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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Jessica Enders is a licensed professional counselor in her private practice in Texas called Red Oak Therapy in College Station Texas called Red Oak Therapy. In her practice she provides individual counseling, virtual DBT group counseling, consultation for working with trauma and dissociative disorders, and training or speaking engagements. She works with adults who have experienced neglect and sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. Most of her clients are working to manage attachment issues, personality disorder symptoms, PTSD, complex PTSD, and dissociative disorders. Jessica has previous clinical experience in various settings including a psychiatric hospital, local mental health authority, rape crisis center, and domestic violence shelter.
Speaker 3:Her clinical training includes dialectical behavioral therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Additionally, she is a trained yoga instructor and integrates mindfulness and the various limbs of yoga into her practice. Presently, she is also a doctoral candidate in counselor education and supervision at Sam Houston State University. In her research, she focuses on the identification and treatment of dissociation and dissociative identity disorder. Personally, she is an extroverted social person who enjoys playing sports and spending time with her dogs and loved ones.
Speaker 3:Welcome Jessica Enders.
Speaker 1:My name is Jessica Anders, and I'm a licensed professional counselor in Texas. And I mostly work with trauma and dissociative disorders in my practice. I will also work with some personality disorders, mostly borderline personality disorder. And, that's the stuff that I I like to work with. I like to work with all of those things, and that's kind of what I I focus my practice on with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's just, like, a little bit about me. I'm also a yoga instructor. I'm also a trained yoga instructor, so I do like to bring a lot of yoga into the counseling session, but that doesn't look like what people think. I bring much more than the asana, than just the poses.
Speaker 1:There's eight limbs of yoga, and I bring a lot more of the other ones into counseling.
Speaker 3:You are a clinician who has your own thing going and already focused on these heavy, heavy things. How did you get started on that so early in your career? What introduced you to trauma and dissociation?
Speaker 1:I started working with trauma when I went into my counseling program from the beginning. I I knew I wanted to work with trauma. At first, I thought I wanted to work with kids, and I tried that out. And it just it it's too hard for me not to wanna take all the kids home at the end of the day. You know?
Speaker 1:So I decided, okay. I wanna work with adults because those kids grow up and still, you know, struggle with different trauma. I kinda played around with the idea of working with, like, military veterans, and that didn't seem to really fit for me or or really for them, and that's okay with me. And I started doing my counseling internship at a domestic violence shelter that also had outpatient counseling as well. So I did some work in the shelter and then some outpatient also.
Speaker 1:And then at the same time, I did my clinical internship also at a sexual assault resource center in Bryan, Texas, which is awesome. They they go by Sark, but it's a rape crisis center is how they're classified here in Texas. And I was working with primary and secondary survivors of sexual assault and just really felt like this is where I wanna be, and this is where I'm I felt pulled. I felt called to be working and, you know, figured out all my self care to be able to keep doing it. I think it's very easy to get, you know, burned out working with these types of things because it's just it's heavy and it's hard, but I really found a way to balance that.
Speaker 1:Going through my yoga instructor training was a part of that as well and doing that at the same time. It was a lot, but it was important for me to be able to do that. And while I was working at Sark so after I graduated, got my license, I started working at SARC as a full time counselor there. And I got my first client that came in telling me, I have a lot of dissociation. I don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1:It's really overwhelming. I'm really nervous about all this stuff. And, you know, I was thinking back to, you know, the crisis and trauma class that I took where my professor talked a lot about dissociation and DID because that's something that he works with. And I was like, oh, okay. That's kind of familiar.
Speaker 1:Right? But I didn't really quite know what I was doing or what I was really looking at. But I leaned into that with this client to just say, let's let's talk about that. Let's explore that dissociation. Like, what what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:What's happening? You know, what are your experiences with that? And as soon as I leaned into it, I got a whole lot more back, right, from this client because they were they were dying to to talk about it with someone, but they just didn't know how, and they've been very shut down by other counselors. And I I was very naive of just didn't really know what I was working with. And by, like, session two or three, I was starting to get, you know, what seemed like altered parts, and I did not quite know what I was doing.
Speaker 1:I went to my supervisor, and my supervisor was like, look. I I work with trauma. I I can help you out a lot of the sexual assault and domestic violence specific stuff, but you need to call your old professor. You know? We need to consult with him.
