Getting Unstuck; Unravelling the Knot of Depression Attention and Trauma

K. had a rather harsh mother who was a perfectionist and was never satisfied. When K. did the inner-child exercises, she found a frightened six-year-old who felt inadequate and was afraid of displeasing her mommy.

ADD is about an atypical relationship between motivation and attention.

“the essential feature of the Dissociative Disorders is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment.”

This part of ourselves is usually provided by our experiences with our parents. It’s called the parental introject, the image of our parents that we hold inside when they are not present.

Of course, the inner-child and inner-parent exercises are not as distinct from each other as I have drawn them. They are two sides of the same coin. Almost inevitably, when you interact with your parents in this way, you will feel yourself to be a child, as you did then. In the inner-child exercises, an everyday grown-up self interacts in a nurturi

If you try an inner-child exercise on your own, you may feel some powerful and unpleasant emotions, such as sadness, fear, or shame, upon making contact with an inner child. You do not need to be frightened by these feelings. Rather, stop for the time being, and then continue your exploration once you have sought appropriate guidance.

dissociation creates dysfunction, we had to go back to the beginning. Think for a moment of small children of two or three and about the delightful combination of unselfconsciousness and rapid learning they possess, of the joyfulness with which they meet the world when they are safe and well-tended. They are the prototype of pure right-brain functi

Ego States Theory and Therapy

Conflict and lack of clarity create discomfort, which interferes with reflection and therefore creates more conflict and sets off more danger signals.

These panic attacks were not the biologically-mediated neurotransmitter abnormalities we discussed in Chapter 4. They were, in fact, the result of the emergence of a dissociated ego state, a personality fragment from childhood that was frightened of failure and had no resources for managing, modulating, or eliminating those fears.