fair question. I don’t skip over events later in life to get to the earlier ones. I address things in whatever order they arise, because I trust the client’s inner wisdom – things will come to them in a given order for a reason. So we address things as they come rather than trying to trace back to some kind of “root trauma”. (I’m not aware of any theory which states that healing earlier trauma also heals later trauma, but it’s possible some people think so.)
That being said, I do think that traumatic events later in life such as bullying or abuse – when they are on-going/chronic rather than acute – are often indicators of earlier developmental trauma. Understanding how this works can be helpful for those who tend to self-blame.
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Thanks so much everyone for the kind words. Lovely to see this stuff resonating with you.
Birdsong: I appreciate the website feedback very much!
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