Speaker 1:So I contacted him, and he was very helpful. Now he's he's my dissertation chair right now because I returned back for a doctoral degree. And he was incredibly helpful in consulting with me to help me understand what was going on with this client and how to help them. And, you know, I told this client from the beginning, like, I am in no means an expert in this, but I cannot find anybody in town that works with this. So I'm consulting.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna do my best. And they were very, you know, understanding and appreciative of me being honest about that and willing to work with me or even though I, you know, didn't have this vast experience. And very grateful to that client also kind of letting me start here, and we were able to, you know, make some good progress, you know, and be able to work together. And I learned so much from them and I learned, wow, there's all these people here that are almost like invisible to other counselors, even those of us working with trauma, you know, that have just experienced so much trauma that it resulted in this, you know, different structure within to be able to cope with what had happened to them. But we weren't acknowledging it.
Speaker 1:You know, I I had been directly told that, you know, DID is so rare. You're never gonna see it in your career. Anyone who tells you they have DID, they're they're lying or someone is confused to them. They don't they don't know what they're talking about by a psychiatrist. And so, you know and I was very young at that time too, you know, professionally and just age wise.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking, oh, they they must know. Right? They have more experience than me. They're in this position of power. I'm just never gonna see that again.
Speaker 1:At the time when that happened, I was working as a, like, a case manager at a local mental health authority, And I just didn't realize I kinda internalized that as this bias until I took this class. And then later, I got this client, you know, at the sexual assault resource center. And I was like, okay. Yeah. This is clearly real.
Speaker 1:This is something that people are struggling with, and I am gonna see it in my career. I'm I'm, you know, like, six months into being licensed, and I'm already seeing it. So I wanna figure out how do I help these people because they're, you know again, it felt kind of like they were invisible to my fields, you know? And I would ask other people about it and they tell me the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've heard of that. You know, it's interesting, but, you know, it's so rare. You're just never gonna see it. And, you know, research wise, we know that's not true. It's just it's a disorder that conceals itself, you know?
Speaker 1:And I think it's puts the pressure and the responsibility on on the mental health professionals to be able to, you know, identify this and help them work with it and to be open and believe them about their experiences and to, like, lean in to that dissociation. So I kinda, like, fell into working with dissociative disorders, but it is, like, the heart and soul of what I really, really like to work with.
Speaker 3:This is exactly why I asked you to come on the podcast because you presented at the ISSTD annual conference, and your workshop was amazing. Just even in the title and the description, It was all about being a detective and like following the clues to understand what was going on and using what the client presents for you to understand how to help, which I feel like is so empowering both for clients and survivors and also the therapist.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about that and what your workshop was? Yeah. Yeah. I was surprised and honored that they accepted my proposal because International, you know, Society for Study of Trauma Dissociation sounds so big to me. Right?
Speaker 1:Because I I am, you know, newer professional. I was so excited. So I presented a case study of one of my clients that I began working with. And because I have that other client that I mentioned earlier, I started seeing similar things and started exploring it with this client, but it took what I thought was a long time. It took two years to kind of explore and clarify, you know, do my detective work and kind of struggling through that to identify and get to a diagnosis of of DID with this other client that I presented as the case study.
Speaker 1:But working together with that client, we we kind of figured this out together. So where you mentioned, like, empowerment, that that is such a huge thing for me in working with any of my clients. And I think a lot of that comes from when you when you work in, you know, nonprofit work that is focused around, like, sexual assault and mass violence, there's so much focus on on building their power back up. And I think that's how I approach all of my clients is helping them find their voice and their own power and empowering them to, like, work with me that, you know, they're living their lives day to day. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, how who am I to say, like, I know more than you? Right? I know different. Right? But I don't know everything.
Speaker 1:And so I was working together in this, like, collaboration. Yeah. So trying to, like, collaborate with the client through this process of figuring out, like, what their experience is and kind of working towards a diagnosis together was really, really important to me. And so through kind of exploring this case study, I tried to, you know, portray that in the presentation that I gave, but it really started with me having the knowledge as the clinician to recognize things within my client and to point it out and to ask about it and to explore it. I think a lot of the times people are counselors, clinicians, like, they're working with clients, and they might see some of the signs or, you know, dissociation or of, you know, potential dissociative disorder, but they don't really know what it is.
Speaker 1:And so they don't lean into it. They don't they don't engage with it. They don't ask about it. And there's there can be a lot of, you know, biases or myths that we believe about those disorders, or it can just flat out be like, I just don't know what to do with that, so I don't. You know?
Speaker 1:I know how to work with depression, so I focus on depression. You know? That that's just like a natural human thing. So I don't, you know, fault people for that. But I think that as clinicians, we can be doing more to suspect things.
