Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM Pacific Time.

The topic will be: Dissociation

Dissociation refers to the splitting off of painful experiences from awareness. Dissociation is the hallmark of trauma.

In this episode, Dr. John Deri will discuss dissociation as a psychic defense of last resort. He will describe the effects of dissociation on the emotional lives of affected people. Finally, Dr. Deri will share his thoughts regarding the treatment of dissociation, including conditions for healing and paths to integration.

To listen to the show you can:

1.    Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

2.    Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body

I was a blue baby.  I was born with the umbilical cord tightly wrapped around my neck.  I required resuscitation with supplemental oxygen, immediately upon delivery.  I recovered completely, without any apparent deficits.

This event, as it was narrated for me repeatedly by my mother, had three principal effects on me:

1.    I believed that I had been meant to die.
2.    I believed that I needed to be rescued.
3.    My capacity for communication was inhibited (perhaps due to the image of the constriction around my throat).

My healing, correspondingly, has had three major components:

1.    Embracing life.
2.    Developing self reliance.
3.    Finding my voice, through speaking and writing.

I offer my experience to you for your own reflection:

What events have constricted your life?  In what ways?  What steps can you take to liberate yourself from this constricting influence?

In the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book of wisdom, it is written:

“A man is oppressed by bonds that can easily be broken.  The distress is drawing to an end.  But he is still irresolute; he is still influenced by the previous condition and fears that he may have cause for regret if he makes a move.  But as soon as he grasps the situation, changes this mental attitude, and makes a firm decision, he masters the oppression.”

The I Ching, Wilhelm/Baynes edition, pp. 184-185.

From this passage, we can distill four steps to healing from trauma:

1.    Grasping the situation
This step involves both identifying the key traumatic events in your life, and clarifying their effects on you.  I found psychotherapy to be of immense value to me towards this end.

2.    Changing your mental attitude
I had to change my mental attitude from one of a dependent victim to a belief in my own innate capacity to thrive.  What mental attitudes to you need to change?

3.    Making a firm decision
I made a firm decision to say “yes” to life, at every opportunity.  What decisions do you need to make?

4.    Taking positive action
I have taken a vow to do my best to relieve suffering and to inspire others to achieve their highest potential.  I am taking all actions within my reach that are in alignment with this aspiration.

Aligning yourself and your every action with your highest purpose is the most potent force for healing.

The topic of the episode will be:   Psychotherapy and Dependent Origination

The Buddhist theory of dependent origination will be discussed as a perspective on transference and countertransference in psychotherapy. These psychological phenomena will be explored as a medium for the healing of early childhood trauma in psychotherapy.

During the  Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body, Dr. John Deri will present a clinical case as an example of the work.

To listen to the show you can:

Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body

Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM Pacific Time.

The topic will be: Dissociation

Dissociation refers to the splitting off of painful experiences from awareness. Dissociation is the hallmark of trauma.

In this episode, Dr. John Deri will discuss dissociation as a psychic defense of last resort. He will describe the effects of dissociation on the emotional lives of affected people. Finally, Dr. Deri will share his thoughts regarding the treatment of dissociation, including conditions for healing and paths to integration.

To listen to the show you can:

1.    Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

2.    Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body

In the context of the original traumatic situation, this defense preserves the child’s sanity.  Unfortunately, dissociation tends to persist as the primary mode of psychic functioning throughout the lifetime of the individual.  Such people have great difficulty in knowing or communicating what they are feeling.  These deficits lead to an impoverishment of the person’s emotional life.  Such people tend to experience themselves as ephemeral, or insubstantial.  They usually have great difficulty in achieving or sustaining intimacy in their relationships.

Causes

There has been speculation regarding both biological and psychological causes of dissociation.  From a neurologic standpoint, studies have shown a decreased corpus callosum in traumatized people.  The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres of the brain.  The right hemisphere processes emotional experience.  The left hemisphere includes the language region of the brain, in most people.  A constricted connection between the two hemispheres could result in a limited capacity for recognizing and articulating emotional states.

From a psychological point of view, Joyce McDougall, a French psychoanalyst, believes that dissociation is the effect of exposure to overwhelming emotion that threatens to attack an individual’s sense of integrity and identity.

