Quote:
Originally Posted by peaches100
These questions are for anybody who has recognized that they have distinct, young feeling, very needy child parts -- and has worked on resolving trauma by working with such child parts.
1. Are you able to keep your regular adult state of mind present at the same time that you can access the child part of you with its feelings of pain and shame?
If no, why not? What happens when you try?
2. If your answer to #1 was yes, can you also experience the pain in tolerable increments without getting overwhelmed, pulled too far into the pain, or without losing your adult state of mind?
If no, why not? What happens when you try?
3. If your answer to #3 was yes, while you are in touch with the child part's pain, can the adult part of you comfort the child part of you sufficiently to where the pain recedes and the child part of you feels a measure of soothing and healing?
If no, why? What happens when you try?
If no, do you ask for/accept soothing from your t (hugs, hand holding, etc.)? Did it your child part feel soothing/healing?
4. After making several/many attempts to do this and failing to achieve trauma resolution/healing, have you decided to quit working with child parts and doing this type of trauma work?
If yes, did you find a different method that helped you more? What?
If yes, what did you do about your child part(s) once you stopped trying to access/experience/resolve your traumatic issues? Did you cut them off from awareness?
If no, what made you decide to continue with the trauma work?
I'm finding myself in this situation right now in therapy and am trying to decide where to go from here. . .
Peaches
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brief summary of my other post in your psychology thread with this same subject and questions....
I explained I had two different types of child part.. alters and the normal inner child concept that everyone has of times when they feel like a child..
I gave some examples of times when I have felt like the child I used to be....at work when I was stressed out and over whelmed, on the lake feeling like I did when I went swimming with my siblings and cousins, and during intimate times with my wife..
yes I am able to access the inner child parts of me while still remaining in the adult frame of mind.
yes I am able to do so without getting overwhelmed and pulled into it,
I also went into detail how I do this... when I am feeling these normal inner child parts (not DID type alters which is a completely different thing) I acknowledge the feeling/memory and use the grounding techniques my therapist has taught me. this allows me to let myself feel and deal with those feelings/memories while staying fully aware and grounded.
with DID alters I was not able to do this because I had very limited amounts of co consciousness. co consciousness is remaining aware of whats going on when you switch into being an alter. for me there was just one minute I'm with my wife and the next it was ours, days, weeks later with no idea of what went on during that lost space of time.
my therapist and I would do this kind of work with me bringing in a photo of myself when I was the age in which I was having a problem with, we would talk about the photo and then she would have me close my eyes and picture that photo in my mind. then she would lead me into imagining the photo turning into the child posing for that photo then she would lead me into placing the feelings/memories that I was having a problem with into that child that used to be me. then she would ask me what I felt I/that child had needed. then to say or do that in my mind or out loud to that child.
With the normal inner child concept work my therapist and I rarely included things like touching, holding, cuddling my inner child, being a sexual abuse survivor touch and being touched was a trigger for me, so using that in our work would have resulted in my coming out of the guided visualization/imagery
we still use this inner child therapy concept because it does work for me.
for the DID type alters no we never did this with/for them because I had little to no co consciousness with my alters. the problems with them were solved when they integrated with me so that we were/are one whole person again.