Speaker 1:Right? So I really do think of, you know, kind of like a a Sherlock Holmes type detective, you know, approach of kind of like, what can I notice in this client? And then let me ask about it. And then if that matches something that I have knowledge about with SISU disorders, then I'm gonna go down this path. And if it doesn't, then I'll go down the other path.
Speaker 1:You know? Like, I'm not seeking to find something that's not there, but when there is something there, I'm gonna ask about it. You know? And so that was really kind of my bigger approach and a big advocacy thing that I tried in my community is to, you know, talk with my, you know, my colleagues and my friends and that do counseling of just like, you know, hey, dissociation is is a thing. And, you know, it can look like this or it can look like this.
Speaker 1:And, like, when I describe what it looks like, they're like, oh, yeah. I have clients that do that. You And I was like, okay. It doesn't mean it's a dissociative disorder, but what do you do with that? How are you treating that?
Speaker 1:And so that's a really important thing for me is that this is, to me, like, a huge symptom and and potentially, you know, disorder that we're just missing on our end. And so to me, I think it's important that we suspect it, assess it, that we detect it. You know? And if we need to diagnose something, then we diagnose something. Sometimes we don't need to.
Speaker 1:But we need to still explore that dissociation because we're not treating something in the client that they might be really struggling with. We have to ask about it.
Speaker 3:I just love it so much. I love that you are in tune with your clients. I love You are paying attention to what they are bringing you, which is, as you said, very different from looking for something that's not there. But being present and noticing what's being brought is, besides getting an accurate diagnosis, there's such a level of attunement there that is so powerful.
Speaker 1:Yes. I think that attunement and being present, that is not something I've always been best at in my life. I think that's something that I definitely grew into and developed through my, like, practice with with yoga and all of that. But that's kind of done for me in just being present with myself that I'm able to be more present with my clients. And that attunement research wise, I mean, we know that's what really helps build healthy secure attachment.
Speaker 1:And a lot of the times with, especially with our dissociative disorders, you know, it's been an attachment or there's detachment issues or betrayal or abuse from a caregiver where they need an example of a healthy attachment. And so being able to offer that healthy, safe attunement as well, I think is really helpful in the healing process. I think it's something that they need. And sometimes I think clinicians try to keep themselves a little bit more detached, you know? Or we think that being, you know, the opposite of that, you know, being too attuned means being too personal, right, and not being professional or sharing too much about yourself.
Speaker 1:I still do not share very much about myself with my clients. I I very rarely do, only when it's really relevant. But I attune to them so much better than if I'm thinking of being my my super duper, you know, professional kind of distance, you know, version of myself. I don't wanna be that. Like, I wanna be connected with them.
Speaker 1:And I think it's through that connection that they have the opportunity to really heal within themselves because they can build that trusting connection. And I think if we don't have that attunement, there there isn't really that deep level of trust that's needed.
Speaker 3:Well, then it becomes retraumatizing. Right? Because Yeah. Relationships are where the wounds are. Right.
Speaker 3:And we can be professional without being cold. Right.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. That that warmth is is so important for attachment. You know? And that's really what we have to do is we have to our clients have to be able to attach to us.
Speaker 1:Oh, I would say there's just a lot in attachment theory that I really like and respect, and I think it's so relevant that I I think it's almost kinda skipped over a little bit. And, you know, I think back to, like, my my master's level training to be a counselor. Like, you know, they talk about the therapeutic relationship is very important, and it is. It is. But they don't go into a lot of times the attachment levels of that.
Speaker 1:And they do talk about boundaries, which is good, but I think you can you can have boundaries and still, you know, be personal and connect and attune in all those things that are important, that warmth that's important for healthy attachment with our clients. And I I I personally wasn't trained from an attachment lens. And that's something, you know, in the future. I am getting my doctorate degree, I will get to teach master's students in the future. That's something I really intend to bring into, you know, the classroom is about how important that attachment is to building that relationship so it can be therapeutic.
Speaker 3:When you were using the detective framework with this client, like in your case study, what were some Yes. Or or with other clients too. What were some of the clues that led you to think, okay, DID might be part of what's happening here? Any dissociative disorder, but DID specifically.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a lot of these two, and I talked about this in my presentation, was retroactively. Right? I looked back and I thought, oh, I missed that sign. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, there was a clue, and I know it now, but I missed it then. Our very first session with that client, in our very first session a lot of times, few people have this expectation that their first counseling session, they have to tell you every single detail of something. And when someone's coming to me for something like a sexual assault, sometimes they really think I'm supposed to go beginning to end of the story so they understand they can fix it and help me. Right? So sometimes I have to slow people down.
