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

If working with movement, consider this practice: If one part’s message could be expressed in a movement or a gesture, what would that be? Then notice: If the other part’s message could be expressed in a movement or a gesture, what would that gesture be? Spend a few minutes going back and forth between the movements/gestures and see what naturally

Using verbiage from the late Dr. Francine Shapiro, the creator of EMDR Therapy, these experiences can be adaptive (i.e., serving or helping us) or maladaptive (i.e., keeping us further stuck). She used these terms in describing responses to traumatic experiences (as opposed to terms like healthy or unhealthy) because she saw them as less of a value

One of the reasons we encourage people who dissociate to learn grounding skills is so they can cultivate a sense of safety within themselves. Creating a safe harbor within can be essential when navigating a world that fundamentally feels unsafe.

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear. —Stephen Levine

These practices are never about how long you can stay mindful or quiet, they are really about how you are able to use them to return to the present moment, or sense of groundedness, once you realize that you (and if it applies, your internal system) may have wandered away.

The key to trauma-informing anything is that you can always modify the language and if you are working with a professional, it’s important that they understand that language may very much matter to you.

The general definition that I teach for grounding in my clinical courses is a combination of spiritual director Martha Postlewaite’s work on grounding2 with some of my own flair added in. Grounding is using any and all available senses and experiences to remain in the present moment, or to return to the present moment.

One of the reasons that we use “safe enough” throughout the book is that we, and many other people struggling with complex trauma and dissociation, will literally roll our eyes if one more professional talks about a “Safe Place.” Speaking for our system, the word safety is so loaded, and even in a state of recovery or wellness, safety is something

Elizabeth’s “clinical line” to define dissociation is that when our ability to stay present in life is disrupted, we default into states of denial or into other aspects of ourself/ourselves. Even though she recognizes that the clinical word dissociation is often incorrectly used by others when they pronounce it as “dis-association,” she believes th