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Therapy Quotes

“let's ask our systems how they might let us know when we are taking that step into left-hemisphere dominance ... Often, the respectful gesture of simply pausing to pose this curiosity is enough. Our systems will respond as and when they can.”

PsychologyTherapyLeft HemisphereRight HemisphereTips For PsychologistsRelational Neurobiology
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Forms used in many clinics ask patients to rate their status on a regular basis, hoping to see an ever-upward trend, and sometimes judging the efficacy of the therapist without regard for the complexity of the challenges they are holding together in the space between. All of this is well-intentioned with the primary goal being rapid reduction of suffering. However it is built on the assumptions of the left hemisphere.”

TherapyLeft HemisphereDangers Of MeasurementEvidence Based PsychologyMeasuring Mental Health
Author:Bonnie Badenoch
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“The aim of therapy is not to help people transition through a sex change, and nor is it to try to persuade them against having a sex change. Neither of these aims is appropriate as they would indicate an overt or hidden agenda on the part of the therapist, who would not be in a position to help the patient, as their own political, moral or religious ideals would interfere with their ability to adopt an essentially impartial position.”

TherapyTransgenderTransLgbtqiaImpartialityCounselling
Book:TRANS: Exploring Gender Identity and Gender Dysphoria
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“Working within the NHS, we are, as therapists, part of the system that has its own logic and values that can be experienced by the DID patient as not consistent with their own needs, and can be experienced as cold, detached and abusive.”

TherapyDissociative Identity DisorderPsychotherapyDissociative DisorderNhsTransferenceMental Health SystemCmht
Book:Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“There is also a risk that repeatedly telling people they are victims may lead them to develop a sense of “learned helplessness” and a belief that they have no control over their lives, leaving them vulnerable to depression. Yet, CRT would accuse anyone from a minority group who expressed such contrary views of having “internalised oppression” or of “acting white”.”

DepressionTherapyCritical Race TheoryLearned Helplessness
Book:Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice
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“In therapy, to meet the needs of traumatized survivors of war and torture, the patient is requested to repeatedly talk about the worst traumatic event in detail while re-experiencing all emotions associated with the event. Traumatic memory, they say, is cleared by narration of whole life; from early childhood up to the present date ... this book is my therapy. I am awash with living memories.”

TherapyWwiiHitlerWw2Survival StoryNazi PartyHitler S GermanyWar StoryAlfred NestorUncle HitlerSecond World War In GermanyAlf NestorAuthor Alfred NestorSecond World War ChidhoodTrauma TherapyChildhood Therapy
Book:Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain
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“Those of us who work in the field of trauma and abuse, whether psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, doctors, counselors, or psychotherapists, have been provided with beautiful tools for understanding the impact of trauma. We become adept at understanding the dynamic of why the messenger is always shot and broadcast the Bionic insight of why the visionary is not bearable to the group. However, when it comes to military mind control, abuse within religious belief groups or cults, and deliberately created dissociative identity disorder, we enter the least resourced field of all.”

PsychologyMilitaryAbuseTraumaTherapyDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMind ControlMultiplicitySocial WorkerRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbusePsychological AbuseCultsMessengerMkultraReligious AbusePsychotherapistMuliple Personality Disorder
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children – LLOYD DEMAUSE The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (4) 1994 "Extending these local figures to a national estimate would easily mean tens of thousands of cult victims per year reporting, plus undoubtedly more who do not report.(2) This needn’t mean, of course, that actual Cult abuse is increasing, only that-as with the increase in all child abuse reports-we have become more open to hearing them. But it seemed unlikely that the surge of cult memories could all be made up by patients or implanted by therapists. Therapists are a timid group at best, and the notion that they suddenly begin implanting false memories in tens of thousands of their clients for no apparent reason strained credulity. Certainly no one has presented a shred of evidence for massive “false memory” implantations.”

AbuseTraumaTherapyCultTherapistsPsychotherapyRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseTrauma SurvivorsFalse MemoriesCult AbuseTrauma Therapist
Author:Lloyd deMause
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“Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection. In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009). In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010). Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011). All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time. We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".”

ListeningTherapyPsychological SafetyAttunementCoregulationCo RegulationSafe Presence
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“More important than the words or silence is my inner stance of making room for what is stirring within him, becoming alertly still enough inside that his inner world senses safety, the precursor to him opening into vulnerability.”