Speaker 1:But the way that this client was was trying to do that was they couldn't speak. And there was this what I now know was probably like a desistive trance where they they were staring off into, you know, a wall, right, not looking at me. And all of their affect was just gone. It was kind of like, you know, just like a well, like, something just kinda washed off all of the emotion on their face, and they were just very, very blank. So there wasn't, you know, sadness or anger or fear or anything.
Speaker 1:It was just kind of very blank, and they were just staring off. And they would open their mouth and then just kind of freeze there for a little bit. And then they would kind of shake their head a little bit, and and they would try to say something a little bit. And they started trying to talk a little bit about the assault, and that's when I kind of realized, okay. This is really hard for them.
Speaker 1:And so I stopped them, and I said, no. We have time. Like, we don't have to get into all these details today. Right? And so I kind of just, you know, calm their fears about that.
Speaker 1:But the the visual, what I could observe, what I could see was that they they were not with me. They they were not in this moment. Now this is also really common with with any type of trauma client. Like, this did not raise a big red flag to me yet. Right?
Speaker 1:But it was something where I saw it and I should have explored more of, is there other types of disassociation going on? What does that look like? Is that happening often? And I just at that point in my, you know, career, I just didn't quite know what to do with it. But I did notice it, and I did handle it in a way that was helpful for our relationship, you know, to not, like, force them to keep going through this.
Speaker 1:Flashing forward into you know, we've been working together a little bit more. Typically, the way that this client presented was very I would label it as, like, professional. It was very controlled the way that they held their body. Right? So when they sat in the chair, I mean, it looked like I was about to interview them for a job.
Speaker 1:You know, they, you know, had their their, you know, hands just crossed slightly over their their knees and just very, very kind of stiff and controlled in their body and very small, almost like they were, you know, making themselves smaller. And they they would talk, they would share, they would engage with me, all of that, but they just seemed a little bit distant. But that was just kind of how how I knew their personality for a while. And then it was probably, like, I probably thumbed seven or times before we had the session where we had planned before because I kinda come up in the session before that, okay. Next time, we're gonna look at, like, your your previous romantic relationships, you know, like, what those were like and just kinda explore those.
Speaker 1:And the client's like, okay. That's what we'll do. Well, when they came in for that session, their clothes were completely different. They were much more, like, comfortable. And in my head, I just thought, comfy day.
Speaker 1:Right? You know? That's nice. But the way that they sat in the chair was what really kind of ticked me off was they always, again, sat very, very professionally, like, about to be interviewed. And this time they sat, they threw their legs up over, you know, the arm of one of the chairs and kind of leaned back, you know, with their back on the other arm of the chair, kind of sitting sideways on it and, like, played with their hair throughout the session.
Speaker 1:Their tone of voice was, like, a bit higher and much more comfortable. Like, it really felt like we were, like, kinda like girlfriends at a sleepover, you know, like, talking about boys. And just the whole personality was a little bit different. And at the time, I was like, oh, that seems like something, but I'm not quite sure. Really didn't quite know what that was.
Speaker 1:But just that whole session was very, different. Right? And that was a clue that I probably should have, you know, asked about, like, you know, does this feel different to you? Or, you know, does this happen often? Or when I have the next session with them, you know, to ask, like, you know, what what do you recognize about, you know, how you felt last session compared to how you are feeling this session?
Speaker 1:You know? Different questions I wish that I'd asked that I just didn't yet. Right? So the timeline. Right?
Speaker 1:This this is around the time when that original client that I talked about kind of how I fell into dissociative disorder work. That's when I started seeing alters from that client. And I started thinking, okay. Maybe that's what's going on with this client because this is kinda what it looks like, but it's not like, it was still different. You know?
Speaker 1:There's definitely differences between individual systems. And so I wasn't, again, dead set on it. And at that point, I didn't know how to assess it. But I thought, well, maybe. And then I, you know, kind of put it put it to the side.
Speaker 1:I didn't really dig into that clue. And then two of the biggest clues that came later that I wish I had gone more into, one of them I did. But the first one was I went through EMDR training. Right? So eye movement desensitization reprocessing.
