Vesna Mandic-Bozic

24/04/2023

Lovely

06/01/2023

14/12/2022

Sometimes, it helps me to see things as a chart and to have a visual in my minds eye of how different methods or theories work alongside one another. Because they always do, whether it’s Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory or Pia Mellody’s adapted/wounded child or other terminology used as to how us human beings protect ourselves and go into survival modes in the face of danger.

Whether we are in our child, our adapted angry teenager or displaying some form of defense at the end of the day we ALL want the same things. To be seen, to be heard, to be understood, to be connected with and to be protected on some level.

The next time you or someone you care for is being defensive, or behaving in a very young way, know they are trying to get you to attune to them. When we can do that for each other and for other people, without condemnation, that’s how we all help to heal the world.

Lou xx

07/12/2022

Trauma is experienced by people in many different ways and shows up in a multitude of forms. Therefore, when we discuss trauma, it is important to recognise that how it manifests for each person is unique and often felt differently.

For example, someone who has had a complicated surgical procedure or a traumatic childbirth will have different triggers to someone who has grown up with racial prejudice or being bullied. That being said, no single type of trauma is necessarily worse or bigger than another, also people often accumulate more than one type of trauma over their lifetime.

Of course, it’s worth re-iterating that trauma is always less about the event than about how we experience the event, which again will be unalike for everyone depending on other aspects of their lives and of course, their early development.

We are all beautifully and extraordinarily different, which means that our trauma shows up uniquely and our traumatised parts show up in varying ways too. As therapists and coaches, it is our job to be aware of the individuality of each and every client, to validate and nurture those differences and their trauma and ensure that our clients know that all parts are welcome and their reactions and behaviours are normal responses to abnormal circumstances.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on any of the above.

Take care,

Lou

05/10/2022

I have been thinking about how throughout our lives we all go through many different stages of development. I find Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development helpful with this and think it’s worth considering these different phases through a trauma lens to help us understand how certain experiences may have affected us or our clients at particular points in life and may have limited growth.

In infancy and early childhood, we learn about trusting our primary caregivers and we begin to pursue autonomy. However, if our emotional needs are not met this can also mean developing mistrust and turning the blame inwards leading to shame. Similarly, as we progress into our school years and we start developing initiative, navigating how to be a leader without upsetting others can be tricky and we can start to experience feelings of guilt; when we are starting to develop industry, we can also start to feel levels of inferiority when our demonstrations of worth are not met with suitable encouragement, or if we fail.

Fast forward to adolescence and young adulthood we are tasked with the compromise between identity and role confusion, the point at which we are finding out ‘who we are’ and our values. Invalidation or feelings of not fitting in can lead to difficulty navigating social interactions and becoming withdrawn. When we think about intimacy vs. isolation which occurs from the age of 18-40, if we have an avoidance of intimacy or a fear of commitment - which may come from the earlier stages in our lives and our limiting beliefs - our lack of connection can lead to isolation.

The way in which we move through certain stages of our lives will therefore have a great impact upon how we develop as adults. So it could be that in middle adulthood, those who have struggled in adolescence will be less inclined toward generativity and more likely to experience stagnation. Then, in the final stages of life we reach a point of thinking about our accomplishments and how satisfied we are with our lives. Hopefully, if we have worked on our trauma and lived a life of love and potential, we will develop ego integrity at this stage.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Have you noticed how these patterns affect you or your practice?

For more on trauma-informed approaches and how they can benefit people at all ages there is more information on my website: https://traumathrivers.com/

Lou x

06/07/2022

What is dissociation?

Firstly I think it’s helpful to point out that dissociation is a completely normal reaction to any kind of trauma. We all dissociate to a certain degree, that is we disconnect from ourselves, our thoughts and our bodies. Dissociation is in fact, an extremely useful and adaptive survival strategy there to help us manage overwhelming trauma when it might feel like there is no escape. It can actually enable you to cope with and move through experiences which would otherwise be beyond endurance in that moment. The problem is when dissociation becomes a long-term way of dealing with the aspects of our thoughts, our minds and our bodies that we’d rather not deal with.