Within a developmental context, a child acquires the capacity for emotional experience, regulation and expression, through the parent’s capacity for attunement to the child’s emotional state.  If the adult is incapable of recognizing and distinguishing emotional expressions in the child, it can impair the child’s capacity to experience his own emotional states.

Treatment

Psychotherapy offers a reparative experience for a person suffering from dissociation.  Suffering is actually a misleading term.  Many dissociated people are unaware of their own dissociation.  Often, such a person seeks psychotherapy due to a spouse’s frustration with them.

Working with a profoundly dissociated person in psychotherapy is challenging.  The engine for psyche change is psychic distress.  If the distress itself is dissociated, there may be minimal motivation to engage in psychological work.  Moreover, it is difficult to establish an emotional connection of any depth with a dissociated person.

Often a starting point involves gradually drawing the person’s attention to her state of dissociation.  The therapeutic process is one of symbolically reparenting the child.  The therapist, unlike the actual parent, is able to register and to articulate her patient’s emotional states.  Through repeated interactions in which the therapist is able to service this function accurately, the patient gradually internalizes the process.  As she incrementally acquires the capacity to recognize what she is feeling, the therapy gains traction.

As a person develops increasing awareness of his own emotional states, both present and past experiences come to life.  It becomes possible to narrate, to process and to release the previously frozen residue of early trauma.  As parts of the self that had been dissociated become available for integration, the personality becomes richer, more complex, more textured and more vibrant.

Dissociation makes people feel like ghosts or robots.  Experience has an “as if” quality.  Integration of a full range of feelings gives rise to a robust, embodied passion for life.

As Walt Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself”:

“Urge and urge and urge, 

Always the procreant urge of the world.”

Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM Pacific Time.

The topic will be: Dissociation

Dissociation refers to the splitting off of painful experiences from awareness. Dissociation is the hallmark of trauma.

In this episode, Dr. John Deri will discuss dissociation as a psychic defense of last resort. He will describe the effects of dissociation on the emotional lives of affected people. Finally, Dr. Deri will share his thoughts regarding the treatment of dissociation, including conditions for healing and paths to integration.

To listen to the show you can:

1.    Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

2.    Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body

Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM PDT.

The topic will be: How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part III  – Psyche, Soma and Spirit

Psychological growth and spiritual development are mutually contingent on one another.

This week, Dr. Deri would like to share with you a case that illustrates the interdependence of psyche, soma and spirit in the healing process.  Sophia is a 70 year old member of a religious order.  She and Dr. Deri have been meeting in twice a week psychotherapy for the past four years. Sophia decided to authorize the dissemination of her life story.  She prays that doing so might illuminate the path of healing for others.

During the show Dr. Deri will discuss:

Psyche: Healing Early Trauma
How Sophia reached an experience of genuine compassion.

Psyche and Soma
How psychotherapy helped Sophia to maintain her physical and emotional homeostasis.

Psyche and Spirit
Sophia felt abandoned by God, the Father.  She underwent a protracted “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross). As she healed her psychological wounds, Sophia’s spiritual life, has blossomed.

To listen to the show you can:

1.    Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

2.    Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body

Thus wrote Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist.  Levi-Strauss, like Carl Jung, was intrigued by pairs of opposites.

I have been reflecting on this particular pair of opposites, listening and speaking, in the context of psychotherapy.  I have come to think of listening and speaking as representing the yin and the yang of the healing process.

The Yin and the Yang of Healing

From a Taoist perspective, yin energy is associated symbolically with the feminine, yang with the masculine.  These energies are not, however, linked with gender.  We all embody the potential for both yin and yang poles of energy.

Yin energy in therapy is manifested through phenomena including listening, empathy and nurturance, as well as through a metaphoric “holding space” for the other.

Yang energy may be expressed through speaking, interpretation, emphatic engagement or confrontation.

Both patient and therapist must develop a full range of these capacities.  The process of healing is catalyzed by a creative dance between these polar energies.  Both therapist and patient need to cultivate their respective abilities to speak freely and to listen fully.  Each must be able to listen to herself as well as to the other.