Speaker 1:It's a big therapy intervention technique that is really helpful in trauma. I've been really excited to go through that training. So I went through that, and I was first introduced there to the DES, the Distorted Youth Experience Scale, which is like an assessment where we can kind of ask about different experiences of dissociation. And they taught it to me as a way to rule in or out who you can do EMDR with. Right?
Speaker 1:Which there's lots of people out there too. There's lots of training and protocol on how you can use EMDR with dissociative disorders. But that was all the knowledge I was getting at the time. Right? Was if they score above this, just don't do EMDR.
Speaker 1:And if they score below this, you're good. So that was kind of all that I knew at that point. So I ran with that. So I go to EMDR training, and I think, oh, this client literally can't speak about it, but maybe they can think about it and feel it, and we can process it with EMDR and get them, you know, some some relief and some processing of of the sexual assault. And so I do the DES.
Speaker 1:Right? Because I do that first. That's how they train me to do it. And the score was way above the cutoff, right, for doing EMDR. So I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Never mind. We can't do EMDR. Like, that that was all that I knew at that point, but I didn't know what else to do. So I I start kind of, you know, consulting a little bit more with that professor of mine and asking some questions, but I still didn't really follow all of my clues and really think that maybe this could be a dissociative disorder yet. I really just wasn't sure what was going on.
Speaker 1:I was more focused on that other client. Right? So I hadn't yet learned how to balance having multiple dissociative symptoms systems that I was working with. And then not too much longer, I went to IFS training, just like a short one day training to kinda get an overview of what it was. Right?
Speaker 1:So internal family systems. And at that training, it it's not specifically for, you know, DID, but it was very nonpathologizing. And I like the language of the parts, and it gave me a better way to talk about it and to assess it. And so I introduced this to to this client, and I say, hey. I, you know, I went to this training.
Speaker 1:I, you know, would kinda like to explore a little bit of this with you and see see what you think.
Speaker 2:You know, what do you what do you think about that?
Speaker 1:And I explained it to her. And she was like, sure. Okay. You know, let's let's try that. And so we started working with that, and that's how I called out the first associated part with her that I clearly and it just hit me all at once where I'm all those clues that I had overlooked, like, all hit me in the face at once in this session where we were trying to work with, you know, okay.
Speaker 1:Let's speak to that anger, that part of you that's angry. Right? And I got a full on part, and I watched her physically take up much more space on that couch. Right? And to her voice dropped a lot lower.
Speaker 1:She was not afraid to be, you know, very angry. She wasn't necessarily angry with me, but what we're talking about, she was angry about she was speaking about in this angry way. You know, she wasn't, you know, yelling, but she was you know, her voice is getting louder. It was more like verbal aggression about it. She was really expressing herself in a way that I had never seen.
Speaker 1:She she usually would be just very kind of timid in a way and kinda cautious, not really wanting to, you know, say like, oh, you know, I'm really mad about this. Right? I had to really I didn't think asking her to speak from the angry part was gonna go anywhere because it it seemed that she was very disconnected from it. But she she shifted right into this dissociated part that had held a lot of the anger and was able to speak to me from that. And then as we kind of were debriefing, you know, at the end of our session, you know, this client asked me, is it normal to see these clients in your head like they're like they're like a person?
Speaker 1:And I was like, you know, again, just explored it. Right? What what do you mean by that? You know, what what are you thinking? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm probably making this up. But can I bring you something next time to try to talk talk about it or ask you about it so I can understand it? And then I just said, sure. Sure. And then the next session, she brings in some some images that she just you know, Google images kinda found that represented the most close to how she saw these parts in her mind.
Speaker 1:All the while, she's like, you're probably gonna tell me I'm crazy. I I'm scared to say anything about I don't wanna end up in a padded room. I'm I'm just I you know, I I'm hoping that you'll tell me I'm wrong about this. And that's when I was you know, everything was coming together of, oh, okay. All these clues that I can see now, I wish I'd seen then.
Speaker 1:And here, it was very, very clear. All of it hit me at once, and it was much easier for me to work with her the same way I was working with that other client that had been more more clearly, more obviously a dissociative disorder. And so it's like I said, it took me a little while, but I I will say too just in talking with a lot of people at the ISSTD conference and some of the people in my presentation, they were telling me, you know, well, this took two years. That's actually pretty quick to, like, identify that. And I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:That's I mean, that's good to hear. That's helpful. But at the same time, I'm like, that's a long time for them to stick with the counselor hoping that they'll help them. Right? And the counselor not really knowing what they're working with to be able to help them the most.