Dissociation is very common when working with trauma and it’s important to be able to recognise in ourselves and our clients so that we can come safely back into the body without re-traumatisation or ‘flooding’ the nervous system. And to not be dissociated as a practitioner either, as we need to be fully present to the other person and what is going on.

Dissociation can feel like being separated from reality, but there are some other ways it can manifest:

🔸 ‘Psychic anaesthetising.’ This is a flooding of endorphins, similar to morphine, and has a calming, dream-like, floaty quality. The brain seems to ‘go blank’, ‘switch off’, or you may feel as though you are leaving your body.
🔹 Disconnection between thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, cognitive processes, mind, and body
🔸 Compartmentalisation of trauma, putting into separate metaphorical boxes, or suppressing it to allow normal functioning.
🔹 Loss of memory not caused by illness, fatigue, substances, or normal forgetting - memories are described as being ‘foggy’, ‘full of black holes’, or even ‘like Swiss cheese’.
🔸 Time loss. This feels like actual loss of time, blanks in a timeline, and not just in the past but also in the present. For example, you might have no recollection of meeting someone or how you got somewhere
🔹 Sense of alienation or estrangement of self or body - numb, blank, outside of body, exist solely ‘in the head.’ Feeling dead inside, or ‘wrapped in cotton wool’, feeling like ‘cardboard’, ‘one dimensional.’ This may also feel like things do not really exist, that behaviours or actions are on auto-pilot, or robot-like.
🔸 Sense of alienation or estrangement from surroundings. This could feel like a separation from your own surroundings, that family and friends are strange, unreal or unfamiliar. Reality could seem hazy and distant, and voices seem to be far away. Often described as a dream-like state.

If you find either yourself or your clients dissociating, you can use trauma-informed practices to re-ground and come back into the body, and bring about a sense of safety. Understanding trauma triggers, and knowing how to manage them is essential when dissociation is happening as is knowing what to do.

For those who have experienced trauma, staying present and not dissociating in situations which represent stress, uncertainty, or fear can be very difficult. But with patience and practice - as well as the help and guidance of a trauma-informed therapist and coach - managing dissociation can become easier.

Do you tend to dissociate? How do you cope when you do?

Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Take good care
Lou

22/06/2022

Coming from a Trauma-Informed perspective is essential at the present moment. Given what has been happening in the world, it seems as though many of us are experiencing trauma after trauma.

Learning about the Four Rs of a Trauma-Informed approach is a perfect place to begin. The United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration instigated the four Rs. (SAMHSA).

The whole Trauma-Informed approach is guided by four assumptions and operational goals, which express the need:

🔹 To Realise the widespread impact of trauma and understand the potential paths for recovery.
🔸 To Recognise the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved within the system.
🔹 To Respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices.
🔸 To actively resist re-traumatisation and putting anyone through any further pain, distress or upset.

Trauma-Informed care means knowing about trauma, its key symptoms, and what trauma means. Then it understands how trauma sits under most mental health diagnoses we know about. Presenting issues such as substance abuse or other addictions, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, OCD, social phobias, etc., are primarily due to trauma in some way, shape or form. It’s helpful when people begin to be aware of both the causes (trauma) and symptoms (addiction) of their presentations at some point in their recovery.

By focusing on the symptoms (the addiction in this case), we rarely ever alleviate them completely; in fact, doing so often does precisely the opposite of helping the symptoms dissipate by exacerbating them instead.

As we realise the widespread impact of trauma and understand what it is, things will shift. This could be your first port of call? Becoming informed about what trauma is and how it affects individuals is crucial if you’re in any helping profession or a role where people and relationships are part of your job: HR, teaching, speaking, education, prison services, coaching, childcare, etc.

Learning more about trauma, its impacts, and how we can work towards acknowledging and letting it go is a crucial part of the recovery journey for all. I would love to hear your thoughts on this: send me a message or comment on this post!