ListeningSafetyTherapyPresenceTrauma HealingPsychological Safety
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Even after baking that afternoon while Dre covered the counter, she'd been left with very few cupcakes to refrigerate overnight, as she routinely did, selling them as day olds the next day, for a reduced price. She still had fresh frozen extra batches of unfrosted cupcakes, her base vanilla bean cake and semi-sweet chocolate, which she'd thaw, then pipe fresh frosting on in the morning. Even with those she'd still be behind with her freshly baked trademark flavors, no matter how early a start she got. She'd whipped up some of those frostings this evening, but everything else would have to be made fresh from scratch in the morning. She should be in bed, sleeping. Not standing in the shop kitchen, experimenting with a pavlova roulade she didn't need and couldn't sell. But therapy was therapy, and she needed that, too.”

TherapyBakingFlavorsCupcakesLeilani TrusdalePreparations
Book:Sugar Rush
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“My parents are worried about me, so they take me to a lady, so I can talk about my dragon. She says she knows about dragons like mine. I am hoping for a magic spell or a dragon slayer, with sword in hand. No such luck; just a tiny woman dressed in a short skirt with a lot of pleats and a fancy top with tons of sparkles. […] She looks me in the eye and for some reason I don't feel like I have to look away.”

AnxietyWomanTherapyDragonEye ContactTherapistSocial PhobiaMagic SpellDragon SlayerFor Some Reason
Book:Help! There's a Dragon in My Head
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“I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapySurvivorAlcoholismDissociative Identity DisorderPsychiatristMultiple PersonalitiesSplit PersonalityAlcoholicMpdAltersMultiple Personality
Book:A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
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“It’s true that AI can mimic the human brain, but it can also outperform us mere humans by discovering complex patterns that no human being could ever process and identify.”

DoctorsMedicineDataTherapyAiHealthcarePhysiciansDiagnosisClinicPatient Care
Book:AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors
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“The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to "fix things." As I try to listen to myself and the experiencing going on in me, and the more I try to extend that same listening attitude to another person, the more respect I feel for the complex processes of life. SO I become less and less inclined to hurry to fix things, to set goals, to mold people, to manipulate and push them in the way that I would like them to go. I am much more content simply to be myself and to let another person be himself.”

TherapyTherapistCarl Rogers
Book:On becoming a person: a therapist's view of psychotherapy
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“Basic misunderstandings about DID encountered in the therapeutic community include the following: ° The expectation that all clients with DID will present in a Sybil-like manner, with obvious switching and extreme changes in personality. ° That therapists create DID in their clients. ° That DID clients have very little control over their internal systems and can be expected to stay in the mental health system indefinitely. ° That alter personalities, especially child alters, are simply regressive states associated with anxiety or that switching represents a psychotic episode. Anyone who experiences dissociation on a regular basis knows better, however. DID is not only disruptive to everyday life but is also confusing and, at times, frightening.”

TherapyDissociative Identity DisorderMental Health StigmaDissociativeRegressionMisdiagnosisMental Health SystemSybilDissociative SymptomsHidden DisorderHidden SelvesMultipler Personality DisorderStereptype
Author:Deborah Bray Haddock
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“After a while Mary said, “Zsadist?” “Yeah?” “What are those markings?” His frowned and flicked his eyes over to her, thinking, as if she didn’t know? But then . . . well, she had been a human. Maybe she didn’t. “They’re slave bands. I was . . . a slave.” “Did it hurt when they were put on you?” “Yes.” “Did the same person who cut your face give them to you?” “No, my owner’s hellren did that. My owner . . . she put the bands on me. He was the one who cut my face.” “How long were you a slave?” “A hundred years.” “How did you get free?” “Phury. Phury got me out. That’s how he lost his leg.” “Were you hurt while you were a slave?” Z swallowed hard. “Yes.” “Do you still think about it?” “Yes.” He looked down at his hands, which suddenly were in pain for some reason. Oh, right. He’d made two fists and was squeezing them so tightly his fingers were about to snap off at the knuckles. “Does slavery still happen?” “No. Wrath outlawed it. As a mating gift to me and Bella.” “What kind of slave were you?” Zsadist shut his eyes. Ah, yes, the question he didn’t want to answer. For a while it was all he could do to force himself to stay in the chair. But then, in a falsely level voice, he said, “I was a blood slave. I was used by a female for blood.” The quiet after he spoke bore down on him, a tangible weight. “Zsadist? Can I put my hand on your back?” His head did something that was evidently a nod, because Mary’s gentle palm came down lightly on his shoulder blade. She moved it in a slow, easy circle. “Those are the right answers,” she said. “All of them.” He had to blink fast as the fire in the furnace’s window became blurry. “You think?” he said hoarsely. “No. I know.”

TherapyMaryBlack Dagger BrotherhoodZsadistNalla
Book:Father Mine
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“I expect nothing from Psychoanalysis or therapy, whose rudimentary conclusions became clear to me a long time ago--- a domineering mother, a father whose submissiveness is shattered by a murderous gesture... To state "it's a childhood trauma" or "that day the idols were knocked off their pedestal" does nothing to explain a scene which could only be conveyed by the expression that came to me at the time: to breathe disaster. Here abstract speech fails to reach me.”