Speaker 1:And so that's where I think, again, for for me, it's just like a big passionate thing for me is is trying to detect it and to find it within the people that it exists so that we can help them in in the way that they're actually needing to be helped. Because I think sometimes we're we're we're not not helping, but we're not really treating what the actual problem is, and we just don't know it because we're not we're not seeing it when it's actually there.
Speaker 3:I agree that it's such a short time for it to be figured out like that, and that's really to your credit and to the consultation that you did to their credit as well, that you all were able to navigate that and work that and those insights to come and your client to have the courage to share those things because it really can take like they say the average is seven to ten years. And so that's just a powerful thing. What what have you learned about I'm just curious. What have you learned about using EMDR with DID since then? So personally, I have not done any training or kind of
Speaker 1:learned about doing EMDR with DID clients. And my my reason for that is the clients that I have are not clients that feel ready for that because we have kind of explored it before, but they're it's not something that they feel ready to do. Some of them are not even always fully ready to do a lot of the trauma work, you know, kind of the the phase two, right, trauma memory work. And and that's okay. You know, I think the biggest thing I have to have is patience, you know, of just, you know, when when they're ready, they'll be ready.
Speaker 1:You know? But I that's the only reason I haven't really sought it out. It's something that's kind of on my back burner of I'd love to learn more about it. But like I mentioned, I'm doing a a PhD right now, so I'm finishing the dissertation. And once I get through that, then I can get to all of the interesting interesting trainings trainings and and things things that that I I wanna wanna do.
Speaker 1:But I I honestly don't have a client right now that would be would be ready for that kind of work also. I know some people are, you know, that have dissociative disorders, and they have, like I said, lots of trainings out there for it that could be really helpful. This is not something I've personally done yet.
Speaker 3:Well and I don't mean to be overly intrusive, but I just I and this is a personal comment, so I apologize. But I just really appreciate what you're sharing because I've done a PhD, I know how intense that is, and I understand the need to finish that before you're doing other in-depth trainings. Like the ISSTD obviously offers a great EMDR course and the professional training program classes and all of that. But what I wanna say about it is that it's evidence of your good care of your clients because it's not just good care of you. If you are burned out because you're doing too many things at once or trying to deal with too many things at once personally, like if you were doing your doctorate and those courses and the EMDR class and these other things.
Speaker 3:Like, that's so much. And it's when it when it's too much for you, it's also too much for your clients. And I just have seen how that can really make things fall apart in my own personal experience. And so I'm so grateful that you're taking good care of your clients by not taking on too much for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thank thank you for saying that. That's something that's become just really, really important to me is truly understanding self care. You know? It it's something that, you know, we do talk about a lot more in the profession, but I think really figuring out what that looks like for you.
Speaker 1:And for me, it it was learning how to say no to things and also learning how to say no to, like, my my whims and my interests and things. Because sometimes I'm like, oh, that's interesting. That's cool. I wanna learn about that, and I can't do everything. Like, I I have to accept that, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:You know? Growing up, I never did that. I said yes to everything. I wanted to do absolutely everything, and I just, you know, would sacrifice the sleep, and I just did it. And I and I did it, but I was, you know, like an energizer bunny, and I and and I ran out of energy.
Speaker 1:And that's where I kind of got drawn and fell into a lot of yoga. And a lot of what that gives me is, like, a spiritual fulfillment of just, like, reenergizing, filling myself up, empowering myself of it's good to say no to things sometimes or to say not yet or later on, you know, and to really be intentional with my time and my energy is is something I really try to value. And I try to help teach that. I got to teach some undergrad classes throughout my doctorate program, and the school I'm at, like, they have a, like, a minor that's human services, but it includes some, like, counseling, like, classes. So I could teach, like, an intro to counseling and an intro to helping relationships.
Speaker 1:And I got to teach them about, like, figuring out your own self care and talk about boundaries, not just in, you know, don't don't stay don't share that with a client, you know, kind of thing of just what are those boundaries and what you can say yes to, what you can say no to. How do you check-in with yourself and feel and know how much you can take on today or this week or this season. Right? Like, really respecting when your body is telling you, I'm done. Like, I can't do anymore right now.
Speaker 1:Right? And when you do a career like this where you're a clinician and you're helping other people, like, you're you're pouring out so much to them and you're holding so much space for them, you can't forget about yourself or you have so much less space for them. And so in order to do what I love doing, I have to find that that love and care for myself also. So I just I I appreciate you recognizing that.
