Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life

Even if you don’t see yourself as a very expressive person, chances are there is still some music you like to listen to. Listening to music and assembling it into a collection you find especially helpful or anchoring is one of the best ways to begin working with the expressive arts in your healing, particularly the art of music.

Seven contributors describe practices that would qualify as withdrawing from excess sensory distraction as important to their overall grounding plan. Getting enough sleep, setting boundaries, and taking a nap all fall into this category.

There are a variety of ways to incorporate your music and playlists into the healing process. We’ll begin by inviting you to make an “After Therapy” (or other healing art) playlist.

Parts is a general term used in the psychological and helping professions that can refer to many different things. I see it as the most generic term possible that can be used to describe aspects, sides, or facets of self that do not necessarily represent the presence of another ego state. Some people even conceptualize their parts as the various ro

An important word of caution is in order here. Some of the skills uncovered in this chapter are simpler and subjectively safer to try than others. Take, for instance, pushing against a wall. That is something you can try right this moment without putting in a lot of time or effort. After every skill, you can take a pause and notice what you notice.

In my own experience and in assisting others through my roles as a therapist and as a teacher, we are generally severing from one of two things in order to meet a need or to protect ourself/ourselves/our system. Yes, we may separate from our core self or develop more separate and distinct parts to help us deal with life. These experiences can be so

Co-regulation teaches that all mammals are in the best position to stay regulated and balanced when they have consistently engaged in this behavior with others. We, as people and as mammals, attune to each other’s nervous systems. This is the reason why you can have a very meaningful relationship with your pet—without ever having to exchange any wo

Being in Nature and Connecting with Pets and Animals Sixteen contributors specifically spoke to the power of going outside or being in nature as immensely helpful to their grounding and healing. For many years as a therapist, I’ve observed the raw power in simply being able to go outside with a client and engage in some “walk and talk” therapy, esp

Introject parts, based on a term from Gestalt therapy, can refer to parts that are intruding with the process of the core self or the entire system, and sometimes seem to align with a perpetrator or an abusive figure.