Hearing Voices and Cultivating Internal Dialogue

An important goal in dissociative disorders treatment has always been the achievement of co-consciousness. An antidote to amnestic barriers that prevent information exchange and often contribute to high-risk behaviors "behind the back" of the client, co-consciousness has many clinical benefits. By facilitating the client's ability to recognize the parts' voices, points of view, and belief systems as differentiated from their own, it increases the degree to which clients can maintain continuity of self over time. When clients know whose thoughts they are hearing or whose impulses they feel, rather than feeling possessed by mysterious forces, that knowledge contributes to their impulse control, good judgment, and, most importantly, their safety. Co-consciousness also offers the system an opportunity to develop internal empathic connections between parts and an increased sense of community or inner attachment.

In this webinar, we will address the challenges of helping DID clients establish co-consciousness in the face of trauma-related habits of secrecy, internal conflicts between parts, and mistrust or avoidance of each other. Using techniques drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, ego state therapy, and Internal Family Systems, therapists who work with DID will learn ways of overcoming phobic or dismissive reactions to the parts, to observe their communications, and to cultivate internal dialogue not only in words but also through the body. Lastly, we will focus on how to cultivate "earned secure attachment" in clients by increasing internal compassion for wounded child parts.

This course is based on the recorded webinar, Hearing Voices and Cultivating Internal Dialogue created by Janina Fisher, Ph.D. in 2016.