Speaker 3:It's such a big deal. It really is. What what else would you have counsel for new clinicians or emerging professionals?
Speaker 1:I think that awareness and getting to know yourself is so, so important. But I think also balancing kind of like learning and confidence. Because I think a lot of the times at at the beginning, we feel very, like, you know, impostor syndrome and, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And sometimes people kinda cover that up with being, like, too confident. Right?
Speaker 1:Or I can I can fix everyone? I can help everyone with everything. And I think balancing that with, like, we always need to still be learning, but we also need to, like, give ourselves credit for what we do know, what we have learned. And when we hit something, we come across something that's like, oh, I don't know how to do that, that we have that ability to lean on consultation, on supervision, on reaching out to an old professor like I did. Like, to let yourself do that and not see that as, oh, that means I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Right? It's okay to not fully know what you're doing, but you just have to be honest with yourself, with others, and often with your client, you know, to say, hey. I I think this might be it, but I I don't quite know. So what I'm gonna do is I'm I'm gonna consult with someone and see if I can, you know, learn and be helpful for you. Right?
Speaker 1:And if not, then, you know, we'll look at a referral. But I think a lot of the times people are afraid to do that because they're they're afraid that making a referral or consulting or asking for that help means that you're not good at your job or you don't know what you're doing. But a part of being good at this job and this work, I really think, is saying, oh, I know about that, but I don't know about this other thing. And so let me go let me go research it. Let me find a trainee.
Speaker 1:Let me consult with somebody. Let me, you know, see if someone does ongoing supervision for this. It's like, makes you good at your job. Like, it's not this weakness that I think sometimes we label it as. You know?
Speaker 1:I think that was something I, you know, kinda had to overcome more. Luckily, I feel like in life, I able to overcome that a little bit earlier, but applying that to my clinical work. Working with Dissociative Disorders was definitely that opportunity to be like, okay. I know how to help people with, you know, trauma and with this and sexual assault and domestic violence, all of that, but I don't quite know what I'm doing with dissociation. Let me figure it out.
Speaker 1:And then as you learn and you learn that competency grows, and then you can you can work from there. But it's okay to hit things that, you know, oh, I just don't quite know. Right? Let me go find out. You know?
Speaker 3:You also shared about yoga. What are some of the other ways that you use yoga in your practice?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So most people are most familiar with yoga as the the asana. The that's one of the eight limbs of yoga that is the poses. Right? The way that we pose.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot to a lot of work you there's lots of trauma informed yoga and approaches like that that do use a lot of the asana. What I bring in so much is is the mindfulness and the breath and the awareness are some you know, there's there's different words for that, but there those are some of those limbs of yoga where that's a part of my practice all the time. I do a lot of mindful breathing, connecting to feeling the body. And and I will say to you a lot I've been to a couple of trainings that were, like, you know, mindfulness for counselors or, you know, teaching bringing trauma informed yoga into your practice. And when they weren't taught by yoga people, they just were not as helpful.
Speaker 1:When I went to just the straight yoga trainings, they were a lot more helpful for me because it's much more focused on the the yoga first and then point it in versus the the counseling trainings tend to be, you know, the counseling first and adding in, sprinkling in the, you know, mindfulness and the the yoga aspects of it. So I I've really preferred the specific yoga trainings around it and just getting deeper in yoga and then creatively applying that with my clients. So there there aren't a lot of specific training names of techniques that I could kind of mention, but I I really like to do a lot of, like, physical touch and watching that and mirroring as well, things to kind of really get people in their bodies and so that you can feel your own body. Because when we're very dissociated, like, you don't feel real. You can't find yourself, so to speak, and and you can't find yourself in your And so what I try to do is is movements and things that can help us find ourselves and to connect with the body and the self.
Speaker 1:A lot of that is, you know, increasing awareness. Like I said, some of the breathing and a lot of the just physical movements and feeling comfortable in the body, right, is really the big thing. And and the goal, the hope would be to feel relaxed in the body. But, you know, I kinda see that in stages of, well, let's just find your body first. Let's feel your body.
Speaker 1:And then let's, you know, maybe be a little comfortable. And then if we can get to relax, you know, then that'd be wonderful. But if we don't get there, it's okay. Just enough is to find your body. Right?
Speaker 1:And so a lot of that a lot of those principles kind of come to me from a lot of the yoga study that I've done. People tend to think, you know, I'm I'm rolling out a mat and having clients, you know, guiding them through, like, a yoga session. I don't particularly do that. What I've done with some clients because I have I have little yoga figures, like, in my office and, you know, to my disclosure and everything. So clients will ask me about it, and I'll tell them about it.