Sending you all love!

Lou x

09/06/2022

Boundaries are a vital part of the recovery journey; without boundaries it can be hard to know where we begin or end, and where another person starts or finishes!

Many of us have a habit of putting others first, ignoring our own wants and needs. It is important to think about what suits us, and not just what suits others, in order to be fulfilled and heal properly.

If you find it difficult to get your own voice across, speak up for yourself, or express how you feel, then time spent with friends, family, or colleagues can be especially triggering. But remember that it is okay to say NO, and if saying no immediately is uncomfortable for you or you are unsure about whether you want to do something or not, just a simple ‘can I get back to you on that’ can be a lifesaver! You don’t need to be rude to make sure your boundaries are firm enough to keep you safe and feeling settled.

When setting boundaries it helps to say things such as:

“When you do _________ (behaviour which is not acceptable to you),

I feel ________ (express clearly how you feel).

So in future I would rather you _______ (how you would rather they spoke/acted).”

Practice makes perfect with this strategy, and it may be better to attempt it around people who are usually well regulated and feel safe, before people who are likely to be explosive or reactionary.

For those of us working with trauma, or in trauma or addiction recovery ourselves, numerous situations can be triggering for us or our clients. So above all, take care of yourself, set limits, speak up and be enormously kind to you, too.

Love,

Lou xx

12/05/2022

Our U.S. and Canadian publishers are offering a chance for readers to win a galley of The Myth of Normal on Goodreads and that people can enter through the end of the month at the links below.

U.S. giveaway link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/345264-the-myth-of-normal-trauma-illness-and-healing-in-a-toxic-culture

Canada giveaway link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/345210-the-myth-of-normal-trauma-illness-and-healing-in-a-toxic-culture

The book is being published on September 13, 2022 and is available for pre-order here: https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal/.

30/03/2022

I love using this model as a simple explanation of how our minds operate! It’s called transactional analysis (TA for short), which was developed by Eric Berne in the late 1950s.

Some thirty years ago now, I read a book called “A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis” by Berne. It was the first book I’d ever read around the subject of mental health, which I’d become fascinated with because I had recently been admitted to a psychiatric hospital after suffering from psychosis.

Reading that book helped me begin my long journey into the field of psychology in the hope of working out why my mental health had gotten to where it was.

Thirty years later, and after much more reading, I still find the above model helpful to use. It does fairly well in simplifying some of the aspects of how our neurophysiology works. Because we all have a parent, adult, and child state, there is always an internalised parental voice that can be either nurturing or critical. One of the goals is to try and lessen that critical internal voice and learn to become more nurturing and compassionate in the way we speak to ourselves and others.

Thankfully, we also all have an adult part, although some of us have a more established and present adult ego state than others! If you look at some people (like Putin), they only act out of their critical parent and their not okay child ego states. The adult state is fairly diminished, which means people are less able to use their prefrontal cortex - the rational, executive functioning part of the brain.

However, we all have a not okay child state too - sometimes called an inner child. Seriously, if you’re reading this and deny having an internal child, please think on. Your child ego state can either be okay, fun-loving and free, or it can be the not okay part of you that carries your limiting beliefs and definitely holds onto your wounds. It’s the felt sense of who you are in your body.

The TA model also works well in business. Think about how you can easily notice where people are in their ego states at work, particularly in meetings. For example, do you ever notice that if your boss behaves in a particularly critical parent way, other people may seem to go into their not okay child state? It’s pretty hard to stay in our adult state around others who are activated.

Building and strengthening our adult and bringing ourselves back into the present moment is crucial. Our child and parent parts both operate from our historical conditioning and what’s happened to us in our lives. Some of those neural pathways undoubtedly will need dissolving so we can spend more time in our adult and be triggered hopefully far less.

Let me know what you think of this model and if it makes sense to you and is helpful.

Alternatively, let me know if it’s not helpful at all and why. I love to hear your thoughts.