The Role of Early Life Trauma

The reason why listening and speaking are healing can be understood against the backdrop of early life trauma.  The traumatized child goes unheard.  Neither parent has the wherewithal or the willingness to listen to the child.  As a consequence, the child comes to feel alone, uncared for, disconnected and afraid.  Moreover, such a child is liable to grow up as an adult who is wary of closeness to others.  Such an individual is prone to seek social isolation.

Wilfred Bion, a British psychoanalyst, in his paper “Attacks on Linking,” put forth the premise that such a child is deprived of a primary experience of emotional bonding or “linkage,” with either parent.  This absence breeds in the child an experience of sadness, a sense of futility and ultimately of rage.  The child’s rage has the potential to generalize into an unconscious hatred of all “linkages”: between the child and another human being, between thought and feeling, between the child and himself, and ultimately between the child and reality.  Such broken or unconsummated linkages are the substrate for unspeakable suffering.

The Alchemy of Healing

Through reciprocal speaking and listening within the therapeutic relationship, emotionally meaningful linkages are formed.  The patient’s capacity to achieve emotional connection with the self and with the other is enhanced.  Dissociation between thoughts and feelings, between feelings and images, is transformed into integration.

Through integration of split off parts of the self, healing occurs.  Through relatedness with self and others, the full potential of the patient blossoms and flourishes.

These transformational processes are always reciprocal, between patient and therapist.  Witnessing and participating in this alchemy of healing is deeply moving.  Such participation is the central calling of my life.

Wisdom in Healing

From a conventional point of view, phenomena are incontrovertibly how they appear. At this level, healing in psychotherapy includes the kinds of work that I have described in previous blogs and radio shows.  It is essential to bring dissociated feelings and memories into conscious awareness.  Doing so in the context of a caring psychotherapy relationship allows the “working through,” the integration and the release of these emotions.  Mourning is central to this process: mourning for both what was wounding and for what was lacking in the patient’s early life.

Another key component of the healing process is working on the patient’s “shadow” side.  Trauma propagates through identification with the aggressor.  It is a painful, but vital, step to recognize one’s own propensity to hurt others.

From an ultimate point of view, all phenomena are inherently “empty.”  I am not qualified to discuss the Buddha’s teachings.  So, for our purposes, let me just say that healing is facilitated by the cultivation of the awareness that all of our perceptions, all of our experiences, are like a mirage, like an illusion.  We all construct our own “psychic reality.” 

This realization is very powerful.  It gives us the freedom to construe the past from multiple vantage points.  We can achieve release from an identity as a perennial victim of circumstances.  We can develop the capacity for what Carolyn Myss has called “symbolic sight.”  We can learn to “learn from our experience” (Wilfred Bion).  We can develop the potential to do things differently, to experience transformation. 

Viewing life as an open field, rather than as a constellation of solid figures, liberates us from fixity, from the unconscious compulsion to repeat the past.

Compassion In Healing

Compassion for others is the antidote for narcissism.  Narcissism is the root of all suffering.  When we fixate on an “I,” we experience ourselves as fundamentally disconnected, constricted, anxious and depressed.  When we cultivate our compassion for others, we feel alive, related and infused with life energy.

Wisdom and compassion are inseparable, like the two wings of a bird.  In conjunction with one another, they liberate us from suffering, allowing our spirits to take flight.  The darkness of our delusions is dispelled.  The radiance of our innate nature shines forth unimpeded.  We are free.

Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM PDT.

The topic will be: How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part III  – Psyche, Soma and Spirit

Psychological growth and spiritual development are mutually contingent on one another.

This week, Dr. Deri would like to share with you a case that illustrates the interdependence of psyche, soma and spirit in the healing process.  Sophia is a 70 year old member of a religious order.  She and Dr. Deri have been meeting in twice a week psychotherapy for the past four years. Sophia decided to authorize the dissemination of her life story.  She prays that doing so might illuminate the path of healing for others.

During the show Dr. Deri will discuss:

Psyche: Healing Early Trauma
How Sophia reached an experience of genuine compassion.

Psyche and Soma
How our therapy helped Sophia to maintain her physical and emotional homeostasis.

Psyche and Spirit
Sophia felt abandoned by God, the Father.  She underwent a protracted “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the cross). As she healed her psychological wounds, Sophia’s spiritual life, has blossomed.

To listen to the show you can:

1.    Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560

OR

2.    Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body