Speaker 1:And some of them are very into yoga. And so sometimes I will, like, write them some, like, sequences that they can do, which is just like a pose to pose to pose, like a couple different poses they can do. And I'll tie that in with, like, the work that we're doing as, like, a homework thing. So there's been times where I've done some of those for building strength, building power, building control within yourself. And there's certain poses from yoga that we would use for that.
Speaker 1:So there's a big principle and kind of belief behind yoga is there's there's certain body poses that can, like, you know, channel the certain energy and connect ourselves emotionally to help us feel strong, to help us feel in control, things like that. So I will, like, build in some of those poses in the sequence that I make them. And then we kinda walk through a lot of them, you know, if they're into yoga, like, they're kinda familiar with some of the poses. And so I'll write notes of, like, you know, hold this because a lot of times people are used to the very western, very fitness oriented yoga where they're, like, trying to sweat, you know, and trying to go through it really fast or, you know, build strength. And those can be really helpful things in other ways.
Speaker 1:But when I'm using it therapeutically, I'm really wanting them to focus on how it feels and connect with themselves and that awareness of that, you know, strength or control or whatever it is we're working to build versus, you know, like, a workout routine. Right? So I try to to use that when when that works for people. But a lot of the awareness, the mindfulness, the body movement, I'm using with most of my client here and there, not not every single session. Right?
Speaker 1:But when it's needed, when we're dealing with a lot of dissociation, that can be really, really helpful for us.
Speaker 3:How do you introduce that with people who are not aware of their bodies or afraid of being in touch with their bodies or feel easily overwhelmed even at the idea of touch, for example?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what what I do is the biggest thing I do is I start with just, like, this thing I do with with the hands where just having them hold their hands up. So I might just introduce and be like, okay. I want us just to try something. This is gonna feel like kind of a weird activity.
Speaker 1:And if you don't like it, we'll just stop. But I'm gonna do it with you, and I'm gonna kinda show you first. But what I want us to do is we're gonna pull you know, put both of our hands here in front of us so that they're they're apart from each other, and you can look and see them. And just kind of, you know, line them up as if they were going to touch each other. But I want you to just put them as close or as far away as you would like.
Speaker 1:And so I'll let people kinda decide, you know, how far they want it to be. And then imagine that you can feel the space between your hands. And I'll let them connect with that for a little bit. And then I'll ask them to try to make that space smaller to condense that energy together and pull the hands closer and closer and closer as close as they want to. And if they want them to touch, they can.
Speaker 1:And if they don't, they don't have to touch. So especially if they're uncomfortable with touch or touch is painful, just getting close to it. It's kind of like a desensitization thing. Right? Just having them be the one that is doing the touch and to be in control of that and to be choosing, okay.
Speaker 1:I don't want my hands to touch, but I can feel that energy between them, and I'm still connected. I'm still feeling something. Right? So we're still getting the benefit of it, but we're not having to necessarily make the actual contact of touch. Because you're right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes touch can be very challenging and uncomfortable. Right? So we have to really ease into that.
Speaker 3:Anything else that you wanted to share with us today before I let you go? I think the biggest thing would be just
Speaker 1:if you're a clinician, you know, counselor, psychiatrist, whatever that might be, like, really just listen and lean into clients when they tell you about these experiences that, you know, might sound really strange or confusing to just ask them for more. You know? The biggest, thing that I can do with my clients is saying like, okay. Tell me more about that. Help me understand that.
Speaker 1:And really trying to understand that and trying to think how we can actually help with that because we really need to see what it is that we're looking for. And then I guess just for for clients and for people experiencing some of this stuff, I think it's really important to find a counselor to work with or, you know, therapist, social worker, whoever that you feel like listens to these experiences. And if they're not, you know, try to ask them about it or, you know, maybe that's not a good fit for you. You know, if someone is not responding to these associated experiences that you know you're having, either you've tried to bring them up or, you know, you're not comfortable to bring them up, then maybe we just need to find someone that's a better fit for you. And if that's okay, it's okay to, you know, find someone else if that's what fits better for you.
Speaker 1:It's all about getting you what you need. And I think that needs to be our focus always as those trying to help is helping someone get what they need. And in order to do that, we have to recognize these things so to be able to help them.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for sharing with us today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Of course. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
Speaker 2:We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too, being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.