TraumaTherapyLanguage Barrier
Book:Shame
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“I recently consulted to a therapist who felt he had accomplished something by getting his dissociative client to remain in her ANP throughout her sessions with him. His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with DID and DDNOS. Although his client was properly diagnosed, he assumed that the ANP should be encouraged to take charge of the other parts at all times. He also expected her to speak for them—in other words, to do their therapy. This denied the other parts the opportunity to reveal their secrets, heal their pain, or correct their childhood-based beliefs about the world. If you were doing family therapy, would it be a good idea to only meet with the father, especially if he had not talked with his children or his spouse in years? Would the other family members feel as if their experiences and feelings mattered? Would they be able to improve their relationships? You must work with the parts who are inside of the system. Directly.”

FeelingsHealingMistakeFamilyPsychologyCommunicationAbuseErrorsTraumaTherapyTeamworkSecretsPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisPsychotherapyMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseTherapistMpdDdnos
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be “just like us,” so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple “selves” have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different “moods.” In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients.”

TherapyDissociative Identity DisorderPsychotherapyMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderAssumptionsCultural DifferencesMisunderstandingsDdnos
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“Through mirror neurons and resonance circuitry, we are taking in each other's bodily state, feelings and intention in each emerging moment (Iacoboni, 2009). This gives us an approximate empathic sense of what is happening in the other person, but it is important to be aware that the information is also being filtered through our implicit lens. This filtering colors our perceptions and pretty much guarantees there will be ruptures that invite repairs, as our offers of empathy will sometimes not reflect what the other person is experiencing.”

ListeningTherapyResonanceTrauma HealingAttunementBody WisdomSomatic ExperiencingMirror NeuronsRupture And RepairEmpathy Tips
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“When I sat with clients and opened my mind to them, a taste usually came through. It might be sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. After a moment, it would blossom into a full flavor. The sweet ripeness of apricot, the sourness of a Key lime, the earthy saltiness of Mexican chocolate, the aromatic bitterness of nutmeg. In a flash, a feeling would follow the flavor. Joy. Skepticism. Lust for life. Quiet acceptance. And from that feeling would come a memory, a scene called back to present day. A moment whose real meaning and importance I might never fully know. And I didn't really need to know everything. I used my gift to see my clients' stories so I could design desserts- in this case, a wedding cake- to fit each customer like a couture gown, not an off-the-rack dress in desperate need of alterations. If I got the cake and filling and frosting flavors right, they would resonate with my clients, reaching them in those down-deep places where they would begin to feel that everything really would be all right.”

TherapyCakeFlavorsWedding CakesClaire O Neil
Book:The Memory of Lemon
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“That was when I realized I had no control over my actions anymore. All I knew was that though no one knew what hell felt like, my life had become a version of fire and brimstone. My restrictive anorexia was completely and inexorably interfering with my ability to live like a normal human being.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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“Soon, everyone around me had come to terms with my peculiar eating habits and started accepting me for who I was. It felt peculiar at first, but when someone said things like, “I wish I could resist eating all that,” in whatever parallel universe I existed, I felt powerful.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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“He helped me sit up on my bed and tried to force-feed me glucose dissolved in water and a biscuit he’d grabbed from my roommate’s bedside. But I spat it right out, still thinking about calories and numbers. “That’s enough, Amira. I’m literally trying to feed you water. It’s not going to hurt you!” he screamed.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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“The better question is: Do you want to recover?” I didn’t have an answer; I wasn’t sure. Recovery sounded great on paper and in the calm and casual way he said it. But why did the very thought of recovery seem like the most excruciating and difficult thing? What if I started hating myself after a few months of making conscious efforts to be a healthy person again? What if recovery meant being fat all over again? What if I wasn’t ready? “I’m not sure,” I said.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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“It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop. I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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“The scars of my anorexia, perfectly hand-drawn in red, immaculately colouring one-fourth of my left arm. It had hurt like hell, but it still wasn’t as painful as the last two years of my life. The mental, excruciating pain within the depths of my brain had managed to surpass the aching pain of the pointed edge of the object I’d used on my arm. I’d thought that overshadowing the pain I already felt with a much harsher form and intensity would make the emotional pain disappear. I was wrong. The latter pain always remains stronger; that is something I realized.”

Mental HealthTherapyAnorexiaBulimiaImperfect MortalsMirror Mirror On The WallMental Well BeingDisordered EatingRestrictive Anorexia
Book:Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
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